I have to admit, I am taking some sick pleasure out of the recent problems that the maker of Hellgate:London (HG:L) and Mythos, Flagship Studio, has been struggling with. It is quite surprising how much bitterness my 60 could have spent on something better dollars have left me, considering how much money I spend on computer and games every month.
Well, at this point everyone pretty knows and admits HG:L was a failure, and I am sure nobody wants to hear my rant about how HG:L sucked and blah blah. But as someone who spent 4 years studying software engineering and a future game developer wannabe, I’d like to share some thoughts on the sink of Flagship.
One thing that has been getting popular in the field of software engineering is the idea of Extreme Programming(XP), which is a set of mindsets and methodologies aimed to deliver the highest quality of code with least amount of resource spent. Interest enough, Flagship CEO Bill Roper said something very akin to a specific path of XP: the Agile Development Method based on Hellgatewiki:
One of our philosophies of design is to get the game up and running as early as possible, keep it at a constantly playable state, and then constantly iterate on what’s there. Although this process takes a very specific mindset and dedication from the development team, we have found this to be the best way for us to create and balance an RPG.
The idea of constantly iteration sounds nice, and I am sure it has worked in numerous different companies. What interests me is the question “did they really follow the specific mindset Bill mentioned”? Based one former Ping0 employee, the reason the studio was failing is
and they didn’t do anything the easy way. They had their own server architecture, their own client, their own chat, their own graphics engine, their own everything basically. Plus they wanted a game that could support thousands of concurrent connections with no downtime, had an engaging single-player campaign, and could support an ongoing, persistent world. It was like picking everything that’s hard to do in a game
which is the total opposite of what Bill Roper said in the interview. Instead of using the simplest solution to get the game to work earliest possible followed by constant small incremental iteration, they aimed high and big from the scrath. I have personally learnt some very similar(and hard) lesson in one of my school projects, but to expect some industry veteran making the same mistake in the first and probably last muti-million product of a new company? Not something you would see everyday.
Another thing I find interest about HG:L is, being made by the maker of Diablo (as Bill Roper mentioned in countless interviews), HG:L is in no way comparable to the Diablo franchise. As much as I hated those “there will be no Diablo3 because everyone moved to Flagship” people(and now since D3 is announced the “D3 will suck because everyone moved to Flagship”), I also like to give everyone on the old Diablo team for making of such awesome games. So why does HG:L failed so hard in comparison to Diablo?
Being a firm believer of XP, I have always believed it is the people who make the software rather than the process or company regulations. But from the case of HG:L, it seems the same brilliant developers can perform vastly differently under different company. Being a new founded studio, I’d imagine Flagship have way less process and regulation enforced on its developers as Blizzard North. Could the lack of quality assurance process be one of the reason why they cannot put up the same performance as they were in Blizzard North? Maybe it is another example of 100 sheep lead by 1 lion defeats 100 lions lead by 1 sheep?
Jonova
