Flagshipped.com was fortunate enough to come across a forum post by Flagship Studios audio and gameplay programmer, Guy Somberg, before the entry was regretfully retracted from his online journal (you can catch his original cached post by heading here). His gloomy yet lengthy nine-paragraph complaint described the dreary situation over at the development house, then proclaimed himself as Hellgate: London's new Senior Developer now that everyone jumped ship.
Somberg initially began his post by describing the depressing atmosphere. Hellgate: London didn't live up to gamers' expectations - you can see our review of it here. They complain on the forums, they complain within the game itself and the overall feedback says that "the game sucks" (although it managed to pull in a meager 70% average score over on Gamerankings.com). Somberg even mourns over the use of "Flagshipped," a new term describing a company's over-ambitious promises that don't follow through with a quality product.
Now FSS employees are walking out. "So why is work depressing (other than all of those other depressing things, that is)?" he asks in his post. "The reason is that people are leaving. In droves, they're leaving. We've had programmers, accountants, HR people, and artists leave. The founders are all still around, but they've been floating away from Hellgate to work on various other projects. The only one still actively on Hellgate is Tyler, but Tyler's not programming anymore; he spends all of his time on management activities."
Somberg goes on to say that the programming intern moved on to pursue his PhD in computer science, and another programmer put in his month's notice as well. "Thing is, the way things are going, I'm likely to be the only programmer still working on Hellgate left from the original crew. I've heard rumors that other programmers and artists are thinking of leaving," he added.
His foreboding news certainly paints a dark shroud around the studio. Founded by the original developers of Blizzard's Diablo (Max Schaefer, Erich Schaefer and David Brevik) and Blizzard North's ex-vice president Bill Roper, the company launched in 2003 and released Hellgate: London on Games for Windows in October 2007. Taking their experience with Diablo, the team brought a first-person perspective to the action/RPG scheme. Given the founders' previous track record, expectations were set extremely high before the game's initial release. However, fans quickly turned against the company, complaining about slowdowns, crashes and various bugs.
Hellgate: London from Flagship Studios and Electronic Arts.
Currently Flagship is working on another Diablo clone, Mythos, a free-to play online action/rpg with additional quirks for subscription-based gamers. With most of the Hellgate staff abandoning ship, what is the current state of the studio? That's a good question, but Somberg seems determined not to leave. "I don't want to leave Flagship. I'm happy here. I like the people, I like the environment, I like the pay, I like the location... There's so much good about it. I'm not considering leaving. It's just overwhelming and depressing having all of these people go. Every time a programmer leaves, it's more work for me. Every time an artist leaves, it's less content that we can create for Hellgate in the future."
With news of his forum post spreading across the gaming community, Somberg may find himself looking for a new place of employment anyway despite his dedication. In the meantime, Flagship Studios CVO David Brevik went into damage control mode and issued a follow-up, saying that Somberg was "having a bad day." He went on to admit Hellgate's problems and that, because they are an independent developer, the company didn't have the resources to delay the game. However, everything is kudos with Flagship and fans should be pleased with the upcoming Abyss Chronicles patch.
"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," said Brevik in his official statement. "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."
But even though Somberg retracted his blog entry, one still has to wonder the actual status of Flagship despite Brevik's follow-up. Even if Somberg was "having a bad day" or his descriptions were "vented, exaggerated and inaccurate," it still doesn't change the overall view of Hellgate: London and Flagship.
Hopefully things will change once Flagship releases the Abyss Chronicles content patch for Hellgate: London.
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