Former 38 Studios employees defend Schilling, talk political misinformation [Updated]
Gamers and other outsiders have been quick to label Curt Schilling as the primary villain in the 38 Studios drama, but a new piece at Gamasutra intimates that that might not be the whole story.
The website cites multiple anonymous sources who say that 38's situation wasn't helped by Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee. "Once things went bad, Chafee's office started leaking any information it could to make 38 Studios look like it had been a bad deal. Unfortunately, a lot of these leaks involved partial and complete misinformation," the source said.
Another source dispelled notions of excessive spending at the shuttered studio. "I can say that the company didn't spend money extravagantly at all. We didn't have giant statues in the halls, or supercomputers with 30-inch monitors at every desk. We had what we needed to work on the game and that was it," the source tells Gamasutra.
[Update: One former team member talked about 38 Studios' MMO, saying that it was quite close to completion: "I have worked on a number of projects in my career, and I can say without reservation that Copernicus [had] incredible potential to be a blockbuster MMO. It wasn't completely revolutionary in terms of gameplay, but it took existing conventions and refined or improved them across the board. The idea that this imminently playable, triple-A, beautiful MMO that had millions of dollars and man-hours poured into it is heartbreaking."]
