Oh No, Not 38 Studios

The first time I heard of 38 Studios was during my first multi-boxing experiment in World of Warcraft. During that time of my WOW career, 38 Studios acquired one of my all-time favorite add-ons, Azeroth Advisor.  If you never used it, you missed something I thought was very special.

Like many gamers, I was pulling for Curt Schilling and his company.  What gaming enthusiast hasn’t dreamt of developing their own game some day?  I sure as hell have daydreamed about it.  Personally, I think that’s one of the reasons MineCraft is such a huge hit.  The sandbox environment is ripe territory for would be game designers to build mini games to share with others. 

Politics and drama about what did or did happen aside, it’s a tragedy all the way around.  People are out of jobs, some after having relocated to work for 38 Studios.  And someone’s dream has died a very public death, one that will be dragged out in the media for years to come. It will serve as a point of reference for what not to do and bear the brunt of tasteless jokes.

The amount of money invested seems staggering.  We know from indie game successes that it is possible to develop a game for much less.  I’m certainly the type of player that appreciates all the bells and whistles but for goodness sake, this scenario seems to have been a slice of Little Caution topped off with Pie in the Sky frosting.   Note to self that if I ever have millions to risk, it would be safer to do a Dollywood version of my Steampunk idea and NOT the MMO version.  *smile*

I was impressed by the number of sales reported for Reckoning (1.3M).  My household contributed 2 to the number.  I wasn’t very interested in playing the RPG.  I considered it paying it forward to get the MMO out the door.  To now read that they needed 3M in sales to break even is mindboggling.  I can only name a couple of IPs I’d expect to have a prayer at that number and an unknown IP isn’t going to be among them.

38 Studios’ sudden demise, so close in proximity to the underwhelming performance of SWTOR and the resultant layoffs, should serve as a warning.  World of Warcraft is an aberration, one that is not likely to be repeated in the MMO space for a long time to come, if ever.  No studio should be banking on millions of subscribers to break even.  Hell - has any subscription MMO of recent history reached 3 million within the first month after launch, let alone retain that many?  Just seems like these budgets are banking on obtaining upwards of 2 million subscriber mark and were financially structured that way but are failing hard.

Sad news all the way ‘round.  I was pulling for this studio and their game.

Comments

[Yarr]

Of recent subscription games other than SWTOR, the only other one to hit millions of players would probably be Aion. While its release was staggered over 9 months, it started with 3.5 million subs in Korea, about 2 million in China & Japan, then another 1+ million in the west. Pretty impressive as that was about half of WoW's numbers; which also has the majority of its subs from Asia, by all accounts. Was at about 2.5 million worldwide just before switching Aion to F2P in the west.

If a game with the Star Wars IP can't hit 2 million copies sold at release (not even close to that apparently), then nothing will in the west.

Trion/Rift is being very smart keeping their initial dev costs down and using clever marketing to be successful with much lower subs and box sales. By all accounts they are quite a bit below EVE's 300K numbers (very likely under 100K at any time), yet are active with updates and bringing players back for a month now and then with new content. TERA will need to do the same or else switch to F2P to stay around. I expect the same with TSW. Times have changed. The Guild Wars model is looking like the smartest way forward, sell lots of boxes and then fluff cash shop items in between expansions.

Sorry for the long reply.

[Saylah]

Didn't realize Aion's numbers had gotten that high. Good for them. I liked the game well enough, combat especially. But oh goodness the grind was rather severe once you it high 20s. I couldn't be bothered pushing through it and the crafting grind was even worse. Not even F2p gets me back into games I didn't enjoy for one reason or another. Too many other things come along to go backward.

I don't mind paying a subscriptions but the criteria to keep me is higher than it used to be for MMOs. Lots of options and less game time = much more selective.

I'm so looking forward to GW2. I pre-ordered via Amazon almost 2 years ago. Their model made trying it a no-brainer and now that I have tried it, I'm in love. :-)