Luca Zanzi writes:
"Say what you will about former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, but you cannot deny the man is a dreamer.
As a child getting his hands on a baseball for the first time, he probably dreamt he would one day win the World Series.
And as millions of gamers around the world, he too dreamt he would one day own his own video game studio."
Why do game studios keep imploding?
Dysfunction is baked into the video game production process, as it currently exists. The big-budget games industry is dominated by a few large companies, the publishers. Like book publishers, they are responsible for distributing and marketing games (much but not all of this is entirely digital now, but most of the publishers established themselves when game distribution meant getting physical discs and cartridges on retail store shelves). Games are actually made by studios, which are generally either owned directly by the publishers or independent. Making big-budget video games takes an enormous amount of highly specialized labor. It is possible for one person to make a game, and even for that game to be a hit, but the biggest, most profitable games released each year are nearly always made by enormous teams of people, working directly or indirectly for those publishers.
The 4-year investigation of video game developer 38 Studios comes to an anti-climatic conclusion.
The Rhode Island Attorney General announced today that it would not be filing charges against individuals involved in the failed 38 Studios loan in Rhode Island.