It's really a shame, Kingdoms of Amalur was a damned good game.

What irritated me about that whole thing was a video game company getting a government backed loan all so Rhode Island would get a few hundred jobs. Seemed a huge waste of tax payer money. They could've gotten a private loan. Is this common practice and I just have heard of it before?

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE.[hr:1uw1adng][/hr:1uw1adng]
And I mean common practice for game companies. I know they do it for other industries.

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE.

I think it was mostly so they would make RI seem like a really good place for up and coming game companies and other industries, being supportive and all. It backfired pretty hard and it'll be some time till another state/country tries this to boost their employment rates with this venture. Too bad, too bad... although that loan was massive. Schilling is certainly out of shillings now

Okay.. I have to tread carefully here - I know many people who worked there - many who left my company to go there and many which we have hired from the ashes. But here's a bit more info - most of which should be easy enough to find to validate/confirm publicly through gaming sites, news sites, etc.. none of this should be considered information I know because of my position ::

1) Whether or not they COULD get private backing, Rhode Island made the play to lure the company from MASS to RI. RI provided up to $75m in loans to assist in getting people relocated and hired. In exchange, 38 Studios was expected to hire people at a designated pace among other requirements.

2) 38 Studios acquired the studio that produced Kingdoms (Big Huge Games), but the publishing deal was already established giving EA the bulk of the revenue from it, not 38 Studios. This lead to statements about how KoA would have to sell over 3m copies to break even.

3) While Schilling is a well-known public figure, he'd never created a game before, had limited knowledge of what he was going to be doing. However, he hires a CFO, COO and other key employees who are responsible for running the business properly... and they didn't do all that great of a job. That said, he was a gamer and an enthusiast. He's taking the loss VERY personally - regardless of the loss of money.

4) RI turned into playing a bit of politics. Politicians that supported it bemoaned the $75m agreement. They stopped short of allowing 38 to take out all $75m. They leaked information that could have potentially sabotaged 38 from getting additional private funding.

5) The size of 38 Studios was larger than most game companies pre-launch which directly results in severely higher expenses, adding to the financial distress.

In the end, 38 Studios was just a failed business, potentially negatively impacted by politicians which may or may not have played a key role in the failure.

--Micah

Seems like the whole thing was very over ambitious on all fronts from what I've seen.

Sent from my EVO 4G LTE.

[quote="[BBF"]Shahal]
What irritated me about that whole thing was a video game company getting a government backed loan all so Rhode Island would get a few hundred jobs. Seemed a huge waste of tax payer money. They could've gotten a private loan. Is this common practice and I just have heard of it before?
[/quote]

Very common, Canada is luring jobs from the US, Dubai, Ireland, and it is even done in the Carolina's.

www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... incentives

Finding investors, or getting loans is very difficult. Most loans or lines of credit are predicated on quarters of positive cash flow or earnings, unless a principal has personally staked collateral or guaranteed the loan.

What happened at 38 was tragic but not self imposed to some degree.

www.wpri.com/dpp/news/local_news ... -over-133m

Anyway it is very common for governments to give incentives to businesses to stay in places they normally would not.

hm, the subject has been changed drastically within this thread haha.

But we're writing about gaming =)

--Micah

So how was the GW2 early access launch for you over the pond?

I was at a friends house and he had pre-ordered the game and we basically resorted to watching movies all day, since he couldn't get on and we tried the whole day every 30 minutes or so.

Trading House has been down, the game's been pretty solid. There's some bugs/glitches preventing people from completing certain tasks, POIs, etc.. but all in all not a bad launch.

--Micah

yeah but the writing is not exactly blog material hahaah. i can't be posting top secret information about video game studios and such. however, Akkim, if you want to do an interview sometime with me that would be flippin awesome.