spix's circlet on 12/6/2013 at 12:25
I know this is a long shot, but if anyone in Australia still has a copy of the PCPowerPlay magazine where they covered the fall of LGS, I would love to have a look at it. It would be, obviously, over a decade old now. All I can remember from it was that it apparently cost a million dollars for them to make SS2, and that it just fell short of that in sales. I seem to recall a lot of companies going under then from cost; that games were starting to need massive production values.
Interesting note there jt. I never knew that. It's kinda unpleasant to think of LGS suffering from hubris.
zacharias on 12/6/2013 at 12:41
SS2 was done by Irrational not LGS, albeit using LGS engine and some staff such as Mike Ryan on level design, etc.
spix's circlet on 12/6/2013 at 16:11
I know. I think it is fair to say it was co-developed between the two, in the sense that they pooled their talent and risks.
More info (
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131813/postmortem_irrational_games_.php?page=2) here on article by Johnathan Chey:
Quote:
System Shock 2 was truly a cooperative development between Irrational and Looking Glass. Looking Glass provided the engine and a lot of infrastructure support (such as quality assurance), while Irrational handled the design, project leadership, and the responsibility for marshaling resources into the final product. [...] During the early stages of the project, a deal was worked out whereby a small number of Looking Glass personnel were subcontracted to Irrational when it was determined that Irrational's development budget could not cover all the System Shock 2 development costs, and as compensation for the late delivery of the Thief technology.
zacharias on 12/6/2013 at 16:43
er, not really..at the end of the day it was an Irrational game, despite the subcontracting and such. If it had tanked completely IG would be the company folding. I don't see why SS2 would have been a business risk for LGS unless they were signing peculiar contracts.
spix's circlet on 14/6/2013 at 09:07
Really? We all know that LGS was in financial trouble before SS2, and the (
http://www.ttlg.com/articles/lgsclosing.asp) Sterrett article here writes that "System Shock II more or less offset the failure of Flight Unlimited III." This implies that there must of have been a definite profit in-take for LGS from units sold of Shock 2. Although the "average" sales of SS2 (at the time) was clearly not
the factor in the fall of LGS, it was arguably
a factor: "Obviously, better sales would have helped." To have your logo on the cover box and yet not take a cent in earnings would be peculiar. In this sense, sure, Irrational wouldn't by necessity fold because of it; but LGS by then was long in dire need of big profits. Remember, it was only after this that IG starting pulling away from LGS to find other contracts because the latter was in debt. This "venture" then between the two didn't work out as best as it might have. Anyhow, the game couldn't have been made without either of them. (I was off on the budget; Chey says SS2 had a cost of $1.7 million).
jtr7 on 14/6/2013 at 10:41
1996/7 was a really rough time, devs were shouting at each other, and key people left, bailing out of a bad situation, like Sean Barrett, who thankfully stayed in touch contracted out as consultant for his hand-built renderer. And people who left, like Doug Church, stopped back in, took a look at the progress of the games, and gave his suggestions. I can't remember which game pulled them out of their trench, but the timing of things, including bringing on Randy Smith and bunch of other famous names here, and Paul Neurath's realization that The Dark Project should be about a Thief, created a better time for that team. LG was spread too thin, and it's been described that they were getting too cocky about how good they were, so they had fingers in too many genres, like sports and one other I can't recall that isn't mentioned much, instead of focusing on fewer games with better chances. Tim Stellmach somehow kept it together and barely survived getting Thief out the door. While Seamus Blackley was still there, he was working on those flight simulators and physics engines, but left as soon as he saw his chance. LGS recovered for a time, and then sank hard again, and it wasn't LGS's failures alone, but other Eidos-acquired properties that drained Eidos who couldn't also keep LGS afloat anymore.
zacharias on 14/6/2013 at 11:14
Spix: You seem to be contradicting yourself :) On the one hand saying LGS made a profit from Shock 2 and then that it was a factor in the fall of LGS?
(If LGS finances were healthy - no problem - it would have been a break even or modest profit type project.)
Yeah, looking at the wiki and such it seems to be officially a co-development, my bad, although was this more of a publishing/marketing thing(?) My understanding is that at the start it was the three Irrational founders and most of the risk of the project was on Irrational's side. LGS would have been paid for licensing the engine but taken less of the profits presumably(?)
Anyway..going a bit off topic..
