Bill Roper Interview

The Bill
Roper Interview on 1Up is a Q&A with the cofounder of Flagship Studios about
the developer that is in essence deceased at this point, as well as thoughts on
Diablo III and other topics later on. As to the subject of Flagship, they
ask about what he can discuss (at one point he makes a pointed reference to
Hanbitsoft not honoring their nondisclosure agreements), and he describes
efforts at paying off institutions and employees still owed money by Flagship
and the attempts to save the company from going under. His comment about losing
the Mythos IP, indicates he thinks the new owners got less than they
bargained for: Yeah. But I think part of it is -- the challenge they face
is -- it's like if somebody says, "Hey, I made you a loan against your Ferrari,
[and] now the loan's due, so I want the Ferrari." And I say, "Great, here's a
box of parts, because I didn't actually finish building the car yet." So they
have it, but it's not done, and they don't have any of the engineers that were
there that know how to build the game or use the tools or use the tech or
anything. So yes, you have it, but you have it where it is, which isn't done
yet. It's a lot different from a movie. With a film you can say, "Here's all the
footage. Get some competent guys with an Avid system, and you could piece
something together. Go shoot some more scenes. Release the film." Totally
different situation here. There isn't just a quick way you can slap something
together. So I think that they're facing a big challenge: How to actually get a
shippable title out of this without that team being there anymore.
Unfortunately, it isn't something we didn't kind of warn them about. We said,
"We want to know what you guys will do." We had transition service agreements
that we have done everything we can to fulfill. Flagship at this point is unable
to actually provide those transition services. I don't have programmers anymore,
or artists to work on the title, but we provided them with all the personal
contact information with anyone they wanted. After that the onus is on them as
far as whether or not to bring those people in.


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