Why Hellgate: London Failed

[GameBanshee News]

Former Flagship Studios business developer Stephen Goldstein took some time to discuss the failing of Hellgate: London at the GDC.

"For all intents and purposes, everyone was flagshipped."

"I'm sure some of you are familiar with that term," said former Flagship business developer Stephen Goldstein. "For those of you who are not, the term 'flagshipped' literally has no less than five definitions in the English language."

An illustrative slide appeared on screen:

Tim: "I just bought a new table tody and one of its legs broke."

Mike: "Man you got flagshipped."

[Lemmus]

While his insight is interesting, he fails to understand the fundamental reason why the game failed. As interesting as it was, the pay to play model had a serious problem. Mike describes that problem as :

Quote:

"Imagine how bad this if you're giving everything away for free, and you're trying to get people to pay you. Because then they hear that the billing is screwed up. And they say hey, I can get all this stuff for free. Why would I pay for it?"

No mention of the fact that they were charging a monthly fee equivalent to a full MMOG, for online content equivalent to Diablo II. Chat areas, extended stash, a few rare items. It's still a fully instanced game that plays like SP. Dungeon Runners has more advantages to subscribing than Hellgate did at launch.