T3 Entertainment’s relaunch of the online multiplayer demon hunting PC game Hellgate kicks off its open beta phase today, inviting players in North America do help rid the world of the hellish hordes starting tonight.
The closed beta test for the soon-to-be-revived Hellgate kicks off next month, and T# Entertainment has your closed beta keys. Hit up the Hellgate website to secure one for yourself and relive the horror. More »
Korean publisher HanbitSoft is finally ready to reopen Hellgate, Flagship Studios’ online multiplayer tale of demonic invasion, in North America. Closed beta for the free-to-play game launches in early June, with a full release coming later this year. More »
Proving you can’t keep an ill-conceived MMO down, the Hellgate series is back. And it’s moved on from London. And the English language. And now finds itself in Japan. Speaking Korean. More »
I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this. Contrary to recent reports, Hellgate: London will only be clawing its way out of the abyss in Asia. Fans of the game in the US and Europe will be bidding the game farewell at the end of January, as expected.
Cryptic Studios hired Bill Roper, former Director of Blizzard Entertainment and co-founder of Flagship Studios , as the company’s Design Director, they announced today.
Will the last Templar Guardian please turn off the lights and do whatever it is that you do to auras that makes them stop glowing – Hellgate: London is shutting down.
Gamasutra has a nice five page interview up with David DeMartini of EA Partners, the Electronic Arts division that has released games like Rock Band, Crysis, The Orange Box, and, uh, Hellgate: London in the past year. It’s a pretty wide ranging chat, from discussions of the challenges the come with working with Japanese studios, to acquiring new titles, to the relative disaster of Hellgate:
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.
Certainly worth a read through — I always enjoy reading interviews that cover a lot of ground, and this certainly satisfies in that respect.
David DeMartini on the Renaissance of EA Partners [Gamasutra]
You might recall the demise of Hellgate developer Flagship Studios from last month, and the subsequent shutdown of Mythos and IP fight over Hellgate. Now Flagship’s former Seattle team has reconstituted itself as Runic Games, continuing its focus on action-MMORPG games.
Travis Baldree, formerly of Flagship Seattle, emailed us Sunday with the news release. He was the project director for Mythos and is now the president of the new venture. Baldree is joined on the management team by Max Schaefer, formerly executive producer for Mythos. Baldree said all 14 on the Seattle team are aboard — “basically the whole Mythos team”.
The studio has a Web site, and the full news release is on the jump.
