Reflections on Hellgate London February 8, 2011

Gamasutra has a facinating inteview up with former Flagship and Blizzard developer Bill Roper on Flagship Studio’s only release, Hellgate: London.

Hellgate: London had a ton of promise.  The company was formed of former Blizzard developers who worked on Diablo, a staple of PC gaming.  It was one of the first PC-Exclusive titles to embrace the early Games for Windows Inititive and offer DirectX 10.0 support in an industry where consumers were just refusing to upgrade from Windows XP.  It had a full Single Player campaign, and a full MMORPG component that would have support for both paid and free subscribers.  Within months of release, the single game release had spawned at least three books and a manga, and a main character was given a nude spread in magazines.  The game’s collectors edition DVD had one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen detailing the start of a Triple-A company working together in a guy’s house!

But the game was simply not sustainable.  By many accounts the game was rushed to release and came out at a timeframe that was flooded by a lot of ambitious new projects and major sequel releases.  The game could not bring in the players it needed to be sustainable and it shut down.

Bill Roper talks about all this in the first part of an interview with Gamasutra.  It’s a facinating read, espessially for those interested in the financing and investments that make games possible, and what it takes to make a big game a success.