Curt Schilling Blames R.I. For Troubles

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And the public pissing match continues. At this point, the only thing we know for sure is that Schilling and Chafee are both idiots.

"The governor is not operating in the best interest of the company by any stretch, or the taxpayers, or the state," Schilling told the newspaper. "We're trying to save this company and we're working 24/7. The public commentary has been as big a piece of what's happening to us as anything out there."
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The 45-year-old Schilling said he stands to lose all of the money he saved while playing baseball, and rejected criticism that he is seeking a public handout.
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Don't gamble unless you can afford to lose.
 
How can you reject criticism about accepting a public handout after accepting a public handout? What's next, he's going to say that he didn't 'quit' baseball?

His problem is that he started with something way too ambitious. It's not that he wasn't a techie, because plenty of companies have been started without a designated 'techie'. Bioware was founded by 3 Canadian medical doctors whom pooled $100,000 to get started.

After thinking about everything, I hope Schilling and his team IS able to climb out of the hole they are in. I think he'll learn a little humility, and while I think Kingdom of Amalur was a mediocre game at best, I think it could be made into a good sequal if they take criticism to heart.
 
Well he's claiming that RI isn't coming thru with tax breaks that they were supposed to get. If that's true then the dude's got a legitimate beef.
 
IN before SOE buys his project and inserts a cash shop and launches it 60% complete!!
 
I have yet to see him accept any blame in this. He should be critical of himself and his company before pointing the finger at anyone else. How do you blow through 120 Million dollars with at least a year of development time left, and not think you did anything wrong.?
 
It's way too early for him to accept blame. He's still trying to get the situation under control and potentially get things moving again. He already looks bad enough to outside investors, think on top of it all he's going to admit OHH hey guys I really screwed that one up, whoops. Not only would that mess up any further potential private investment money, but it would also cause an even bigger wave of hate toward himself.
 
I see multiple problems here and potential pitfalls. The first being this concept that you need that much money to create a good game. Some of the best games ever were made on what would be a shoestring budget today. Now they seem to think they need Hollywood blockbuster budgets to make a "good" game. News flash, you don't need A string voice actors and state of the art equipment to make an A+ game. People will look past B class voice acting (which still can be good) as long as the game play and story are good. The B class actor will do the work for $60k where the A class actor probably wants at least $500k. Also a $3000 machine can process things %80 as fast as the $25,000 super rig you HAD to have for everyone in the development team.

The other thing I see is for R.I. as a state. If it's viewed they didn't live up to their promises when they lured 38 in, companies in the future will be much less likely to take the same risk.

I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the big budget games/movies these days would be just as well received on half the budgets they currently spend.
 
The governor sounds like a giant DOUCHEBAG. Not because it's his fault directly (RI shouldn't have offered it in the first place) but because it seems that the governor has made it his "mission" to make 38 studios look back and has did NOTHING but blame them for everything.

He's basically throwing 38 under the bus and trying to come out of it clean. Meanwhile instead of HELPING Them (which in turn coudl lead to more jobs down the road/not having the tax payers footing the bill of the loan) he's just publically humiliating them and demeaning them as much as possible.

He doesn't know ANYTHING about the game industry, when he says 1.2 million is a failure it's laughable because for a new IP, that is GREAT SALES by any stretch of means. Trying to quote the npd and saying it "didnt sell that many" shows how little he knows, because the npd does NOT count digital sales which is where the bulk of pc sales are coming from, every origin copy (which EA/38 studios hav ea record of) he does not, nor does the npd, so he is just misinforming them in public trying to make it look like it's all 38's fault.


Both are at fault here, RI for even offereing it, and this jackass of a Governor for his public humiliation , and 38 studios for accepting such a stupid loan (requiring them to hire like 400+ people , that is an EXTREMELY high number of employee's for a new/starting company, even some big AAA development studio's don't have that many people working for them. Then having not one, not two, but THREE projects under its belt whent hey only published one game. They should have developed KoA alone, not tried to go straight out of the game with an mmo. MMO's cost an absurd amount of money to develop and take the longest of any game genre to turn a profit (because you have to keep developres, CS, IT people all working on it post production, unlike other games where you can move them onto something new).
 
ViperGrendal said:
I see multiple problems here and potential pitfalls. The first being this concept that you need that much money to create a good game. Some of the best games ever were made on what would be a shoestring budget today. Now they seem to think they need Hollywood blockbuster budgets to make a "good" game. News flash, you don't need A string voice actors and state of the art equipment to make an A+ game. People will look past B class voice acting (which still can be good) as long as the game play and story are good. The B class actor will do the work for $60k where the A class actor probably wants at least $500k. Also a $3000 machine can process things %80 as fast as the $25,000 super rig you HAD to have for everyone in the development team.

The other thing I see is for R.I. as a state. If it's viewed they didn't live up to their promises when they lured 38 in, companies in the future will be much less likely to take the same risk.

I wouldn't be surprised if 90% of the big budget games/movies these days would be just as well received on half the budgets they currently spend.
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I'm sure they would, if the content were there. But it's all about doing the next big thing and out-doing your predecessor. I think people get sucked up in that and think that the next MMO that comes out should have EVERYTHING the most recent blockbuster had, PLUS some more to make it unique. Keep adding to the pile of "unique" aka worthless features, like full voiceover (whoop de doo).

I think the moral of the story is, the idea well MMO developers are pulling from is starting to run dry. The genre needs a mini-revolution to get back on the right track.
 
Stiler said:
The governor sounds like a giant DOUCHEBAG. Not because it's his fault directly (RI shouldn't have offered it in the first place) but because it seems that the governor has made it his "mission" to make 38 studios look back and has did NOTHING but blame them for everything.

He's basically throwing 38 under the bus and trying to come out of it clean. Meanwhile instead of HELPING Them (which in turn coudl lead to more jobs down the road/not having the tax payers footing the bill of the loan) he's just publically humiliating them and demeaning them as much as possible.

He doesn't know ANYTHING about the game industry, when he says 1.2 million is a failure it's laughable because for a new IP, that is GREAT SALES by any stretch of means. Trying to quote the npd and saying it "didnt sell that many" shows how little he knows, because the npd does NOT count digital sales which is where the bulk of pc sales are coming from, every origin copy (which EA/38 studios hav ea record of) he does not, nor does the npd, so he is just misinforming them in public trying to make it look like it's all 38's fault.


Both are at fault here, RI for even offereing it, and this jackass of a Governor for his public humiliation , and 38 studios for accepting such a stupid loan (requiring them to hire like 400+ people , that is an EXTREMELY high number of employee's for a new/starting company, even some big AAA development studio's don't have that many people working for them. Then having not one, not two, but THREE projects under its belt whent hey only published one game. They should have developed KoA alone, not tried to go straight out of the game with an mmo. MMO's cost an absurd amount of money to develop and take the longest of any game genre to turn a profit (because you have to keep developres, CS, IT people all working on it post production, unlike other games where you can move them onto something new).
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Its RI's fault that Schilling is a lying, hypocritical scumbag who should have never asked for public money, much less received it??????
 
MacLeod said:
Well he's claiming that RI isn't coming thru with tax breaks that they were supposed to get. If that's true then the dude's got a legitimate beef.
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Taxes aren't paid on revenue but on profits, so no tax break in the world is able to effect the fundamental financial standing of a company like 38 studios. They would have had to turn a profit first before Rhode Island's proposed incentives could come into play. 38 never made it that far.
 
Exactly. So please reiterate why this is Schilling's fault besides the fact that he's obviously a professional athlete first, and a businessman last. The state of RI invested it's money in an MMO. A VIDEO GAME. A game they knew was going to take quite some time to develop. And you can't even say anything about Amalur, that was over halfway complete when they relocated and RI had *ZERO* stake in that game.
 
Mr. Schilling,

We have a fine selection of cheese to go with all the whine.

Signed,
Humanity
 
Stiler said:
He doesn't know ANYTHING about the game industry, when he says 1.2 million is a failure it's laughable because for a new IP, that is GREAT SALES by any stretch of means. Trying to quote the npd and saying it "didnt sell that many" shows how little he knows, because the npd does NOT count digital sales which is where the bulk of pc sales are coming from, every origin copy (which EA/38 studios hav ea record of) he does not, nor does the npd, so he is just misinforming them in public trying to make it look like it's all 38's fault.
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Well, the reason the game was considered a 'failure' is that it didn't make the money back the game used in development. Remember, EA got involved with the demo and everything and had reciprocal bonuses built into KoA and Mass Effect 3, and I can't imagine what EA would have demanded from 38 Studios to get that in.

All told, the game was required to sell 3 million total to make back the development costs. Yes, 1.2 million is nowhere near a failure and is a lot more than I expected, actually, but still, not what they needed. It sounds like they company spent a lot of money to try to make their game without the concept of what they were spending it on, or how much in total.
 
38 Studios made a pretty good game, but were not able to be profitable doing so. You can't just keep throwing good money after bad (not the public's money at least). I feel for Mr. Schilling, but I doubt he stands to lose all of the money he has saved, I'm guessing he will still have a couple million even if things totally fall apart. Best of luck to 38 studios though.
 
EPOQ said:
IN before SOE buys his project and inserts a cash shop and launches it 60% complete!!
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LOOOL.

To be fair... the last time they did that (with Vanguard), it was Sigil's fault. Not SOE.

I'll never pick up another title Brad McQuaid is involved in, beyond just being a "designer with no business say so". He cost a lot of decent people chances to become top end designers.
 
You can't spend a Call of Duty-sized budget on development and only pull down a million copies. You just can't. These projects got too big for their britches, especially if they were planning on asking for an additional loan to make a sequel.
 
ballistic90 said:
Well, the reason the game was considered a 'failure' is that it didn't make the money back the game used in development. Remember, EA got involved with the demo and everything and had reciprocal bonuses built into KoA and Mass Effect 3, and I can't imagine what EA would have demanded from 38 Studios to get that in.

All told, the game was required to sell 3 million total to make back the development costs. Yes, 1.2 million is nowhere near a failure and is a lot more than I expected, actually, but still, not what they needed. It sounds like they company spent a lot of money to try to make their game without the concept of what they were spending it on, or how much in total.
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I HIGHLY doubt the budget of KoA was anywhere near that,I thinkt he governor is thinking KoA is the game they made with the RI money and that it needed 3 million to break even as far as paying salaries/the loan.
 
Furthermore a budget that high (3 million x 59.99, well factoring in MS/sony's cut for consoles then marketing/EA) is still absurdly high for a new ip game, even many well establish huge games budgets don't go that big outside marketing.
 
EPOQ said:
Exactly. So please reiterate why this is Schilling's fault besides the fact that he's obviously a professional athlete first, and a businessman last. The state of RI invested it's money in an MMO. A VIDEO GAME. A game they knew was going to take quite some time to develop. And you can't even say anything about Amalur, that was over halfway complete when they relocated and RI had *ZERO* stake in that game.
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My province invested millions in video game start ups too. The difference is that they only gave $1 million to each that qualified.

The goal was to draw in new business. My province (Ontario) had previously invested a lot of money in car manufacturing, and when the big 3 detroit companies had problems, a lot of people were out of work. These development projects are supposed to get people back to work in an new industry.

Yes, the amount of money Schilling was loaned was pretty excessive, but Schilling was just as much at fault for accepting it under impossible terms as RI was for offering it. Isn't that called 'personal responsibility' that people like Schilling was spouting off at the mouth about?
 
Stiler said:
I HIGHLY doubt the budget of KoA was anywhere near that,I thinkt he governor is thinking KoA is the game they made with the RI money and that it needed 3 million to break even as far as paying salaries/the loan.
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I'm thinking the amount of money includes buying out Big Huge Games, as well as the loan payments the company was responsible for.
 
ballistic90 said:
My province invested millions in video game start ups too. The difference is that they only gave $1 million to each that qualified.

The goal was to draw in new business. My province (Ontario) had previously invested a lot of money in car manufacturing, and when the big 3 detroit companies had problems, a lot of people were out of work. These development projects are supposed to get people back to work in an new industry.

Yes, the amount of money Schilling was loaned was pretty excessive, but Schilling was just as much at fault for accepting it under impossible terms as RI was for offering it. Isn't that called 'personal responsibility' that people like Schilling was spouting off at the mouth about?
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Yeah you are right about personal responsibility. I will agree with you there. At the same time, Curt was/is very adamant about making this game. It's his baby, and he was willing to do whatever it took to see it come to fruition. I can think if I was so personally invested in something, I would likely do the same thing. Perhaps he was blinded by how much he wanted this game to succeed and unfortunately sold his soul to the devil when he jumped on this deal with RI. It dosen't excuse his actions, but I do believe he wants what is best for his company and his project. He didn't start 38 Studios to become rich. He was already rich. He's a gamer and he wanted to have a hand in making the kind of game he likes himself. I can't blame him for that.
 
EPOQ said:
Yeah you are right about personal responsibility. I will agree with you there. At the same time, Curt was/is very adamant about making this game. It's his baby, and he was willing to do whatever it took to see it come to fruition. I can think if I was so personally invested in something, I would likely do the same thing. Perhaps he was blinded by how much he wanted this game to succeed and unfortunately sold his soul to the devil when he jumped on this deal with RI. It dosen't excuse his actions, but I do believe he wants what is best for his company and his project. He didn't start 38 Studios to become rich. He was already rich. He's a gamer and he wanted to have a hand in making the kind of game he likes himself. I can't blame him for that.
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I blame him for making terrible business decisions. Betting a massive budget on two new IPs isn't giving yourself much better odds than winning the lottery. And that's kind of what it is. When you invest millions into a single project like that, you're betting you'll get at least that much out of it, if not more. Propping up the company with smaller projects and re-investing your profits into your big plan game makes economic sense, and is how smaller gaming companies have to do it now. That, or get a publisher to fund your project entirely.
 
ballistic90 said:
I blame him for making terrible business decisions. Betting a massive budget on two new IPs isn't giving yourself much better odds than winning the lottery. And that's kind of what it is. When you invest millions into a single project like that, you're betting you'll get at least that much out of it, if not more. Propping up the company with smaller projects and re-investing your profits into your big plan game makes economic sense, and is how smaller gaming companies have to do it now. That, or get a publisher to fund your project entirely.
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Well he definitely played it like an Indie developer. All their eggs in one basket, and in for a bust. The sad part is, he had 50 mil of his own money he could have done anything with. Most Indie companies start from scratch, with damn near NOTHING. It's a serious letdown to hear this news, especially those anticipating a great game. I hope something good comes out of it, but I can SERIOUSLY see another developer purchasing 38 and ruining everything Curt had been working to achieve. I hope that doesn't happen though.
 
EPOQ said:
Well he definitely played it like an Indie developer. All their eggs in one basket, and in for a bust. The sad part is, he had 50 mil of his own money he could have done anything with. Most Indie companies start from scratch, with damn near NOTHING. It's a serious letdown to hear this news, especially those anticipating a great game. I hope something good comes out of it, but I can SERIOUSLY see another developer purchasing 38 and ruining everything Curt had been working to achieve. I hope that doesn't happen though.
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Curt didn't seem to know where to start, and with a staff of 450 people, I think he tried way too hard to do everything at once. In a market like this, you need to start small and work hard and work your way up .I don't care how much money you have, or how good your game is. You need to catch people's eye with something, and gain their trust. Start with a real indie project instead of pumping money into a so called "Triple A" title.

For a great game, you need a good idea to start with, and I just don't see the core idea of what Schilling was attempting to accomplish with KoA or his MMO. And let's be frank, in this market of AAA titles you need to really stand out if you're the new guy on the block. Instead, the game immediately took a backseat to every other big release that came out shortly afterwards.

If KoA was his 'small' project, he didn't really know what he was doing. Start small, but with a big idea that screams "Look, this is something you've never seen before!!!!" and people will notice you. KoA felt way too familiar to what was already flooding the market.
 
No other rpg has combat as fun as KoA's really, at least open world like that (dark souls is more tactical based but it's close between those two).

The combat in KoA put every other rpg to shame mostly, especially skyrim.

If they could have just had a better world design/art styl e(the wow cartoony look is olddd now) and an actual decent storyline that wasn't the "same old same old" generi cfantasy romp.

one of Curt's biggest problems was going outside the game world to people like Todd Mcfarlane and RA Salvatore. Neither really brought anything new/exciting to the game world, Todd's art style looked like he said "what's the biggest game? WoW? Lets copy that" and RA just seemed to phone his writing in.

I mean he created Drizzt for crying out loud, which was something unique and didn't fit into the D&D stereotypes for races, it brought something new/different from a character perspective and look how well that lturned out for him.

Instead of trying something like that in the fantasy rpg world he just....did more of what's already been done.

Games like The Witcher have carved their own unique styles into the fantasy rpg game world because of their lore/style. KoA failed to do that, it was coming off of Skyrim and it just didn't have anything outside of combat that made people go "wow look at that." Most of all the thing that really hurt it was the lack of a patch or any difficulty setting increase.
 
DesertCat said:
Don't gamble unless you can afford to lose.
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I wouldn't be too worried about him....he's got a pension from MLB, plus he's working as an ESPN studio analyist.

At this point, he's playing with house money. ;)
 
Diddn't these guys have a huge staff to ? I'm no expert in all this but I thought i read they had like 700 people on pay roll.
 
The state offered an unrealistic loan to a company. The company signed that unrealistic loan. The state also intentionally lured the company to RI with the loan. Schilling shouldnt have agreed to the loan but RI shouldnt have offered that loan. If you want to create business by luring companies with money offers you better do everything possible to help that company succeed. Including offering realistic loans.
 
I just want to add that I live in RI and watch this closely because as a taxpayer, it pisses me off. The current gov is a complete dumbass, he is as dumb as they come, but in his defense, he didn't broker this deal, the previous gov Carcieri did. Remember folks it isn't "RI" taxpayers that let this happen, its the idiots in public services who did, the taxpayers knew damn well this was a bad investment, it's not like it went to a popular vote and were asked........"Hey folks of RI, what do you think of this?".......it was......"We've backed 38 studios with an attractive loan to get more business and jobs into RI".

Good, bad, or indifferent, we the TAXPAYERS didn't get THE CHOICE of this complete clusterfuck........so please keep your comments in check when you blast "RI" as gambling on this shit.......we didn't ask for it, it was dumped in our laps.

The only way to fix it is to get rid of the idiots in there now.......and good luck with that!......:(
 
Spire3660 said:
Its RI's fault that Schilling is a lying, hypocritical scumbag who should have never asked for public money, much less received it??????
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Don't try and interject sense into one of the dumbest posts I've read on these forums in years.
 
Remember folks it isn't "RI" taxpayers that let this happen, its the idiots in public services who did, the taxpayers knew damn well this was a bad investment, it's not like it went to a popular vote and were asked........"Hey folks of RI, what do you think of this?".......it was......"We've backed 38 studios with an attractive loan to get more business and jobs into RI".
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Hard to understand your perspective on this one. With $40M in collateral and a game property currently generating income, it will be hard for RI to loose money in the long term.

This loan was modeled after the (profitable) GM/Chrystler bailout. Because the loan is safe for RI, it's unsafe for any other investor. Had RI acted in good faith, it would have waived the first guaranteed payment. The stuff about private investment is just propaganda - any such deal would have to be brokered by RI.

If you understand why the loan is safe for RI, you also understand why the IP purchase and large development effort was necessary. It simply doesn't matter to RI whether 38 defaults at this point, since the loan was structured to guarantee return of the principal.

The real story is that a political system has become sufficiently transparent, directly democratic, and polarized that it is whipped into a self-flagellating frenzy even when handed a guaranteed checkmate. We feel like experts because we can nitpick over the former governor's patronage play or the current governor's propaganda play. Unfortunately, 15M people can't micromanage and nitpick their way to functional organization. Neither can 350M.
 
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