Hellgate London

OK. Hypothetical question time. You're the CEO of a brand new development company. You've got ten million dollars to spend on a computer game AND you need to impress the investors and get your money back.

Do you:

A) Make the best game you can releasing only when the game is finished, listening to your testers and pulling out all the stops to make your precious title near perfect?
B) Spend most of the cash on secretly concealed holidays, whores and beer?
C) Make a half assed effort and sign your name off at the end no matter what! You worked on Diablo - surely that'll get you some sales, right? Besides, even if it all goes tits up you know you'll walk into another job based on the bit of work you did on Diablo, so what does it matter? Did you mention that you worked on Diablo? Well, you did (kinda).

Well, for Bill Roper, former CEO of Flagship Studios, one (or more) of the above options was firmly ticked, and I find it really sad that development companies willingly release buggy and unfinished titles.

End of the Road: I received yet another email from Namco regarding their beleagured title Hellgate London. It said pretty much the the same as the last three or four:

NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc., today announced that they will continue to support customers of PC game Hellgate™: London with online server support and play through January 31, 2009 despite the closure of Flagship Studios. In a further gesture of support, Namco Bandai Games will provide this server support free of charge to all fans and players of the game up until the shut down date.

So, guys, you've got a little over thirty days to get the most out of Hellgate London (HGL), which is SUCH a crying shame, as, of all the MMOs in recent years, I felt HGL had the greatest potential, despite it being a complete sack of crap as an online game.

Which is a double shame as the gaming industry seemed to be pretty much on fire for the post apocalyptic sci-fi demon killathon ( at least before the reviews came flooding in).

If you wondered where it all went wrong - here are some answers. Maybe HGL can serve as the bible of how NOT to create a MMO.

Now, this game is from the developers of Diablo, so, with so esteemed a title under their belts, how did it all go so horribly wrong? Bill Roper CEO of the now defunct Flagship (more like Chip Shop) steered the boat in the oh so very wrong direction.

Things started when the developers decided to turn this rather atmospheric and surprisingly playable game from a single person game into a MMO. But it seems they did this with no real kind of plan OR feel for what was required for an online game.

1. The game was missing so much of the vital MMO content. It was a MMO in name alone. The chat system was so horribly clumsy no one read it. The grouping system was rubbish and every feature seemed tacked on at the last minute.
   
2. FIX YOUR BUGS. There were plenty of demonic insects in game to slay, but these bugs were a bit more tenacious. Crashes to desktop, memory leaks, and simple coding errors, HGL was riddled with problems many gamers found unacceptable. The game still needed a few more months of testing and updates to really give it sufficient polish to cope with today's highly competitive market.
   
3. Give Us Your Cash. There wasn't nearly enough content to warrant a monthly fee. Flagship offered a few measly extras called 'premium content' but it was a weak and greedy ploy to scrape a few extra dollars from players. A cheap tactic that ultimately killed the game.
4. Development Schedule. Or lack of. Slagship offered a healthy development schedule of new content and large patches. Despite the (very late) Stonehenge patch, we barely saw any new content after that. Were the developers focussing on other Flagship games instead of trying to fix HGL? It all comes back to money, again.

All the major problems with the game were corrected, but for Flagship, their flagship game was already sinking. The writing was on the wall and it said TITANIC in huge red letters.

If HGL had remained a first person shooter it would have been atmospheric, fun and polished. Instead Flagship released a barely finished title deprived of the basic components of a MMO. With excellent artistic direction and some genuinely meaty moments in game, this is testament that the designers and artists did a wonderful job here, but that the game was beleagured by the senior management, who were hungry for a piece of the Warcraft pie, while seemingly having little to no idea how to steer their company in the right direction for success.

All of these things contributed to the death of a game that had so much potential. Certainly, there are FAR worse games out there that have done so much better (coughs: Horizons still going, I see).

As for Bill Roper: unless he's got an oh so very good explanation for why HGL was such a steaming pile of demon crap - he should never work again in the industry.

Hellgate London - I salute you. You were the game that should - and could - have been so wonderful. You will be missed.