38 Studios
- Thread starter Tmac
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Famm
Ahn'Qiraj Raider
- 11,041
- 794
Tyen is probably way ahead of you. He's going to push out some half baked hacked up shit with the remains and use it to fund EQbrowser.
Abefroman
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
- 12,588
- 11,904
It is worth a good amount. Not the 15-20 million that Rhode Island hopes to get for it. But it will sell for between 5-10 million. Reckoning was still a very successful game; despite everything else and made EA a good deal of money. Much shittier IPs sold for just as much in the recent THQ asset sale.
Eomer
Trakanon Raider
- 5,472
- 272
I will be shocked if it sells for more than a couple million, maybe upwards of five at the most optimistic. And that's just for the name/IP. The resources created for the game itself are completely useless I would imagine, no one's going to sort through it to piece a game together. They'd be better off just starting from scratch.
If it sells, and I have my doubts that it will, I'm going to bet on around $350k. Also you guys are all going to bust over on The Price is Right. I'm going for the lowball!
Also Reckoning wasn't *that* successful.http://www.vgchartz.com/game/46225/k...lur-reckoning/
Retail sales of it were 730k. I believe a link earlier stated that it sold a total of 1.1 million. That's not "very successful."
Also Reckoning wasn't *that* successful.http://www.vgchartz.com/game/46225/k...lur-reckoning/
Retail sales of it were 730k. I believe a link earlier stated that it sold a total of 1.1 million. That's not "very successful."
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
- 5,907
- 4,483
I would have to assume that they subcategorize Reckoning's sales in with other RPGs (which, rumor has it, don't traditionally push as many sales as say First Person Shooters)thenproclaim that it was successful. I challenge you to show me a new IP that ever sold Call of Duty numbers.
I read in a few places that the number Reckoning sold (as a new IP) was good, but Curt's expectations of how well it would sell were unrealistic. Didn't 38/BHG also sign a bad deal with EA where they would receive a "bonus" based on metacritic rating (a rating it didn't quite meet) or something?
I read in a few places that the number Reckoning sold (as a new IP) was good, but Curt's expectations of how well it would sell were unrealistic. Didn't 38/BHG also sign a bad deal with EA where they would receive a "bonus" based on metacritic rating (a rating it didn't quite meet) or something?
Vorph
Bronze Baronet of the Realm
- 11,019
- 4,781
Lol anyone who says KoA didn't sell well are kidding themselves. A new IP and an RPG selling over 1million is great. Anyone expecting more then that was/is high.
OneofOne
Silver Baronet of the Realm
- 6,673
- 8,242
About the most realistic number I've seen tossed around so far. I stick my bid in at $349k. I've seen the show enough times /wink
Denaut
Trump's Staff
- 2,739
- 1,279
Personally, I think it is a bit high. In the world of IPs the top tier are worth quite a lot (Halo, GTA, CoD, etc) but even the second tier below that are worth almost nothing. If you twisted my arm to take a guess I'd say it is worth about 5 figures, maybe 40k, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was closer to 10.
I'd think it depends alot on how many art assets come with the IP.
edit:meant how many actual art assets they had ready when the work ceased.
edit:meant how many actual art assets they had ready when the work ceased.
Camerous
Molten Core Raider
- 331
- 1,056
Why would a game even if it is only 50 - 60%, as high as 75% if some of the people who worked on it aren't just blowing smoke, be useless? It's not liek they were coding it in their own super sekret code... just pick up from what they had done and build on top of it. Save your crew lots of time and yourself a huge chunk of cabbage since the largest amounts of money are spent on the engine, frame work, and art assests. You probably saved yourself 10 - 15 million and they only paid 5 -7 for it.. hell they have already made money lol
Why wouldn't they all come with it... they were specifically designed for said project and when Curt lost control of the company they all automatically become RI property.
As for how much it will sell for... I am going to say around 1.5 to 2.
Caliane
Avatar of War Slayer
- 14,620
- 10,119
yeah well, isn't that what happened with Amalur:reckoning itself?Why would a game even if it is only 50 - 60%, as high as 75% if some of the people who worked on it aren't just blowing smoke, be useless? It's not liek they were coding it in their own super sekret code... just pick up from what they had done and build on top of it. Save your crew lots of time and yourself a huge chunk of cabbage since the largest amounts of money are spent on the engine, frame work, and art assests. You probably saved yourself 10 - 15 million and they only paid 5 -7 for it.. hell they have already made money lol
BHG was canned, and the game they were making was canned with it. Everyone saw this as a great chance to pick them up, and retool the game.
38 studios grabbed them. put out the game with window dressing retooled for Amalur IP and..... somehow went bankrupt.
I'm sure only the finance people at 38 studios could REALLY tell us how much of the money vanished with BHG acquisition, and how much was lost to over inflated MMO cost.
Hiring new people to come in and work on code someone else wrote for an established game. yeah.. I don't know shit about coding. but that seems like it would be super not cost effective at all to me.
Dandai
<WoW Guild Officer>
- 5,907
- 4,483
Since you seem genuine and not trolling I'll explain why it doesn't exactly work like that. There were dozens of hands on the project, and each of those people had their own style and talent for building/customizing the engine. Even if the code was neatly organized and commented extremely well it would still take a very long time for a new team to dig through the code and really grasp what's going on. Remember how the EQ devs had a wish list of things they wanted to do with EQ but no one that originally coded EQ's engine was still around and the foundation was a mess (often called "spaghetti string code")? They'd try to implement something like a new player-character model and suddenly gnolls stopped spawning in Qeynos Hills - crazy random stuff like that? That's more or less what you can expect when you take software like this that is extremely complicated and don't have anyone around to explain what you're looking at or how the systems are all interconnected. You pretty much have to learn through trial and error, but good commenting of the code and development documentation can ease the pain quite a bit.Why would a game even if it is only 50 - 60%, as high as 75% if some of the people who worked on it aren't just blowing smoke, be useless? It's not liek they were coding it in their own super sekret code... just pick up from what they had done and build on top of it. Save your crew lots of time and yourself a huge chunk of cabbage since the largest amounts of money are spent on the engine, frame work, and art assests. You probably saved yourself 10 - 15 million and they only paid 5 -7 for it.. hell they have already made money lol
The engine I'm almost certain wasn't custom. I know they were using Big World to handle their MMO architecture, but I don't recall what they were using to build the world itself. Rift used Gamebryo with some in-house customization. I want to say that I remember Curt saying they used a modified Unity engine but it's been so long that I can't recall. In any case, using an established enginewouldmake it easier to wade through as someone new to the game, but there's so much going on that you'd still spend months digesting it before actually being able to reliably (and efficiently) start adding new content.
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Yeah but its still doable and still better than starting from scratch. They still managed to change EQ just fine over the years. and Im sure they had dozens of different programmers work on that code over the years. Its part of their job. How many programmers get to work on something fresh and brand new anyway? Most of the shit they ever work on in their life is probably legacy shit they have to change.
Im sure programmers turn over is probably quite high, especially the good ones that are sought after. So pretty much all the companies have to deal with that shit and its nothing new.
Im sure programmers turn over is probably quite high, especially the good ones that are sought after. So pretty much all the companies have to deal with that shit and its nothing new.
I'll have to disagree, the software assets are worthless and are really in the low five to four figure range.
First, for the reasons stated previously: you'll need months before you can make heads or tails of it.
Second, you'll not be able to properly gauge the value of the assets until you've understood them. So the only use for them right now would be to spin off the same game and sell it while you try and understand it. You're basically participating in one of those Storage Wars bidding scenarios, where you're bidding sight unseen on what might amount to so much trash.
That's why they didn't mind doing it with EQ, because EQ was generating income and thus helping pay off the technical debt accumulated over the years. A project that has a sufficiently high technical debt which is not generating revenue is best started from scratch.
Third, there might be differences in how the assets were created/stored/used that might make it very game specific. If you wanted to roll out a *NEW* game you might even be able to use them. If all you wanted was to take the same old game that was originally released and work on it incrementally, you might have something to on. But from the comments I've heard, the game was shit, it didn't sell well enough and it's already a marketing nightmare. So you're looking at a very low yield on any purchase.
The code by itself is worthless if it can't generate revenue. It's not like you can break it apart like you would a car and use bits and pieces to build a new car. Unfortunately, most things in software are custom built and don't really play well when moved over to other projects.
First, for the reasons stated previously: you'll need months before you can make heads or tails of it.
Second, you'll not be able to properly gauge the value of the assets until you've understood them. So the only use for them right now would be to spin off the same game and sell it while you try and understand it. You're basically participating in one of those Storage Wars bidding scenarios, where you're bidding sight unseen on what might amount to so much trash.
That's why they didn't mind doing it with EQ, because EQ was generating income and thus helping pay off the technical debt accumulated over the years. A project that has a sufficiently high technical debt which is not generating revenue is best started from scratch.
Third, there might be differences in how the assets were created/stored/used that might make it very game specific. If you wanted to roll out a *NEW* game you might even be able to use them. If all you wanted was to take the same old game that was originally released and work on it incrementally, you might have something to on. But from the comments I've heard, the game was shit, it didn't sell well enough and it's already a marketing nightmare. So you're looking at a very low yield on any purchase.
The code by itself is worthless if it can't generate revenue. It's not like you can break it apart like you would a car and use bits and pieces to build a new car. Unfortunately, most things in software are custom built and don't really play well when moved over to other projects.