Curt Schilling is not a moocher and looter, you guys:
In exclusive interviews with The Providence Journal, Schilling broke his silence, defending his beleaguered company and denying that he sought a government “bailout.”
Schilling’s controversial partnership with the State of Rhode Island was forged with $75 million in taxpayer-backed bonds two years ago. If 38 Studios fails, Rhode Island taxpayers will be liable to repay more than $100 million. Also, Schilling says, he stands to lose $50 million of the fortune he earned as a professional baseball player and committed to the venture. […]
Here’s what he told his hometown paper:
‘‘I have done whatever I can do to create jobs and create a successful business, with my own income,’’ he said. ‘‘Fifty million dollars, everything I’ve ever saved, has been put back into the economy. The $49 million from Rhode Island has been put back in the economy. I’ve never taken a penny and I’ve done nothing but create jobs and create economy. And so how does that translate into welfare baby? I’ve tried to do right by people.’’
Strapping young bucks buying T-bones with Food Stamps put money “back into the economy”. Welfare queens buying Cadillacs put money “back into the economy”. If that’s the new standard, bring it on, but cut the holier-than-thou I-Am-John-Galt bullshit.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, gosh, that’s different. He’s a white guy!
A white guy who thought he had a “WoW killer” and had no clue as to how much money it takes to even draw a two handed sword of WoW killing to attempt “WoW killing” Let alone succeed at it.
No one ever will, because no one is willing to spend the bucks and make the effort to do so. Cuts into hookers and blow, you know.
Bruuuuce
My sock bleeds for him.
Bloody welfare queens.
lacp
He’s got them on the hook for $100 million? For a fucking gaming company? How did they jam so much stupid into such a small state?
kdaug
And dancing into the MMO market with no experience in dev whatsoever?
Beyond dumb, for Schlling, RI, BHG and 38.
I’ve been in those trenches. It ain’t softball.
It’s fucking hard work.
Give me a console IP any day – takes MinSpecReqs off the radar, and you have backup QA from the manufacturer.
r€nato
@lacp:
North HaverbrookRhode Island – where themonorailvideo game development industry is king!dr. bloor
I don’t give a flying fig about Schilling–the Schilings of the world have always been with us, and always wll be. Rather, I want Don Carcieri’s head on a pike, because this is his personal goatfuck, and he’s skated on it thus far.
Gin & Tonic
@lacp: This deal was approved by the former governor, a “pro-business” Republican, and the Democrat-controlled legislature as a way to lure the company from Mass to RI. You could call it a bribe, although “that would be wrong.” Both the lege and the gov were starstruck by the Red Sox hero. They put out just like the homely chick who gets asked to the prom by the handsome quarterback.
The current gov was left holding a shit sandwich, as he was adamantly against this deal while he was campaigning, but it went through before he was elected.
As an RI taxpayer, I fervently hope Schilling loses everything he has and has to live in a cardboard box.
Violet
White men can’t be welfare moochers. Especially not white men who “tried to do right by people.’’
He tried. He tried so hard. It’s not his fault he failed. Curt Schilling can’t fail; he can only be failed.
Professor
When will these idiots learn? Capitalists – vulture or whatnots- do NOT creat JOBS, it is the CONSUMERS who creat DEMAND and thus JOBS!
MikeJ
Pity that they took BHG down with them.
If you can’t ship, you’re aren’t in the software business.
r€nato
Shorter Curt Schilling: stimulus works, but only when it’s done by white Republicans.
SatanicPanic
Schilling needs to take a refresher course in crony capitalism- you’re not supposed to put up your own money for your poorly conceived venture- that’s what the suckers and the government are for.
Villago Delenda Est
@Professor:
I expect they will learn this truth the day they crack open The Wealth of Nations.
That is, never.
lacp
Seeing as how he’s so underappreciated as a job creator ‘n shit, he’ll probably depart in a huff for Curt’s Gulch.
Maude
@Gin & Tonic:
I don’t even want him to have a box.
kdaug
@MikeJ:
Agreed.
Ah, but shipping is only the first step in the MMO biz. Then you have care and feeding – expansion packs, community relations, server upgrades, et.al.
The dev does not end with ship, it’s continuous.
And loud.
ETA: Those poor bastards in CR had nothing to do with bugs or the crappy design. Treat them with respect.
amk
In short, 100 million & 0 jobs ?
Villago Delenda Est
“When I think about the good love you gave me…”
Keith
From the sound of it, he didn’t put too many jobs into the economy.
rlrr
@amk:
Give me $100 million and I can guarantee more than 0 jobs created…
Rommie
If he’s really lost his shirt on this, you’ll be seeing him as an “expert analyst” on one of the baseball networks soon enough. He might have to downsize his mansion, but he’ll be fine. Too bad about the little people, he tried to guide the invisible hand for them!
@SatanicPanic:
He was trying to pull off the public money heist like a good job creator, but bungled it. I imagine he’s the target of dumb jock jokes in the CEO crowd for blowing the scam.
ruemara
@rlrr: $100 million and I’d have the funding for 3 businesses I’ve already worked out on paper. I hate rich people who do this nonsense. No one else gets shots like this except them.
mardam
I wish he’d succeeded. Those are real people without jobs, and that much less money going into other people’s jobs. Except now, the taxpayers pay again.
But it’s no different than “stimulus” or welfare, for that matter. The money goes into the economy.
I don’t know of any welfare or food stamp mothers with a nest egg under the mattress.
Tom Johnson
It’s good he put his own money up, too, but by working with government loans rather than venture capital, his equity share is preserved. His upside is a lot bigger with tax-payers accepting all that risk. Mr.Shilling, who was a great pitcher, needs to acknowledge that contribution to his substantial upside.
Violet
Any Rhode Islanders here? How is this playing with regular folks in that state?
Bulworth
Yeah, see. He didn’t put the $50 mill under his mattress. So there.
srv
Why isn’t there an Ayn Rand MMORGP?
MikeJ
@amk:
Zero jobs now. There were over 300 people working for him. Sadly some of those were from Big Huge Games, which had been a going concern for some years (and actually managed to ship games and make money.)
They bought a company founded by the guy who wrote Alpha Centauri and ran it into the ground.
middlewest
Where do the majority of welfare queens put their money: Switzerland or the Cayman Islands?
aimai
The RI taxpayers are paying off his debt to the bankers–not to anyone holding an actual job in production, severance pay, health care, etc…Schilling just looted the taxpayer’s purse for all that money. That he wasn’t smart enough to double it in fake loans like Mitt Romney would have is besides the point. The taxpayers are left holding the mortgage on a destroyed house, still owing the money. I always hated that grandstanding motherfucker. I’m sorry for RI but I’m glad that he didn’t pull anymore wool over the MA taxpayers–since I’m one of them.
aimai
Provider_UNE
A simple request: Can we stop using the Cadillac/Welfare meme?
I know that you know that it is a crock of shit, but to continue to repeat one of the most lingering dogwhistles from the Reagan era without the appropriate mockery as in; “Strapping young bucks buying T-bones with Food Stamps put money “back into the economy”. Welfare queens buying Cadillacs put money “back into the economy” I fear simply serves to perpetuate the myth.
And yes i know you have scare quotes around “back into the economy”, but i think we can find more topical examples to make the same point.
Sorry, seeing that shit just pisses me off. I came of age as a young black man during the Reagan administration and every time a story about crime or welfare came on the tv they were almost always accompanied by images of black folk.
There are other ways to make the point that Schilling is a hypocritic Fuckstain. You can make plenty of hay over his whining about how he gambled his life savings and lost, likely because he did not know what the fuck he was doing and now is asking for a sympathetic ear, when you know that he has in the past demonstrated little sympathy for people who were not born with his gifts.
Anyway, carry on.
…
middlewest
@srv: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_2#Multiplayer
Ben Cisco
The obvious problem here is that his taxes were too high.
\snark
Professor
@Tom Johnson: Are you sure he put his own money in that venture? Then he MUST be a fool! Normally, most of the seed money is borrowed (it is beneficial taxwise)so maybe your pension funds have skin in the game.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Public/private partnerships can work occasionally, but the more I read the more this sounds like it was a bad deal from the start. Most of the rage should be reserved for the idiots in the RI state government who greenlighted this deal (although Schilling obviously made promises he couldn’t keep).
Small software shops, especially gaming shops, are never more than one quarter away from going out of business completely. The margins are just too thin.
amk
teh twitter
Raven
My brother went to high school with him at Shadow Mountain. he was a dick then and he’s a dick now, fuck him.
Cato
Speaking of Looters and Moochers, after Scott Walker wins big in the Wisconsin recall, is it all over for public employee unions as we know it?
The Ancient Randonneur
With apologies to the late Steve Gilliard but, FTFRS!
MikeJ
@The Ancient Randonneur: It’s not the fault of the Sox. Besides, they’re suffering enough this year.
JoeShabadoo
It sounds like a collosal management screw up. They apparently already released a game that did better than expectations. of course management then increases the size of the company to an incredible degree to enter the cutthroatand expensive mmorpg market and then they cant even get it close to coming out the door.
I’m constantly amazed how people get loaned so much money (by private investors too) with a plan that just doesnt even come close to reality. Last I heard they were trying to sell their tax credits.
gbear
@Ben Cisco:
You might say that they’re ‘job killing high taxes’.
You might say that if you were a tool like John Boehner. But you’re not, lucky you.
amk
@JoeShabadoo: Heh, there is always facebook to “fall back” on.
gbear
@Cato: We do know that Scott Walker will continue to be a looter and a moocher, just as you say.
Whether he wins the electon or not. He’s on the wingnut welfare gravy train either way.
Provider_UNE
@Professor:
When will these idiots learn? Capitalists – vulture or whatnots- do NOT creat JOBS, it is the CONSUMERS who creat DEMAND and thus JOBS!
Fucking A…Ding, ding, ding!!!!!
Where would you like your personal portion of the internet deliverd, sir?
…
cckids
Schilling fucked up on Rule #1: NEVER PUT YOUR OWN MONEY IN THE SHOW.
Moron.
Jack Abramoff
@SatanicPanic: I would really like some muckrakers to open up some books to find out how much Schilling really “lost”. NWIH did he put in $50M, and likely closer to $0.
Bet you 10 to 1 end of the day all Schilling lost was “lost profits”, and that he was repaid his initial investment (likely a few $mill but NWIH $50M) from the Gov proceeds.
White Republicans dont lose money. Taxpayers lose money.
Gin & Tonic
@JoeShabadoo:
They don’t have tax credits to sell. They were hoping they’d get some from RI under a filmmaking program, but the gov said no dice. That’s why Schilling is blaming RI for this fiasco, rather than his own stupidity.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
clearly the problem is that schilling needed a cool headed advisor like lenny dykstra.
S. cerevisiae
@MikeJ: Suffering? Talk to a Twins fan.
cckids
@srv:
Because it was an insanely boring book with little plot & would make a snooze-inducing game.
ETA, blockquote fail, hope this works.
TenguPhule
Corrected.
slag
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
I very much share your skepticism of PPP, PPIP, etc, but I’m not sure this situation meets the criteria for being considered a partnership, per se. However, I really don’t understand this stuff on anything close to a technical level. On a philosophical level, I do find myself wanting government-business relationships to be strictly limited to serving the longer-term needs of the country.
For example, I’m on board with government loans that get us closer to meeting a national goal of achieving sustainable energy independence. Or even loans that get us closer to meeting a national goal of having more diverse businesses in lower income areas.
But loans that get us closer to meeting a national goal of having more professional sports players in the video game business? Not so much.
Violet
@TenguPhule:
Can you imagine what kind of martyr the wingnuts would turn Walker into if he “mysteriously dies in a car crash”?
Mudge
This sounds more like a Bain Capital enterprise than a business deal. Investing your own $50M? If he did, it was pure idiocy. No one, I repeat no one, creates a business to create jobs. Jobs are a necesary evil. For Schilling to say, nay whine, that shows how often and religiously he has drunk the Koolaid. But he wants us to know how noble his intentions were. Businesses are created to make money. The post understated his incredible greed in moving from MA to RI.
And if the taypayers are stuck with $100M, then we have another shining xample of privatize the profits, socialize the losses.
Appropriately filed, of course.
kdaug
@middlewest: Bioshock 2 ain’t an MMO.
PurpleGirl
So 38 Studios was not created out of nothing — Schilling bought an established game company (Big Huge Games) and changed the name. Was Schilling known as a gamer and geek? Or did he just look around and decided to buy a company and make profits? Just what did he understand about the sector and gamers? He’s looking more foolish and stupid all the time.
RSA
From the article:
That’s funny. Last week, according to the governor of RI, Schilling said he was “all in” and “tapped out”. Now he stands to lose $50 million of the fortune he earned?
Curt, normal business people either have money to put into their company or they don’t. And it’s not $50 million of some potentially much larger fortune. Get your story straight.
Southern Beale
Ay fucking men to that. You know who creates jobs? ACORN. Planned Parenthood. The ACLU. These places hire all sorts of people. But for some reason that’s never mentioned. How many people were made unemployed when ACORN was shut down? How many clinic workers and front office staff are now unemployed in Texas since Rick Perry shut down the women’s clinics there?
For that matter, I’m sick to death of people in Nashville pissing and moaning about the homeless people selling “The Contributor” on street corners. This is a newspaper produced by the homeless about homelessness and vendors sell them for donations on street corners all over town. Well, excuuuuse the hell out of me daring to live. Some folks would just prefer that the homeless stay hidden away and not be all in your face about it. They’ve been trying to outlaw them in some communities.
Everyone is always all like “Get a job!” and then when folks do they’re all like, “No, not THAT job!”
Fuckitall I’m sick of it.
Aet
@srv: There is; its called EVE.
It’s player-run banking system is routinely robbed for billions.
jl
I don’t understand how he blew through 75 plus 50 (?) million in two years (?) and has nothing at all now on a start up. But them I am lesser person, so have to be a little more careful about burn rates when I try to get some piddly little personal venture off the ground.
Any links explaining what the deal was about would be appreciated, for any one who knows about the computer game bizz and feels charitable.
In one of the links he blames Chafee for devastating his ‘puter game business with negative publicity. But Chafee never liked the deal, and was saying so before the deal got off the ground, if I remember correctly.
Zach
He’s lying. He loaned his company startup money and then paid himself back from the Rhode Island loans.
Bruce S
In an outburst of candor, Curt Schilling had this to say on the situation:
“What Government run/funded program in this country’s history has ever been run with an ounce of financial responsibility, prudence, or with the peoples best interest at the forefront? None, that’s which one.”
(Uh…back in 2010 when he was campaigning for Scott Brown and against “government run” health care. Video games, of course, are a special case, being essential to national security. Gamers are, from an early age, becoming skilled in the “right stuff” to operate our robot army of drones.)
MobiusKlein
@S. cerevisiae: Twins suffering? Talk to an A’s fan!
Bruce S
@slag:
You sound like a hater.
Which is, of course, a good thing in this particular context.
Walker
@PurpleGirl:
Yes. And in the pen-and-paper world he is highly respected — as a money guy. He has single handedly kept Advanced Squad Leader alive (by buying the rights and publishing it himself) since Avalon Hill went under and became this minor division of Hasbro that publishes Risk and Axis and Allies.
But his cred in the computer gaming space is much less, shall we say.
kdaug
@jl:
Start here.
MTiffany
Informed discussion? What informed discussion? (@9:15) http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/escapist-podcast/5767-046-38-Studios-Debacle-and-Gay-Superheroes
Walker
@kdaug:
I mentioned this is a previous thread when it came to light: How in Hell do you mistakenly thing your house was sold. Even if someone else sells it, you have to sign a crapload of stuff to complete the sale. In person.
Villago Delenda Est
What I don’t get is why a company with one published game would then immediately jump into the abyss that is MMOs? Blizz got VERY lucky (well, they made their own luck, actually) with WoW, their first MMO. Others not so much. But Blizz was a very well established gaming outfit with multiple seriously popular franchises, the most popular of which they used as the basis of their MMO.
Just doesn’t seem to make much sense. Someone with a brain must have cautioned them that jumping into the MMO market is just not smart. It’s a quantum leap that few dare to take.
Walker
@jl:
MMOs are goddamned expensive. You have to roll your backend to support it. There are no credible “engines” to support it. BioWare tried with the Hero Engine and that fiasco cost them three major revisions of their server architecture (damn thing looked pretty but scaled for crap).
And that is not even considering data center costs, as cloud platforms do not really support the latencies yet to handle these things (or if they do, it is not cost effective to use them).
As a general rule of thumb, a “WoW killer” is 200 million plus before you see a dime of revenue.
kdaug
@Walker: “Come to Rhode Island and work with Curt Schilling! We’ll sell your house for you! Don’t worry about it! You’ll get to work with Curt Schilling, and we’re making an awesome MMO that everyone will love! Trust us!”
Walker
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh I am sure that happened. MMOs are generally funded by a publisher. The fact that he was funding this out of this pocket/RI tax payer money meant that all the publishers told him “no”.
kdaug
@Walker:
In general, it’s ~135-150K subs.
You hit the inflection point, and you’re fine.
But like I said, this ain’t writing an app.
Post-launch work goes on forever.
TaMara (BHF)
Another thread where we shat on Schilling. These are my favorite flavor.
Aet
It’s not that they have nothing, its that the only produced one thing. They spent $100 million that only made back a fraction of that.
It didn’t do well with critics, who complained about the consistency of the plot and about how the game wasn’t really an open world. Fans of the fantasy genre were still engaged with Skyrim, which was considered one of the best games of 2011.
They tried to make an MMO, failed, then released what they _had_ made as a single-player game trying to recoup their losses. Anyone following the company a year ago knew the question wasn’t whether they would succeed, it was if they could break even given their initial massive misstep.
Aet
@kdaug: He’s talking investment, not subscribers.
Canuckistani Tom
@Aet:
And when you have a Randian MMO like EVE, you get stuff like this happening (Entries 7 & 1)
http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-7-biggest-dick-moves-in-history-online-gaming/
Walker
@Aet:
Yes. I meant dollars.
Villago Delenda Est
@kdaug:
This is something that the morons of Lucas Arts don’t get.
An MMO is forever. Futhermore, if you fuck it up, it haunts you until the end of time.
Gus
Who the hell signed off on this? A distinguished baseball career prepares you for a business career how?
thefncrow
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, they didn’t jump into the MMO game after producing one game. They jumped into the MMO game as their first game.
They started the studio working on this big MMO. Reckoning only happened because Big Huge Games was working on a fantasy RPG back while they were owned by THQ, and THQ hit some earlier money troubles and was on the verge of shuttering Big Huge Games if they couldn’t find a buyer. 38 Studios stepped in to buy Big Huge Games in order to change their existing fantasy RPG game into what became Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. They bought a mostly complete game and then had the game changed to fit into the same universe as their long-in-development MMO.
As to why they decided to do an MMO as their first game? From all accounts, Schilling was a huge WoW fan, so I figure he probably thought “Hey, I could do that and it’d be me making all this money!”.
r€nato
@jl:
so if only Chafee had clapped louder, it would have succeeded?
Just like Iraq?
kdaug
@Aet: @Walker:
Understood. A bit of transliteration on my part – I was unclear.
The 150K subs get you to sustainability.
Charlie Dodgson
@r€nato:
Well, the way the right-wingers on the Boston sports radio morning shift were spinning it, Schilling had investors lined up out the door to pony up more money, until Chafee scared them away… whereupon the business immediately went belly-up.
I’m not sure how the story goes after that — whether these investors wouldn’t have wanted a look at the company’s balance sheet before investing, or whether that wouldn’t have scared them off. (“Need cash today to make payroll” is usually a bit of a red flag.)
I haven’t got the patience to listen to these dunces for very long, so I don’t know why they think Schilling was a hero for “at least going out there and trying”, but Solyndra, which was trying to do something rather more useful, was a colossal scandal…
HyperIon
@TenguPhule: TP, someone always dies or comes to violence in your posts. I’ve been noticing this for years.
LanceThruster
This needs a Craig Nelson “I was on food stamps and nobody ever helped me!” hashtag.
elm
@Charlie Dodgson: Making a fantasy MMO is a pretty big red flag too.
Rule 0 of the Video Game industry: MMOs fail.
Villago Delenda Est
@Charlie Dodgson:
As elm said, the investors had to be idiots in the first place, because MMOs are about as investment quality for a startup firm as the craps table at Caesar’s.
If you do it right (ha!) what you do is make single player games, starting with the console platforms, then expanding to PC/Mac (with all the compatibility issues that raise their heads) then, after you’ve got a good franchise established in those two fields…your game publisher cred has been proven in the marketplace, and you’ve got a solid fan base for your franchise, with lore and so forth ready to roll, THEN you plunge into the MMO field. You need to have the basics covered before you try something as expensive and risky as an MMO. $200 million JUST to get it out the door, then years of ongoing development to see that investment returned.
JustMe
This wasn’t even a decent public-private partnership: this was a parasitic endeavor by the state to throw free money at a corporation in order to entice them away from one state into another. It wasn’t about fostering local talent or providing financing with hyper-local expertise that larger financers couldn’t/wouldn’t be in a position to do. It was crony capitalism at its finest.
Walker
Fixed for where the real money is these days. I have a number of students that have successful start-ups in this space.
Kathy in St. Louis
@SatanicPanic: I’d need to see the books on his business to believe that story, both sets.
jl
Thanks for the MMO (whatever that means) gaming info, folks.
All this weird ‘puter stuff is happening on earth, izzat right?
I will assume so until told otherwise.
Sounds like Schilling didn’t know what he was doing, except enough to get his money out while he could; and, as either commenter here or in one of the links said, only entity that did not mess up was the bank that signed the guaranteed loan.
Villago Delenda Est
@jl:
MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online game. World of Warcraft is the iconic example right now.
mark
bummer indeed
aa
Let’s just leave it there.
Argive
@Gus:
It doesn’t. Pro athletes try to make it big in business all the time, and they often fail. Some of them wind up doing quite well, such as Magic Johnson. But for every Magic, there are like 20 examples of poor guys like Mark Brunell, Terrell Owens, or Mets Legend (yes, I’m a Phillies fan) Lenny Dykstra.
Jason
There’s that personal responsibility and self-reliance Republicans talk about so much. Schilling discovered the truth of the old adage “Man who invests in video games = idiot”, and now he’s bravely
taking the consequencesbegging the state to bail him out of the hole he dug for himself.Jason
And in the pen-and-paper world he is highly respected—as a money guy. He has single handedly kept Advanced Squad Leader alive (by buying the rights and publishing it himself) since Avalon Hill went under and became this minor division of Hasbro that publishes Risk and Axis and Allies.
It’s said that MMP (which publishes ASL) runs at a loss, and Schilling subsidises it — but for what to him is pocket change. Which makes me wonder how this affects MMP now that Schilling has run out of money.