Flagship Studios' Founder Discusses Its Demise

1Up is running a lengthy interview with Bill Roper, founder of Flagship Studios. The game company, known primarily for its Hellgate: London and Mythos titles, announced massive layoffs last month, and is now simply winding down and taking care of a few final issues. Roper gives quite a bit of detail regarding the financial machinations of a game developer and the current status of the games' code. Co-founders Max Schaefer and Travis Baldree gave a related interview recently as well. "The subscription money we did get, we all poured directly into keeping the game online, keeping it up and running. But the development demands far outstripped the revenues. There just wasn't a good contemplation early on of how that would work. It wasn't like: This is the budget that comes in every month; we'll do whatever we can do with that. We just said [that] development will get done out of the revenues, and whoever pays for development, they get paid back out of the revenues. And there wasn't really enough revenues coming in to cover the expected and required development."

Comments

release a crappy product

[moderatorrater]

and you get a crappy return. From what I understand, there were a lot of bugs and problems with the game, to the point where it wasn't worth picking up. If those bugs had persisted, those already playing the game would have left (to varying degrees of course). In the end, they released a product that wasn't where it needed to be, and they lost out on their big opportunity to make a splash.

Re:release a crappy product

[lgw]

Six months after release, the technical quality of the game was fine (it was still lacking in content). Flagship was forced to ship 6 months before they were ready, because they had so mismanaged the business side that they lost control. This game didn't fail because of poor developers, but poor business management (including not hiring enough content developers to go with the software developers).

Even if you don't like Hellgate, it's a shame

[OrangeTide]

It's a shame when a studio that is at least trying something different goes under. It was a shame that Hellgate was basically a beta product until only recently. If you release a finished product at the start then you don't have to pay for developers from your monthly revenue.

And this is why...

[Red Flayer]

And this is why, ladies and gents, if you want to make a go of a business, you'd better understand the business end of things as well as the sales and product ends. And if you don't fully understand the business end, you hire someone who does.

And people wonder why VC firms are so obsessed about the cash flow of startups (after learning their lessons of the 90s).

Re:And this is why...

[lgw]

This is exactly right. Bill Roper and company knew how to write a game - Diablo is evidence enough of that - but in a story that seems to endlessly repeat, a bunch of engineers who knew little about the business side decided to go into business for themselves, and failed horribly through no lack of engineering skill. You *have* to understand the money side to make the business work.

And Flagship made every stupid newb mistake they could. They gave away too much contol, and were forced to ship early by other corporations. They tried to do too many things at once, because there was no business manager to put his foot down and force them to focus on the core game, and made sure that resources got allocated to content, not just technology. They didn't have an "after we launch" plan to ensure things would be profitable either, which ensured their demise.

It's a damn shame, too - it was a decent enough game idea, that might have turned out well if they had spent enough time on it, and focused more on world design and content than technological infrastructure.

Re:And this is why...

[Kjella]

The theory is rather easy, in practise it's rather hard. Ship too early and you're bugzilla, ship too late and you're "outdated" or worse. Why do you give away control? Well, because those you give up control to are usually the ones funding you. If the VCs pull out, usually the whole thing fizzles. The core game usually means things that have been done before, so you need something creative and different and it better be good. A lot of it just does not work out, so it feels like you've spent far too much money on things you shouldn't but otherwise you probably wouldn't have found the killer features either. A working engine with little content is a poor game, good content with poor engine is no game at all. The answer is of course that you need money for both, which leads to more VC money, which leads to less control... "After we launch" is something you can have in MMORPGs and whatnot to prevent churn, in most other ganres and even in MMORPGs you're toast if the game isn't flying high already from launch. If you just got off the runway and the plane is on fire, no follow-up plan will save you.

Re:Missing the obvious

[MooseMuffin]

It wasn't even all that well polished. I think the real problem was, and this is mentioned in the interview, is that Blizzard had several superhits under its belt and that creates a very different environment. Blizzard could basically take as long as they needed on their games, because their track record gave investors confidence that it would pay off for them. Flagship had no such luxury and they had to release the game far sooner than they would have liked because there was no more money for more time.