EA’s David DeMartini on Hellgate: London Failure

Gamasutra has published a five-page interview with EA’s David DeMartini, in which he addresses a handful of questions about Hellgate: London’s failure.

But, for example, Flagship and Hellgate: London did basically implode. Should you have stepped in more?

DD: Yeah, I mean… We’re certainly sad with the results for Flagship and what’s happened with Hellgate, because at the time we signed it, we were trying to get involved in a very complicated relationship between Namco and Flagship. We were coming late to the party, and trying to do whatever we could to sprinkle the game magic on the project and get it headed in the right direction.

I think that’s an example where all three parties had the best interest of the game in mind, and sometimes the game doesn’t work out. Hellgate is still an incredible concept. The guys who worked on it spent thousands of hours trying to make that concept work, and sometimes we just don’t see something. Sometimes, we just didn’t take enough time. Sometimes, things don’t work out the way you expect.

It’s kind of like a film with all big stars — on the script, it should be successful, but the movie doesn’t turn out as good as everybody hoped. That’s why EAP takes a portfolio approach with its games. You have to place a lot of bets, and hope for a lot of hits.

Were you actually funding it, or were you just marketing and distributing, or what?

DD: We were co-publishing with Namco. I’m not going to dodge a bullet — we had people who were actively working with them on the title. We thought it would have been slightly higher quality than it turned out to be, and I think the problem with the game was that by the time it got really good, we were four to six months post-release. That was too late; we’d lost the fanbase.

It was strictly an issue of the gameplay and game quality needing to be higher at the start. Unfortunately, Flagship was in a situation where they weren’t in a position to hold the game any longer, and the situation kind of took over.

Bill Roper said this week that there were conversations about EA acquiring the studio. Was that a serious discussion?

DD: I can’t really comment on any kind of acquisition conversation. I know I wasn’t involved in any of them.