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The Fall of 38 Studios
An anonymous reader writes "Boston magazine provides the first reasonably satisfying account of the final year of Curt Schilling's video game company 38 Studios, which was heavily subsidized by a huge loan guaranteed by the state of Rhode Island. During his career as a baseball pitcher, Schilling helped lead three different teams to four World Series, resulting in three championships. He has so far been much less successful as a video game CEO; although he has some of the stereotypical qualities of a successful entrepreneur (passion, energy level, optimism, selling ability), his company seemed utterly lacking in controls, while facing a very tough industry and economy. Schilling apparently regrets the decision to bet the company on an MMO game, but otherwise seems to accept little blame for the demise. His company burned more than $133 million over six years, mostly for headcount, according to an analysis of public documents by Providence TV station WPRI."
Is it so we feel sorry for some rich dumb fuck who's greatest achievement in life is throwing a ball around, and who only got the chance to cause hundreds of hard working people to lose their jobs because America seems to reward the former attributes above all else?
38 steps, that's how far !!
Glad it stopped there - one more, and Mr. Memory would've been toast!
#DeleteChrome
After reading the article, I can only say one thing.
Congratulations mr. Shilling, for winning the "most arrogant douchebag of the century" award.
We've still got 82 years to go, but we're pretty sure nobody will even come close.
He wanted to outdo with half the money in half the time and no experience, what few experts dare to do.
My whole life was spent doing things that people didn’t believe were possible, because God blessed me with the ability to throw a baseball. And I carried that same mentality into everything I did here.
You weren't doing anything anybody thought impossible. Any league has a finite number of teams, one of which will win; this is not an impossibility.
Apart from being CEO at Microsoft, the ability to throw objects has no value outside the baseball field.
The mentality to do short bouts of activity for a few hours every week isn't necessarily the right mentality for anything else in live.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The loan wasn't given out under Chafee, it was given out under his predecessor. Chafee was only governor during the time the company was publicly imploding. Try researching things before posting next time, ok?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Idea: use tax money to make a retired baseball pitcher into a software CEO.
Gently reply
Does not predict success as a tech CEO, particularly when you are a right wing ultra-religious asshat.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The companyâ(TM)s death was grisly: Before going under, it defaulted on the $75 million guaranteed loan that the state of Rhode Island had used in 2010 to lure it to Providence. As the money ran out, the company encouraged its 379 employees to continue coming into work, even though it knew it could not pay them. Staffers realized theyâ(TM)d been stiffed only when they noticed the money missing from their bank accounts. A pregnant woman had to find out from her doctor that her healthcare benefits had been cut off.
- like all the other government loan guarantees, and all other types of moral hazards created by the government, this business was failing with a much bigger bang because of them.
Without gov't loan guarantees, the guy couldn't spend that much money on a losing business, the tax payers wouldn't be footing the bill, the taxes didn't have to be collected, the money could have stayed in the private hands, banks or VC firms, the risk would have been managed better.
Companies must go bankrupt, they must blow up, it's a healthy thing - that's how the free market allocates the scarce resources (land, capital, labour) efficiently. This means that money is not wasted further, once the profits stop and losses start, the company has to restructure, it has to be made more efficient, it has to be made profitable or it has to die.
So many people don't understand that profitability is the only true indicator of whether the scarce resources should be spent in any particular way. The problem with government getting into any business is precisely this: there is no price discovery and there is no accountability because the profits don't matter for much longer (until the company in question or the entire economy tanks).
You can't handle the truth.
Because that's pretty much the only stuff you got money for in the IT world a few years ago. Seriously. Walk into some investor's office and tell them you're gonna make a computer game, they'll wait until you add "and it's an MMO like WoW" and suddenly their eyes will light up and they shower you with money. For some odd reason they seemed to think every MMO is an instant success like WoW. For some odd reason they thought the market wasn't saturated. It seems they had no idea how the success of WoW came to be and that they could easily recreate it just by fiat. I wanna, so I can.
I guess that's how he got the money. Greedy investors without a clue what they invest in.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Considering that most of the money is from the US taxpayer, I guess it would fit to give it to the public...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I note that recently the Court of Justice of the European Union rejected an attempt by Oracle to stop the sale of secondhand licences on software downloaded over the internet. It seems to me that reselling of games software should also be allowed under the same ruling.
Same shit with the "Make an MMO first because it makes you the most money!" thing. What a retarded, arrogant, idea. When you are new in business, best not to try and shoot straight for the most financially risky stuff because good chance you fail. Had he really wanted to make games and been smart about it he would have started small, maybe with something he could self-fund, and then as he learned moved on up.
Just as you don't start pitching for the majors, you don't want to start on an MMO. It is a shit ton of work, a lot of money, and easy to fuck up. Even for the big players it can happen. Look at The Old Republic. Bioware was doing the design and story on it, and they have a history of very solid single player MMOs, EA was publishing and controlling it, and they have a few MMOs to their name (Ultima Online, DAoC, and Warhammer Online) and yet they still screwed it up fairly badly and it is questionable if they'll manage to break even.
He just thought he was such an amazingly smart motherfucker that he'd go straight to the top, fuck all that noise of learning the business or anything. Instead, it was straight to the bottom.
I just don't get why he didn't make what he knew. I mean I personally don't care for sports but I bet a baseball game where every player is a real person and you have teams and leagues and work your way towards the World Series would probably sell, a hell of a lot more than yet another WoW ripoff.
I mean how damned many more MMOs filled with elves and dragons and crap do we really need anyway?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It would also give basically free publicity, of an actually good kind. "Curt Schilling making a baseball MMO" gets you into both the tech press and the sports pages, and probably would build interest and anticipation even without having a product yet. "Curt Schilling is making a WoW clone" also produces some press, but more of the puzzled/curious kind.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I did, and I quoted it: Chafee put his name on the agency, meaning that he believes in these kinds of programs in principle. The idea that such an agency under Chafee will make any better investment decisions than it did under Carcieri is silly; the problem is that such agencies exist and have the power to give away large amounts of tax dollars in the first place.
And if you do your research, you'll see that Chafee failed to minimize losses and instead just let the whole thing collapse in on itself; why should he bother doing more, the tax payer is just going to pay for it and he can just blame his predecessor.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/28/technology/38-studios/index.htm
Jesus did one more than that.
Obama voted for TARP as a Senator. And he used TARP funds to bail out the auto industry, which he has been taking credit for in campaign ads.
Not that anyone in America cares about facts during this election cycle.
It lacked MMO development experience at the top. “Curt was not the CEO,” Dagres says, “but you could see he was quite involved and had a lot of control. I was a little nervous.” He also took note that the COO was Schilling’s relative.
I wrote out what I think should be done in my journal but of course the formatting looks like crap with italics. I think Rhode Island should get what they paid for and do what they want with most of the assets (including the source).
My work here is dung.
This "jock" is probably a bigger gaming nerd than you ever were -- he was leading a major guild in everquest one back when playing professional baseball (as pitcher, he had plenty of off days when he could lead raids!), and he's still got active max level characters in several MMOs.
He's a hard-core player of tabletop boardgames, and rescued the company that publishes the advanced squad leader franchise when it was having financial problems; he sometimes wore t-shirts from boardgame conventions around the office, and occasionally stayed late to play boardgames with employees.
I'm hoping he hasn't learned his lesson, because 38 studios was a great place to work, and I'd be happy to work for him again if he starts another company.
This loss reminds me of an old Disney cartoon as saw as a kid. Casey at The Bat.
http://youtu.be/erfSed2MUsA
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Not a flippant comment. I suspect that this guy gave a presentation like no 100 geeks could give. Because of his sports fame and no doubt an ability to have access to the corridors of power he was able to convince the government that they could "pick a winner". I have watched and dealt with people like this my whole career. They see money being made and they insist on getting a "taste" Then they use their one schmoozing skill, round up an obscene amount of money put on a great show which usually is designed to impress and round up even more money. Then since their single driving focus wasn't putting out a great product they fail.
In fact I have long suspected that these guys don't usually want a product out as then the product would potentially drive the success well beyond their simple abilities.
The real drag in these situations is that not only do they waste taxpayer's money but they drive legitimate start-ups out of business; this is through their eating much of the available investment money, eating up the local talent, overpaying for rent, and then leaving a sour taste in everyone's mouths in the area for tech start-ups with the whole once bitten twice shy thing. In my area there was a famous flameout of an educational business. Same deal these guys literally had top government education people working for them "on secondment". Then boom it all blew up over a decade ago. The lawsuits and criminal charges are still working through the system.
Any good tech business need some business savvy people near the top; but It all boils down to whether there are tech people making the decisions. The showmen should be the head of marketing, not the head of the company.
The comments venturing over into partisan politics are getting lame and mean spirited. This is a story about a tech failure and an unqualified CEO. Comments about that are interesting. All the "Republican this" or "Democrat that" replies are irrelevant and pointless.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
He may have all the superficial characteristics of an entrepreneur, but the difference ends up being what you mean by the word "lead". TL;DR: enthusiasm may win a game. It doesn't build a business.
A pitcher LEADS a team through his performance. Perhaps even through his attitude. He doesn't manage the team, he doesn't recruit talent, he doesn't set salaries, he doesn't run practices.
To have a successful business, you CANNOT lead simply through your own performance - you have to do all those other things successfully. Or, recognizing your own shortcomings, hire the right people to do them. That's where the software-development company failed.
KoA is a decent game; in fact, I'd say it's quite a good game. But building a new-IP AAA title in a software world of Bethesda, Rockstar Games, Blizzard, etc is no small challenge; it's probably only an order of magnitude down from assuming one could just 'step into' the major-brand automobile manufacturing industry. Burning through your capital unsustainably is almost the most-likely result.
So ultimately, Schilling was very much like *most* entrepreneurs in every way but one. He had a good idea, enthusiasm, charisma, and willingness to work hard, but also found that ballooning that idea into a company that could make it work was beyond his skill set.
The only exception is that he started with piles of $$, when most entrepreneurs don't get that far, or only get that far with hard, hard work.
-Styopa
The summary was missing something important: a list of games from 38 Studios. So here you are. I haven't heard of Kingdoms of Amalur, or Project Copernicus (unreleased). Sorry they went out of business, but it is a tough industry and they clearly weren't delivering.
It sounds like you worked at 38 Studios.
No doubt the parent here is out of bounds with his comments. Everything I've read about Schilling makes it seem that he was fairly hard core gamer and was passionate about entering the market. The leaked screenshots and flybys from Project Copernicus do look intriguing to me as an MMO player, honestly. I like the art direction and overall aesthetic. Too bad there are no details on game play, because I'm really interested in what the game would have been like compared to similar titles had it been released.
By all accounts, it sounds like Schilling tried hard to make 38 Studios a kick ass place to work. It is no wonder why employees held him in such reverence. It'd be hard for me not to love my employer if I had all the perks Schilling was dishing out. At the same time, all these accounts also make it seem like he had zero experience actually running a business and had an overly optimistic view of the marketplace. While he clearly has experience playing games, it seems he was quite naive in believing that he could make a game that rivaled WoW. I'm certain that many 38 studios employees were very talented, but it sounds like there was no cost management. While MMOs slip release dates all the time, it also seems like Schilling had originally wanted the MMO to launch in 2010. When 38 shuttered, while there was clearly progress on the graphical side of things, there was no indication to the public that the game was even playable at an "Alpha" level. All this time working on the game, and there was very little info released about it for potential players to be hyped about.
I think numerous strings of failures and disappointments over the past several years have proven that making a successful subscription based MMO is a difficult prospect for anyone, and replicating the success of WoW has proven to be very hard (not even Bioware was able to replicate it using the Star Wars IP). Even when you have done almost everything right at launch, convincing gamers to leave behind their established characters in WoW will be a challenge. Even if Copernicus ended up being completed and had a solid launch, if the game just ended up being just like WoW but with prettier graphics, it likely wouldn't do as well for that reason.
To be honest, when 38 shuttered a lot of people threw hate Schilling's way and that he screwed over a lot of people. I don't know if this is a fair way to put it. Personally, it seemed to me that everyone had willingly placed themselves in a reality distortion bubble and were shocked when it finally popped and they saw reality. Schilling included.
Choosing an impossible project is not exactly good business practice.
What's fascinating about this is that Curt Schilling (and apparently many Slashdot readers) think that you can IGNORE poor business practices by PRETENDING it's the fault of those who make those poor business practices available.
To these people it's not Curt's fault he took the loan, it's the fault of the people who offered it to him.
Equally fascinating is the implication that Curt Schilling is DUMB AS A STUMP if he JUST CAN'T STOP HIMSELF FROM TAKING THAT MONEY.
I didn't know if this company had ever shipped a product. I like playing PC games and I had not heard of them, so I thought I would investigate. I discovered they released a game called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. So, I decided to look into what it was all about.
It's another elves and demons knockoff of the Lord of The Rings books or The World of Warcraft game. There are a bunch of games like that. It appears to me a "Me Too" game. I found nothing to make me choose it over World of Warcraft and I read all those books and saw the movies already. I already own WOW and a few other similar titles given to me as gifts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdoms_of_Amalur:_Reckoning
Yawn. Sorry, I have to conclude that they sure picked a difficult genre with lots of other similar titles to develop as a first product. I hate to see anybody fail after trying so hard, but they picked a pretty risky road to travel.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Let's be honest here, nobody in America ever cares about facts.
When they started telling people via the media that 38 Studios was coming to Providence that it was going to end in disaster. I mean, who the hell thinks a baseball player has any business experience? For example, I've been in the I.T. field for 20 years and I wouldn't even begin to think I could lead a team to create a game like that. But former Governor Carcieri, the Embarrassment got star struck and moved his administration to make the deal.
"It's way too easy to contribute to making the world shit and then deflect all responsibility" - Anonymous Coward
Indeed.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Most jurisdictions consider that a criminal offense.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Maybe they will open source their code and the IP won't entirely go to waste. As for the money, well, it is in someone's bank account. It is not lost, just redistributed. Every day we make bets that seem stupid later but such is life. Sometimes stupid bets payoff (I'm looking at you instagram).
You couldn't wish for a more textbook example of narcissism-derived Dunning–Kruger bias.
Da Blog
And you'd think the sports nuts would eat that shit up wouldn't you? I mean you get to play left field for the Padres or second base for the Rangers and play out the season and try to make a run for the Series? I mean its not like HS baseball, even right field is a damned hard job in the majors and every player can make winning or losing plays so it would require some real team work to get your team up the rankings. Hell you wouldn't even need your whole team online as it'd have your stats for the various positions and other teams could offer you a slot to fill out their roster, so you could raise your stats when your friends weren't playing. Seems like a baseball nut's ultimate fantasy baseball to me.
But to make a WoW style elves and dragons MMO is just suicide! Its like competing with FB, the only way someone is gonna take that over is if FB royally fucks it up, same with WoW. Too many people play it because "that is where all my friends are" and the MMOs are such a time sink most people only play 2 at most, with many sticking to a single one. It just doesn't make any damned sense.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I'm hoping he hasn't learned his lesson, because 38 studios was a great place to work, and I'd be happy to work for him again if he starts another company.
Of course it was a great place to 'work': you got paid and didn't have to do shit.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Anyone knows what happened to "Project Copernicus"?
It supposed to be the mmo that beats all other mmo but I've yet to see its debut
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I still think it will stand up later this fall Take game iwin
I'm hoping he hasn't learned his lesson, because 38 studios was a great place to work, and I'd be happy to work for him again if he starts another company.
Of course it was a great place to 'work': you got paid and didn't have to do shit.
_this_. everyone liked him since he was spewing money everywhere, hiring too much at the wrong stage of development for funs sake and so forth, too bad he didn't in the end actually have that money. 38 studios was probably a great place to hang out.. work..? not so much.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
In other news: making games is much harder than playing them.
Wonder if the folks at 37signals.com sued for defamation of character.
I'm sure there might be many things the guy can do. Hit a ball. Throw a ball. Level up an Orc hunter. Sure. Running a multimillion dollar software studio? Not so much.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon