Hellgate London is in dire straits

PC News | Game designer vents on his blog.

According to news that has just broken on mainstram gaming websites, a blog post(which has since been removed) from Flagship Studios Programmer Guy Somberg is showing the strain that has been put on the company following the highly publicised failure of their unspectacular title Hellgate: London. According to IncGamers - who first brought the story to light a couple of days ago - Somberg's blog talks of staff leaving the studio "in droves" and how working at the company is "depressing" as the population does "nothing but complain".

He explains that the company's founders are all still on board but they are all "floating away from Hellgate to work on various other projects".

He also added that with the mass exodus of employees, he feels he is carrying the load, and worries that the games future is really on the line. "Thing is, the way things are going I'm likely to be the only programmer still working on Hellgate left from the original crew. I've heard rumours that other programmers and artists are thinking of leaving. [And] every time a programmer leaves, it's more work for me. Every time an artist leaves, it's less content that we can create for Hellgate in the future".

Although he seems to be oozing a bummed out attitude, Somberg also displayed a sliver of optimism with the belief that the Asian market will rekindle a passion for his game, as he points out that the Koreans "really love" it and hope that when it is opened to a Chinese audience, Hellgate will also pick up a number of fans there.

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8 Comments

IISpacebreakII

3 years ago

Time for a new media staff overhaul then, because from the few images I've seen of this game, it looks as dull and boring as hell.

Or maybe the game sucks, because generally when decent stuff comes out, I'd hear about it from this site ^^

Kimberley Ellis

3 years ago

Considering that the game whipped many an MMO fan into a frenzy over it, it's significant to look at how far off the mark Hellgate really proved to be -- not to mention it will be interesting to see whether a promising developer in Flagship can steady the course and continue to develop games or whether they will go the way of 'crap game hell' in the near future.

Lord Haart

3 years ago

Sadly, I think that the blogger said it himself - the game didn't live up to expectations. Therefore it won't be profitable to continue development anyway. It would be nice if it finds a market, but it does show publishers that they really need to make sure their games deliver on the hype, or they will lose credibility with consumers. This is something that EA is learning, and 3DO learnt too late.

Having something of an idea of how much work goes into creating games, I can safely say that fixing a badly-coded game is much, much harder than writing a new one. I think the fact that staff are leaving is just people cutting their losses - however, the blogger is correct in his denunciation of said quitters, because it's lack of enthusiasm in the game that doomed it in the first place.

Also goes to show just how cut-throat and tinsel-town'ed the gaming industry has become. There's bright lights and big stars, but the chances of you ever reaching those peaks as a developer require more than just skill, luck and motivation - you need money and marketing too.

Skiller

3 years ago

They should have made it a top down game like diablo, it would have sold like hotcakes if it was, but the 3rd person view breaks the gameplay too much so it sucked

. I think the same thing is likely to happen to fallout 3 too

Matt Bassos

3 years ago

Remember to make sure to follow up on news, so the whole picture can be revealed

. Seems the blog was postered in May. The official forums states from a interview with Kotaku ...

Quote

And Somberg himself joined the conversation. "Ivan said it quite well," he said. "Things here at Flagship are running business as usual. 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."

Somberg said he'd written that blog post on a day when he felt "frustrated and overwhelmed," but that after some hot chocolate, a few hours' game time and some sleep, he felt better.

Said Somberg, "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."

Either way Hellgate is a mess.

Lord Haart

3 years ago

^As you said, that might excuse the post, but it doesn't make Hellgate a better game.

The other question is whether or not the retraction of his statements was of his own volition.

Capoeira

3 years ago

It makes you wonder whether the end of this game is not So Far Away. Perhaps some gaming journos should launch a couple of Private Investigations into the scandal.

Those poor subscribers, paying all that Money for Nothing. Then again, those Brothers in Arms can take the Walk of Life through the Tunnel of Love and become the Sultans of Swing, so maybe it's not all so bad after all!

so sorry...

Marka

3 years ago

I had such high hopes for this game, but it just has so many issues. First is the technical issues that were constanly complaned about in the beta that made it to retail version of the game. (Come on Flagship, not acceptable.) These include things like the perfomance issues that crippled anyone whos PC had less than 1.5G Ram and how rediciously easy it was to get stuc on environmental object forcing you to quit and try again.

Next was the terribly reppetitive environments and creatures. Some environments and environments were recycled more than 20 times. Some new environments were introdced towards the end of the game, but it was to little to late.

The gameplay and quests were about as interesting and varied as the environments. Also, whos idea was it that you can't respec your charecter, leaving some of your charecter devlopment to trail and error. This design choice is both stupid and archaic by todays standadrs for this type of game.

It is also obvious that this game has suffered a case of identity crysis. It dosn't quite know wethere it wants to be a MMO or a Singleplayer game.

In conclusion, Im not suprised if it is in trouble and I want my $80 back.

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Hellgate: London

Pre-order or buy:
PALGN recommends: www.Play-Asia.com

Australian Release Date:
  1/11/2007 (Confirmed)
Standard Retail Price:
  $99.95 AU
Publisher:
  Electronic Arts
Genre:
  Action RPG
Year Made:
  2007
System Requirements:
Windows XP or Windows Vista
1.8 GHz(XP) or 2.4 GHz(Vista) Processor
1GB RAM(XP) or 2GB RAM(Vista)
NVIDIA GeForce 6200/ATI Radeon 9000 chipset or greater
6GB Free Hard Drive space
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound
Internet Connection required for multiplayer

Read more...