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Official Statement on Recent News - Flagship Studios Fully Staffed, Guy Just Had a Bad Day
- June
- 11
5:06 pm Hellgate London
From Flagship Studios CVO, David Brevik, an announcement was issued today letting the good people of the Internet know that all is well. While they “will be the first to admit that Hellgate: London did launch with some problems”, but hard work is making it better. Along with mentioning the team developing Hellgate: London is currently the same size as when the game was shipped.
Share ThisHello,
I would like to respond to some of the recent coverage that Flagship Studios has received as a result of the publication of Guy Somberg’s blog.Everyone has good days and bad days. Guy was having a bad day. It was his friend’s last day of internship and he found out another friend was thinking of leaving. He vented, exaggerated, and posted information that was inaccurate.
We will be the first to admit that Hellgate: London did launch with some problems. The game would certainly have benefited from a couple more months in the oven, but as an independent developer we didn’t have the ability to delay our ship date. It can be difficult to stand by and see something that you put your heart and soul into, week in and week out, get the initial reception Hellgate got. It can put a strain on any developer and some days it can get to you. Thankfully, after some very hard work by all the people here, including Guy, the game is much better now and we believe in the future of Hellgate.
Both our studios are currently fully staffed, with our San Francisco studio working on ongoing content for Hellgate: London and our Seattle studio working on our free-to-play MMORPG, Mythos, which should go into open beta within the next couple months. In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios. As is typical in the industry, after a game is released some people naturally want to work on something else and they leave the company to do so. But in total we have had less than 10% turn-over and have rehired for all needed positions.
All our Directors and Founders are still working at Flagship, and all of them are working on Hellgate: London or Mythos. The team size for Hellgate is as big now as when we shipped. We are putting all of our efforts into these projects and I think it will show in the upcoming Hellgate Abyss Chronicles.
Sincerely,
David Brevik
CVO
Flagship Studios
37 comments
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Posted by RoboMonkey, on June 11th, 2008, at 8:31 pm. Yawn, if there are so many people working on HGL where is the QA? |
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Posted by Mountain Man, on June 11th, 2008, at 9:57 pm. They’ve got all those people working for the company, and everything’s hunky-dory, but they can’t spare a few programmers to give us decent single player support. And with that many people on staff, why the hell is every thing they release a cluster fuck? |
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Posted by Project_Xii, on June 11th, 2008, at 11:18 pm. Two lots of damage control announcements, a developers blog, Guy’s removal of the blog and a new one with the child’s book link… and they expect us to believe everything is fine. Overcompensating, anyone? |
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Posted by h0nam, on June 12th, 2008, at 2:30 am. So, for some reason Guy cannot clarify this himself. Unless Guy is someone who tends to over-exaggerate, two people leaving would not be said as ‘leaving in droves’. “Both our studios are currently fully staffed” Then why are you still hiring Game Programmers? (http://www.flagshipstudios.com) “In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios” And zero of that 100+ are working on SP. Because we don’t benefit the company. “We are putting all of our efforts into these projects and I think it will show in the upcoming Hellgate Abyss Chronicles” On a side note, I would like to commend you on the updates done to the tilesets; although there still seems to be quite a few bugs, I read on the forums that there were some changes to the tilesets in the game (even for non-subs). |
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Posted by Mountain Man, on June 12th, 2008, at 5:35 am. As I’ve thought about this, things don’t quite add up. Think about it: this Guy fellow just caused a major PR nightmare for Flagship, a company that already has serious problems with their public image. And yet he still has a job. I work at a small company, and if I ever did anything remotely like this, I’d be out on my ass so fast it’d make your head spin. And yet Flagship apparently has no thoughts of firing Guy. Something tells me they’re desperate to hang onto as many people as they can. Agamemnon replied on June 12, 2008 He did say he was their last programmer, remember? It’d be like adding another hole in your already-sinking boat. mdg replied on June 12, 2008 Nah, more like trying to fix all your holes in the ship…. with a SHOTGUN ! They are shouting garbage like out a machine pistol… Anonymous replied on June 12, 2008 Guy’s not the one that caused the PR nightmare. Websites operating under the guise of fansites that pointed out his blog to the entire fucking world caused the PR nightmare. It would be like Castro endorsing Obama for President. That in and of itself means nothing bad. But as soon as Castro endorses Obama for President, the media and all those fucknut Right-Wingers and Conservatives would blow it out of proportion, painting Obama to be a Communist and/or supporter of everything Cuba’s about. And it would be bad PR for Obama. Just like the Reverend Wright scandal. So blame yourselves and IncGamers for spreading the news of this blog — not Guy. Once you two reported on it, that’s when Kotaku or Joystiq got a hold of it. And once they mentioned it, all those other places that wishes they were as popular as Kotaku and Joystiq decided to throw their dubloons in the spittoon too. (Don’t ask about the metaphor. I don’t know what I’m trying to say there. But you know what I mean.) You guys seriously need to decide what you are. Your commenters and forumers seem to be on the latter boat. And your more recent news looks like you’ve built a mast in that boat as well. If that’s the path you choose, stop trying to sell yourself as legitimate journalists. Seriously. Sorimar replied on June 12, 2008 And again, more arguments about how we are the problem, and about how we go about what we do, and our tone, rather than the substance of what is talked about and nitty gritty details of the ongoing problems. This proves (yet again) who’s side has the better arguments and facts out their side. When your argument turns from what someone is arguing to how someone is arguing, you are on a path to failure. When the gist of your argument becomes personal attacks on the other side, rather than substantive discussion of the facts at hand, you are on a path to failure. You guys go ahead and keep attacking us personally, that will certainly turn all our arguments and concerns into dust. It’s not a well known logical fallacy or anything. Suggesting all those other sites were just a bunch of morons who went with the story for sensationalist reasons (or just as blind followers) rather than legitimate concern and discussion is so ridiculous there is hardly even a word to describe it. Oh wait, I can think of one after all. Rationalization. Who’d have thunk it? A bunch of customers so upset with being treated like shit (for years) by greedy and unscrupulous developers that they speak up and start a backlash. And of course, it’s really all their fault, not the companies that pulled the bullshit in the firt place. We really are the most socicopathic and vitriolic gamers in history, and all just happened to buy HG:L, and now lash out against the working man. If only our Mom’s hadn’t kicked us out of the basement. It’s hard to pack when you have cheeto dust all over your fingers. Kind of stains everything. Aurien replied on June 12, 2008 Lets talk about the points then. A blog post was dug up that may or may not have been 100% accurate and may or may not have been overreaction. It’s then plastered on the front of this site, then bleeds over to the official forums. Those threads where then locked/deleted. But that must be a huge cover up, because FSS should let people who don’t have the facts, first hand knowledge, or even second hand knowledge debate what’s really going on. Instead of letting a huge flame war erupt on the forums they closed the threads down. Here comes the kicker. FSS makes official statements about the incident. But since it’s not what you’re expecting to hear then it must be a lie. There is no it might be true thought, just it has to be flat out a lie. But if they had said something like “we’ve lost 50% of out staff since launch etc. etc. etc.”. Well then no one here would be questioning the validity of the statement, because this is the kind of stuff you want to hear. What’s even better is people around here bitch about FSS lack of communication. How they failed at communicating with the customer. But whenever they do, it’s instantly blown off as lies, cover ups, propaganda, etc. So how can they communicate if you don’t listen? Let me guess, “by telling us the truth”? Is it the truth you want or tales of hardships and disasters? I bet if Guy’s blog on FSS had been talk of how great work was, bugs being fixed, etc. it would have never graced the front page of flagshipped.com. Then you bitch how in the official post they deleted “you noninflammatory” post. No matter how nice you try to say it, your post had one message. FSS is lying and covering up the facts. That’s pretty inflammatory no matter how you spin it. It’s like smiling at someone while telling them to fuck off. No matter how much you smile, you’re not being kind. You keep wanting to harp about facts and how flagshipped.com is right and everyone else is wrong. Well last time I brought up facts and reality into the argument, about SEA, everyone around here seemed to shut the hell up. Odd huh? You’re more than welcome to chime in if you want. http://www.flagshipped.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=139&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=20 While we’re talking about facts I love seeing the statement that flagshipped.com is the #1 fan site. Says who? Flagshipped.com? Lets try graph #1: Ugh oh. Flagshipped.com doesn’t come close. So who’s number 1 again? BryanM replied on June 12, 2008 #1 as in being the best and most awesome. Anyway, you do make the point that we could use content beyond just news. If we got a wiki set up (and… if my hard drive didn’t die) we could, possibly, make something competent… Mountain Man replied on June 12, 2008 Face it, Aurien, Flagship’s response to Guy’s blog doesn’t quite add up. He says that people are leaving in droves and that he’s the only full-time programmer still working on the game. Then Flagship comes along and says, “Oh, that was just an exaggeration. Only one or two employees have left, and we’re fully staffed at over a hundred people.” Huh? That must have been a hell of an exaggeration! As always, the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle: Flagship has lost more people than they want to admit (but perhaps not the “droves” mentioned by Guy), and while they may have more than one full-time programmer still dedicated to the game, they likely don’t have nearly as many as they’d like, and the ones they do have are overworked and getting burned out. That’s my take on the situation. Of course, Flagship can’t come right out and say that, so they spin it and wait for fanboys like you to lap it up with a smile. :) Aurien replied on June 12, 2008 Oh he said he’ll be the only programmer left? Wait a minute. No he didn’t: Was there a period after hellgate? Nope there was the rest of the sentence. Glad to see your on top of altering sentences. Good job guy. I know. There I go picking at the little stuff you said wrong. It’s a fun game huh? Mountain Man replied on June 13, 2008 Yes, you are picking at the little stuff and dodging the bigger issues (as you are wont to do). A company that is healthy does not have overworked, stressed out employees writing bitter complaints about the state of the company in a public blog or emotionally snapping during a public chat. Bottom line: things are not quite as rosy as Flagship wants you to believe, though to be fair, they’re probably not quite as bad as Guy wanted us to believe either. Nam replied on June 13, 2008 ok Mountain Man, seriously think about it! Plus lets not forget that any information out there about FSS condition is completely speculatory and is just being twisted by every person who gets their hands on it and then again that twisted info gets released as new information by people who don’t know it, and then it goes again until FSS trys to stop it by deleting it, which then gets presented by you people as “facts” just because they stoped it from becoming a tornado of false shit that does nothing but spread and empowers the FSS doomsayers. So why don’t you think about what I said, and my advise is to get yourself a good lawyer because if you get in trouble and try to prove your point with no evidence or proof(Just preety much like all of your argument agains FSS were) you would be in some big trouble. You can disregard my last remark though, but don’t disregard my whole entire post and move on to tell me how Im trying to say that all is nice and peachy! I’m not saying that, your the one who’s saying everything is in hell, and just because Im agains you does not mean I pretend that everything is fine, I just don’t find any proof what so ever in any of your posts. Mountain Man replied on June 13, 2008 “Just the simple fact that you people belive Guy and give his story more credibility or any at all over FSS shows that your state of mind is not open…” Um, no, I said that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. In other words, I’m giving both parties the benefit of the doubt. If that’s not open minded then I don’t know what is. Zerosugar replied on June 13, 2008 Point 1.) Anything negative said from an employee about the game has the potential and will most likely hurts future sales Chew on that one for a few minutes. Point 2.) Now if an employee should make a blog doing just that, then the company is left with no other option but to have it deleted or let it stand and possibly and likely hurt future sales. Should the news spread, they have no other option but to make an official statement. Here they can either agree with the employee or take distance from his comments. in light of point 1. flagship did exactly what was expected..take distance from it and have the blog deleted. I haven’t touched if anything guy said was true or an exaggeration yet. You can either believe what he said was true or that it wasn’t. Coming here saying that “Flagship’s statement could and likely is the truth” is wishful thinking. There is no proof other than their word. Just as Flagshipped.com (never saw them use the word facts or proof in regards to that article btw) can’t prove or disprove Guy neither can you prove or disprove FSS’s statement. The fact they made it was damage control and as such should not be taken as gospel. Remember Clinton and the little BJ incident? ..”no i did not have sexual relations with that girl” ..Damage control can be a lie or it can be the truth. If you try and be a spokesperson for FSS statement then you really should start opening your own eyes and question things around you more. As for a normal person letting it go and moving on. There are quite a few people out there fighting for consumer rights, people rallying against bad business chains. Without these people you wouldn’t be able to have the kind of service and respect from said chains and companies today. A lot of companies have been brought down by consumers alone. just because you are lazy,indifferent or accept such behavior when you buy a 30 - 150$ defect product from a company that makes nothing but defect copies of the same product. Doesn’t mean other people are crazy for speaking up and trying to do something about it. Nam replied on June 13, 2008 “As for a normal person letting it go and moving on. There are quite a few people out there fighting for consumer rights, people rallying against bad business chains.” Yes I belive thats why I used the adjective “Normal”, but I guess I was wrong, sorry I didnt know that you people are revolutionists fighting for my rights day and night and protecting the little guys like me against big corporations. Zerosugar replied on June 14, 2008 I don’t think they are doing it for you really. but you are right maybe you should thank them instead :) Mountain Man replied on June 12, 2008 “Guy’s not the one that caused the PR nightmare.” Uh, yes he is, unless you think somebody else is somehow responsible for him airing Flagship’s dirty laundry on a publicly viewable blog. You really can’t blame news sites for picking up on a bombshell like that. As for your “Castro endorsing Obama” nonsense, it’s more analogous to when Obama called his racist grandmother a “typical white person” and his followers crying when the news reported it. Agamemnon replied on June 12, 2008 Curious, what is a legitimate journalist? And where have we ever claimed that we were “journalists”? By the way, you need to work on your analogies. That one was just pitiful. But that’s curious. We’re responsible for reporting the news on a public blog post and how everyone else picked up on it? Are you sure you don’t work at Flagship Studios? You seem to have the ability to pass the blame to everyone but the source of it. Anonymous replied on June 12, 2008 “That is not negativity. That is called journalism.” ^ Direct quote, from you. Comments to “Opinions about HGL from forum regulars” And I’m quite positive I don’t work for Flagship Studios. If I do, I’d really like my paycheck sometime soon. Sorimar replied on June 12, 2008 So you really don’t have a “dog in the race” so to speak then. Why do you care? What harm is this site doing to you, personally? It’s unfathomable that someone could be as “concerned” as you are without being someone who has a personal stake in the matter. Anonymous replied on June 12, 2008 I get personal pleasure out of you guys not being able to identify who I am, at the very least. Though I will say this much: BumfuckingEgypt is my account on your forums, but the e-mail I used to sign up for it is an alternate e-mail that I do not tie to other accounts. Agamemnon replied on June 12, 2008 Can I get a link to the post? By the way, great question dodging there. Anonymous replied on June 12, 2008 It’s on your site, you find it. Should be on the second or third page of “Previous entries” Agamemnon replied on June 13, 2008 Here’s what I’ll do. There’s about 10 responses to the point behind this site. They are some where on the site. Find it. Duhr-Duhr replied on June 16, 2008 http://www.flagshipped.com/2008/05/19/opinons-about-hellgate-from-hgl-forum-regulars#comments About a quarter-way down the page. Agamemnon replied on June 16, 2008 Thanks. What was the original argument again? Since we’re reporting on the failings of Flagship Studios that we’re apparently not journalists? I forget. Anonymous replied on June 19, 2008 they cant fire the last programmer they have mtnman, i have to say i feel really bad for Guy, i really do, if i had to shoulder the whole company by myself with everyone else sitting around eating sushi, talking shit to thier customer base and cruising the forums looking for the next FSS employee, i’d be a little depressed and worried too… my question to FSS would have to be, why the hell dont the other employees with programming expirience get off thier asses and help Guy out? |
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Posted by ScytheNoire, on June 12th, 2008, at 11:53 am. There is some truth in what Guy had originally wrote, or Flagship is just doing things wrong. Considering that the UI can’t even be scaled and how long it is taking them to do things, and then you look at a game like Age of Conan that is getting two patches a week to get things up to snuff, it really shows that if a company is serious about getting things done, they get it done. Flagship hasn’t shown that, and a lot of it might be from incompetence. Do they just not know how to make a customizable UI? Is it too difficult to make it scale? I just question how things are run there, if at all, and how many people they have, and what the quality of staff is. They also seemed to of made a huge money grab, since they had that founder’s offer at the start, and got as much extra money as they could get out of people, then seem to take off with it all without delivering as promised. Content has been slow and the game is still not up to snuff with other games out there. I don’t see how they could justify a monthly fee for this game. Hellgate should have been released for free like Mythos and worked off of microtransactions. I just don’t know what they were thinking. I really think it was one of the greatest hype scams in gaming history. fabuloid replied on June 13, 2008 ” Do they just not know how to make a customizable UI? Is it too difficult to make it scale?” Um, actually, yes it is really hard. Not to excuse them entirely, but I’d prefer getting auction houses in the game to a customizeable UI. That’s way down on my personal list. Also, FSS is NOT saying that they didn’t make mistakes (as per Brevik’s statement), and that they’re not concerned about fixing them. I’m also always amazed how people think FSS must be rolling in dough… do you have any sense of how expensive 100 people are? And what a gamble they are taking by keeping HG alive and trying to fix it? I say kudos for them for making it this far. Let’s see what Patch 2 brings, give them a chance to do what we’re asking them to do! Oh, on a side note.. I’m really curious… would you actually prefer HGL to be microtransaction based? Anonymous replied on June 13, 2008 Depends, do you mean buying the content patches, or more like a cash shop/item mall sort of method, like they’re doing with Mythos? For Hellgate, I really wish the content patches (in addition to having more in them) were microtransactions. If the point of subscription is to unlock new content, then the least intrusive way, in the players’ mind, is by selling the actual new content, in chunks. Of course, that doesn’t allow them to generate new revenue between patches, whereas a Subscription model does (assuming they get subscriptions, of course)…So going with the “tried-and-true” mark would appear to be the better way of going about it, no matter the truth to the appearance or not. The problem with relying market research is that precedence is everything…and when there’s no solid precedence for what may or may not be more effective, there’s nothing to judge by. And it’s not generally wise for a new company to try an untested or unproven payment method for their first game. If you meant like a Cash Shop/Item Mall…I don’t know. It seems okay in Mythos, but with Hellgate, I don’t think it fits. ScytheNoire replied on June 14, 2008 It would make more sense for HGL to be microtransaction based than subscription based. Much like D&D Online, which should have been microtransaction or the expansion pack method (Guild Wars). I think justifying the subscription when people can play for just the box and also play is hard to do. When all have to pay to play, then it’s hard to argue against it. At least with microtransactions, they could have sold new content as they released it, and this would allow people to buy content as they want or need it. It would result in more income, since you can’t have both subscription and free to play, it doesn’t work out. |
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Posted by anon, on July 4th, 2008, at 7:50 am. they want us to believe that |
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Posted by Flagship has been flagshipped? at You Got Flagshipped, on July 11th, 2008, at 2:51 pm. […] have Warcry reporting on possible layoffs at Flagship Studios (which, of course, goes against their press release saying everything was okay). Hmm. We don’t have enough information to say “I told you […] |
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Honurot replied on June 11, 2008
People on the official forums are buying it lock, stock and two smoking cocks, so why shouldn’t you?
Oh right I forgot no one sucks cock around here with any form of common sense and two open eyes. My bad..
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