Why Hellgate London Failed - GDC Speech

Necuno

Necuno

The Piper
Why Hellgate London Failed - GDC Speech

i have 2 words why - Bill Roper

Seeing that a lot of you guys here came with us from Hellgate Guru, I thought some of you might be interested in reading this.

At this years Game Developer's Conference, one of the keynote speeches was conducted by Stephen Goldstein, who as far as I recall was one of the legal guys with Flagship Studios.

The speech was regarding why Hellgate London failed as well as how the studios behind it was "Flagshipped".

"Everything we did, the entire corporate setup, was meant to swing for the fences," said Goldstein. "Everything was solely plan A. There was no plan B."

In particular, Goldstein noted that the company should have raised more money when they had the chance, saying that it was the "company-killing moment."

"We had a title a year from launch, with a team that had sold 17 million units worldwide from their previous franchise," he explained.

"It's my guess that we could have probably raised 25 to 30 million dollars to just stick in a coffer and wait. It would have provided us the ability to delay the launch of the title. We needed another four months, possibly five, to get things polished. And we just could not take it."

He then talks about the Billing system and how it was broken at the start (many users were Billed twice) and how unprepared their whole system actually was. Stephen then goes on to talk about the failed two tier subscription system and how many people simply didn't bother to subscribe.

As it turns out, Hellgate sold a respectable amount of copies in the US and Europe. But the game's business model depended on subscription revenue in the long term, and not enough of those sales translated into subscriptions.

"The problem wasn't that we sold 500,000 units," said Goldstein. "The problem was we weren't getting subscription [revenue] from those units."

Goldstein guessed that if the game was subscription-only, it would have sold around 250,000 copies less, but the subscription revenue would have kept Flagship afloat.

Goldstein then goes on to talk about how the team actually was pretty resiliant to even get the product out there, as there were a lot of firsts for the team such as a first FPS game, first subscription game and first 3D game.

(Which kind of begs the question why not just stick to something you know first and once that's successful take on the risk project...)

"This game wouldn't be made today," he said, while turning that particular failure into a testament to the team's resiliency.

"The fact that it was in the box really is a testament to the team that we had. They didn't get the credit that I think they deserved, because with the amount of challenges that we faced, they pulled through."

Shacknews has a few other quotes from the speech which can be read on their website.
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DarthCat said:
I like Hellgate: London. Still have it on my pc :)
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same. i do play it religiously- its my doom + diablo :)

i can however say that hanbitsoft is picking up the ashes slowly, apparently in patch 1.5 its going to be free 2 play and finnaly a damned auction house to be added amongst other good changes they have implemented so far. i personally would have though that a engine tuneup was is neede first especially for dx10 mode.
 
Out of interest, from what I can gather, the Hellgate London server is still online?

Would that mean that if I get the game now then I can still play online?
 
Solitude said:
Out of interest, from what I can gather, the Hellgate London server is still online?
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No, it is not online and not for you. that is the short answer; it lives on at hanbitsoft's korean servers and is for koreans only. how to get an account is another thing in its own as this is how it goes around there and the net mostly (but as with all things google is your friend in more ways than one):


  • how do i get an account - we don't talk about it
  • how do i get the korean client - we don't talk about it
  • how do i my english client to work on the korean servers - we don't talk about it
  • how do subscribe past act 2 - we don't talk about it
  • how do i join up with an "english guild" - we don't talk about it

Solitude said:
Would that mean that if I get the game now then I can still play online?
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see above.
 
What didn't you enjoy about the single-player mode, necuno? While the environments were recycled and it could become a bit of a grind at time, it wasn't bad for an action-rpg-and it had Achievements Points! :D
 
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