shinjuru
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| Maker of Hellgate: London Closes
Flagship Studios, closes.
said by ShackNews :
Formed by the ex-Blizzard North staff responsible for the acclaimed Diablo series, Flagship released its first title, the action-RPG Hellgate: London, last fall. Another action-RPG, Mythos, was still under development.
More at Voodoo.
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Dandy
join:2001-12-30
Brooklyn, NY
clubs: | this is what happens when you rush a game out. |
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The Flash
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| said by Dandy  :this is what happens when you rush a game out. too bad that doesn't apply to EA. |
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Jigsaw
Stardust We Are
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| said by The Flash :said by Dandy :this is what happens when you rush a game out. too bad that doesn't apply to EA. I wish it did and Im willing to bet EA is the reason Hellgate London was doomed from the get-go.They will not blink a eye about Flagship closing its all about the money/marketShare to them(EA) nothing else....
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Dentist
join:2001-08-11
Waterloo, ON | reply to shinjuru
Fun game for a month, but not even close to a finished product.
D3 plz. |
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Kearnstd
Elf Wizard
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join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | reply to shinjuru
Rule #1 learned from this: never ever publish your first title with EA, find a publisher that will let you perfect the product and then release it.
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SKYHN
Lu.. Lu.. Lulululu
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99999
| said by Kearnstd :Rule #1 learned from this: never ever publish your first title with EA, find a publisher that will let you perfect the product and then release it. That is exactly what happened. EA is the worst gaming company in the world. 99% of what they get their hands on turns to horse shit. They have ruined so many gaming franchises. C&C is the only thing right now that hasnt been tainted fully.
I wonder if bill roper regrets leaving blizzard now. |
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Airwolf
Premium
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Windsor, ON
clubs:
1 edit | reply to shinjuru
Bring on the real deal; Diablo 3.
Suckers to whomever paid the founder's fee. That is if the game dies with the company. If someone else claims rights, maybe the game will get better? |
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
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| reply to Jigsaw
said by Jigsaw :said by The Flash :said by Dandy :this is what happens when you rush a game out. too bad that doesn't apply to EA. I wish it did and Im willing to bet EA is the reason Hellgate London was doomed from the get-go.They will not blink a eye about Flagship closing its all about the money/marketShare to them(EA) nothing else.... I just don't see how EA can be blamed in this at all. The reason the game was doomed from the start is because the maker of the game did a piss poor job at making it and then supporting it. Not to mention the game wasn't that good anyway. So why blame the company who just slapped a box on it?
You are right on the last count though. EA won't bat an eye to the company going under. They made their money off the game when each copy was sold. No more copies are selling, and they don't get any money off the subscriptions.
Course, any publisher won't bat an eye to a company closing its doors once the product has not been selling well for a while. |
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Nightfall
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| reply to SKYHN
said by SKYHN :said by Kearnstd :Rule #1 learned from this: never ever publish your first title with EA, find a publisher that will let you perfect the product and then release it. That is exactly what happened. EA is the worst gaming company in the world. 99% of what they get their hands on turns to horse shit. They have ruined so many gaming franchises. C&C is the only thing right now that hasnt been tainted fully. I wonder if bill roper regrets leaving blizzard now. That rant would be on topic, if EA actually made the damn game. Flagship studios did. |
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KCP
join:2008-06-21
Pearl River, LA
| reply to Airwolf
said by Airwolf :Suckers to whomever paid the founder's fee. i honestly tried to pay. but the internet died while i was trying to pay. never thought about trying again after that night. :P |
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SKYHN
Lu.. Lu.. Lulululu
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| reply to Nightfall
said by Nightfall :said by SKYHN :said by Kearnstd :Rule #1 learned from this: never ever publish your first title with EA, find a publisher that will let you perfect the product and then release it. That is exactly what happened. EA is the worst gaming company in the world. 99% of what they get their hands on turns to horse shit. They have ruined so many gaming franchises. C&C is the only thing right now that hasnt been tainted fully. I wonder if bill roper regrets leaving blizzard now. That rant would be on topic, if EA actually made the damn game. Flagship studios did. EA is the publisher. EA is one of those companies that regardless of what the developer says, EA has the final say on things. The biggest thing is the release date. This is the same company who released a hockey game with 11 weeks of development. They only look at quick profits and dont care about their reputation in the long run. They scoop up popular developers and games, tickle your balls with screenshots and gameplay videos, then when the game comes out, they take a big steamy dump in the box and throw it on the shelves.
EA is one of those companies that developers are enticed by because of the whisper. "Money...more money...come to us...". I thought it was a complete joke when I read an interview from bill roper about how he left blizzard for such and such reason, and was so excited about his new project, etc. Then he said that EA would be publishing it and that pretty much nailed the coffin. He left a company because him and his buddies felt that vivendi was dictating too much on Diablo 3, yet they chose EA for the publisher of their super fantastic game.
It reminds me of the madden and other sports franchises EA puts out. Its the same damn game every year, they just add new players, change the cover, sometimes bump the graphics a bit and add 1 or 2 gameplay elements, that really dont do anything much. Or the sims. The Sims Pets, The Sims Vacation, The Sims Go to vegas, The Sims Mow the Yard, The Sims bake cookies, The Sims clean the house, The Sims eat a cake, The Sims take a dump, The Sims call a plumber, The Sims are unemployed, The Sims forclose their house, The Sims join the mafia...
Its the EA way. Bastardize and Whore out til it dies.
Theres too few good PC gaming companies left out there. Eventually it will be just blizzard and EA. And the side of the scale with the big horse dump will far outweigh the other. |
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The Flash
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| said by SKYHN :Theres too few good PC gaming companies left out there. Eventually it will be just blizzard and EA. And the side of the scale with the big horse dump will far outweigh the other. Don't forge Valve, I would say they are top notch. |
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Nightfall
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2 edits | reply to SKYHN
said by SKYHN :EA is the publisher. EA is one of those companies that regardless of what the developer says, EA has the final say on things. The biggest thing is the release date. This is the same company who released a hockey game with 11 weeks of development. They only look at quick profits and dont care about their reputation in the long run. They scoop up popular developers and games, tickle your balls with screenshots and gameplay videos, then when the game comes out, they take a big steamy dump in the box and throw it on the shelves. EA is one of those companies that developers are enticed by because of the whisper. "Money...more money...come to us...". I thought it was a complete joke when I read an interview from bill roper about how he left blizzard for such and such reason, and was so excited about his new project, etc. Then he said that EA would be publishing it and that pretty much nailed the coffin. He left a company because him and his buddies felt that vivendi was dictating too much on Diablo 3, yet they chose EA for the publisher of their super fantastic game. It reminds me of the madden and other sports franchises EA puts out. Its the same damn game every year, they just add new players, change the cover, sometimes bump the graphics a bit and add 1 or 2 gameplay elements, that really dont do anything much. Or the sims. The Sims Pets, The Sims Vacation, The Sims Go to vegas, The Sims Mow the Yard, The Sims bake cookies, The Sims clean the house, The Sims eat a cake, The Sims take a dump, The Sims call a plumber, The Sims are unemployed, The Sims forclose their house, The Sims join the mafia... Its the EA way. Bastardize and Whore out til it dies. Theres too few good PC gaming companies left out there. Eventually it will be just blizzard and EA. And the side of the scale with the big horse dump will far outweigh the other. Correct, EA was the publisher, but not the maker of the game which is what my point was. You are right, EA made games have went to crap. NHL 2008 was a joke. The Madden games blow now compared to what they were. On the computer, only Battlefield 2 and C&C are the only two games that are even decent. Even those can be improved. The rest are garbage.
However, they didn't make the videos of the game. They weren't involved in the gameplay. All they did was just throw their name behind the distribution. Flagship studios was in charge of the game since day 1.
If you read a book that is total garbage, do you go after the company who published the book and blame them? Or do you go after the author who wrote the damn thing and blame them? Big difference there.
You are comparing apples to oranges here. You should be pissed off at Flagship studios for taking a steaming dump into the box and selling it. The people who paid for lifetime subscriptions to the MMO should be pissed at Flagship. Instead, you are redirecting your pissing to EA and leaving nothing for the real company who released this game and supported this game. You are not alone. Seems that a lot of people think this was EA's doing when it clearly wasn't.
Otherwise, good rant on EA. Just entirely off topic for the situation at hand. |
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KCP
join:2008-06-21
Pearl River, LA
2 edits | @Nightfall
I don't think you caught what he said in the begining. He said that EA forces them to make the deadline (as well they should) weather or not the game is polished.
But I also do agree that Flagship should have said something when they didn't have a polished game ready to hit the shelves. *edit: Maybe they did, I don't know.*
You make your deadline without a game being polished; flop.
You tell the customers, "Hey, games not completely done yet, we'll drop it in 1 or 2 quarters" with a finished & polished version, you might not flop and have a good game on your hands.
My opinion, of course. |
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Nightfall
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| said by KCP :@Nightfall I don't think you caught what he said in the begining. He said that EA forces them to make the deadline (as well they should) weather or not the game is polished. But I also do agree that Flagship should have said something when they didn't have a polished game ready to hit the shelves. *edit: Maybe they did, I don't know.* You make your deadline without a game being polished; flop. You tell the customers, "Hey, games not completely done yet, we'll drop it in 1 or 2 quarters" with a finished & polished version, you might not flop and have a good game on your hands. My opinion, of course. So how does this whole debacle point at EA being the culprit? EA, just like any publishing company, can't force another company to release a game. If a publishing company requires the company who made the game to stick to a deadline, and the product isn't done, the decision is simple. Choose 1 of the 2 options below.
1. Release the game, but get nailed when everyone discovers the bugs and problems.
2. Don't release the game and ask for an extension. This is something book and software publishing companies are fine with doing. If one company won't grant the extension, others will be happy to pick up the product and distribute it.
I caught what he said at the beginning of his post, but it was nothing but ranting against a company that had nothing to do with making the game. Please post proof that EA forced Flagship to release the game and Flagship had no choice but to do it. Otherwise, I call that accusation utter crap. As a published writer, I have had deadlines before, and on major jobs even I can get extensions at times. Yes, I am held to my deadlines though, just as you say, EA should make deadlines and encourage companies to make those deadlines. |
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SKYHN
Lu.. Lu.. Lulululu
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| reply to shinjuru
I cant post proof cuz I dont have copies of any contracts they signed. But I've read about developing games and what not, I dont believe its been specifically about an EA published game though. But developers do put forth deadlines based on funding, type of game, system, etc. Your average MMO game takes over 4 years to develop just for beta release. Other non-online games take might only take a year or so, depending on the amount of content it has.
The problem with option 2 is the developer has already signed a contract with the publisher. They cant go somewhere else, unless the publisher breeches the contract. And that rarely happens. EA is such a big company, they dont care about the losses anymore. You can see it with the way they throw their name out their and buy up developers and other publishers. They make their money up on the mindless franchises they own, such as the sims and madden. With 1 madden release they can probably make up the losses from 10 to 15 different games across all systems.
A really good example of a good game that went to shit with EA on it, is Earth and Beyond. It came out in about 2002 I think. That game was a good concept and effort for a space MMO that was aimed at the casual MMO player and one who wanted something a little above the norm. I enjoyed that game a lot and played it from when it came out for about a year or so. The developers frequently posted in the forums with feedback from gamers and the thing I commonly saw was that they had all this stuff they wanted to add to the game, even had some of it ready to go, and because of the way they were contracted with their publisher, EA, they werent able to add it all in. I guess the way it was setup, the developer could only add so much content to the game in a set amount of time. So an update would come out, and it would only add a small new area to the game, that was incomplete. People got tired of it, left, EA shut the game down because it wasnt making enough money. This was a game by westwood, the people who made the original C&C games. A pay to play game that had enormous opportunity, i think at one point it had almost 40,000 subscribers. This was way before the WoW powerhouse where that many subscribers was considered mid range for an MMO game, with the average being about that much, and the higher end ones having up to 250,000 subscribers(like EQ or DAOC).
Theres a long list of games that this happens to, and EA has their name tattooed on a large majority of them. The only time you could blame a developer is if they spend a long period of time on a game and it turns out boring or the gameplay elements just dont make it fun or worth playing.
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Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
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| Still, point is that EA getting a bad rap on this game going under is just not founded. The only people slamming EA here are people living under a rock or just hate EA. While I am not a fan of EA, I cannot and will not blame them for this debacle of a game.
Any blame should be put solely on the shoulders of the real game maker.
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Somnambul33t
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| reply to shinjuru
i boycott true EA-backed games. HGL was not a true EA game. they had nothing to do with the development at all. there are varius stages of "EA" games. did you know that Valve is an EA Partner? the only thing to my knowledge that EA does for valve is publish the retail PC and xbox games for valve.
i still havent seen an official post by FSS but it has been announced SOMEWHERE that this news is true.
flagship is now done. they closed their doors and laid off their entire workforce. hanbitsoft has some sort of rights to HGL and plans to continue development and support of it, although theres a decent chance only in the asian market. Some financial backer Bank officially owns HGL. hanbitsoft owns the IPs to HGL and i believe Mythos.
i'm not sure what's going to happen to NA HGL players. i dont know if servers are going down, if subscriptions are going to mean anything, or if patch 2.0 will ever come out. i do know that hanbitsoft plans to develop the game, as i just said, but that it's with their own in-house developers. if they support NA i'm still not sure if we'll see 2.0.
it's times like these i'm glad i bought HGL for $20 and consciously decided never to sub. it was worth $20 to experience and play with buddies for a few months.
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Bender_2k
join:2003-01-12
clubs: | reply to shinjuru
Well...I'm feeling a whole lot better I didn't buy this after all even though my friend was urging me too.... |
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