Posts Tagged ‘Flagship’

Phoenix Rising: Hellgate returns as free-to-play… Again.

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Ah Hellgate. You’ve had a long and winding path, and eventually, just like Schwarzenegger, we all knew you’d be back. If you’re not quite familiar with Hellgate’s history, let’s just say it’s been “troubled” at best, which at the end of the day, is/was quite a shame, as the title itself is quite enjoyable, and even through it’s ups and downs, has somehow manage to retain a devoted following, even while the game was offline.

A 90-second recap:

2007 – Hellgate London receives critical acclaim, as eager gamers can’t wait to get their hands on a new offering from former Blizzard employees who’d worked on the Diablo series.

However, that’s about as far as it went, as the game suffered from a number of critical bugs, with fix patches promised, but never released.

2008 – Developer Flagship Studios filed for bankruptcy, and was subsequently never heard from again (for the most part). Publisher Namco Bandai sought to save the title from its ultimate demise, first offering the title as a free-to-play in early January 2009, however the damage was done, the writing on the wall, and players leaving in droves.

What ensued is nothing short of a scene right out of Kramer vs. Kramer (a classic – watch it), with Korean publisher HanbitSoft finally gaining the IP rights to Hellgate: London. Consequently, and perhaps Against All Odds (another classic not to be missed), Hellgate took root and flourished in the South East Asian market.

After a few rounds of He Said, She Said (You see, it always comes back to Kevin Bacon), it looks like the North American market will see the return of Hellgate. T3 entertainment, Redbana and HanbitSoft announced yesterday that Hellgate is coming back with a vengeance, and is slated for a June 3-5th closed beta. As we’ve heard previously, this new (and hopefully improved) version of Hellgate will return as a free-to-play MMO.

So let’s see how this shakes out. I personally played Hellgate a bit back in the day, but eventually ended up with WoW as my personal MMORPG of choice, but that’s not to say that Hellgate wasn’t engaging. In fact, it was exactly this level of engagement, and the lack of developer support that finally made me throw in the towel. If HanbitSoft has learned any lessons from the past, it’s that in order to make a success, consumers must receive ongoing and regular service updates. A bit of a no-brainer, but clearly one that Flagship couldn’t quite get off the ground. And who knows…perhaps Hellgate is one of those titles that was just a bit too ahead of it’s time, and now, with a proper support mechanism in place could give some other competitors in the space (I’m looking at you Nexon) a run for their money. Literally.

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Torchlight moves 500k copies – Runic Games acquired by Perfect World

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

An alternate title might be, “All’s well that ends well,” as it seems as though the (sunk) Flagship games mass exodus has finally seen a silver lining. Runic Games, which was founded by ex-Flagship devs, announced this week that their premier title: Torchlight has officially sold over 500,000 copies worldwide, both digitally and on the PC. This announcement comes immediately following their announcement of Torchlight available to Mac players via Steam.

torchlight_01Torchlight is a single-player, Diablo-esque RPG , (current devs are former Diablo, Diablo II, and Hellgate: London team members) but Runic Games has been touting the fact that they’re about two years out from a Torchlight MMO. To this end, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Perfect World, a Chinese developer and publisher of several MMO’s revealed in their Q1 2010 financial results that they’ve acquired a majority stake in Runic Games for approximately $8.4 million. Not a bad exit/payout for a firm that was born from the ashes of an epic debacle.

Again, this acquisition shouldn’t come as a surprise, as since April 2009, Perfect World inked a deal with Runic Games to be the exclusive worldwide publisher of Torchlight. In other words, Perfect World already had a vested interest in the success of Torchlight, and now with the magic 500K copies sold benchmark being achieved, presumably, Perfect World decided to go “all in” at the table.

According to Perfect Word, the Runic Games buy in is centered around strengthening R&D capabilities. Long term, the goal is to fuse Runic Games’ experience in developing sophisticated gameplay and graphics engines with their own expertise in publishing and administering free-to-play MMO’s.

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Battlefield Heroes – Hold your fire! Until 2009

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Dice, the developers of the highly anticipated free-to-play title under the EA banner, Battlefield Heroes has recently announced that they’re putting the breaks on the official release date until 2009.

Dice Senior Producer James Salt posted to the games site (see below), citing backend issues as causing the snag.  The quick and dirty looks like this: While the frontend, the interface and gameplay that users experience is running quite well, beta tester feedback has been heard and applied, it’s all the backend features (up to 90% of the actual ‘game’) that aren’t quite up to par.  Rather than rush what could and should be a flagship model of the free-to-play industry to market, Dice/EA are making a wise decision by closing the doors and retooling the system.  The closed beta servers will have the plug pulled at 6pm CET, and will remain closed until further notice.

James Salts’ post:

Hello Heroes,

Been a looooong time since our last update. I want to apologise to you all for that.

So what have we been up to?

Well, the obvious answer is that we’ve been hard at work on the beta. To give you more detail, part of what makes Battlefield: Heroes unique is that it is equal parts game and website. On the game side, we’ve been listening to feedback from the lucky beta people, who have been a tremendous help to us in balancing the gameplay, squashing bugs and improving the overall quality of the game.

On to the other half of the Battlefield Heroes experience: the website.

We have also been working hard on the parts of the beta that aren’t the game. Sound weird? Let me try and explain: You know the old saying about icebergs being 10% above water, and 90% below? Heroes is a little like that. There’s the 10% game part you can see, and the hiding 90% is what we call the ‘backend’. The backend does a lot of things. From running the website’s features and looking after the items you have, to collecting the results from each Heroes game and matchmaking players into games.

We have received lots of great feedback from our beta testers. So much so that we are now ready to enter our next phase. On Friday evening (6pm CET) we will be closing down the current Closed Beta and moving our focus to polishing the backend. So for a while there will be no closed beta available to play. We expect to re-open the beta early next year.

A special thanks to all of our beta testers for your feedback on balance, polish and bug reports over the last few months. Your help has been invaluable to us.

The post has garnered over 800+ comments at the time of my writing this, with a majority of the feedback running towards the ‘Awww man…what’s up?  The game is great!” variety.  Naturally, there’s a smartass comment here and there, but meh…such is life.

This announcement is a bit of a double-edged sword for me personally.  Battlefield Heroes was the only title that I returned to play again on the second day at the Leipzig Games Convention, and I truly do enjoy the gameplay.  Tossing in the ‘it’s free’ factor only ups the ante.  On one hand I was planning on wasting a LOT of time over the upcoming holiday season with BH, but on the other…I’m a patient guy, I’d rather see DICE/EA close the doors, if only temporarily, to deliver something that’s truly going to blow the doors off the nay Sayers.

Here’s to you folks at Dice and EA.  A bold move that’s certainly not going to please all, but kudos to you for having the guts to hold fire until the product is just right.

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Hellgate: London – alive for now, free-to-play Mythos – still up in the air

Monday, October 27th, 2008

Good news for Hellgate: London fans – it looks like you’re back in the game, at least until January 2009.  Hellgate: London, and the associated Flagship fiasco behind the game are quickly shaping up to be one of the great ‘WTF’ stories of the gaming world for 2008.

Let’s take a step back, and I’ll give you the $0.50 tour.  Basically, the saga shakes out like so:  back in June, Flagship Studio’s audio and gameplay programmer Guy Somberg wrote a length nine-paragraph blog article reporting that Flagship employees were leaving “in droves” including accountants, programmers, HR peeps, and game artists.  He continued on and noted that only one full time employee was still working on Hellgate: London, and that the game was still trodding on, even though the gaming committee had trashed the title, sighting that it was full of various bugs causing system slowdowns and complete crashes.  Shifting into damage control, Flagship Studios CVP David Brevik followed up the article, claiming that Somberg was “having a bad day” and that everything in Flagship land was sunny and bright.  The blog has since disappeared.

“Both our studios are currently fully staffed, with our San Francisco studio working on ongoing content for Hellgate: London and our Seattle studio working on our free-to-play MMORPG, Mythos, which should go into open beta within the next couple months,” said Brevik in his official statement. “In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios. As is typical in the industry, after a game is released some people naturally want to work on something else and they leave the company to do so. But in total we have had less than 10% turn-over and have rehired for all needed positions.”

Shall I continue?

Basically the story takes a turn for the (even) worse, with CEO Bill Roper finally admitting that there was some truth to Somberg’s outcry on June 14th.  Instead of folks leaving in droves, it looks like they were forced to take an early vacation: they were canned by Roper and Co.

“The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer,” he said.

Now we all know that where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire, and sure enough, Flagship Studio’s smoky environment, sent some pretty clear signals to those that had a vested interest in both Hellgate: London, and Flagship’s free-to-play title: Mythos.  Korean based HanbitSoft, exclusive publisher of Hellgate: London and Mythos stepped into the foray and claimed that it intended to take over control of the titles.  Insert war of words here, including a juicy statement from HanbitSoft’s CEO Kim Ki-Young:

“Flagship not only lacked effort (in developing and maintaining Hellgate), but were only looking for personal gain. Firing all of the Flagship employees in order to protect the personal interests of its founding members only shows how selfish and irresponsible they are.”

Ouch.

As it turns out, HanbitSoft only has the rights to Mythos, and not Hellgate: London as well.

While this ensuing war of the words was taking place, Hellgate: London forums lit up like the 4th of July with everything ranging from wild speculation, to downright close to the truth.  Namco Bandai had been seen as a potential supporter of the Hellgate: London title, and this past Friday, they finally confirmed a number of rumors:

“[Namco] will continue to support customers of PC game Hellgate: London with online server support and play through January 31, 2009 despite the closure of Flagship Studios.”
“In a further gesture of support, Namco Bandai Games will provide this server support free of charge to all fans and players of the game up until the shut down date. NAMCO BANDAI Games appreciates the enthusiasm of all the Hellgate: London players and looks forward to providing them with future entertainment products.”

Phew.  What a tennis match of following he said/she said.

Which leaves us with one very crucial piece of the Flagship Studios puzzle: Mythos.  Mythos lead designer, Travis Baldree and Flagship Studios co-founder Max Schaefer didn’t take the collapse of Flagship sitting down, but rather, founded Runic Games.  The site was last updated on August 8th, 2008, and mentions Mythos, but gives no concrete details.  I’m going to take a guess, and say that the name may be well mired up in copyright issues and that we may never see this free-to-play see the light of day.  Again, only speculation.  On the other hand, if Baldree and Schaefer are as committed as they seem to be in Baldree’s WarCry interview, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a number of elements of Mythos incorporated in a new free-to-play premiered as Runic Games’ coming out party title.

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