Is profit sharing with employees not a common thing for software companies? From time to time, I read about companies being bought and sold and the comments talk about “money hats”, “set for life”, etc.
I expect everyone in the business has tried to make their games a big splash, quite a few with plenty of funds backing them. I think the only ones who’ve succeeded have been Blizzard, really. At best everyone else has made little ripples.
I’m not saying Schilling is a figurehead or anything like that. Just that having a desire, a popular (I hesitate to use the word “good”) writer, and a popular (there’s that word again!) art director isn’t really a sufficient pedigree to end up at “good game”.
I don’t know how or why, but everything points towards these games being harder to make than regular ones by far. Maybe that’s not true and we’re just seeing the same success rate in MMOs that we would expect in regular games, but if so those odds are extra-shitty when your up-front costs are 10s of millions rather than millions of dollars, y’know?
Stop looking at this like a baseball guy and no one who knows what they are doing starting a game company.
I’m not. I’m looking at it as some guys wanting to make a game that, really, nobody knows how to make. We have one example of a blockbuster hit and a couple more of really solid niche products (EQ, DAoC if you’re generous and the niche is PvP, UO). Of those, the niche games all tended to be bolstered by “Look at this new game type we invented” syndrome, rather than having to be compared to WoW.
Maybe some of the guys at the frontlines will weigh in here, but my impression is the “free money printing here!” days are pretty much gone, and at the same time nobody’s really nailed down the fundamental ingredients of the genre well enough to know how to incrementally increase the success reliably from product to product (unlike, say, an FPS or an RTS). That’s a pretty volatile situation to throw oneself into, no matter how much funding or true desire the guy has. If you want to argue that somehow because he’s a ball player with lots of bucks that he inherently understands these games better than most other people trying to make them, well, I’ll have to disagree.
That’d be from stock options, I would think. Profit sharing is pretty much unheard of.
to mouselook:
You may very well be right. I’m hoping a story written by Salvatore and art direction by McFarlane might do better than a story done by an amateur.
That said, it’s possible it will simply fail on that regard because of the scale of it. I might also fail if Schilling is a pain to work for, or it might simply fail.
Who knows. It’s way to early to tell.
You may very well be right. I’m hoping a story written by Salvatore and art direction by McFarlane might do better than a story done by an amateur.
Did art direction by McFarlane help the previous games he’s been involved in?
He’s making well over $10 million a year in salary alone, plus endorsements. But I doubt it’s all his money in this; one of the nice things about having famous people is the ability to secure more funding. He’s probably seeding the thing out-of-pocket, but there will be no shortage of people willing to invest. Hell, just think of rich Red Sox fans. Maybe Ben Affleck and Matt Damon will toss a couple million in the pile.
Schilling also has a board game company that makes Squad Leader add-ons.
Not Squad Leader add-ons. That’s not accurate.
The guy already owns a board game company. He also happens to be a pretty diehard Advanced Squad Leader player (about the most complex regularly played board game you’re going to find). When Avalon Hill sold out to Hasbro, he literally liked it so much, he bought the company (okay, not really, but he owns the company that has the licensing rights to all ASL stuff - we’re talking the main rulebook, all the modules, basically the game).
They seem to be doing fairly well. Nothing will guarantee great things out of this, because you wouldn’t guarantee that with any other normal, start-up company that didn’t involve Curt Schilling. But I see no reason why this has any less of a chance than any other; if anything, as previously stated, it may have a better chance simply because it is unlikely to be capitalized on a shoestring.
Interesting take, I’ve never been called bland before which is kind of nice actually.
As far as going ‘on and on’, I won’t disagree, I have an immense amount of passion about games in general, especially the ones I play, and about this company and our goals and dreams.
My love for this is in the dream more than anything, and in creating a company that’s so vastly different than what’s out there, and being part of changing peoples lives, and having the ability to, so ya, I can and most likely will continue to go on and on.
Because at the moment there’s nothing you need to know as customers and providing any information at this point would do neither side any good. We are in the midst of a length pre-production schedule, a period of time that sees many iterations of everything as you progress. The only thing I’d be doing is hyping something that may or may not be in the game, which would do neither of us any good. I don’t need to hype the game right now, and if the game is great then the hype doesn’t need to be done too soon or in excess.
I can only say it’s cool because I’ve been gaming for 25 years, been in the MMO space since Alpha in UO, I know what’s out there in the MMO space, I know what’s been out there, and I know what’s not. I think what we are creating is ‘pretty cool’, even more than that, but details, as I said earlier, would not be the prudent thing to give now.
As an expert in the games industry, which I am guessing you are based on your statement above, I can’t refute those conditions might exist elsewhere. Having said that I am not sure how, based on the talk at MIT, you were smart enough to project those things occurring at GMG.
What exactly did I say that allowed you to conclude we’d have a high pressure enviroment? What did I say that gave you enough insight to deduce we have extended work days? What exactly are our ‘ill defined goals’? Who’s going to be changing them on a whim?
I’m always open to getting better at something, if you think you know more about this industry than I do then by all means I’m all ears.
Baseball has made me more famous and wealthier than I ever dreamed I would be, I am getting into this for neither of those reasons. Plus, simple mathmathics told me that under a 50/50 profit share, if the people that actually MADE the game got rich, then under that formula wouldn’t I as well?
I am not sure where revenues and subscription bases will be in a few years, but based on todays economy in the game space it’s safe to say both are going to grow exponentially right?
Oh there is a master plan, and when legal statutes force me to have to reveal them publicly then I guess that will happen. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you haven’t been told, somethings not being done. Making an MMO, any game, is a massive undertaking requiring tens of millions of dollars and tens of hundreds of people. Budgeting those dollars and taking care of those people is my #1 goal as President of this company. If our game is great, which we believe it will be, does giving you the information before we release it make it any greater?
The details that will be made public will be done so when they need to be on a schedule we deem to be the most beneficial to the game, the company, and the people. If getting the word out early is a requirement to your game being good, you’ve lost before you started.
And as for partners, there are none. GMG, at the moment is owned 100% by me, R.A., and Todd, have both signed on to oversee their respective areas as leads for the flagship title.
When the times are right, announcements to hires will be made. I think, based on the talent here so far, we are matching the tech side with the talent side tit for tat.
I won’t fund this myself, I have put the seed money in to get the company up and running, but ultimately we will have one or two partners. Those partnerships will be ones that enhance the parties involved more than just monetarily.
Yes I have had a long and very prosperous relationship with SOE, they’ve been great to me and to my family. If it can be worked out SOE and GMG will certainly partner in some way, down the road.
This industry is a very small one and very tight knit. Almost like a high school campus. Everyone knows everything about everyone else, or thinks they do. Hiring tech and lead talent means finding studs, which means finding people that have been there and done that, which means finding people that are already employed and secure. To do that you better bring alot more than money to the table to hire these people, and I think that’s something that’s working incredibly well right now and will as we go forward.
We opened our offices last week in Maynard, Mass. 30k square feet that will hopefully be jam packed a few years from now. The first of the core team is in house and pre-production has already begun and the pace will be picking up over the next few months as more talent comes into the company.
It’s certainly not boring!
Man, I don’t get wobbly over a celebrity often, but that’s pretty freaking cool.
Good luck with your games, Curt. I don’t know if they’ll be something I enjoy, but high profile video game supporters are always a good thing in my book.
One with tiny fucked up feet and shoulders and biceps bigger than your torso. Incidentally the same as what juiced baseball players look like.
That’s the most blatant shilling for a company I’ve ever seen.
Yes, kill me now.
I hope they’re working on a game like Vanguard, but for the really, really super hardcore. Old school corpse runs and XP debts are great, but I don’t like the idea of just pushing a button to make my character run forward. I want an interface that lets me control each muscle in his body individually so I can simulate my own running motion.
My one piece of advice, Curt, is to not hire tens of hundreds of people. You can probably get by with eight or nine hundred.
Just kidding. Good luck (I can tell you you’ll need it to make real progress this first year with you still playing ball), and please don’t let Todd make the bad guys be hordes of Africans with tiny grass skirts and bones through their noses like he did in his last game.
Good luck with the game, we’ll definitely be watching for it. The world definitely needs more GOOD MMOs.
Good call on not putting too much information out too soon. Technology and expectations change fast enough to make it a no-win situation.
My advice to you gehrig38, is that you sign with the Reds.
First, let me say welcome to gehrig38 and thanks for offering insight into the process.
Not sure if this is something that can be discussed but obviously the 800lb gorilla kicking back in the room is WoW. Is that something that consciously comes into the decision-making process or do you focus on exactly what you want to do, regardless of what may have come before, and make the game you would want to play?
Either way, good luck with this endeavour.
The absolute A#1 thing any new game should have is polish, especially on the PC. Make it run as slick as a console game. It should run like World of Warcraft does, on modest hardware. High framerates are such a huge plus in any game because it helps build up immersion in the gameworld removes any interest in the technology that’s running it (especially if it’s running poorly).
Heck, never talk about the technology at all when you finally start releasing info. Talk about the game.
Curt–
I don’t really care about the MMORPG stuff, but I will say this–thanks for saving ASL from imminent death.