Hellgate: London Programmer Vents Frustrations

The guys over at Flagshipped have posted the contents of a recent blog post made by Hellgate: London audio and gameplay programmer Guy Somberg about some of the behind-the-scenes activity at the company. Something tells me this won’t make him too popular with his superiors:

Work is depressing right now. Never mind the fact that Hellgate isn’t as popular as anybody had hoped. Never mind the fact that there exists a term (Flagshipped,) meaning where a company basically overpromises and then screws you. Never mind the fact that the forums are totally populated by people who do nothing but complain and talk about how much the game sucks. Never mind the fact that people do the same thing in the game itself.

Yes, Hellgate is not a big success. That sucks, and it’s depressing. I’m keeping a positive attitude about it because of Korea and China. The Koreans really love the game, and the Chinese have yet to see it. I don’t know how any of these deals are structured, but I’m hinging my hopes for Hellgate’s future on the Asian market.

So why is work depressing? (Other than all of those other depressing things, that is.) The reason is that people are leaving. In droves, they’re leaving. We’ve had programmers, accountants, HR people, and artists leave. The founders are all still around, but they’ve been floating away from Hellgate to work on various other projects. The only one still actively on Hellgate is Tyler, but Tyler’s not programming anymore; he spends all of his time on management activities.

Today was our programming intern’s last day; he’s leaving the company for the world of academia to get his PhD in computer science. I also learned today that another of our programmers is leaving in a couple of months (he gave lots of notice, which is very nice of him). With him leaving, I am basically the senior developer on Hellgate. Tyler, Dave, and Peter (the founders) are the only other programmers who were around beforehand, and I was the first programming hire after that. With Dave and Peter on other projects, and Tyler basically no longer a programmer, I’m what’s left after he leaves.

Thing is, the way things are going I’m likely to be the only programmer still working on Hellgate left from the original crew. I’ve heard rumours that other programmers and artists are thinking of leaving.

I was so disturbed to learn that all of these people are leaving that I couldn’t concentrate, and I left work early, claiming illness. I don’t want to leave Flagship. I’m happy here. I like the people, I like the environment, I like the pay, I like the location. There’s so much good about it. I’m not considering leaving. It’s just overwhelming and depressing having all of these people go. Every time a programmer leaves, it’s more work for me. Every time an artist leaves, it’s less content that we can create for Hellgate in the future.

Tyler is talking about replacing our programming intern with a designer. I’m fighting against that, because we need more programmers! We can’t just put it all on me.

Bah. Listen to me whine. It could be much worse, of course. At this point, though, what I need is some fresh projects; I’m getting burned out on Hellgate.

In response, Flagship Studios CVO David Brevik had this to say:

Hello,
I would like to respond to some of the recent coverage that Flagship Studios has received as a result of the publication of Guy Somberg’s blog.

Everyone has good days and bad days. Guy was having a bad day. It was his friend’s last day of internship and he found out another friend was thinking of leaving. He vented, exaggerated, and posted information that was inaccurate.

We will be the first to admit that Hellgate: London did launch with some problems. The game would certainly have benefited from a couple more months in the oven, but as an independent developer we didn’t have the ability to delay our ship date. It can be difficult to stand by and see something that you put your heart and soul into, week in and week out, get the initial reception Hellgate got. It can put a strain on any developer and some days it can get to you. Thankfully, after some very hard work by all the people here, including Guy, the game is much better now and we believe in the future of Hellgate.

Both our studios are currently fully staffed, with our San Francisco studio working on ongoing content for Hellgate: London and our Seattle studio working on our free-to-play MMORPG, Mythos, which should go into open beta within the next couple months. In total, we have over 100 employees working for both studios. As is typical in the industry, after a game is released some people naturally want to work on something else and they leave the company to do so. But in total we have had less than 10% turn-over and have rehired for all needed positions.

All our Directors and Founders are still working at Flagship, and all of them are working on Hellgate: London or Mythos. The team size for Hellgate is as big now as when we shipped. We are putting all of our efforts into these projects and I think it will show in the upcoming Hellgate Abyss Chronicles.

Sincerely,
David Brevik
CVO
Flagship Studios

Looking at what’s included in the Patch 2.0 update, it’s pretty obvious that at least some members of the development team are still dedicated to the game.