Tag Archives: flagship studios

Flagship CEO Bill Roper has said Hellgate: London’s failure boils down to simple over-ambition.

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HanbitSoft has acquired the full rights to Hellgate in the west. Yep: that means the fated pseudo-MMO will return to the US and Europe.

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Bit slow on this, sorry. HanbitSoft – the South Korean company that now owns the rights to Hellgate: London – has confirmed that there’s new content in the pipe for the troubled action-RPG-MMO.

“Since acquiring the intellectual property rights, HanbitSoft Inc., the publisher and distributor of Hellgate: London in Asia, has concentrated on the development of Hellgate: London, and has received many inquiries regarding new updates,” the game’s product manager wrote on his blog.

“Our US development studio is currently working on an update that is to surpass The Abyss Chronicles. This game will be available through our web site. We thank you once again for showing your interest and ask for your continuous support for Hellgate: London, as we hope to bring good news shortly. In the meantime, we will continue developing the world’s best game!”

The game caught on nicely in Asia, despite original creator Flagship biting the bullet earlier this year.

Champions Online developer Cryptic Studios just confirmed that Bill Roper has taken a role at the firm as design director.

Roper’s last project, Hellgate: London, ended in the closure of Flagship Studios, the company Roper co-founded.

“Bill brings a ton of creative energy to the Cryptic office and we’re thrilled to have him join our team,” said Cryptic boss John Needham.

“His years of gaming and online experience are huge assets to all of our projects, and Bill will assist us in furthering our studio’s vision to create innovative, exciting MMO gameplay.”

“Cryptic has experienced huge growth over the past year and has exciting opportunities ahead of it,” said Roper.

“The company knows how to choose compelling IPs that have rich histories such as Champions and Star Trek. I’m looking forward to working with the team.”

Press release after the link.

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Speaking to 1UP in a frank interview, Flagship boss Bill Roper has admitted there’s nothing left to do with Hellgate developer Flagship other than pack up and go home with a little dignity.

“We’re working hard on how to end gracefully,” he said. “Obviously, we’ve got people we owe money to, so we’re doing absolutely everything in our power to get those people the money we owe them, whether that’s on an institutional side, lenders, or, equally as important, with our employees who aren’t there anymore.”

There’s plenty more through there. It doesn’t make for especially pleasant reading, however.

According to a post on the official Hellgate forums, Namco has stepped in to save the Flagship game being washed away in the wake of the developer’s demise.

“I know everyone is looking for an announcement, and we’d love to make one, but right now, many things are in flux and we don’t have all the information yet,” said Zack Karlsson, business development boss at Namco US. “As soon as we do, we’ll post here on the forums, on the website, and anywhere else we can find you.

“In the short term, please do not worry. The game is up, the servers are not going away in the short term and any major changes to status will be communicated in advance.”

There’s now a Hellgate homepage up on Namco’s site, so it looks as though there’s been a stay of execution on the part-MMO.

More soon.

Travis Baldree, project lead and programmer on Flagship MMO Mythos, has created a thread on the official Mythos forums bidding adieu to the game’s fanbase.

You’ve been an incredible community that we’ve all felt privileged to be a part of, and we’re not quite ready to let go of that little family just yet. No matter the outcome, this has been a fantastic experience, and I and the team would like to thank each and every one of you for the tireless hours of testing and discussion you’ve undergone, and the uniquely friendly community spirit that you all helped foster. It’s been a treat every step of the way.

In case you didn’t know, Flagship Studios just fired everyone, which isn’t so good.

By Mike Bowden

According to this Bingegamer piece, Flagship boss Bill Roper has issued a statement on the state of the developer, saying that while everyone has been laid off, the company is still alive.

“It is with deep regret that I must announce that Flagship Studios has laid off most employees,” he said. “However, the core management and founding team members are still at Flagship. The past five years have been an incredible experience for us, but unfortunately, we couldn’t sustain the size of the company any longer.”

More through the link.

According to this Voodoo Extreme report, all Flagship Studios staff have been laid off and the Hellgate developer’s office will be officially closed down today. From the piece:

Word of the studio closure reached Korean distributor HanbitSoft, leading to the release of a statement regarding intellectual property control and the subsequent clarification by their American lawyers that included the following sentence: “It is unfortunate that Flagship turned down additional investments HanbitSoft offered to make that would have allowed it to keep its doors open.”

It would now appear that the firm has completely run out of steam, will all staff fired, IP lost, offices closed.

Flagship Studios: we salute you.

Hellgate developer Flagship Studios has made significant staff cuts, the firm has confirmed to Gamasutra.

The news comes after a programmer claimed people were leaving the company “in droves” last month, a report quickly controlled by the company.

No specific details are offered in the Gamasutra report on the size of the redundancies.

Guy Somber, the Flagship developer who authored a blog post saying people were leaving the company “in droves”, has told Destructoid has said that the text was aimed at his family and friends and had no bearing on what was happening at the company.

“Things here at Flagship are running business as usual,” he said in an email. “We’ve just put a build of Chronicle 2 onto our test center, which has represented a lot of hard work from everybody at the company, myself included.

”When I wrote that blog post I was frustrated and just a little bit overwhelmed, but it was nothing that a mug of hot chocolate, a few hours of gaming, and a good night’s sleep didn’t cure. I was surprised and disappointed at the community’s response to my words, which were more directed at my family and friends to describe my state of mind at the time, than to give any sort of insight into the company. Personally, I think that the ‘Towers of Hanoi’ series of posts on my blog is far more interesting and worthy of commentary and analysis.

”I’m sorry to have caused such a ruckus over such a small thing.”

Guy. Dude. When you say things on the internet like, “So why is work depressing? The reason is that people are leaving. In droves, they’re leaving,” don’t be wildly shocked when people assume you’re not lying.

Ivan Sulic, Flagships’s marketing communications manager makes a fuller statement on the issue after the link. All an huge exaggeration, apparently. “Very few” people have left the studio. Amazing how those completely ambiguous statements can be whipped up by the evil press, isn’t it?

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Talking on his blog, Flagship audio and gameplay programmer Guy Somberg has admitted that the Hellgate studio has something of a leakage issue.

“So why is work depressing? The reason is that people are leaving. In droves, they’re leaving,” he said. “We’ve had programmers, accountants, HR people, and artists leave. The founders are all still around, but they’ve been floating away from Hellgate to work on various other projects. The only one still actively on Hellgate is Tyler, but Tyler’s not programming anymore; he spends all of his time on management activities.”

Hellgate, says Somberg, is not quite the game is was supposed to be.

“Hellgate is not a big success,” he added. “That sucks, and it’s depressing. I’m keeping a positive attitude about it because of Korea and China. The Koreans really love the game, and the Chinese have yet to see it. I don’t know how any of these deals are structured, but I’m hinging my hopes for Hellgate’s future on the Asian market.”

Whoops. More through the link. It doesn’t make for pretty reading, frankly.

Funny old world. Despite not really doing the do in the west, Flagship’s Hellgate: London has attracted over a million subscribers in Korea after only two weeks on sale, Joystiq reports. From the site:

Hellgate’s beta officially kicked off in Korea on January 15, and according to Korean online game tracking service Gametrics, the game quickly found an audiences with gamers in PC Cafes, ranking ninth among online games, fifth among RPGs, and was the most popular beta being played. This was followed by a commercial release on February 22, a launch that Flagship boasts achieved “record sales,” though it’s a record that we’re pretty sure will be broken soon enough.

Flagship Studios has announced a funding deal with Comerica Bank which apparently uses “an independent film financing model as its basis”. A film facility’s been set up based on the money made from Hellgate, from the sound of it.

“By following a model similar to independent film financing, we are able to directly finance ongoing content for our online games without relying upon a publisher’s investment,” said Flagship’s biz dev boss, Steve Goldstein. “As the PC game business makes the transition from the boxed retail model to the online model, alternative financing will become a cornerstone of expanding the industry.”

Press release after the link.

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