

Curt Schilling’s dream died quite quickly at 38 Studios - ilamont
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2012/05/26/curt_schillings_dream_died_quite_quickly_at_38_studios/?page=full

======
maybird

      That same day 38 Studios employees were told their health
      insurance would expire in two days.
    

It's in times like these that you realize the importance of universal health
care. (I'm not talking about COBRA.)

~~~
bhb916
Someone losing a benefit on short notice does not constitute an argument for
tax-payer subsidization of that benefit. There are other options for these
people, like individual plans that aren't provided by their employer. If such
plans aren't available to these people in the state they live in it's most
likely due to the regulatory environment of that state. In the states I'm
familiar with (CA, WA, AZ) individual health insurance plans are cheap and
readily available. (People with serious, chronic pre-existing conditions are
another matter entirely)

The people who will be adversely affected by this layoff in this domain will
be those who get catastrophically ill, requiring huge hospital bills, who
aren't otherwise individually covered and who don't find employment before
they get sick. I expect that number to be really, really low. Insuring this
entire population against that event seems silly.

Ultimately, relying on your employer for these things is a ticking time bomb.

~~~
asdkl234890
_Someone losing a benefit on short notice does not constitute an argument for
tax-payer subsidization of that benefit._

You know there is a whole continent where most people think of healthcare as a
right, not a benefit.

And the Hippocratic Oath doesn't mention anything like "only if they have
money". And people in the wast majority of other professions don't usually
take oaths.

Healthcare and medicine are treated specially around the world.

Isn't it odd how the US mandates car insurance but not health insurance?

~~~
kika
And this whole continent is now sinking financially. I believe it's somehow
related.

~~~
orbitingpluto
Meanwhile in Canada...socialized medicine and a better economy.

~~~
kika
May be they found a perfect balance. I'm from the country where medical help
is either free (covered by the government mandatory insurance) or pretty
cheap. First thing we (me and my family) did when we came to US - maxed out
our dental plans (and put a sizable chunk on top of it) to fix what THEY did.

------
VonGuard
MMO's are fucking money sinks. Investors see the insane profits from selling
virtual items and figure "No inventory! No warehouses! Yet they're selling
product!" and figure they can just throw money at a game until it's
profitable.

Also, after Schilling started, free-to-play became the model. A genuinely
doomed company from day one.

~~~
jmduke
MMOs aren't money sinks. Look at World of Warcraft, look at Lineage.

Bad MMOs are money sinks.

Bad anythings are money sinks.

~~~
patio11
US-based AAA MMORPGs have development budgets in the $X00 million range, and
only end up profitable if they're World of Warcraft or launched before 2004.
They take, minimally, three years to launch. The primary customer acquisition
method is a nationwide media buy which costs as much as the development costs
do, and if you don't totally saturate the retail channel and then sell all
your boxes, you lose.

By comparison, you can launch a social game for five/six figures in two
months, your primary acquisition method will be virality backed up by cross-
promotions and FB ads, if it doesn't work you shoot it in the head and do
another one, and if it does work you double-down on development and quintuple-
down on advertising and then print money hats.

~~~
cunac
League of Legends had budget which was 10x less , and it is profitable ,
launched 2009/2010 but I agree it is hard to make good hit MMOORG. Got sold
for cca. 500Mil to Tencent years or so ago , so yes you can make money but it
is not easy

~~~
patio11
League of Legends and the other MOBA games are a very different model from AAA
MMORPG development. (I'd call it a ridiculously superior model if I had
investors who had staked me with $X0 million and told me make a video game,
but I sincerely pray that I never offend anyone enough to have them sentence
me to that.)

------
imcqueen
pretty crazy to think that Rhode Island could have financed over 3,000 YC seed
investments with this one failure.

~~~
stephengillie
Why was Rhode Island trying "to jump start a video game industry in Rhode
Island" by investing in only _one_ company? Why not fund 3000 smaller
videogame companies?

They could have given $250,000 to 300 videogame companies, or $2.5 million
each to 30 companies.

~~~
thedaveoflife
the sad answer is because 38 studios had a famous CEO

------
zdgman
Funny that this degenerated into a discussion about healthcare. I can almost
guarantee this will be a business school case study in the very near future.

The thing is, companies are still putting out MMOs. Guild Wars 2 - Not out yet
but looks to be an awesome followup to Guild Wars. Tera, just released in
North America and getting some praise (was previously in South Korea). Star
Wars The Old Republic also just released and had a pretty successful launch
even though now it is seeing it's user base decline.

I would be very interested in seeing how these three titles perform over the
next 5 years but it's safe to say that you can still produce an MMO as long as
you (a Have actual experience in the game industry (b Have some successful
titles under your belt or a publisher willing to bankroll your talented
studio.

Also, really great followup article that goes over some of the failures:

[http://kotaku.com/5913492/curt-schillings-big-
huge-38-studio...](http://kotaku.com/5913492/curt-schillings-big-
huge-38-studios-debacle)

------
soapdog
As a foreigner, I can't understand why the U.S. has no public free healthcare
for all. Its one of the basic rights and one of the first obligations of a
government. All governments should provide free and public healthcare and
education. Here in Brazil we have a pretty bad government and yet we have
those. And if you're seriously injured and it is an emergency, you can go to
any private hospital and they are forced by law to treat you and payment is
decided later. Sometimes U.S. policies scares me...

~~~
learc83
>And if you're seriously injured and it is an emergency, you can go to any
private hospital and they are forced by law to treat you and payment is
decided later.

That works exactly the same in the U.S. You can't be denied emergency
treatment.

------
DamnYuppie
I find this to be quite sad. I really enjoyed the game and was looking forward
to their follow up.

I also don't approve of companies keeping employees in the dark when things
are going wrong. I understand why they do it, keeping bad news quite is all
the rage apparently, but I can't endorse it.

~~~
rsanchez1
It's a delusion on the part of everyone involve. Management can't see past the
next quarter and hopes beyond hope their company won't collapse. Employees
don't see the warning signs and just accept what management is feeding them.
Management has bad news but isn't willing to share with employees for fear
that the employees will leave, even if that bad news means collapse is
imminent and all employees will leave anyway.

------
mkramlich
It sucks that Curt is going to have this failed thing associated with his name
now. Because his prior big splash in the game industry is/was with the board
wargame Advanced Squad Leader at his company Multi-Man Publishing. They did a
stellar job at bringing ASL back to market and back from the dead, especially
with the Starter Kit series -- brilliant design, just what ASL needed to
bypass the complexity hairball of the full system, which was so intimidating
to potential newbies. So perhaps this was a case of a mortal biting off more
than he could chew. I also strongly hope that this doesn't somehow indirectly
hurt MMP or ASL and they keep on kicking ass.

------
ZenPsycho
I wonder if this is another example of Gall's Law at work.

~~~
mcav
for those wondering, Gall's Law is:

> "A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a
> simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true:
> A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to
> work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system."

— Wikipedia

------
jakejake
It's hard for me to even understand burning through 75 million, but from what
I read I guess that's the cost of making a blockbuster game these days.

~~~
frou_dh
See the MMO game APB and its Scottish developer Realtime Worlds for another
debacle. Mad cash was burned, it _just_ managed to get released, then bombed
spectacularly, taking the 300+ employee company with it.

<http://lukehalliwell.wordpress.com/category/realtime-worlds/>

~~~
jakejake
that's crazy, it's hard to even understand where all of the cash goes.

------
jfb
Where was Schilling's principled libertarianism when he went begging for
taxpayer cash?

/crickets

~~~
rsanchez1
He fell for the lie that the government "invests" when it spends taxpayer
dollars on projects doomed to fail.

------
ilamont
One thing that has amazed me since the story first broke a few weeks ago is
how little attention has been paid to the actions of 38 Studio's CEO Jennifer
MacLean, the CFO, and board of directors. This was an all-star team (see
[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lamont/2012/05/18/38-studios-
bo...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/lamont/2012/05/18/38-studios-board-of-
directors/) ). The media attention has been on Schilling, but the senior
management and board of directors have some responsibility for this debacle as
well.

------
bluedanieru
Good. These are the same assholes who allowed me to preorder KoA in Japan on
Steam, saying "it will be released internationally a few days after the US
release". It still isn't unlocked.

