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You are here: Home / In for a Schilling

In for a Schilling

by DougJ|  June 23, 20127:42 pm| 89 Comments

This post is in: Going Galt

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I’m from one of those Boston families that hears things around the courthouse, and other places. They told me a little while ago that Curt Schilling was going to lose all his money on this video game thing — it looks like has. They also said he might be serious legal trouble due to some financial improprieties (some funny business with the houses of employees of Studio 38). We’ll see if that comes to pass.

What’s clear is that he is a fuck-up and a clown, even relative to the standards of other Randroid parasites. My favorite of his claims is that some other chump would have pissed eight figures down this drain if soshulist Linc Chafee hadn’t put the kibosh on it:

Schilling also accused Chafee of failing to work with an investor who was willing to put $15 million to $20 million into the company to help it succeed. He said the investor walked away because of Chafee’s inaction.

Tbogg nails it:

Hey, what investor wouldn’t want to sink another $15 to 20 million into a video game company that had already burned through over $100 million in less than two years?

Isn’t it just like a winger to run things into the ground and blame it on someone else?

If only Chafee had clapped louder….

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Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Keith

    June 23, 2012 at 7:49 pm

    For reference, Rockstar Games burned through $100 million to produce Grand Theft Auto IV (and made over half a billion in sales). But then, the Housers *really* know what makes a good game.

    And, oh, yeah, GTA IV consists of an entire city the size of New York (and based on it), with thousands of people going about their business within it, more than a hundred locations you can visit, including a car dealership and clothing stores, along with about twenty radio and TV stations you can watch/listen to, including DJs and sitcoms.

  2. 2.

    Martin

    June 23, 2012 at 7:50 pm

    Burning $100M is par for the course in top game firms. However, they’re burning that money on proven franchises.

    The funny business with the houses is that he told employees that the company would sell their homes for them as part of a relocation deal. Turns out the company didn’t do that, didn’t make the payments, and now the employees are learning that they’re in foreclosure and their credit rating has gone to shit.

    Oh, and they have no jobs, too.

  3. 3.

    MikeBoyScout

    June 23, 2012 at 7:51 pm

    Wait! What?
    Damn! I was going to invest throw away my money into the shilling enterprise.

  4. 4.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    June 23, 2012 at 7:51 pm

    How do you do that though? How do you actually spend $100 million in less than two years? I mean what the fuck were you spending it on?

  5. 5.

    satanicpanic

    June 23, 2012 at 7:57 pm

    You liberals just don’t take responsibility for yourselves like conservatives do.

  6. 6.

    Quaker in a Basement

    June 23, 2012 at 7:59 pm

    That’s a gambler mentality: Sure, I’ve been on a losing streak, but my luck is changing, I swear. I got a system, see? Just let me slide another week and I’ll pay you back.

  7. 7.

    robertdsc-PowerBook

    June 23, 2012 at 8:03 pm

    @Keith:
    And it’s an incredibly involving game. There are so many things to do other than what you mention.

    I’ve completed it to 100% and had a great time doing so.

  8. 8.

    shortstop

    June 23, 2012 at 8:10 pm

    @Martin: That was the rumor, but it doesn’t pass the smell test. Employees turned their homes over to Schilling and trusted him to sell them–without contracts, documentation, paper trails, or monitoring of mortgage payments? If this is true, these are the dumbest people on the face of the earth.

  9. 9.

    The Dangerman

    June 23, 2012 at 8:18 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    How do you do that though? How do you actually spend $100 million in less than two years?

    WHY do you do that though? He had a long career; he must have had a nice little nestegg. Why burn through it on a crap shoot? I understand the concept of must get more, but I also understand the concept of must protect against ending up fucked.

  10. 10.

    GxB

    June 23, 2012 at 8:20 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: Hookers ‘n’ Blow

  11. 11.

    GxB

    June 23, 2012 at 8:25 pm

    Check out comment #28 by Crosstimbers – should be disseminated far and wide.

    On almost every occasion, when I listen to what the ultra-conservatives or libertarians are complaining about, and let it stew and simmer down to it’s essence, it is that their freedom to dupe, cheat, destroy their fellow citizens is limited by government. Their concept of a nation is something like a fenced off Serengeti for social Darwinism. They squeal when they discover that they are just one of the wildebeests.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    June 23, 2012 at 8:27 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: It’s not unusual for a really big video game to cost that much. Basically, big video games involve creating a large and detailed game world, with a whole bunch of things going on. You need a cast of thousands to pull that off. Artists to create every last square inch of world, writers to populate it with interesting events, programmers, am army of testers to try to make sure the whole thing actually works, etc. The cost adds up fast.

  13. 13.

    Coco Laboy

    June 23, 2012 at 8:30 pm

    @GxB: He should have designed the game around that and got Charlie Sheen to endorse it

  14. 14.

    Keith

    June 23, 2012 at 8:43 pm

    @The Dangerman: At a minimum, he should have been working on a baseball-related game (and hoped EA would buy him out), since at least he knows something about it. But instead he decided to produce some kind of fantasy RPG…he might as well have started up a restaurant. At least he would have had a strong chance of losing a few million dollars instead. Hell, he would have lost less money actually spending it all on hookers/blow.

  15. 15.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    Free Enterprise = Privatize profits, Socialize losses. It’s a win, win because……………

  16. 16.

    DougJ

    June 23, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    @robertdsc-PowerBook:

    Everyone says it’s a good game.

  17. 17.

    JGabriel

    June 23, 2012 at 8:51 pm

    DougJ @ Top:

    My favorite of his claims is that some other chump would have pissed eight figures down this drain if soshulist Linc Chafee hadn’t put the kibosh on it…

    I’m sure Chafee feel just awful that it’s all his fault Curt Schilling might not be worth tens of millions anymore.

    DougJ:

    Everyone says it’s a good game.

    The story and script were by R. A. Salvatore, who’s a known progressive and Kossack.

    Strange bedfellows.

    .

  18. 18.

    Michael57

    June 23, 2012 at 8:52 pm

    As a Yankee fan, I still respected most of the Sox, but I always thought that Schilling was a total douchebag. When people would rag me about A-Rod, I would rag them about Curt. So glad he’s back in the damn news!

  19. 19.

    gnomedad

    June 23, 2012 at 8:52 pm

    @GxB:

    On almost every occasion, when I listen to what the ultra-conservatives or libertarians are complaining about, and let it stew and simmer down to it’s essence, it is that their freedom to dupe, cheat, destroy their fellow citizens is limited by government.

    Or they are Tea Party sad sacks who imagine that if the Job Creators were given one more tax cut, they would be deputized to get in on the duping, cheating, and destroying.

  20. 20.

    Yutsano

    June 23, 2012 at 8:57 pm

    @The Dangerman: He was a huge Evercrack/WoW player and he wanted to create his own bigger badder version because of WOW! Plus he’s fucking Curt Schilling, the man farts unicorns and rainbows! Just ask him!

  21. 21.

    The Dangerman

    June 23, 2012 at 8:57 pm

    @Keith:

    At a minimum, he should have been working on a baseball-related game…

    I haven’t monitored the details; it wasn’t a baseball game?! He might be the biggest asshole ever.

  22. 22.

    JGabriel

    June 23, 2012 at 8:59 pm

    @Martin:

    The funny business with the houses is that he told employees that the company would sell their homes for them as part of a relocation deal. Turns out the company didn’t do that, didn’t make the payments, and now the employees are learning that they’re in foreclosure and their credit rating has gone to shit.

    So Schilling made committments and didn’t keep them? He lied?

    Sounds like a Mitt Romney Republican.

    .

  23. 23.

    PreservedKillick

    June 23, 2012 at 9:00 pm

    The company was apparently more than $100MM in the red.

    You have to wonder if Schilling has even one thin red dime left to rub together, especially since he’s probably personally liable for all the unpaid wages. If he doesn’t end up actually, you know, in jail before this is over.

    At the end of the day, that is what is most mystifying to me – any sane company would have shut down well before NOT PAYING THE EMPLOYEES.

    And Schilling is, quite simply, nuts if he thought that anyone was going to invest in that streaming pile. They’d simply wait for the inevitable to happen, as it quickly did, and pick up whatever assets they wanted for pennies on the dollar (as they soon shall.)

    Truly impressive mismanagement.

  24. 24.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    @Michael57: How many times has A-Rod had a bloody sock? Now A-Rod can claim that he’s a few threesomes and Schilling probably thinks that means something else.
    I really hate folks like Schilling who think the Government owes them a living. What does he drive a cadillac or something.

  25. 25.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:03 pm

    @JGabriel: free enterprise.. free enterprise

  26. 26.

    PreservedKillick

    June 23, 2012 at 9:04 pm

    @JGabriel:

    IIRC, the company paid the mortgages while it was trying to sell the houses.

    The houses didn’t sell, which would not have been a problem, except the company stopped paying (they also stopped paying for health insurance and actual, you know, salaries, too).

    Then it was a problem.

  27. 27.

    dr. bloor

    June 23, 2012 at 9:06 pm

    @efgoldman:

    ETA: And the governor of MA is looking like a genius for not touching the Schilling deal with a ten-foot baseball bat.

    Actually, the citizens of MA look like a genius for electing a governor with a pulse and functional cortex. Don Carcieri might have been the only governor north of the Mason-Dixon line dumb enough to bite on Schilling’s money hole.

  28. 28.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:08 pm

    My brother went to high school with him, asshole then and asshole now. Xin Loi douche.

  29. 29.

    BGinCHI

    June 23, 2012 at 9:09 pm

    When government invests in roads and education it’s a waste of money, socialism, a burden on taxpayers.

    When the government invests on a video game enterprise captained by an uneducated ex-athlete who railed against government spending, it’s an investment.

    It’s the gap between those two statements that haunts our national discourse and is the reason we are headed toward the dustbin/shitter of history.

  30. 30.

    Violet

    June 23, 2012 at 9:09 pm

    @shortstop:

    Employees turned their homes over to Schilling and trusted him to sell them—without contracts, documentation, paper trails, or monitoring of mortgage payments? If this is true, these are the dumbest people on the face of the earth.

    Exactly. If they did this, they are idiots. Now, if they’ve got signed documents saying the company was going to do this, and the company failed to do it, that’s something else entirely.

    A company selling a house for an employee if the company requires them to move isn’t unheard of. My dad was relocated from one city to another city with the company he worked for and the company sold their house for them. This was decades ago, though, so I don’t don’t if that kind of thing is still done. I know it used to be done.

  31. 31.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    June 23, 2012 at 9:11 pm

    @JPL:

    I think that there’s a point where a certain type of person accumulates enough wealth and power that they expect government (and us proles) to bend to their will. They expect tax breaks to locate their businesses somewhere, public money to back and build their pet projects that they siphon everything out of for themselves, workers who will work at slave wages and so on.

    They have POWER and dammit, they want to use it to their advantage. Never mind that they are asking for welfare and free banking services, they have money so they deserve it!

    They usually get it too, at least until they do a Schilling.

  32. 32.

    BGinCHI

    June 23, 2012 at 9:11 pm

    @Raven: I assume you are posting from the Five Eight show.

  33. 33.

    Violet

    June 23, 2012 at 9:14 pm

    From an article on Boston.com, dated today:

    When 38 Studios moved to Providence a year ago, it offered to help workers relocate by selling their homes for them and taking over the mortgage payments. But the company’s relocation company was unable to sell seven homes, including the younger Salvatore’s in Leominster, and told workers last week they are now responsible for the payments. Bryan Salvatore declined to comment.

    So they hired a relocation company. You’d think there would be some kind of paperwork and contracts associated with that.

  34. 34.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:14 pm

    @BGinCHI: We bailed, it’s hot’n mofo and I don’t go without my doggies. We watched Emma instead! Bitch gettin old.

  35. 35.

    Roger Moore

    June 23, 2012 at 9:17 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    How do you actually spend $100 million in less than two years?

    Easy; it’s probably easier to burn through that much money when you’re on a deadline than if you have lots of time. When you’re on a deadline, you throw money at problems to make them go away. It can work, but it’s risky.

  36. 36.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    @Odie Hugh Manatee: I agree and I think it’s only fair that they pee in a cup for every 500 dollars they want. In fact I think a daily pee is necessary because they could be having wine and martinis at home. If they can afford wine and martinis then they certainly can afford to do without govmint help. Is there a test for caviar?

  37. 37.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:20 pm

    @Roger Moore: If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter!

  38. 38.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    June 23, 2012 at 9:21 pm

    Just been watching the Romney brothers on Conan. Can I ask a question? What do the Romney brothers do for a living? I have never actually seen that reported anywhere? Do they live off Daddy’s money or do they actually work for a living?

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    June 23, 2012 at 9:22 pm

    @Keith:

    At a minimum, he should have been working on a baseball-related game (and hoped EA would buy him out), since at least he knows something about it.

    In fairness, Schilling has been in the gaming business for quite a while. He got hooked on Advanced Squad Leader something like 20 years ago and wound up buying out the company that developed it when they decided to stop; AFAIK he was moderately successful doing it. My impression is that his bigger problem is that he bit off more than he could chew, not that he was a completely hopeless novice.

  40. 40.

    JGabriel

    June 23, 2012 at 9:24 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    What do the Romney brothers do for a living? … Do they live off Daddy’s money or do they actually work for a living?

    Whether or not they work, they still live off Daddy’s money. Most jobs don’t pay enough to afford the lifestyle they’re accustomed to.

    .

  41. 41.

    Jamey

    June 23, 2012 at 9:24 pm

    I still haven’t seen Schilling’s long-form birth certificate…

  42. 42.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:25 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: As real patriots they have been campaigning for their Dad because then they know America will be great again. In fact in 2008 they made mention their job was more important than serving overseas… They are Sarah’s patriots.

  43. 43.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:25 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt: One of them (not sure which one) has his own hedge fund firm, in partnership with Daddy and someone else from Bain (I think). Who knows about the others.

  44. 44.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:27 pm

    @Jamey: duh…he is white and we don’t ask that of the white folks.. Please get with the program.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    June 23, 2012 at 9:27 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    Do they live off Daddy’s money or do they actually work for a living?

    They work trying to grow daddy’s big pot of money.

  46. 46.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:30 pm

    @PurpleGirl: From a site called wiki.answers:

    Mitt Romney has five sons, Tagg, Matt, Josh, Ben, and Craig.

    Tagg Romney is a Managing Partner at Solamere Capital. He co-founded the company and has previously worked as Chief Marketing Officer for the Los Angeles Dodgers, VP of onfield marketing at Reebok, and Director of Strategic Planning at Elan Pharmaceuticals. Tagg founded and subsequently sold Season Perks. Tagg worked for each of his father’s three political campaigns. He also worked for several years as a consultant at both Monitor Group and McKinsey and Co. Tagg graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Economics from Brigham Young University and earned his MBA from Harvard Business School.

    Matt Romney works as Vice President of Strategy and Investments at Excel Realty Holdings. He was previously a Project Manager for Microsoft Corporation and held marketing and project management positions for Polaroid Corporation and Lavastorm, Inc. Matt received a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University.

    Josh Romney is a Real Estate Developer and owner of Romney Ventures. Previously he worked as an Acquisition Analyst for Intercontinental Real Estate. He has considered going into politics and currently serves as an advisor to Utah Governor Gary Herbert. He also helped his dad with his 2008 Presidential Campaign. Like his older brothers, he got his BA from Brigham Young University and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

    Ben Romney is a Medical Student who also got his Bachelors Degree from Brigham Young University.

    Craig is an Advertising Music Producer. He got his Bachelors Degree from Brigham Young University as well.

    Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_kind_of_jobs_does_Mitt_Romney's_son_have#ixzz1yfbhQgd5

  47. 47.

    Darkrose

    June 23, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    @JGabriel:

    The story and script were by R. A. Salvatore, who’s a known Kossack.

    And a cringe-inducing writer. And I say this as someone who owns the first few Drizzt books.

  48. 48.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    OT: Today is what would have been Alan Turing’s 100th birthday. Go to Google for a neat animated logo in honor of Turing.

  49. 49.

    Anoniminous

    June 23, 2012 at 9:32 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    How do you actually spend $100 million in two years?

    At $136,986.30 a day.

    (The quote isn’t exact so the money pissed-away-per-day isn’t right because it’s hard work going out and finding out facts, true facts, unalterably unquestionable facts and figuring out which of ’em are untrue facts … and math. MATH! Too. Also.)

  50. 50.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    June 23, 2012 at 9:33 pm

    What Sean, Rush, O’Reilly, couldn’t hook a brother up when he was on the hook?? Where was the invisible hand or the ghost of Ayn Rand? Will Curtis Maximus write a mea culpa book and become a born again socialist?

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    June 23, 2012 at 9:33 pm

    @JPL:

    They are Sarah’s patriots.

    ‘

    Say what you will about Sarah Palin, you can’t hold that against her. Track put his ass on the line in Iraq, and there’s no hint that she pulled strings or anything to try to protect him.

  52. 52.

    Walker

    June 23, 2012 at 9:35 pm

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    He was working on a “WoW killer”. Those are 300 million dolars before launch (and before you see a dime of revenue). You do notdo these without heavy guaranteed backing. Such as Bioware had for SWTOR; and look how that is turning out.

  53. 53.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:37 pm

    @Roger Moore: IIRC, the boy was in some amount of local trouble and it was advised that he join the army instead of spending time in jail. A time-honored low-income American tradition for troublesome sons.

  54. 54.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:37 pm

    @PurpleGirl: Smile when you say that.

    “Got in a little hometown jam
    So they put a rifle in my hand
    Sent me off to a foreign land . . .”

  55. 55.

    amk

    June 23, 2012 at 9:41 pm

    @Roger Moore: Didn’t “track” run off to military to avoid some police problem in alaaassska ?

    ETA: PurpleGirl beat me to it.

  56. 56.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:41 pm

    @Raven: Yes, I smile at the thought. My brother spoke to the Air Force recruiter before starting college, thinking that if he didn’t succeed with college, the Air Force was better than the Army. Lots of boys made such plans back during Vietnam.

  57. 57.

    Walker

    June 23, 2012 at 9:41 pm

    @DougJ:

    It was a pretty good game. The problem is that is not where the money went. That game was a money raiser for the MMO they were working on.

    There is a reason Epic “bought” Big Huge Games (the division of 38 Studios that made Kingdoms of Amalur), , and not the rest of 38 studios (e.g the Rhode island branch working on the MMO). And by bought I mean “immediately hired everyone in that studio after they were laid off and made a new studio).

  58. 58.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:42 pm

    @PurpleGirl: Yea, fuckers got TDY pay ALL the damn time!

  59. 59.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:51 pm

    @Roger Moore: I definitely agree with you but because of stupid pranks he had a choice of jail or the army. He made the wise choice. It’s not as though he signed up willingly though.

  60. 60.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:53 pm

    @Raven: My brother saw some time in Vietnam and a little time in the Aleutians but spent most his time at Clarke AFB in the Philipines.

  61. 61.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:54 pm

    @JPL: I had the same choice and it was willingly. That’s what a choice is.

  62. 62.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 9:56 pm

    @PurpleGirl: Getting TDY pay and hangin in Olangapo City! :)

  63. 63.

    PurpleGirl

    June 23, 2012 at 9:57 pm

    On the topic: At the rate Schilling was spending money, I think another 20 or 30 million wouldn’t have lasted all that long. Maybe 2 or 3 months. And he’d be back in the same situation of needing money and the MMO wouldn’t have been finished or ready for players.

  64. 64.

    JPL

    June 23, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    @Raven: I definitely understand that, the problem was that his mom didn’t protect him. She couldn’t. It does not diminish his service, it diminishes hers.

  65. 65.

    catclub

    June 23, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    “I spent a fortune on liquor, fast cars and fast women. The rest I wasted.”

    Is one of my favorite quotes.

  66. 66.

    Darkrose

    June 23, 2012 at 10:00 pm

    @DougJ: The one person I know who played it said it was good. The timing was bad, though, especially for starting a new franchise; a lot of people were either still playing Skyrim, or waiting for Mass Effect 3 and Diablo III.

  67. 67.

    Raven

    June 23, 2012 at 10:01 pm

    @JPL: Yea and all that “thank you for your service” shit is just that, shit.

    Pick up “When Trumpets Fade” about the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest. Very interesting look at “bravery”.

  68. 68.

    Darkrose

    June 23, 2012 at 10:02 pm

    @Walker: As soon as the words “WoW Killer” were mentioned, their funding should have been yanked on grounds of stupidity.

  69. 69.

    alex milstein

    June 23, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    An article about Schilling in Business Insider says he is:

    “…blaming the government for refusing to give the company tax credits…”

    I love the GOP mentality. Government assistance is OK when I need it for my business, but not OK for someone who is let go from my business when I screw things up.

  70. 70.

    Walker

    June 23, 2012 at 10:29 pm

    @Darkrose:

    I don’t disagree.

  71. 71.

    Jay C

    June 23, 2012 at 10:45 pm

    OK, a serious question: while it certainly sounds like Curt Schilling is likely to be extraodinarily full of crap about his boondoggle “just needing another $20MM” or whatever to make it: can anyone say that he really IS wrong? I know absolutely zippedy-squat about the VG industry, but on general business principles, it’s rarely likely that a properly-run development project will run through it’s budget up to 100%, and then need just 110 or 115% to hit it big. Or is the gaming biz different?

  72. 72.

    catclub

    June 23, 2012 at 10:57 pm

    @Raven: The post WWII GI Bill was an anomaly. The Bonus Army was a response to the usual treatment.
    Which later famous General had his first taste of ‘combat’ against them?
    ETA:Eisenhower, Patton and MacArthur were involved in the attack on the Bonus Army.

    Mistreating ex-soldiers may not be unique to the US, but it is endemic.

  73. 73.

    sdhays

    June 23, 2012 at 10:57 pm

    According to this Ars Technica article (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/schilling-says-hes-tapped-out-after-38-studios-implosion/), the man doesn’t even understand why people would suggest that he’s a hypocrite:

    “I’m not sure where my stance and opinion in that we need a smaller government—I’m not sure how that correlates to this,” he said. “The program was there for local businesses to use. … That money was literally coming out of the budget into our company, going right back into the local economy.”

    Smaller government = government taxing other people to give to me to put “right back into the local economy”

    What. An. Asshole.

  74. 74.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    June 23, 2012 at 10:57 pm

    @alex milstein:

    Hey! They’re rich and should be allowed to gamble with others money and lives! They need to make more money…

    to bribe the politicians for more money.

    We’re only voters, we aren’t worth much to them except at election time. In fact, the more the politicians and wealthy assholes discourage voters, the more control they can exert over the system via the smaller pool of voters that they need to influence.

  75. 75.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    June 23, 2012 at 11:04 pm

    I definitely agree with you but because of stupid pranks dealing meth he had a choice of jail or the army.

    @JPL: FTFY since I’m such a nice guy.

    I might note that Americans who are not the sons of state governors don’t get offered such good deals.

  76. 76.

    Mnemosyne

    June 23, 2012 at 11:47 pm

    I realize that Lincoln Chafee will never become a Democrat, but he does seem to have become genuinely independent from the Republican Party, which is nice to see. I liked how he told the right-wingers who were upset that Rhode Island had a state “holiday” tree and not a “Christmas tree” to go fuck themselves.

  77. 77.

    shortstop

    June 23, 2012 at 11:57 pm

    @Forum Transmitted Disease: Was it dealing meth? I thought he took out the entire school district’s buses or somesuch.

  78. 78.

    redshirt

    June 24, 2012 at 12:07 am

    Some advice, RI: Just open a casino in Providence to pay for this loan. Easy money.

  79. 79.

    GregB

    June 24, 2012 at 12:43 am

    Schilling is making Lenny Dykstra look like Gordon Gekko.

  80. 80.

    Dexter's new approach

    June 24, 2012 at 12:46 am

    “Free market” defeats Schilling, taxpayers.

    He’s gone bust and and took more tax $s than he ever paid – and he’ll never make enough going forward to be a net tax payor. I guess that makes him a worthless parasite.
    (“It hurts doesn’t it? Your hopes dashed, your dreams down the toilet…”)

    Normally I feel bad when a small business fails. But he learned a valuable lesson: it’s hard to bootstrap to success even with $50m and celebrity leverage if you’re not that smart.

  81. 81.

    isildur

    June 24, 2012 at 1:53 am

    @Jay C: It’s not really likely that the game only needed another $20M. In game development, money buys time. You’re paying for staff, and that’s it. When you go through $100M in two years, another $20M is going to get you about four and a half months of additional development time.

    If you’re shipping a major AAA online title, you need about three months to do a final polish pass and get your launch infrastructure set up. What that means is that you should have a working, playable, feature-complete game, with all its core content in place, before those three months start.

    If they had that, all they’d have to do is show the product to any major publisher and it would be snapped up in a heartbeat. Publishers love when someone else sinks $100M into a project and then turns the project over to them on the cheap.

    Since that didn’t happen, I have to assume they were nowhere near shipping the game. If I had to guess, I’d say they were a year out, minimum. Things I’ve heard from people in the industry suggest that’s about right.

    What was actually happening: if you can get $20M, you buy three or four months of time to round up more investors. It’s not going to get you across the finish line, but it’s going to give you enough gas to keep driving a little further.

    When a project goes off the rails like this, it’s always a result of incompetence on the part of the producers. You can make a WoW-killer, and you can even do it for $100M, but you need great designers and really competent, focused producers to keep everyone focused. Most game studios are lucky to have even one great designer or competent producer.

    (eta: I’m speaking from the experience of having been both a lead designer and a producer in the game industry.)

  82. 82.

    Shalimar

    June 24, 2012 at 2:09 am

    Schilling also accused Chafee of failing to work with an investor who was willing to put $15 million to $20 million into the company to help it succeed.

    How would another $15-20 million have helped the company succeed? If it’s true that they were at least a year away from completing their big MMO, then that amount of money wasn’t going to get them close to pulling in the revenue to match their expenses.

  83. 83.

    johnny gentle famous crooner

    June 24, 2012 at 2:28 am

    Not that Schilling isn’t a clown, but let’s at least keep in mind that 300 employees all lost their jobs when the company went down.

    There’s a big difference between “Schilling is a moron and a shitty businessman” and “Ha ha! Your stupid company got pwned!”

    Not that people here are making the latter type of comment, but I’m just mentioning it.

  84. 84.

    Villago Delenda Est

    June 24, 2012 at 4:28 am

    “WoW killer” is a blurb on a PowerPoint slide you show to potential investors. Sort of the same trick that Qui-Gon Gin used on Watto. You appeal to their greed to get what you want…more money for development.

    The problem is, WoW is an anomaly. As Isildur points out above, you need to have great designers and seriously competent producers. Blizzard was fortunate to have that. Having great designers is not enough…that’s what crippled Star Wars Galaxies. They didn’t have the production talent to go with their world class design team.

    The thing is, players know all this. But people on the outside of the MMO ghetto don’t get it.

  85. 85.

    isildur

    June 24, 2012 at 7:22 am

    When I say ‘WoW-killer’, I don’t really mean it literally, and anyone who says they can create that game is lying — to you, or to themselves. I don’t know which category Schilling falls into, but probably the latter; fans who have never worked in the industry have strange ideas about how games get made, and what makes them successful.

    To me, ‘WoW-killer’ means you’re making a $50M+ triple-A MMO that you believe will attract enough of an audience to pay for itself in the first year or two. There are a lot of people out there who have burned out on WoW. You can draw them into your game by promising them an experience like WoW, only newer and more exciting. As well, there are a lot of people who aren’t even in the MMO audience yet, and if you can grow the market to just a small percentage of those people, you can make back your investment.

    I’ve got friends who’ve worked on, or are currently working on, making these games — Star Wars: TOR, Rift, and WildStar — and they are a viable business model. But you can’t fuck around, because if you go over budget or over schedule, the chances of you making that massive initial investment back are slim.

    And if you’ve spent $100M and can’t show a real product to potential investors, you’re fucked. Because that’s more than enough money to get a playable, fun prototype running and out the door into the hands of testers.

  86. 86.

    auntie beak

    June 24, 2012 at 9:26 am

    @Shalimar: the current winger line in r.i. is that it’s chaffee’s fault the company went under because he bad-mouthed it to potential investors, of whom i’m sure there were many thousands.

  87. 87.

    Lurker

    June 24, 2012 at 12:22 pm

    @DougJ – if you’re interested, the wife of one of the screwed-over families wrote a letter about what went down from the artists’ perspective:

    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/172303/38_Studios_Spouse_speaks_out.php

  88. 88.

    shortstop

    June 24, 2012 at 6:15 pm

    @isildur: @isildur: Very informative. Thanks.

  89. 89.

    Dylan

    June 25, 2012 at 5:00 pm

    That’s hell of a lot of cash… How can someone spend so much money! Curt Schilling should of hired someone to help him out with the project. You can’t just decide to make a video game with a budget! Spend it wisely.

    Dylan,
    Gaming Author
    Spin Palace

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