Those words from Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chaffee sum up the downfall of 38 Studios better than anything else ever could. Judging by the way the collapse was handled, there may have been other problems, but they don’t matter. In the end, even if every piece of business was in order, every employee competent, every "t" crossed and every "i" dotted, 38 Studios was a company set up to make one game, and that game needed to succeed spectacularly in order to keep it solvent. It didn’t.
There was nothing all that wrong with Kingdom of Amalur. It had decent gameplay and rewarding levels, but it was set against the backdrop of a vanilla fantasy world and a boring story. It was fun, but it didn't grab. It was good enough, but if there’s one lesson to be gleaned from this whole episode, it’s that when it comes to new AAA franchises, good enough isn’t good enough.
When establishing a new IP, standing out is absolutely essential. Schilling told me that he built Amalur by borrowing elements of all his favorite games, but the studio failed to make the game distinctive enough to become valuable in its own right.
Look at Assassin’s Creed, the first one. It had sub-par, repetitive gameplay. The story was convoluted and weird, and reviewers all agreed that it was a decent game at best. And yet, Assassin’s Creed had style. It was set in the Crusades, it had a mysterious, white-cloaked protagonist and it had vast vistas of ancient Mediterranean cities.
That was enough. Assassin’s Creed survived long enough to develop gameplay, and while it still has issues, it’s become one of the most reliable franchises on the market.
Amalur had no style. It had gameplay and it was expansive, but there was nothing that made the game pop off the screen and demand the player’s attention. It was a decent game, and perfectly entertaining. But it was not the game to bet the fate of a studio on.
There’s money in the games business, that much is clear. But like Hollywood, gaming is all about hits. Make something so entrancing that it must be played and you will be rewarded. Do anything else and you will fail.
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