Hello Roper

Hello people.

I was a little premature with Hellgate London news it seems. It appears that Bill Roper, CEO of Flagship Studios, creator of Hellgate London, has been interviewed by 1-Up. The full eight page interview can be found here [Original link removed - archive 1Up link added]. But you don't want to read all that, although I found it interesting. I'll summarize.

Well, Jeff Green asked all the right questions I think. Bill responded to the questions the best he could, and responded that he didn't want to violate his NDA ("Non-disclosure Agreement" I belive is what it means) with the lawyer stuff going on.

Anyways this is what I got out of it. Bill and the gang had a passion for video games, but didn't have business smarts. They were used to Blizzard's work environment of we need more time and money to finish the game. Alas they weren't at Blizzard and publishers were like, "Ok. where are you going to get this money." So they had to release the game on October 31, 2007. So that's where the bugged game came from. I pretty much assumed as much. Bill also admits that they wanted to do too much, when they should have stuck with what was good, and made it better. He talks about how he released in 15 + languages, and had to do QA testing on those languages and fix bugs in the languages, when they could have been working on the core game.

Another thing I learned from the interview. Namco-Bandai and EA are both good. Yeah you heard me. I actually complimented EA. They actually helped Flagship. Right now, Namco-Bandai is running the servers for the website and Hellgate London. They aren't seeing profit from it right now. They just love the game and don't want to dissappoint the fans, until the legal issues (which i'll touch on later) get settled.

Also before Hanbitsoft got bought by T3, they were good. They helped spread Starcraft and Diablo to Asia. But they were bought by T3 and screwed Flagship over. The new management basically gave Flagship a bad deal that Flagship had no choice but to accept because of the situation they were in. So yeah. That was a contributing factor to the fall of Flagship also, so I put part of the blame on Hanbitsoft, and Flagship's lack of business smarts (although I respect Flagship because they love games and just wanted to create a fun game).

Bill also admits that before the game was released, he had regrets of choosing a hybrid model (free to play, but subscription for added perks). He wishes they would have choosen either a completely free to play online, and release expansions, or a completely subscription based model. But it was too close to the release date and he couldn't change it (he goes into details on why in the interview).

Alright, legal stuff. Flagship used Mythos as colateral with Hanbitsoft (I think that was part of the rotten deal they got from Hanbitsoft). So without a doubt, Hanbitsoft owns Mythos IP (all the tools used to create Mythos, and the game). Bill wasn't too worried about Mythos, because it was an incomplete game and they don't have any of the people who worked on the game. The people who worked on Mythos, were laid off and are now part of Runic Games, as I mentioned before. I love seeing Hanbitsoft get shafted in some way shape or form. :).

When Flagship got money from Comerica, a bank that has worked with movie companies for funding, they used Hellgate London as colateral. So they own the Hellgate IP (Game, tools, engine, etc). I don't know about the books (the last one in the trilogy is suppose to be released August 26). Bill was a little worried about that. He said if he had the money, he would buy it back, but he doens't.

For a new game, they have to create a new engine from scrap, since the bank owns it. The bank is obviously going to sell it to someone. Hanbitsoft wants it. They broke their NDA saying that. Anyways, that's what I know of the legal issues.

I respect Bill Roper a lot though. He says it was a learning experience. He, and the founding members of Flagship, paid the employees that got laid off from their pockets. I'll definitely keep an eye on them for future games. Same with Runic games.

I played a little Hellgate London last night, because a friend bought it last month (bad timing). It kinda feels empty knowing that the fate of it is up in the air. I love the game still, but doesn't feel the same.

Plus I got Resistance Fall of Man to beat on single player. I have 6 more chapters to beat. I beat it with a friend on coop. I don't know how I'm going to beat the last few chapters. They were tough with a friend, but by myselft I have nightmares just thinking about it.

The second half of the game gets hard because checkpoints are scarce, and so is health. Bah. I get done with a hard battle, and then have to fight a couple of titans, or something and it's depressing. So I started out with "Oh the game isn't frustrating." and ended up with "Holy crap this game is frustrating!" It's funny to think about... but not funny actually living.

It's still fun though. Resistance will always be fun to me.

The fourth installment of my "Games to the Video" news post is coming up. I've been working on it (it's my only news post that I type in advance). It's looking pretty good. 13 games will be on the list. I have 6 write ups done. I also need to harvest some pictures for it though.

All of the games are advertised as being released this year, so yeah. I think I'll do that from now on with all my Games to the video posts. Don't go too far into the future, like I did with the last one. Just rediculous. So expect that soon.

I also have a list of games for 2009, so probably in December/January you'll see yet another one. We'll see though. If I don't get more accurate release dates, other than "2009" then I might just wait.

Yeah another paragraph. Can you believe it? I'm pimping out my Playstation 3. I bought a 320 GB harddrive for the baby. Only 110 bucks. That's cheap compared to the replacement hard drive that 360 owners would have to pay (180 bucks for a 120 GB one, or 20 GB for 90 bucks. Ouch.) I like that fact that a playstation 3 harddrive is just a laptop harddrive. Sony encourages you to replace it. They have instructions to do it on their website. They have a "backup harddrive" option on the PS3, which backs up data onto a USB device. They also have a restore option too, so it's very easy to do. I wanted the harddrive because I'm going to fill up my 40GB really fast (I already am).

I also bought two more Dualshock 3 controllers. I got a white one and a silver one from amazon.com. Awesome. I can play some four player action now.

I'm looking at getting the Nyko Media Hub+. It plugs in to one of your USB ports on your PS3, and has 3 USB ports, and an SD card reader. My ports are full right now, with a dual charger and remote attatchment that allows me to use a remote to watch movies with. That was a horrible description of the remote attatchment thing.

My posts are getting longer. DVD wise, I preorded season 4 of House, season 2 of Heroes on Bluray, and season 3 of Supernatural. I'm gonna have a busy fall. I love those shows. Although I heard that Season 2 of Heroes wasn't that great. There's only 11 episodes in season 2 also. Darn writer's strike.

Anyways that's what I've been doing. Working on my family reunion website redesign. Almost done. Thinking about changing up this website a bit. I have a few ideas that I want to implement into the site, but don't know exactly how. I'll tinker around and find something that I like.

That's all for now.

Later.