Ex-Splatterhouse Developer BottleRocket Closes Its Doors
BottleRocket Entertainment, formerly the developers of Splatterhouse for Namco Bandai and responsible for the Mark of Kri series, is no more. Studio president Jay Beard announced BottleRocket’s official demise today via e-mail.
Beard’s statement on the closure notes that “after fighting to keep the doors open for the past six months we have decided to close and move on,” putting an end to the studio’s seven year history. The studio was previously working on a reboot of Namco Bandai’s Splatterhouse before having the project pulled, leading to a handful of curt exchanges between BottleRocket staffers and Namco execs.
The studio was also rumoured to be working on a video game based on DC Comics’ the Flash for Brash Entertainment before the publisher imploded.
Beard says in his e-mail that he is “now in the process of building a new development studio from the
ground up” but did not expand upon those plans or whether BottleRocket staff would make the transition to that new studio.
Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@slimky: Considering the slander that came from both sides of the fence, why do you automatically think Namco are the bad guys here? Considering that Bottle Rocket never sued Namco for breach of contract, but Namco took the game away from Bottle Rocket for just that... why do you think Bottle Rocket is in the right? Just because they're the smaller company? I would assume if they were in the right on this one, they would have sued.
AoE
@Archaotic: Bottle Rocket wasn't one of their developers though, it was a 3rd party independent studio who they hired to work on a title. If you believe the Namco side of things, they weren't living up to their end of the contract. If you take the Bottle Rocket side, Namco may have fucked them over. However, considering Bottle Rocket never sued Namco for breach of contract or anything else, that probably means they didn't have a leg to stand on. After all, if they hadn't violated the contract, they could have had their way with Namco in court for pulling it from them.
AoE
@Archaotic: By the way, if previous accounts about the Namco / BR fiasco are to be believed, Namco did send some of their staff to aid the development crew. Unfortunately, both parties are saying different things so it boils down to a he said / she said situation.
Kagechiyo
@Archaotic: The only one I agree with you about is how Brash killed Factor 5.Bottle Rocket had a contractual obligation to fulfill in terms of Splatterhouse and were failing to meet Namco's expectations. Namco is the client. They set the terms and BR either agrees to them or declines them. Then they establish milestones - again requiring consent from both parties.Our company has worked with Namco (Japan) before and they are very easy to work with. You can't blame a publisher for the developer's short-comings.
Kagechiyo
@AlexBadger's hat makes him look flyeth:
Theres some batshit crazy rumours saying they were making a FF game.
@Archaotic: "Square Enix killed GRIN (allegedly)"
When were the two involved? I've only seen GRIN working with Capcom, but I haven't seen them do anything except Bionic Commando and Terminator.
Mark of Kri was brilliant. Loved the use of dualsticks. Just terrible, two failed name changes already.
Thanks, Namco. Is it just me or are more and more developers being killed because of publishers pulling funding on them?
LucasArts killed Free Radical, Brash killed Factor 5, Square Enix killed GRIN (allegedly) and now Namco killed Bottle Rocket.
Here's an idea, publishers. Stop fucking over your developers. If you don't like what they're making, help them fix it.
F is for Failure.
eatsleepdie
It is sad to see a small independent developer closing his door. However, the situation seemed kinda problematic since they lost the Splatterhouse game (good job Namco, I will remember that one). When you plan doing a 360/PS3 title and you are a small studio, you plan your staff and money for at least 2-3 years ahead with no back-up plan. If you lose the title after 18 months, you are kinda screwed since you have no jobs for all this qualified staff and money runs low to start another 360/PS3 projects. They seem to try their best getting other titles but it seems they ran out of money before doing so.
I think their new strategy is to start a new studio with less staff, work hard to get a contract and hire most of their staff (if they still want to work for them). Best of luck to them and all the people that lose their job today.
slimky
I'm sad. They sponsored my robotics team, and we took a tour of the place. It was really amazing, and yes, I am confirming that I saw Flash stuff there. The guys were very nice, and I'm sad to see them go.
Nickcompoop
Sucks. A Flash game would've been cool.
Sad to see so many lesser developers go the way of the dodo.
Dsrtstorm9
@HK-47: Query: Did you try Rise of Kasai?
A shame....Mark of Kri was criminally underrated, was always hoping for a new installment somewhere down the line, guess not. Best of luck to the ex-employees.
HK-47
What Namco did with Splatterhouse was beyond awful, that compounded with a project with a publisher who fell apart just makes this whole thing an unavoidable business tragedy for the developers at Bottlerocket. A damn shame.
Aww. I liked Mark of Kri.
Mark of Kri was great but that was a long time ago. I can't think of anything recent that I've enjoyed from them.
AncientUnknown1
Too bad to hear that, it'd be nice if Splatterhouse as they were showing it as it looked wicked cool. Hopefully they do the same as Grin & keep their team but start up a new studio somewhere else, that and make fun of Namco when they get the chance with their games going gold.
It's sad that the developers have shut down, but what they made Splatterhouse into was even worse. If Namco had allowed them to finish the game, Splatterhouse would have been a former shell of itself. They made Rick into another generic Gears Of War style steroid monster, Biggy Man was made fat and had one of his chainsaw arms removed, and Dr.West rode around on a Robotic Gorilla. As I see it, Namco had every right to take their game back if BR wasn't doing a satisfactory job. If it had been Namco's fault, BR would have sued for breach of contract, but as they didn't, there's more evidence that Bottle Rocket was in the wrong.
One last thing, I've seen some of Splatterhouse, both before and after Namco took it back, and now they have it back, it's shaping up to be much more like the original. No fat Biggyman, No Mastodon soundtrack (I like Mastodon, but not in this game. It wouldn't fit.), and no robo gorilla.
@twinturbo2: LucasArts pulled funding for Battlefront 3 out from under them, leaving them without any projects to work on or any money to pay their employees with. Haze hurt them, but it was LucasArts that delivered the final blow.
@Archaotic: LucasArts killed Free Radical? I thought it was the terrible sales of Haze that killed Free Radical...
twinturbo2
@Archaotic: If this keeps happening, I think developers will flip a giant bird to publishers and begin to distribute their own stuff. PSN, XBox Live, and PC all have the ability to buy full-fledged games for them online, and that might become the future.
DukeOfPwn
@riffleraffle: A lot of people on here are criticizing Namco but do we really know what went on? We've heard from both sides but there single thing that's missing is agreement on what happened? Should they be expected to fund a failing project? This is, after all, a business and to fund it would doom Namco. In that case the stories would be: " I can't believe Namco have gone bust! Man, they shouldn't make such sucky games! Does no-one check their games for quality any more?"
And I don't work for Namco; i've not idea what went on.
adgeman
@Archaotic: Maybe if Haze wasn't so awful, then LucasArts wouldn't be so skittish.
And maybe if you weren't so jaded... nah, that's asking for too much.
twinturbo2
NOOOOOOOOOO THEY NEVER FINISHED MARK OF KRI.
Dammit this sucks :(
I was digging of mark of kri but my friend told me the second was utter crap and the A.I. that you're partnered with wasn't much help.
s0nlxaftrsh0ck
@Archaotic: The problem is sometimes the publisher can't fix it. Sometimes the publisher doesn't have the talent to fix it. Sometimes the publisher does have the talent and it still can't be fixed.
It's easy for a developer to blame a publisher. It's easy for publisher to blame a developer. But the truth is, there are hundreds of ways a game can go wrong.
We have no idea how bad or good the game actually was. If it was cancelled, there were probably fundamental problems.
No one will cancel a game that is going well just for the heck of it. There's always a reason.
Remember that pretty screen shots only tell part of the story.
Boneyard
@Archaotic: Its not you. Credit is tighter so developers are more reliant on publishers to fill the gaps at the moment. A few years ago, a failure like Haze wouldn't have sunk Free Radical because they could've gone to the bank on the basis of that Star Wars game or whatever else. Now, the money's not there.
That said, you can't pin this on Namco. Bottle Rocket was hired to work on this game, if they screwed it up, its not Namco's responsibility to hold their hands and get it done right.
Mokon
Are developers immune to bankruptcy problems? It seems no matter which studio closes, they always start new ones the same day, pretending nothing ever happened.
Over here only politicians can screw things up without having to take responsibility.