Curt Schilling, 38 Studios, and Rhode Island

lol, at first, because of the RI connection, i was thinking of seth mcfarlane and thinking, "duh, of course it was doomed to failure!"

oh man I had forgotten that this was the Spawn meets Drizzt Do'Urden MMORPG

what do the farrelly brothers do with their money?

Big Huge did Rise of Nations, right? the Civ/Age of Empires mash-up series?

What pisses me off is that the motherfuck makes fucking loud-ass Tea Party noises for years, then runs for public coffers for dosh to pay back himself first, iirc.

Setting up a system for subsidized loans to entice high-tech industry and gamedevs is a good idea(Bethesda is in MD, if you remember); dumping insane amounts of funds into a new studio run headed by a first-timer trying to make a blockbuster MMO on their first try is not.

likewise, sinking all of the state's economic development funding into a single business!

exactly! awesome example of appeal to authority as a cognitive fallacy, too!

i heard through the grapevine that schilling had gotten money out of a bunch of pro athletes as "investors" lol

― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, May 25, 2012 2:25 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

iirc schilling actually asked for MORE loans to cover costs after 38 couldn't make payroll, over and above the loans already received. the request was turned down, which led to the mass firings this week. afaik, the only remaining thing 38 can do to raise money is to sell off their tax credits to other businesses.

Big Huge did Rise of Nations, right? the Civ/Age of Empires mash-up series?

What pisses me off is that the motherfuck makes fucking loud-ass Tea Party noises for years, then runs for public coffers for dosh to pay back himself first, iirc.

― Choad of Choad Hall (kingfish), Friday, May 25, 2012 1:48 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep they did Rise...studio was founded by Brian Reynolds, one of the ex lead producer types at Firaxis, like a said a good, solid PC oriented studio, Schilling certainly didn't pick a bad company to work with...

I believe the Reckoning project was actually started with another publisher, dropped and picked up by 38 Studios

to your second point, Big Huge was in Maryland and Schilling actually sort of played Maryland and Rhode Island against each other to see who would give me the most "job creation" kickbacks...Rhode Island got sucked into his celebrity and also the very misguided idea that making money on these dang games those kids love so much is really easy - why my kids play video games all the time!

Schilling is basically just a well-heeled fanboy with the hubris to think he knows one fucking thing about running a successful game company, no different than any million dudes except he's famous.

if i've learned nothing else, it's that the business is incredibly complex and just crushingly difficult -- even if you are amazing at what you do. and that enjoying playing games has very very little to do with whether or not you'd be good at making them.

RI public radio roundtable on the subject, including Gov Chafee

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wrni/news.newsmain/article/0/13/1932647/Top.Stories/Political.Roundtable.the.future.for.RI.and.38.Studios

right, Dunning-Kruger Effect in action.

Will take this moment to state that I really want Firaxis or Reynolds to do an updated Alpha Centauri, my fave of all Civ games.

I enjoyed it so much I even read _The Jesus Incident_, its source material.

Schilling actually sort of played Maryland and Rhode Island against each other

this is exactly what happened, it essentially became a bidding war

you win this round, maryland. *shakes fist*

massachusetts comes out of this looking great too because our politicians our dumb but thankfully weren't dumb enough to call when rhode island raised

I really can't see Deval Patrick going for this at all

I mean, there's no casino component

hah yeah pretty much

curt schilling is the worst person.

― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Friday, May 25, 2012 11:37 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

$75 million loan is just a staggering amount, like how many fn people did they think this place was gonna employ

400-450 iirc

public documents from the RI EDC are online, who knows what's buried in the fine print

http://www.riedc.com/38studios-public-documents

i realize that fantasy genre shit with foofy names makes tons of money all the time, but it still cracks me up that this much coin was riding on something called Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

as far as fantasy names go, that's super tame and boring tbh

One former employee told the video game blog Kotaku that 38 Studios workers learned of the payroll miss only when checks failed to hit their accounts. According to the employee, workers learned by word of mouth that their health insurance was to expire abruptly, Thursday night at midnight. "We found this out when an employee's pregnant wife was told by her doctor, this was on Tuesday 22nd May this week," the employee wrote.

ra salvatore made $5 million off this, lol

that to me is the worst shit, like it's one thing to hear "oh you're not getting paid in 2 weeks" and another to hear "oh that bill you thought you were gonna pay today? yeah that's not happening"

ironic that my video-game-loving son's public school may end up getting shuttered and consolidated because of a failed video game

schilling's the dope who drove this into a wall but carcieri's the moron who handed him the keys to his car, unfortunately I live in that car and, well, I don't really know where I was going with that metaphor

into a wall

Catherine Welch ‏@CWELCHRI
@RINPR Ex-38 Studio employee tells RIPR that Gov Chafee stonewalled the company
2:48 PM - 25 May 12 via web

i completely understand 38 employees being outraged at the sudden loss of their jobs but i honestly don't think chaffee is the appropriate focus for yr anger, dudes

he would not give us $78m more dollars

trying to make an MMO from the start seems like the worst business plan ever for a game company

i just don't know what oversight could the state have provided re: how the funding was dispersed, short of interfering with the actual development of the game?

are there any truly successful MMOs that aren't built on the back of existing IP and reputation

just imagine the RI general assembly getting involved in the development of an mmorpg

what on earth would that game be like

character class: potatohead

probably more interesting than a generic fantasy MMO

i hope this stops Delaware from staking its future on non-erotic Twilight fan fiction

just imagine the RI general assembly getting involved in the development of an mmorpg

what on earth would that game be like

― judas, a homo (elmo argonaut), Friday, May 25, 2012 4:30 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is the game dont u see

Yeah, I'm wondering who made that call.

About starting with an MMO right out of the gate. Don't these people play Game Dev Story?

trying to make an MMO from the start seems like the worst business plan ever for a game company

― ciderpress, Friday, May 25, 2012 4:27 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are there any truly successful MMOs that aren't built on the back of existing IP and reputation

― ciderpress, Friday, May 25, 2012 4:29 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yes its completely insane. how on earth did nobody in charge go WHOA WHOA WHAT THE FUCK before this money was given to schilling

new quest!
objective: bring me some stuffies & clamcakes from flo's

curt schilling with an entry into the nominative determinism hall of fame

someone probably said that already though

Scott MacKay ‏@ScotMackRI
Gotta love Rhode Island, only state that can take $75 million and turn it into a Schilling
11:19 AM - 25 May 12 via web

this is insane! i feel a little better about MN political culture now, at least we're gonna have a stadium out of the deal

yes its completely insane. how on earth did nobody in charge go WHOA WHOA WHAT THE FUCK before this money was given to schilling

― Hungry4Ass, Friday, May 25, 2012 4:35 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well you see ppl involved in state government are essentially the lowest form of life on the planet

lower than dwarves and endelrons? i dunno man

does this mean the state of rhode island is going to own *googles* Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Chafee:

"If the company's not going to be profitable and can't give us the confidence [it can get] on solid footing, then we have to deal with the ramifications," Chafee said. "Industry experts tell us this is very, very expensive and it's not only the cost of producing the game, but then maintaining it once it's released, and then tens of millions of dollars to market it. I think the Red Sox lost Babe Ruth because the owner invested in a play called No No Nannette. And the play failed and he had to sell Babe Ruth. This is very very similar. The game failed. That was integral to the success of the company."

Curt Schilling ‏@gehrig38 3h

If someone were to buy Amalur, put team back on it, it's a billion dollar franchise, 2 years later and still no ones done what we were doing

it's true, I can't think of another software developer who bankrupted a state

Only one video game company put up a blood-soaked sock as collateral.

' 2 years later and still no ones done what we were doing'

Weird kinda delusion makes you make public statements like that, or sink your fortune into taking on WoW right out of the gate with a team of no MMO experience, or be a ball player who adds 'Gehrig' to his twitter handle

@williemayshayes

Gehrig is his son's name fwiw

Seriously?

Also, did KoA ever go on super sale on Steam or amazon or anywhere? I'd to actually try the game out now that all the shouting's done

he's just a really big gehrig fan, and i believe has used that handle forever on wow and message boards and stuff. it's probably the least offensive thing he's done.

A ha

diagnosed with cancer, and the fact that he doesn't want to talk specifics leads me to fear the worst :/

Game is on Steam, finally. Was on sale this weekend.

I mean, I don't even care about Schilling beyond schadenlols and I thought responding to "dude has cancer" with "plus his game came out" was cold

i took it as a pvmic but idk

It's a horrible diagnosis, but one of the things I've been curious all along is what the actual thing that effectively started all this downfall was like as a game.

I'll grant my juxtaposition could have been handled better.

Sort of. That one that actually came out was developed by another studio that got swallowed up by Shilling's studio during all this, and it was already mostly done. I believe they rebranded it to fit into their fictional universe, the main game of which never came out.

Really? IP acquisition is weird. I always thought that his studio led with the design and brought in all the nerdcult names to work on it. Like, this thing was a piece with the MMO.

http://deadspin.com/various-lowlights-from-curt-schillings-failed-38-studio-1732879364

Chas Pierce paying attention to this loony

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a47895/curt-schilling-senate-elizabeth-warren/

and Taibbi!

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/curt-schilling-is-the-next-donald-trump-w435754

Curt Schilling...Mike Pence...is there a right-wing American fucknut called Pound, by any chance?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Ezra_Pound_1963b.jpg

in many ways the ur-fucknut

TY. Eric Morecambe behind EP, too.

hahaha is that actually Eric??

http://deadspin.com/detective-curt-schilling-is-on-the-case-of-the-hoboken-1787242420

next trump http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2016/09/28/curt-schilling-run-president-haha-sure

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--JYqz9Ent--/c_scale,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/r7t7jjyzhcggacqjivbc.jpg

lmfao

he still hasn't deleted it

Gotta go on Twitter and thank him for the display name