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Turbine Cuts Out Publishers With Funding Boost
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an official press release announcing MMORPG developer Turbine has secured almost $20 million in venture capital funding to help fund Turbine's first self-published PC MMO project, Dungeons & Dragons Online. A GameSpot story quotes a Turbine spokesman as saying the move presents a "total shift in [our] business model. We're taking out the middle man between us and our fans." The Asheron's Call developers are still "partnered with Atari for retail marketing and distribution" on D&D Online, the company it "secured the D&D MMORPG sublicense" from earlier this year, but describes its intent to "[transition] from a developer into service publisher with its newest franchises." Turbine are also still working on The Lord Of The Rings: Middle-Earth Online in partnership with Vivendi.
And all americans with him.
Saddam:captured Your evil overlords- those who run Islamic nations, Left-Wing Socialists experimenting with the lives of their countrymen, and Communists, killing human spirit and progress and legislating mediocrity - will be deconstructed and destroyed. You cannot impose your foul cults on the progressive world. You will be found and stamped out sometimes with force, sometimes under the weight of your own corruption (just like Nicolae Ceausescu.) Also, Communists and Far-Left Socialists, you will be shown to be the frauds you are and your failing systems will buckle under the system of economic imperialism and power. We will defeat you all until you capitulate into acting like human beings and worrying about your family, your children, their success and their future and human progress before your cults, religions and nationalism. We will expose the cults and the frauds you are and when you capitulate to the progressive west your standard of living will rise and the lies of your dictators will be exposed. FREEDOM from your cults and oppression, and you Socialist armchair assholes who think they can think for me and everyone else like Soros and other rich, communistic disgusting scum, we will triumph over you. We will not let you suppress our excellence, your drive to success and explore and to win in the game of life and to preserve the human species viability as an organism. Stand in the way of progress and DIE or progress with us.
You may say that we are corrupt liars but we, the progressive west, are less fucked than any of the Communist, uber Socialist or Islamic governments. We produce real results in technology and higher standard of living. So the proof is in the pudding, bastards, if the West is so cracked and beleaguered with fraud may the best system win. We are better than you, smarter than you and more motivated than you. I expect to defeat your scum corrupt governments in the course of the next 100 years. Prepare to do battle on economic, standard of living and the war fronts, losers. Go cry to Castro baby!
(Use a disposable account from a disposable IP before moderating this up. Editors generally watch and see who moderates controversial things like this up.)
When you are logged in,
Please *log out* AND use another browser before making your AC comments.
Your UID is being tracked, it's not Anonymous. Lots of people post lots of things to Slashdot as AC only because they believe it is really anonymous - it isn't. They hunt "trolls" (non-karma whores and non-group thinking bots) down.
This is true. I used to be a bit more freestyle and witty AC and be a nice guy logged in [basically a karma whore]. After a short while, I could no longer moderate. Slashdot does brand AC posts with IP and then map them back to users. They lie about AC, AC doesn't exist if you re-use ip addresses.
Big brother is watching. So while I might be a "troll" a lot of the AC things I said were to protect myself from Slash-bot groupthink. They punished me for voicing my opinion freestyle.
They also revoke moderation FOREVER - $rtbl it is called, for any moderations of any post that have been secretly flagged annoying [Slashcode has hidden flags viewable by editors]. If you *EVER* mod up something an editor secretly marked annoying you NEVER moderate again, ever - ever even if your karma is capped.
Also, Slashdot uses the friends system to track "trolls." Mark a troll you find funny as a friend *bang* $rtbl never to moderate ever again. My real account had many many good friends who had good karma, and a few funny trolls later, no more moderation for that account. Again, Slashdot is spying on its users to make the people who find certain things funny ineligible to moderate. You will never moderate again if you are a friend of a "foe or freak" of an editor.
FACT: This is in Slashcode CVS
Revision 1.7.2.5 / (download) - annotate - [select for diffs] , Thu Feb 8 13:12:32 2001 UTC (2 years, 9 months ago) by pudge
Branch: bender
CVS Tags: v1_1_3_0
Changes since 1.7.2.4: +18 -7 lines
Diff to previous 1.7.2.4 to branchpoint 1.7
log more AC info
So AC is a scam here. Hitler-Malda screws AC posts in the caboose. So now all you can do is go 100% AC, or , as they expect you to, KARMA WHORE. And it is so lame and unfair and probably illegal as they lie about anonymity.
Also, sometimes when certain information becomes an active thread, they bitchslap the thread much later so that people think its "safe" to participate and the whole thing gets slapped.
There is a presumption anonymous means something. They lie like rugs to the posting public by using the word anonymous. It is not. They brazenly lie though and the un-assuming poster is having everything he says correlated with him and stored in a computer just waiting to be subpoenaed by the people that Slashdot claims to hate but works for. They work for the fascist forces and components of the US government. I like the US and other Western governments but they have good and bad components - there are things you need to do to protect yourself from the bad components. Basically "covering your ass" so to speak. At Slashdot, in lying about AC, un-protects its posting public (seeding a de-anonymizing privacy stripping pandemic in their own "little" way). This makes Slashdot a very dangerous target for you the posters to have your "anonymous" information subpoenaed and you to be chased down and persecuted for speaking your mind. I think that it is a joke Slashdot editors post about SCO, MSFT, RIAA, MPAA, TIA, FBI, etc. They do
Yeah, but that doesn't mean that the game will still suck.
Turbine is working on a MMO-LOTR game and now a D&D-MMO game at the same time? Isn't that reaching a little too far?
Well, the economy is recovering, so we ought to see a dramatic rise in pre-bust business models appearing.
Current:
Publisher says: We'll publish your game and give you money to produce it if you can demonstrate that it will sell. After we sell it, we'll give you your profits.
Then:
People say: Here's 20 million dollars! Go waste it on nerf guns and quake-lan parties. Oh, and if you get around to making a game, maybe spend some on that, too?
Lets see, financial stability approaches zero. Quality control approaches zero. Customer support approaches zero. What was the last major PC game project to come out without a publisher? Oh yeah. Steam. Roger that.
Game developers are typically at the mercy of their publishers when it comes to taking in money. As an example, its not like DICE is seeing the bulk of the profits generated from Battlefield 1942. EA is gettting the bulk of the profits on it.
If Turbine can put out a decent MMPORG (which is likely), they will be getting all of the profits generated by the subscribers. And once they pay back the venture capitol, they will quite likely still be pulling in money from the MMPORG, and own the rights to the sequel them selves.
The only downside to this is if they totally screw this up.
As a game developer myself, I hope this succeeds for them in a big way. Anything that puts the developers in a stronger position at the expense of the publishers is probably a good thing.
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That is was not Turbine that was Valve.
I certainly hope Turbine does a better job with their Live team this time, after their last game's abysmal failure in that respect. It doesn't take a genius to know that making every mob in the game 5x harder to encourage "grouping" isn't going to please the populace. Oh well, it was a good game while it lasted. The only satisfying thing is knowing that the players were *right*, despite the constant assertions of the Live team that "this is the only thing we can do to make a lasting and worthwhile game". A few months later, 80% of Asheron's Call 2 server were shut down/merged.
I could think of 20 million better ways to spend that money.
I think Mr Turbine Spokesman will find that gamers are generally fans of a *game*, not the developer. Sure there are a few exceptions, Id for example, but it's kinda creepy to hear someone at a development company talking about the company itself having "fans". Surely he means customers? But then maybe that would be a bit too respectful.
Just a quick nit to pick. The price mentioned in the article was $18 million, which isn't really "almost 20".
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
In terms of MMORPGs? Probably Anarchy Online. Despite the (un)forgettable launch, Funcom has done well publishing Anarchy Online, as well as its adventure hit (consitently rated one of the best adventure games) The Longest Journey.
Actually, I take that back. FFXI, in terms of MMORPGs and games in general, has sold very well for Square-Enix. They developed and published FFXI.
I'm sure there are other in-house publishers too, that have done fairly well. But Square-Enix takes the cake, and I look forward to Turbine's effort.
I can't wait for D&D Online. Long overdue. I love playing computer ROGs based on the d20 system (such as Star Wars:KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights). This should be a good one. One question I have that hasn't been answered: what world is it in. I hope it's Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. If its some generic new world they made up I will be dissapointed.
The game will take place in the newly designed world of Ebberon. Very different from any of the other D&D settings, and not my cup of tea. Give it a google.
VERY few companies ever receive funding to the tune of 18 million. I don't know of NONE that sourced if from venture capitalists either (as opposed to the usual developer-publisher relationship). From what I've read, after the whole dot-com crash post 2000, venture capitalists were VERY reluctant to invest in gaming companies.
:)
This is EXTREMELY good news for developers in and by itself. ESPECIALLY if Turbine can pull it off, as it will hopefully encourage greater spending and investing in game development.
Given that history however, I guess there are still enough VCs out there who love D&D and more than willing to sink money into it though
The good news here is that Turbine will probably have greater control over the creative aspects of the game (VCs historically do not get as involved as publishers do). I guess the bad news is that Turbine will probably have greater control over the creative aspects of the game....