Looking Glass Studios Closes

Warrior writes: "Looking Glass Studios, makers of the System Shock series and Thief series, has closed it doors according to sources. GameSpy is reporting that the company plans to cease operations immediately. Despite strong sales of Thief II, the company was rumored to have financial problems. The story says there is no word on who will retain rights to the Thief and System Shock franchises."

Comments

word from the L.Glass family ...

[joelin0]

Having been very close friends and a roommate to one of the LG programmers for the past 3+ years... I think I can safely say that not only were these people incredibly talented and brilliant game developers, but they were also tremendous human beings.

I had a chance to meet, hang out with, and play quake against alot of the LG'ers the past couple of years through my roommate Darren. From Tom Leonard, to Con Hantzopolous, to James and Liz Fleming - they are some incredibly cool and warm people. They'll all do well in their future with whatever avenues they choose. I speak for myself when I say this (so don't quote me).. but from the conversations I had last night about this .. almost expect another company to rise up out of this.

Godspeed LG ...

Objectives of developing games

[Aero]

Normal:

• Have an idea. Doesn't have to be a good one.
• Form a design team. Doesn't have to stay together.
• If game is somewhere between 50% and 75% finished at Halloween, cut whatever corners are necessary to get game on shelves before Christmas.
• Ship on Marketing's ship date. Why pay beta testers when there are thousands of gamers who will pay to beta-test the game?
• Stay out of the bargain bin for at least 3 months.

Hard:

• Have an idea. Make sure it isn't a total rehash, or simply an excuse to wrap expensive eye candy around not much game.
• Form a design team. Keep them together during the entire project.
• Test and tweak sufficiently to warrant a version number of 1.0 (at least) on the gold master.
• Don't listen to Marketing, but still try to get the game out in time for Christmas if it looks like release will be in Q4.
• Sell 100,000 units.

Expert:

• Have an idea. If you're rehashing, make sure it's a rehash of something you've done, and make sure you're doing it better this time. Even this much rehashing is only permissible in a sequel.
• You've got a design team because, with few exceptions, your people don't leave.
• Make sure the game works. Nobody wants to download patches. Nobody catches all the bugs, true, but the game should be fundamentally sound out of the chute.
• Don't set a release date. Don't let Marketing set a release date. Screw Christmas.
• Sell 250,000 units.
• Don't kill anyone. Depriving QA personnel of normal lives during beta testing is allowed, though.

Too many developers play at Normal, and game companies aren't the only culprits. Not nearly enough play at Hard, and a literal handful even try Expert. And now there's one fewer of those. Damn shame.

Aero

Anonymous Info Posted Elsewhere

[StrutterX]

Posted in the evil avatar and fat babies forums:

Start quote:

Well, gee, I guess not all of us can be as hugely
successful as some people around here.

And, I'm happy to know we have such industry luminaries
who know so much about the inner workings and
sales numbers of LG writing our epitaph.

To make things clear:

0) Underworld 1/2, System Shock, Flight Unlimited 1
all sold very well, and were not money losers. Terra
Nova, BOCG, and FUIII sold poorly, and were. Viacom
killed the torturous hell of ST:V. FUII was break-even. BOCG
and TN left the company with a pretty big hole.

1) Thief sold *much, much* better than has been portrayed
in this thread, and at a very high average per-copy price. The
average retail price didn't drop below $30 until nine months
after we shipped. Including OEM deals it made millions
for LG.

2) SS2 didn't sell as well as hoped, but it was produced for
only a small margin over advances. It didn't sink us.

3) [The wood] One project was grossly undersold to publisher A,
and we mismanaged it to make the effect even worse. This
incurred unexpected costs.

4) [The coffin] After the team signed up to do a game signed
with publisher B bailed (unexpectedly and uncooly), publisher
B had grounds to pull out, did, and subtracted millions from
the LG FY2000/2001 budget. This was a disaster.

5) [The nails] Publisher C had stock, cash, other product
schedule slips, and banking issues that killed the acquisition
of LG that had been under LOI.

So there we were. Plenty of long-term income potential in
the briskly selling Thief 2, and signed deals. No short term
operating capital. Can't pay the bills, can't pay salaries?
Can't keep the doors open.

End quote

Someone else pointed out that:

"gross mismanagement following last year's buyout of Looking Glass by Intermetrics is what doomed the company"

Just reporting what I've read, and they ain't my opinions, because I wouldn't know!

StrutterX

Bad news..

[jeremy f]

Apparently, Eidos was set to buy Looking Glass completly, which had been going through a financial crisis (mostly due to having Eidos as a publisher), but Eidos themselves were strapped for cash, so they decided not to buy Looking Glass.

This is what happened.

The real kicker is that they (Eidos) donated $20 million to Ion Storm to help John Romero get Daikatana out the door. I, for one, will delete all games off of my computer the moment I hear that Daikatana sells even half as many copies as Thief II has, or recieves a single greater review than any of Thief II's reviews.

Re: Addendum to this thread...

[antdude]

More on that ShockEd from http://www.ttlg.com/forums/ubb/Forum9/HTML/000543. html thread:

"The employees didn't know of the closure until this afternoon. I was immediately notified, and because of this, I now have ShockEd and the mission files in my hands as we speak.

I'm going to make sure if it's okay to post everything that we're under NDA for, then I will go ahead and release ShockEd to the public. Or maybe wait until we get it working properly before tampering with it."