SOE's John Smedley on Project Copernicus

Sony Online Entertainment’s president John Smedley shared plenty of kind words about Curt Schilling and the defunct Project Copernicus on his Twitter account recently. While Smedley concedes that the Rhode Island loan to fund the title was a bad idea, he also seems convinced that Curt Schilling was acting in good faith, and that the Amalur MMO had plenty of potential potential, despite turning down the chance to fund it at SOE due to the considerable economic commitment required.

I had the good fortune of seeing the game. It looked great. If that idiot Governor Chafee hadn’t trash talked right at the time Curt was trying to get funding you would be playing the game now

Curt is an honest guy with good intentions. Although public money should never have guaranteed a winner or loser

Curt’s only crime was believing in his own ability to will things to be better. He busted ass trying to get funding

Funny thing is even though he came to us many times for money and we didn’t do a deal, I really wanted to play that game.

Dear people of Rhode Island. Look to your elected government for failing to protect you. That 38 studios deal just never should have been.

Public funds shouldn’t be backing risky things like online games. If the fact that no other VCs were investing wasn’t enough of a clue then you damn well shouldn’t be surprised by failure.

are you surprised that no one picked up the IP when it went to auction?

anyone with a brain could have told them no one would buy it. They contacted us and I told them so.

not that the IP isn’t awesome. It’s just not strong without the people making it

Did you get to actually see Copernicus? I loved Amalur and was really interested in Cop.

yes. Beautiful game made by people who cared about what they did.

The idea of suing someone when Chaffe’s own comments were what poisoned the well at the end is beyond the pale.

All he had to do was give Curt another week and we wouldn’t be here today.

Was SOE going to get involved or were you just watching from the sidelines?

at various times we looked at it. Always impressed. But the economics were too tough to make work for us. This is a business where risks are large. We had enough balls in the air. More risk was too much for us. I also felt that too much was spent but the quality was undeniable. It was gorgeous. It had smart people working on it. It was just too expensive is all.

Curt put every dime he had into it. That’s the part that people are missing. He put his own money where his mouth was.

but that’s ultimately what undid it. Unqualified people at that Rhode Island economic council should have seen the fact that no one else would get in as a sign and they failed. That’s not Curt’a fault.

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