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Rhode Island treasurer seeks to block $75M loan to 38 Studios
Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio, who is also the general treasurer, is working to block the state's $75 million loan to 38 Studios. The Boston Globe reports Caprio wants to stop the loan guarantee, which the studio would receive in exchange for moving from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, until a new governor is sworn in. Several other gubernatorial candidates have also expressed concern. The multi-million dollar deal, which would leave Rhode Island taxpayers with the bill if 38 Studios was to go under, is key to the company creating a proposed 450 jobs in the state by the end of 2012. 38 Studios currently employs approximately 200 staff.
Rhode Island politicians speak out against 38 Studios deal
Though 38 Studios hasn't yet released a video game, it's already bringing together a particular community of people: Rhode Island politicians. The state's Economic Development Corporation (EDC) recently lured the studio over from its current home in Massachusetts with the promise of a $75 million loan -- a sum which just about every Gubernatorial candidate from the state has taken to publicly criticizing since it was first announced. For instance, Independent candidate Lincoln Chafee called for "the Board to suspend the commitment to 38 Studios," and to reconsider whether its the best way for Rhode Island to spend the loan. Moderate candidate Ken Block released a statement saying "seventy-five million dollars could go a long way to help many small businesses here in Rhode Island," also calling for the deal to be halted. Don't these guys realize that their campaigning might just be imperiling the stability of 450 futurejobs? Cut it out!
GenCon 2010: Fantasy fencing with 38 Studios
One thing is for certain: When you are sitting in the crosshairs of Curt Schilling and R.A. Salvatore during an interview, it's easy to become bowled over by their collective intensity and passion, especially when it comes to their interest in games and fantasy worlds. While GenCon Indy lacked its usual MMORPG presence this year, Massively was able to grab a few minutes of face time with 38 Studios' founder and lead writer as they passed through the convention. It was a bit of an odd interview, however, as two of the biggest topics -- 38 Studios' move to Rhode Island and any solid details about their top-secret MMO -- were off the table for discussion. Do not fret, as that certainly didn't stop us from trying to pry for a few hints along the way. Schilling and Salvatore were obviously eager to spill the beans about Copernicus, but they are still biding their time until the right moment. Happily, the duo didn't mind us fencing with them for facts, and were quite open about their single-player RPG lead-up to Copernicus, their general philosophy of designing the MMO, and why they've waited so long to unveil it to the public. Read on, gentle gamers, for a few ripostes, parries and lunges with two of the biggest figures in the industry right now.
38 Studios moves next door to Rhode Island for 75 million smackers
Two weeks ago we reported that Rhode Island was attempting to woo 38 Studios away from Massachusetts with a tempting $75 million loan guarantee. Today we've gotten word that Curt Schilling's company has indeed taken the bait, and will be relocating to The Ocean State due to this sweet incentive. While there's no definite timetable on the move, Mass High Tech reports that this loan guarantee comes with a few strings attached: 38 Studios will receive partial loan payments only upon meeting certain milestones, and the company has to put all of its assets up for collateral. The loan comes from a special $125 million program to create high-tech jobs in Rhode Island, and the state hopes that 38 Studios will account for up to 450 new jobs once it arrives. Curt Schilling promised to "protect the loan guarantee that's been given by the state with the same passion and interest that I'm protecting my own investment in this company." 38 Studios recently announced that its single-player RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, will be published by EA next year, with its MMO -- code-named "Copernicus" -- to follow.
Schilling's 38 Studios leaving Massachusetts for Rhode Island
38 Studios is OUT ... of Massachusetts. Curt Schilling's studio, which just announced its first project, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, at Comic-Con last week, is moving from Maynard, Massachusetts to Rhode Island. The state will be giving the development house $75 million in loan guarantees. According to The Boston Globe, the studio is obligated to bring 450 direct jobs to Rhode Island by the end of 2012 or face penalties. Massachusetts is home to several high-profile game developers now, including Harmonix, Turbine and Irrational. Demiurge Studios, which will become the state's largest independent studio once 38 leaves, had the most immediate reaction to the news, sending out an open letter to Curt Schilling. Studio CEO William D. Reed, who was the former director of the greater Boston region for the Massachusetts Office of Business Development wrote, "I can assure you more industry professionals than ever call this great state home. A large number of game-focused graduates and brilliant thinkers come from our local colleges and universities, supplying the talent to meet our industry's growing demand. Our businesses are truly fortunate to grow in such a thriving community." The letter concludes that if "anyone on the talented 38 Studios team" wants to stay in Mass., they're welcome to join Demiurge. Keith Stokes, the executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp., informed the Globe that the state will provide 38 Studios the $75 million in bonds while it adds jobs and meets predetermined milestones. If 38 Studios goes under, RI taxpayers will be left holding the bag.
38 Studios on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
Curt Schilling's 38 Studios has finally announced the title of its first game at Comic-Con, and while details on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning are still sparse, you can't argue that the game's already got potential. Fantasy author R.A. Salvatore has been working on the game's world and story, comic artist Todd McFarlane is designing the art, and Big Huge Games has teamed up with Elder Scrolls veteran Ken Rolston to put the title together. That's Schilling's gamble -- as an experienced gamer himself ("I've got five 70-plus" characters in World of Warcraft, he says), he's trying to make something that thrills him. On Thursday, the team held a Comic-Con panel and teased a mix of "deep quest narrative" and "combat that keeps you doing combat." Todd McFarlane jumped up on his chair to show off how big his characters' motions were and promised that "we will kill some people better in this game than anybody kills anybody." But can this talented lineup pull it off? I sat down to chat with Schilling, Salvatore, and Big Huge Games' lead designer, Mark Nelson, to see if they could share anything beyond what the short trailer and the screenshots revealed. %Gallery-98022%
Rhode Island pitches a $75M loan offer to 38 Studios
States are always highly competitive when it comes to luring industries to their neck of the woods to bolster the local economy. From movie shoots to auto plants to hospitals, states tend to be shameless in offering incentives and tax breaks to benefit from an economic injection by these companies. It's interesting to see that MMO studios are being courted as well. Worlds in Motion is reporting that Rhode Island is enticing Curt Schillings' 38 Studios to relocate from Massachusetts in exchange for a $75,000,000 guaranteed loan under relief provisions for high-tech companies -- a provision that Massachusetts does not offer. The loan would represent a significant investment for the company, but Massachusetts is attempting to provide reasons for 38 Studios to stay put, including citing that it has better access to talent in the state. As the MMO genre expands and more studios pop up, will we see an increase in states fighting over these companies in an effort to help their economies? In any event, Copernicus' developer now has a difficult decision to make, especially for this ex-Boston Red Sox pitcher.
Schilling teases possible Copernicus concept art
Details have been sketchy regarding Copernicus, the code-name of the forthcoming MMORPG from Curt Schilling's 38 Studios. Other than the fact that the storyline is being written by noted fantasy author R. A. Salvatore, we haven't heard any concrete information on the game since GDC2010. Now, Schilling has unleashed a cryptic tweet challenging fans to find the Copernicus concept art among the images attached to a new interview with 38 Studios Senior Environment Artist Joe Mirabello. Schilling (under the Twitter handle of gehrig38) drops no hints as to which of the images might be the Copernicus art, but it's probably a safe assumption that it is one of the landscape pieces, given Mirabello's job title. Check out the interview as well as Schilling's tweet. [Thanks Karen!]
Big, huge interview: Big Huge Games head Tim Train
When 38 Studios isn't busy hiring former Nintendo execs, Curt Schilling's Massachusetts-based MMO developer is buying up close-to-death development studios -- take, for instance, Big Huge Games. Tim Train, the studio's president, illuminated the near-death experience that Big Huge had in a talk at PAX East earlier this year (slides from said speech can be found below). He explained how, with just a handful of days left and termination letters ready to send out, 38 Studios swept in and saved Big Huge and the vast majority of its staff. We found his story so interesting, we thought we'd follow up with Train and have him explain it once more, as well as speak about other topics. Will Big Huge ever produce another digital board game? Unfortunately, it looks like you could be waiting on that for quite some time. Hit the break for the whole thing. %Gallery-92043%
Former Nintendo VP Denise Kaigler joins 38 Studios
It appears that Denise Kaigler has returned to Massachusetts, as the former Nintendo VP of corporate affairs has announced that she's taken a position as chief marketing officer at Curt Schilling's 38 Studios. The notably vocal ex-Nintendo exec vacated her position at NoA late last year, saying then that she wished to spend more time with her family. Kaigler told us in an email this morning that "While at Nintendo, I was commuting regularly between SF, NYC, Seattle and my home outside of Boston. But we're all together now." In her new position, Kaigler serves as lead coordinator for all (but not thirty-eight) development studios operated by 38, including Big Huge Games and the team working on the "Copernicus" MMO. As CMO, Kaigler will also lead the publisher's marketing charge, we presume. Given her outspoken nature in the past, we also presume we'll be hearing more from Kaigler in the not too distant future.
MMO Future Shock video presents some interesting statistics
Obvious statement time here, but anyone who reads Massively with anything approaching regularity knows that the MMO industry is big business. Top-notch titles like World of Warcraft and so many other MMOs take millions tens of millions craploads of money to bring to market under the current Western develop-until-largely-finished model. If you've ever been curious about the MMO industry, and how some of the numbers break down, then you'll want to check out MMO Future Shock. It's created by the guys at Gamers Film, and includes quite a number of interesting statistics, such as a tidbit about how people are spending an average of $1,200 per second in online games. Along with that, there's some great interview footage with people like Brett Close and Curt Schilling from 38 Studios; Joe Rush, Director of Operations at GamersFirst; and various other industry players. We've embedded the video behind the break for you hungry number-fiends. With any luck they'll publish some more episodes shortly so we can see more interviews with folks in the MMO know.
Curt Schilling says majority of savings spent on 38 Studios
Retired Red Sox player Curt Schilling has approached the development of 38 Studios with the same drive and enthusiasm as he did his baseball career, a fact that comes as no surprise to those who know what an avid MMO gamer he is. A recent article on Gamasutra took a closer look at the development of 38 Studios. Schilling felt confident in his endeavor from the very beginning, making an initial investment of $5 million and hiring a lineup of very familiar names including R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, and several others. Once the project was underway, he increased the investment in a big way: "I have put the majority of the money I've earned in my life on the table. If I make another financial investment, I will have crossed the point of no return from a personal investment and company standpoint." The financial and personal commitments have been significant, as with any large business venture, but Schilling remains very confident in the project: "I have no doubt I am on the cusp of creating a multi-million dollar company[...]" Take a look at the full story on Gamasutra.
Overheard@PAX: 'Don't drink your own Kool-Aid'
On Saturday, we attended Big Huge Games prez Tim Train's panel on the near death of his studio (saved at the eleventh hour by Curt Schilling's 38 Studios). And while we'll have a full writeup on the very candid panel for you very soon, we felt it necessary to share Train's word of warning to studios with long-term employees who are working on a single, long-term game: "Don't drink your own Kool-Aid." Train issued the warning while explaining the business missteps (from the top down) at Big Huge that lead to his studio's near downfall. He explained the tale of his studio's unsuccessful attempts at pitching a "AAA" real-time strategy game to publishers unwilling to invest in his company, and the eventual "worst day of my life" when he was mere days from sending out layoff letters to the entire staff. Like Tim, we're rather glad the day never came.
GDC: R.A. Salvatore wants you to die
Fantasy author R.A. Salvatore took the stage at GDC 2010 today and, while he made it clear that his talk about how to create believable fantasy worlds wasn't specifically about his work with 38 Studios' Copernicus project, he did talk a little bit about what he wants from an MMO game and gave the first mention of what the world of Curt Schilling's game is like. Salvatore talked for quite a while in his thick Massachusetts accent about his time in Everquest, which he said was "the best world in a game I've ever seen." He also lauded the idea of a death penalty in an MMO, and said that during his formative MMO experiences the threat of death (he once lost a hard-earned level when he was killed by an NPC that he accidentally clicked to attack) made living that much better. "If you take the pain out of the world," he said, "you lose the accomplishment of winning." And while he admitted that the Copernicus designers were fighting with him on whether or not to include a death penalty in the game, the company would at least make sure that a return from death was explained. His team has written over 10,000 years of history for the game's world (all compiled on "a wiki with over hundreds of pages in it"), and one of the major features of the setting's lore is a "device that's perfected" called the "Well of Souls." The Well, "when you die, will bring you back -- if you meet the conditions." He didn't elaborate about what those conditions were, but he asked the audience what a worldwide death-prevention device would do to institutions like kings and religions. "What happens when you take power away from powerful people?" he asked rhetorically. "How would it play out?" And, he suggested, if there were people who "turned the Well on," what if they threatened the rest of the world with turning it off? Vague, but intriguing. Copernicus still seems like it has a long way to go (Salvatore didn't show any slides or screenshots during his talk), but fans of the old EQ might find the game a return to the old ways if R.A. has his say.
GDC10: Copernicus' Project Mercury being published by EA
If you have been eagerly awaiting news on the top-secret Copernicus over at 38 Studios, you'll be pleased to hear that 38 Studios broke the silence today. "Project Mercury," a single-player title set in the Copernicus universe, will be coming to the PC, XBox 360 and PS3. 38 Studios signed a publishing deal with EA to bring the game to market. "Project Mercury" is described as "an epic single-player role-playing game," and is being developed by 38 Studios-owned Big Huge Games under the guiding hand of Ken Rolston (Morrowind and Oblivion). This will be the first Copernicus project launched by Curt Schilling's team after years of anticipation and heavy speculation. As NASA's Project Mercury set out to test the boundaries of space by putting a man into orbit, "Project Mercury" looks to be testing the waters of single-player RPGs before diving into the realm of MMOs, similar to the approach of fan-favorite Torchlight. Stay tuned to Massively, as we meet with Copernicus' R. A. Salvatore later this week at GDC to pick his brain.
38 Studios appoints MacLean as new CEO
38 Studios has put Jennifer MacLean at the head of the board table, announcing the departure of former CEO Brett Close. Despite the studio being founded and chaired by former Red Sox player Curt Schilling, Brett Close had been the business face of the company. 38 emphasized Close had resigned from the position and was not fired from the studio that, despite making some interesting moves like acquiring Big Huge Games, has yet to produce anything of substance -- although we are told that everyone at the studio is hard at work. MacLean previously worked at the company as senior vice president of business development. If MacLean lasts long enough to show us Copernicus and gets the studio producing product, that would be a start. We expect to see a little something of what MacLean -- and Close -- have been doing with the company sometime next year. Update: Added line that we expect to hear something next year.
38 Studios plays CEO hot potato
Brett Close has left the building, folks. The former 38 Studios CEO has recently resigned, being replaced by Jennifer MacLean, who until now had been senior vice president of business development. "I've had the privilege of building 38 Studios to become an established force of IP creation and entertainment," said Mr. Close, "I leave with confidence in the future success of the company and have no doubt its products will excite gamers worldwide." Of course, he's talking about Copernicus, which we're still in the dark on since the developer hasn't been keen to reveal it to the public.Most noted for its founder and former MLB right-handed pitcher Curt Schilling, 38 Studios has been somewhat quiet for a while now. We're hopeful that their upcoming title encounters smooth sailing, but this industry certainly has its ways of tossing out a typhoon or two. If you're looking for some official word on the matter, then look no further,
Update: 38 Studios sets facts straight on Copernicus
In a follow-up to our story posted yesterday, 38 Studios has contacted us with a response on the issue of the game's cost to be between 50 million and 100 million and their "tenative release date" as reported by the Boston Globe.According to 38 Studios, the 50 to 100 million figure came from the Boston Globe and not 38 Studios, as finances were never disclosed to the newspaper. Production costs were never mentioned as well during the interview. What was noted in the interview was that MMOs can be quite expensive to build, sometimes costing tens of millions of dollars to put together. As said to us by the company, "38 Studios is a private company and does not, and has never, disclosed financials."Furthermore, the company wishes to stress that the supposed "December 2010" release date is not a date they wish to acknowledge. The company will release the game codenamed Copernicus when it is ready, currently wishing to not set any dates for their upcoming game.Follow after the break for the full release from 38 Studios regarding the release date of Copernicus.
38 Studios LFM, PST!
Have artistic talent? Code talent? More properly, do you have that, some industry experience, and the desire to build an awesome MMO? If you can answer yes to those questions and the idea of working with people like Curt Schilling, R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane and other really cool people like Ryan Shwayder from Nerfbat makes you happy, then you'll want to check out the job postings over on the 38 Studios site. It appears they're looking for some more people to join them on their MMO dream team! Currently, the spots open are: Graphics Engineer Senior Character Artist Technical Director Senior Environment Artist Hopefully once all the positions are filled up we'll start hearing more about 38's upcoming super-secret MMO project, codenamed 'Copernicus.' Good luck to anyone who applies, and if you get hired, be sure to tell them to keep us in mind for that eventual Copernicus alpha test. We'd appreciate it!
Ken Levine keynoting first MIT 'Business in Gaming' conference
Focusing on riveting hot-button issues like "digital distribution, marketing, and in-game advertising," the MIT Sloan School of Management is kicking off its first ever "Business in Gaming " Conference (BiG) with BioShock magnate Ken Levine as inaugural keynote speaker. We'll be there, Big Daddy statues and permanent markers in tow, and when we're not ogling KennyL we'll likely check out the panel featuring ex-Boston Red Soxer Curt Schilling of 38 Studios speaking about MMO business models. Hey, maybe he'll talk about that game his company's been making for three years! Code-named Copernicus? No? You don't remember that one? Yeah, neither do we.
