Hellgate Guru

Phil Shenk Forms New Game Company

While not directly related to Diablo 3, this is to do with one of the ex Diablo 2 designers, one who was quite well known as one of the people behind the art in Diablo 2’s expansion pack.

Many people would also recognise him for his work on Flagship Studio’s now failed game, Hellgate London, however what many more people likely will recognise him for is Shenk the Overseer (a monster in Diablo 2’s Act V name after Phil).

After the closure of Flagship Studios, we haven’t heard much from Phil, however it was revealed today that he is starting a new studio named “Gravity Bear” (a very weird name in my opinion), however there is nothing else revealed about the company at this stage. We also know that another ex Flagship Studios employee, Kevin Klemmick (who was the software engineer on Hellgate London) will also make up the team.

Now we just have to wait until they decide on what games they want to pursue and hopefully we’ll see some other competition to D3 come out as well, just to add to the variety of gaming we can enjoy later

Posted in General |

Bill Roper Joins Cryptic as a Lead Designer

GameDaily has just posted up a new interview they conducted with Bill Roper, who as per a press release sent by Cryptic Studios, is going to be a new Lead Designer on Champions Online.

“As you probably know, a few months ago we had to lay off all of our employees at Flagship, so really what we’ve been doing is trying to work with banks, creditors and former employees to wrap things up. We’re not supporting any products right now.” So when pressed if that meant that it was officially over for the Hellgate: London developer, he responded, “All the principals and employees have moved on. At this point and time, HanbitSoft has purchased the IP, which was being held as securities. Namco will keep their servers up until January 31, 2009.”

Roper is not bitter over his time at Flagship, and in fact thinks that he learned lessons there that he’ll be able to apply at Cryptic. “It can be a problem with a game that you try and go too broad, and I think we did that with Hellgate,” he admitted. “With Champions Online, we’ll focus on making something that’s not wider but is much deeper.”

As a nine-year veteran of Blizzard who has worked on the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo franchises, Roper hopes to apply those lessons of success to Cryptic. “It was a meritocracy at Blizzard, and they were willing to take someone who was new in the industry and give them some freedom if they did well,” he commented. “So I’ve had experience directing, producing and went up to VP level there.”

[...]

Roper assured us that he was very excited about coming to Cryptic and he even revealed that it wasn’t the standard route to employment. “I think it was fortuitous. I was really just trying to get into the beta for Champions Online,” he commented. “I was into the game even before the beta, and I read about it constantly because I was a big City of Heroes fan. I went to a friend of a friend, and we just started talking about things and as the discussion evolved, we found we had some similar ideas. It’s great coming to a place like Cryptic, a place with some very passionate designers, and it’s nice to be less of a suit!”

“The first thing I’m going to be doing, is talking with the guys and digging deeply into what Champions Online is now. There’s a lot of fantastic stuff here, and we’ll focus on figuring out what’s working, what needs some polish and rethinking other things. We’re approaching the game from the standpoint that those people who are familiar with the license will be comfortable immediately and those people who aren’t familiar or who like to solo play will have their own niches carved out,” he concluded.

While we know Bill Roper as the CEO of Flagship Studios and his game Hellgate: London which we have covered for a long time, many people always blamed bad decisions of the managing team for the fall of Hellgate London. It was even stated by Bill many times that they tried to take on too much and couldn’t handle it all.

This is why it seems a bit weird that rather than putting Bill into a design position or maybe a storyline position he is being thrust straight into such a leading position. Champions Online was another game that we followed on the Guru websites, so it’s going to be sad if it ends up failing like Hellgate London.

Either way, good luck to Bill on his new venture and hopefully he has more success with the new game.

Posted in General |

More Hints of Hellgate’s Comeback

To follow the last few posts on the new RedBana studio working on Hellgate London, the Game Espresso Blog has been updated again with a new post. This time it is a letter from the Korean Developer of Hellgate London.

To the fans of Hellgate: London,

We wish to express our gratitude to all the fans for showing your passion and dedication to Hellgate: London.

Since acquiring the intellectual property rights, HanbitSoft Inc., the publisher and distributor of Hellgate: London in Asia, has concentrated on the development of Hellgate: London, and has received many inquiries regarding new updates. Our US development studio is currently working on an update that is to surpass “The Abyss Chronicles.” This game will be available through our Web site. We thank you once again for showing your interest and ask for your continuous support for Hellgate: London, as we hope to bring good news shortly. In the meantime, we will continue developing the world’s best game!

Sincerely,
Hellgate: London Product Manager - also a fellow user that loves to play Hellgate: London

Hopefully this means that the game might make a comeback, and hopefully they figure out some deal with the old founders to maybe enable us to at least play the core game for free (as currently this is only Act 1 and Act 2 in Korea)

Posted in HanbitSoft |

Rumours and Speculations - Hellgate: London Possibly To Live

File this one under rumours and speculations as based on my own findings.

While we do know that FSS has died, as per yesterday’s post about Hanbiton acquiring Hellgate: London, we do know that the IP is owned by T3 now. What we didn’t know however, is what would happen to the US version of the game.

A new post went up today on the Korean Hellgate London website. It is a post talking about Halloween events and the “re-opening of the Hellgate”, however what is interesting about it, is that it has a section written in English on a usually Korean only website.

The post also sounds like they are getting ready to re-launch the game (could this mean transferring the old players over?) and the company in charge appears to be Redbana. Further research leads to the Taiwanese MMO company called Redbana, which appears to have quite some experience in gaming. Further research leads to findings of a new San Francisco office for the company, which is where Hellgate offices were located previously.

So take this news with a grain of salt, but until we have more news, there is possibility that the game might come back in some way.

Enjoy

Posted in General |

Hellgate: London Lives in Korea

This was posted over at the Game Espresso Blog, which seems to be a blog dedicated to Hanbitsoft. The game will only be available to Koreans, as it is IP blocked on their website.

Many of you may heard about the sad news of Flagship’s shutdown.

But the good news is that Hellgate will go on with the new crew. HanbitSoft announced that T3 Entertainment recruited some of the best developers from Flagship Studios, Blizzard and formed a team with developers of their own. They will be carrying on where the last crew left off.

Hellgate also decided to go partly FREE in Korea. Don’t be too excited. It’s not ALL FREE.

Act1 and Act2 is open for everyone who wants to experience Hellgate, and only players who choose go on are asked to pay. HanbitSoft introduced various types of price models with a huge bargain, up to 67% OFF at most!

To add, it seems that Hanbitsoft has finally clenched the deal with Flagship Studios and bought the IPs for Hellgate and Mythos. From the same blog:

HanbitSoft now owns both Hellgate: London, online action RPG and Mythos, casual MMORPG, once used to be developed by Flagship Studios. HanbitSoft now acquires IP (Intellectual Property) including the engines and source codes of both well made titles.

This means that HanbitSoft is now the owner of all the titles that Flagship Studios had been working on, and both titles will be developed in newly established studio in the U.S. HanbitSoft expects that full possession of these titles will not only bring them larger portion of the earnings but also upgrade the quality of contents fit for online games.

HanbitSoft had constantly tried to gain the IP of two titles after Flagship Studios shutdown. The company announced recently that the regarding issues are now all settled, and only thing left is to focus on developing the titles the best way possible.

“Hellgate: London is now HanbitSoft’s game, and we have already formed a team. They are doing hard work for updates and patches. Service in Asia including Korea is in good hands” said Gi-Young Kim, CEO of HanbitSoft, and added “I believe Mythos is a very attractive MMORPG, just gaining large fans from couple of beta tests. It has a lot of potential and it will also be developed at studio in San Francisco with Hellgate: London. Both titles will be presented soon with upgraded features.”

Enjoy all you Korean players. Hopefully Mythos will be available to the rest of us too!

Posted in HanbitSoft |

Hellgate London US/EU Servers Shutting Down Feb 1st

Directly from the Hellgate London website:

Posted in Electronic Arts, Flagship Seattle, Flagship Studios, Media, Namco, Ping0 |

Hellgate IAH Servers Finally Shut Down

In what would appear to be fairly obvious news to anyone involved with Hellgate, the IAH servers for the game (that’s the South East Asian ones) have finally been taken down. Here is a statement from the site.

Posted in Infocomm Asia Holdings |

Diablo 3 to not feature Lan

There was a MASSIVE topic here on Lan at one stage when it was announced that it wouldn’t be in HGL…

So thought some people might like to discuss what repurcussions if any would exist in Diablo 3 for not having it as per the latest announcement by Jay Wilson.

Link

This is from a translated interview by diablo3.4gamer.de

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Posted in General |

Runic Games’ Max Schaefer and Travis Baldree

While not strictly related to Blizzard, we’ve been following the progress of the former Flagship Studios’ developers, so this is relevant.

GameCyte has a new interview up with two of them who have started a new studio, Runic Games, who are Max Schaeferand Travis Baldree. The interview delves deep into why the company moved, why they think FSS failed like it did. It specifically mentions the current state of FSS right now as well. Specifically Max makes an emphasis on the fact that for all intents and purposes Flagship Studios is closed down, and Bill is just there to finish off the closure.

Max then goes on to talk about his brother and his involvement with the team. It then goes on to talk about if FSS had any chance of staying open. They then talk of the sorts of games they want to make with the new studios.

Next they talk about the game’s (Mythos) differentiation with Diablo 3 and Sacred 2, as well as the whole colour issue in Diablo 3. Lastly they mention that Namco at the moment is just handling the box sales of Hellgate London, but there is no current knowledge of what they plan to do with the game later.

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Posted in General, Interviews |

WarCry Network with Travis Baldree

WarCry network has posted up a new interview with Runic Games founder, Travis Baldree. He talks of the new studio, talks a little bit about Diablo 3 which may be their direct competition later, the sorts of games they want to make as well as what payment systems they are thinking of doing.

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Posted in General, Interviews |