A quick recap; in 2010 38 Studios relocated to Rhode Island in order to take advantage of a $75 million loan backed by the State economic development fund and this month defaulted on the repayments amid reports that staff hadn’t been paid.
It’s since been reported that the loan payment has now been made but the studio is going to need to secure more funding from somewhere to make their next one. The governor of Rhode Island (no, really) announced that 38 Studios’ MMO codenamed Copernicus will be released in June 2013. There’s a good article covering the whole history of 38 Studios and their deal with Rhode Island here.
This annoys me on so many levels it’s not even funny.
Leaving aside the political arguments about whether governments should be offering these kinds of incentives to business in the first place, why on earth would you give so much to a start-up video game company that were already backed by a multi-millionaire celebrity?
Are things that good in Rhode Island that there aren’t enough ordinary people with struggling businesses that could use some help from a government backed loan? Apparently this $75 million loan came out of a total State budget for economic development of $125 million. So that’s well over half the total funds gone on a single risky start-up.
I’m annoyed at the hubris of Schilling and 38 Studios. We’ve already had 2004 and somebody already made World of Warcraft. I can’t believe it’s 2012 and people are still trying to make “one MMO to rule them all”. If you don’t have the finance or the experience to match Blizzard just get over it and develop some original ideas within a realistic budget.
I’m very annoyed with the politicians who wasted all that public money on something that was always going to be a high risk investment. I guess video games and sports celebrity are a heady mix that they just couldn’t resist.
I’m really annoyed because while millionaire celebrities like Schilling seemingly have no trouble attracting millions upon millions for their first project, small indie developers with interesting ideas for “MMOs that aren’t World of Warcraft” continue to struggle for funding.
I’m super annoyed because this will probably just end up making it even harder for said indie developers to get funding in the future. It further feeds into the narrative that video games are inherently risky with MMOs the riskiest of them all because they take so long and cost so much to develop.
Sure you can do it like that, but I’d have thought that by now people would be wising up to the fact that you don’t necessarily have to take 5+ years and spend several hundred million dollars to make a successful MMO. Take World of Tanks for example which was announced in April 2009 and shipped in October 2010. I don’t know how much it cost, but I’d be willing to bet that it was less than the handout RI gave to 38 Studios. Oh and the game probably makes a ton of money too.
The MMO genre today is far more mature than it was even 5 years ago, never mind 10 or more. Not only is the technology more advanced but the people are better trained and more experienced. So many mistakes have already been made and learned from (or so you’d think!)
It should be cheaper and easier to make an MMO than ever before. Please stop wasting money backing these huge dinosaur projects that want squillions of dollars just to make another World of Warcraft.
Despite the somewhat ranty tone of this post I do hope that 38 Studios can survive, particularly for the sake of their employees. It would also be a shame if the work that’s been done so far were to go to waste.
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