

38 Studios and Big Huge Games lay off entire staffs - cobrausn
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/05/24/38-studios-and-big-huge-games-lay-off-entire-staffs/

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far33d
"The Company is experiencing an economic downturn."

Um. No. You mismanaged your finances and chose not to give your employees any
warning that they will be without pay or health care.

A word to all you startup founders out there - don't toy with your employees'
lives. If you are running out of money, let them know so they can plan.

~~~
fsckin
Is there anything that says they were not warned in advance?

~~~
Negitivefrags
Yes there is. Check out the quote in this Forbes article.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/24/38-studios-l...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/05/24/38-studios-
lays-off-staff-shuts-down-big-huge-games-is-this-the-end/)

~~~
duaneb
I feel like I've been hearing about 38 Studio's slow descent for a while
now... However, there's a huge gap between "hearing about financial woes" and
"Not telling child-expecting couple about lack of health insurance". There's
really no excuse for that.

------
jvrossb
First-time game developers often want to make an MMO. Anecdotally, this
happens all the time on a small scale even amongst hobbyist developers (i.e.
college students working on a part-time project). First game? I'm going to
make an MMO!

I'm not exactly sure why, but it may have something to do with both their
popularity and the ease of imagining a cool, novel MMO concept.

It never goes well. College kids never finish their part-time project, Curt
Schilling blows through millions of taxpayer dollars. Many big-budget MMOs are
in the cancelled game graveyard, and many dragged down their studios with
them:
[http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/show/dead/sCol/estimatedR...](http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/show/dead/sCol/estimatedRelease/sOrder/asc)

I feel bad for the talented folks at Big Huge Games who boarded a sinking
ship. Here's hoping that all the staff at 38 Studios and BHG find news jobs
ASAP.

~~~
phaedrus
Re: to it never goes well... I'm one of your aforementioned "College kids
[with a] part-time project" to do an MMO, now graduated and working a day-job
while trying to finish a game _any_ game.

Let me give you some insight into why we decided and why we thought we could
do an MMO. First of all, a subscription model is very attractive, because it's
clear how the venture is supposed to make money. We thought, or at least I
thought, that we could make an MMO more simply by making a game that's just
the "multiplayer online part" plus a smaller "rest of the game". I got started
immediately working on the network sync code.

I got as far as moving boxes that did in fact sync their positions on multiple
computers. But going from that to a real game is about as big a gulf as going
from nailing boards to building a house. It turns out, code to network sync a
game is not going to go anywhere without a game to sync.

So now I'm working on a simpler single player game, built with the scripting
language bindings that was one of the best pieces left over from the earlier
endeavor. I think even experienced programmers from other fields cannot
understand the soul-crushing amount of work it is to get even simple things
working in a 3D game when you're doing it all by your self. Yesterday I got a
green line to move on a black screen, and I was happy.

(The game engine, which can do more than that, had been not working for 6
months following a rewrite, so I was happy to see anything. And yes I know
about the Joel Spolsky article about the folly of complete rewrites. I'll see
your Joel Spolsky and raise you one Richard Brooks: "plan to throw one away.
You will anyway.")

~~~
rayval
"Plan to throw one away."

That was Fred Brooks, not Richard Brooks.

In one of the best books of all time on the subject of software: The Mythical
Man-Month.

------
lambda
Since when do states give massive loans to game development companies without
a single successful title under their belt?

This is the kind of thing that would make a dubious investment, let alone a
state-backed loan.

~~~
kevingadd
Georgia has been negotiating sweetheart deals with various game studios (Hi-
Rez and CCP to name two) that supposedly include some really nice benefits
(like free rent/office space) in exchange for moving some or all of a studio's
operations to the state, but I don't know if it includes loans.

~~~
cpeterso
Did CCP actually an office in Georgia or was did they just inherit offices
from their acquisition of White Wolf? I believe CCP had software engineers in
Atlanta working on the White Wolf MMO.

------
fsckin
Recruiters will be hunting the folks who got laid off, I hope they find work
quickly.

I thought it was interesting that they were given such a large loan by the
government. But they had big ideas, and behind it was Curt Schilling, Todd
McFarlane, R. A. Salvatore and lots of incredibly talented folks.

I applied when they had a job in my area of expertise, and I had another
(better) gig by the time they got back to me with my application. Not
surprisingly, two months later they contacted me about the same gig,
independent from my application.

There's got to be some lesson in there somewhere, specifically about how to
judge a startup that takes a month to get back about a job inquiry.

------
debacle
Hopefully the silver lining to this is that governments will be less silly
with taxpayer dollars in the future.

But who am I kidding?

------
kevingadd
It's worthwhile to pay attention to the story of 38 Studios; in many ways it
parallels that of a typical startup, but has the less-common context of being
in the gaming industry (which probably seems like the wild west to most
people).

A few key tidbits:

Curt Schilling's inspiration to start 38 and work on Project Copernicus (the
original title it was founded to develop) grew out of his passion for playing
games like World of Warcraft alongside his active participation on game-
focused forums like Fires of Heaven. Many people from that and other similar
communities are observed moving into the industry when they demonstrate
particular insight or skill through game design/balance discussions (aka
'theorycrafting') so it's not as unexpected as you might think for a random
gamer to go from talking about a genre on forums to working on a game of his
own. Curt is only unique there in that he had the cash on hand to get it
rolling himself.

38 Studios started out working on Copernicus (under another name) for multiple
years without much fuss in the press and (presumably) at a much smaller studio
size than it has now. It wasn't until 2009 that it started making visible
moves to expand and act more quickly.

In '09 they acquired Big Huge Games (actual developers of Kingdoms of Amalur:
Reckoning) and had them rebrand their game in order to have an Amalur title to
ship soon and presumably bring their resources to bear on Copernicus. In '10
they made their now-infamous deal with the state of Rhode Island to relocate
the studio and expand to 450 staff in exchange for a loan.

Curt publicly claimed to have invested a large chunk of his personal fortune
(according to some sources as much as $30m -
[http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2012/05/18/curt-
schillings-v...](http://thebiglead.com/index.php/2012/05/18/curt-schillings-
video-game-company-38-studios-defaulted-on-75-million-loan-from-rhode-island/)
) into the company alongside the loan from the state of Rhode Island and
potentially other investors; more recent reports suggest that the amount he
actually invested was closer to $4 million and was repaid out of the state of
RI's loan ([http://blogs.wpri.com/2012/05/14/38-studios-finances-
under-s...](http://blogs.wpri.com/2012/05/14/38-studios-finances-under-
scrutiny-ri-taxpayers-75m-at-risk/)).

~~~
astrodust
With that much capital and staffing it sounds like the "Go big or go home"
approach versus a more sustainable slow burn. Maybe the investors wanted
either a blockbuster hit or an immediate tax write-off.

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robryan
Rise of nations has long been one of my favorite games, was just surprised
when looking it up that big huge games hadn't gone to far (at least in terms
of popular and successful releases) since that.

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binxbolling
Should've stayed in Maynard, Curt.

