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Vapourware System Shock 3 by OtherSide Entertainment - taken over by Tencent!

MasterLobar

Angry OtherSide Refugee
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
358
Location
Killorn Keep
If you had $12 million, would you rather have the publishing rights for SS3 or this palace near Santa Monica (and $1 million left over)?

 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Warren Spector's talk at Reboot conference (which may be a part of the quest for the publisher I assume): http://www.rebootdevelopblue.com/schedule.pdf

(GMT+2)

SATURDAY 13.4.2019
12:30 - 13:30

Warren Spector, OtherSide Entertainment
Stay On Target: Game Goals and the Definition(s) of Success

Seems like the same subject he's been talked about last few years. I guess that GI (media partner) mark means this talk will be recorded or livestreamed.


Other talks of Codex interest:

THURSDAY 11.4.2019

11:30 - 12:30

Hrvoje Kelemenic, LGM
Starpoint Gemini 3: a Bold change in direction

11:30 - 12:30

Zeb West, Stoic
Banner Saga: Inception to Conclusion

16:00 - 17:00

Swen Vincke, Larian Studios
Publishing D:os 2

FRIDAY 12.4.2019

11:30 - 12:30

Justin Ma, Subset Games
Into the Breach & Lessons in Non-Attachment

15:00 - 16:00

Dave Gilbert, Wadjet Eye Games
Narrative design as character study: creating empathetic characters in Unavowed

16:00 - 17:00

Charles Cecil, Revolution Software Revolution - the next adventure: Beyond a Steel Sky

SATURDAY 13.4.2019

15:00 - 16:00

PANEL Heroes of the Narrative
Anne Toole, Charles Cecil moderated by Chris Avellone

MCA, the moderator.

All these talks except the Starpoint Gemini 3 one don't have that GI mark, so no luck for videos.
 

MasterLobar

Angry OtherSide Refugee
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
358
Location
Killorn Keep
At this point, any publisher who might be remotely interested in picking up SS3 is going to demand that OS management/owners invest at least $4 - 5 million of their own money in the development of SS3.

After what happened with UA, I can't imagine anyone being so dumb to believe what they say without them putting money where their mouths are.

But they are not going to do that. Their business model is to spend other people's money, throw a game against the wall and see if it sticks.

They aren't going to be so dumb to invest in their own game. Just looking for useful idiots they can fool.
 

Maggot

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 31, 2016
Messages
1,243
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
If this game comes out, what excuses will people come up with justifying the game being shit so they can continue to worship Warren "homo" Spector?
 

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,278
If this game comes out, what excuses will people come up with justifying the game being shit so they can continue to worship Warren "homo" Spector?

Probably that the team is full of lightweights, that they have no money, and Warren hasn't worked on a game in this genre since 2004.

Whenever I think about one of the "greats" coming back I always fantasize about the ideal scenario where they get all the funding they need, they aren't meddled with too much, and most importantly they de-rust a little by practicing with a less important IP first. Obviously this never happens.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
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Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,530
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Kelethin
Are the rights really that expensive? I don't think it is worth it. Hardly anyone even knows the name anymore so it is not likely to bring in a huge audience, especially when you consider how many people you could attract to some other game with that money. Also if a company is good enough to make a great version of that game, then they are good enough to make it with a different name. Like Prey. Or that other one with all the sequels that I always forget the name of.
 

MasterLobar

Angry OtherSide Refugee
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
358
Location
Killorn Keep
Are the rights really that expensive?

Yes, the deal with Starbreeze was $12 million and we know from Starbreeze disclosures that they spent $7 million until the end of 2018.

OS says the game is "more than halfway completed" and that took $7 million, so that means at least $5 million more to complete the project.

After cancelling the deal, OS must completely refund Starbreeze for what they spent so far.

At this point, OS has no money and doesn't make any money, so any new publisher would have to repay Starbreeze and provide the funding to complete the project. That's at least $12 million a publisher would have to provide.

What's more, OS has a record of failing to meet deadlines and overshooting budget targets (see UA) and there is likely a need to do a lot of marketing (you mentioned the franchise is not well known).

So I'd say any new publisher would have to chip in at least $15 million.

But they are still pretending this is going to go ahead :roll:
 

MasterLobar

Angry OtherSide Refugee
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
358
Location
Killorn Keep
Acer converts convertible loan to Starbreeze into shares.

https://se.investing.com/news/stock...rtering-av-konvertibellan-i-starbreeze-135871

The loan/bond was $7 million in 2016 and the conversion rate at the time fixed at ~$1.7 per share (close to the share price at the time) --- for simplicity SEK converted to US$ at a rate of about 10:1

That's of course a terrible deal for Acer, because the current shareprice is $0.08. They got 4 million class B shares, which is about 1.3% of the company (it has 329 million shares outstanding).

The shareprice jumped 50% after it was announced.

The article also says Starbreeze will continue business operations and the reconstruction period has been prolonged until June 2019.


So what does this mean for SS3?


(1)

The Starbreeze share jumped by 50% when the conversion was announced, because it wiped out $7 million of debt. When Starbreeze annouced that they are selling back SS3 to OS on Feb 11, the share price didn't move at all, although almost the same amount of money is at stake (Starbreeze disclosed they invested about $7 million in SS3 so far).

My reading is that the market doesn't expect that the $7 million will ever be paid back. Otherwise, the shareprice should have jumped up that day, because $7 million are coming in (and the remaining $5 million won't have to be spent on SS3). Everyone knows that after the cancellation of the SS3 deal, OS will be bankrupt soon and won't pay back a penny.

If OS was publicly listed, the shareprice would be zero. The only thing that'll keep them afloat for the next few weeks is the $3.5 million their owners provided in August 2018.


(2)

That also tells us Starbreeze's decision was not likely driven by the prospect of getting back the $7 million - they know these are sunk costs.

They cancelled the deal because they did not want to pay the remaining $5 million, because SS3 is a train wreck like UA that is going to bust its budget and is not going to release any time soon.

After almost two years of development OS has 3 screenshots and a 30-second trailer for SS3. They are desparately searching for a new publisher, but they have nothing else to show.

It was funny when the first abysmal pre-reviews on UA came out (Ars Technica etc.) last summer that said it would take at least a year to finish the game and the UA Beta was released a little later, the OS forum went bust with speculation about OS holding back progress and that they aren't showing what they actually have to surprise people at launch. It all turned out to be BS.

OS had nothing other than the broken Beta. For SS3, they don't even have an alpha. They have nothing.


(3)

Starbreeze isn't going out of business. In the reconstruction period, they are continuing both game development and their publishing business.

We’re now focusing the business towards a portfolio consisting of a mix of internally developed games and publishing titles.

https://www.starbreeze.com/2018/12/...ess-internal-game-development-and-publishing/

They didn't cancel the SS3 deal because they desparately need the money. They could have sticked to the project and scrambled up the remaining $5 million. They are actually investing in their publishing business with other cooperation partners (e.g., Pay Day).

https://www.starbreeze.com/2019/02/...es-with-starbreeze-on-new-payday-mobile-game/

So why did they abandon a "more-than-half-way-completed" project in which they poured $7 million already which they know they are never getting back? Because the money was wasted. They don't believe in SS3 anymore, and they know everything about the real state of SS3.
 

glass blackbird

Learned
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Messages
664
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Running behind was a common story ever since the old days. The difference is the all nighters and people thinking things over 24/7 and fully dedicating themselves, nobody does that shit anymore, it's just not trendy.

Now they just lock themselves in offices to cry and go tattle to Kotaku whenever they get yelled at.
100-hour workweeks for a month or so is genuinely awful, I don't know why you'd defend that shit
 

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,278
Running behind was a common story ever since the old days. The difference is the all nighters and people thinking things over 24/7 and fully dedicating themselves, nobody does that shit anymore, it's just not trendy.

Now they just lock themselves in offices to cry and go tattle to Kotaku whenever they get yelled at.
100-hour workweeks for a month or so is genuinely awful, I don't know why you'd defend that shit

Because there's no other way to make up for a slow start.
But if people want to make low-effort Bioshock clones or just shovel shit out there when it's not finished like UA, then I won't stop them, or "defend" anything that would stop them from doing it.
 

glass blackbird

Learned
Patron
Joined
Apr 9, 2015
Messages
664
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
yes, when poor project management on the part of the higher-ups forces people to work so hard for so long that they have mental breakdowns or kill themselves, I blame the workers who should really just suck it up and stop bitching.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,787

'immersive sim' is such a cancer buzzword. I needs to fucking die

system shock was sci-fi ultima underworld on a spaceship. no one gives a shit if you can bake bread & pick up empty bottles. People want complex, well realized space dungeon, just like the other two.

What exactly is the problem with this term? They created it. Maybe it's not the most creative name but at least you use it to refer to games like Deus Ex 1/Dishonored/Prey 2017/Dark Messiah/Arx Fatalis/Thief/System Shock/Ultima etc.or games that have certain elements from the ones mentioned. Again, maybe the name is stupid but it stuck and most people know what you're referring to when you use that term.


The Ultima Underworld's, Arx Fatalis, Deux Ex, the System Shocks, all action RPGs, no need to call them immersive Sims. Thief is a different genre from them
 

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,278
yes, when poor project management on the part of the higher-ups forces people to work so hard for so long that they have mental breakdowns or kill themselves, I blame the workers who should really just suck it up and stop bitching.
I see you're very attached to the idea of people shovelling out shit after working millenial hours.
I wish they'd stop trying if they aren't going to try. Shit like UA has no excuse, and you don't need Electronic Arts business practices to do better, just a few people on the team that give a shit.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
From Disco party:

Moving from #ua-general , it's nice to see that the Shock3 team has everything outlined for the entire game already. Makes it a lot easier to design levels and plan systems and narrative interactions instead of making the level based on the mechanics and then plopping lore in later

We have a couple of offers already as I understand it; just need to pick our priorities.

Also, seems like there's been a shift; Starbreeze was happy with us publishing PC first and then worry about console later, such as with UA. But it seems our newer publishers are interested in a PC-Console simultaneous launch

so that will have to be considered for the budget and dev time
 

BEvers

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
808
Apparently is was a trade:

Untitled.png
 

MasterLobar

Angry OtherSide Refugee
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
358
Location
Killorn Keep
I predicted that a month ago.

I predict: After the console version (contractual obligation for 505) is out, OS Boston is going to be closed as a cost-cutting measure and the UA and SS3 teams are going to be merged to make more progress to be shown to potential publishers.

Won't save the studio, though. They are doomed.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Why, this is pretty natural thing to do with multiple teams, regardless of a company is being successful or not. (So that I guessed, not saying "predicted", months or a year ago they will share developers. And I think Sam or someone from Otherside has been saying that they will do this from months ago.) Since production cycles.
 

MasterLobar

Angry OtherSide Refugee
Joined
Feb 17, 2019
Messages
358
Location
Killorn Keep
LESS T_T I posted before I saw that it was a swap. Still, I predicted a month ago and I say now that OS Boston is going to be shut down soon. I'd say by June this year.
 

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