{"id":1554,"date":"2008-03-04T12:00:38","date_gmt":"2008-03-04T17:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1554"},"modified":"2008-09-18T07:37:13","modified_gmt":"2008-09-18T12:37:13","slug":"iron-lore-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1554","title":{"rendered":"Iron Lore Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you visit the website for Iron Lore Entertainment<\/a> you’ll see they have two important announcements:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Their latest offering, Titan Quest<\/a>: Immortal Throne, just won Action RPG of the year at Gamebanshee<\/a>. Also:\n<\/li>\n
  2. They are going out of business, and in fact have already done so. Their doors closed Feb 19 2008.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    iron_lore_rip.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table>A couple of weeks ago I said<\/a>, “I guess at some point enough PC developers will go under or get bought up and converted into console game developers. Once the herd is sufficiently thinned, the remaining ones might act on survival instinct and start looking for ways to stay in business[…]” which, looking back, might make it sound like I’m cheering the process on. Actually, it really does sting every time I see a PC developer bite the dust. This goes double for anyone kind enough to make RPGs for us PC gamers. (The fact that I’ve never played or heard of Titan Quest is entirely beside the point. The system specs are really reasonable<\/a>. I might check it out.) An RPG is a niche product on what is increasingly (from a sales perspective) a niche platform and most developers could find greener pastures by pursuing other games aimed at other devices. It’s admirable when they hold their ground, and tragic when they go under while doing it.<\/p>\n

    In 2000, Looking Glass Studios<\/a> went under. At the time the news sounded absurd to me. How could a company that did nothing but make<\/a> incredible<\/a> games<\/a> go belly-up? Then I began to realize what should have been obvious, that making a great game is only one of many required steps towards solvency. <\/p>\n

    I’ve never heard a firm explanation of why LGS failed. Warren Spector isn’t talking<\/a>. I’ve seen lots of guesses, but in the last eight years nobody has managed to come up with the goods. Maybe a lawsuit settlement is binding the related parties to silence. Still, it seems like we should have seen an anonymous leak by now. Eight years is a long time for the gossip machine to go hungry on a story like that one.<\/p>\n

    From my own perspective, I can’t help but suspect plain old fiscal indiscretion. They were based in Cambridge, MA. I lived near Boston (right here, actually<\/a>) at the time and I remember being shocked that a game company would plant themselves in such a high-expense area. Boston ain’t cheap, and Cambridge is moreso. It would be easier to put a strip mall in the Vatican than obtain real estate in Cambridge during the dot-com bubble. I still wonder how much better they might have done if they’d put their office a half hour in just about any direction (excluding, of course, into the Atlantic Ocean, in which case the result would have been about the same) and hired a couple less MIT grads. That sort of thing might not have been what killed them, but they might have had the cash to survive whatever calamity took them out. Perhaps not. My speculation holds the same value as anyone elses. (Zero.) Still, being good with money is never a bad idea when you’re trying to run a business. (Sez the guy hauling half a year’s salary in various debts.)<\/p>\n

    The stories of Looking Glass Studios and Iron Lore Entertainment seem similar to me because both companies looked successful from the outside, just before they imploded for unexplained reasons. <\/p>\n

    Michael Fitch<\/a>, Director of Creative Management at THQ<\/a> (the company which published both Titan Quest titles) weighed in with his own opinions about what contributed to the ILE failure in this lengthy and interesting forum post<\/a>. I’m going to talk more about that later. The problems he brings up nearly universal to the world of PC gaming, and I suspect this isn’t the last time we’ll see a PC developer that succeeds at making games and fails at staying in business. <\/p>\n

    I got the link via Brad Wardel<\/a>. Which, now that I’m thinking of it, makes me wonder how Stardock<\/a> is doing. Hey Brad, you guys ok over there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you visit the website for Iron Lore Entertainment you’ll see they have two important announcements: Their latest offering, Titan Quest: Immortal Throne, just won Action RPG of the year at Gamebanshee. Also: They are going out of business, and in fact have already done so. Their doors closed Feb 19 2008. A couple of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-videogames"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}