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Businesses Entertainment Games

Turbine Lands $30 Million in Venture Capital 19

Posted by Zonk from the more-virtual-land-ready-to-be-plowed dept.
Gamasutra has word that MMOG maker Turbine, developer of AC, AC2, DDO, and MEO, has succeeded in raising another round of venture capital for current and future projects. From the article: "The company has recently been strengthening its publishing and rights hold on its internally-developed products. It assumed complete control of development and publishing on Middle Earth Online, after finalizing a deal with Tolkien Enterprises and VU Games, and also took full control of Asheron's Call from Microsoft following the company's first round of financing. Of Turbine's major new MMO worlds, Dungeons & Dragons Online is due to launch later in 2005, and The Lord Of The Rings: Middle Earth Online will launch some time in 2006."
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Turbine Lands $30 Million in Venture Capital More

Turbine Lands $30 Million in Venture Capital

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  • So Turbine is to blame! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Saturday May 07, 2005 @12:34PM (#12462559)

    set humor=1



    ...MMOG maker Turbine, developer of AC, AC2...

    So it was Turbine that came up with all those Anonymous Cowards! I'm going to write them a sternly-worded letter!

    (AC2? I shudder to think what Anonymous Coward v2 will be capable of...)

    set humor=0

    • For those still confused (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I know that the parent was a joke, but the excessive use of acronyms in the story is still pretty confusing. The games being referred to here are:

      AC = Asheron's Call
      DDO = Dungeons & Dragons Online
      MEO = Middle Earth Online

      A MMOG, of course, is a Massively Multiplayer Online Game.

  • Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dmaduram ( 790744 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @01:25PM (#12462845) Homepage

    I'm not so sure how Turbine managed to get so much funding, given how Ascheron's Call 2 has a pretty dismal showing in the MMORPG market -- if you take a look at the the lastest MMORPG charts [mmogchart.com], you can see that although Ascheron's Call 1 peaked at 120,000 subscribers, Ascheron's Call 2 only peaked at ~50,000 subscribers, and dropped precipitously after May 2003.

    Just as my two cents, I'd prefer to see funding go to the makers of Anarchy Online, Planetside, or Eve Online, which are also indie, but have a much better subscriber base & track record.

    • I don't know, I'd prefer seeing people with attractive licenses get the good money to do something awesome.

      The licenses are what draw customers.
      I know I'd rather play Dragonlance Online than Dragon Saga VII Online.

      Maybe that's just me?

      • rylin: The licenses are what draw customers.

        I'm positive that licensing draws customers in traditional non-MMORPG games -- KOTOR I & II are a great example of this.

        However, the MMORPG market is totally different -- Star Wars Galaxies, the Matrix Online, and The Sims Online are all examples of MMORPGs that have powerful licenses behind them, but are relatively unsucessful when compared to Lineage, Everquest, or Dark Age of Camelot, which aren't backed by big-name licenses.

        Going back to Turbine,

        • Re:Turbine's Poor Track Record (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          There is a difference here you are not metnioning. SWG an MO are games derived from movies. With some notable exceptions, games derived from movies haven't done too well overall. There are a number of reasons for this.
          This logic may apply to Middle Earth Online. It has been published in book form and varios movies have been made derived from it. There was even a pen and paper RPG for it I think.
          I think the problem with developing interactive entertainment from movies or books is that the story is already to
          • The story's told, but those worlds (Star Wars, Matrix and Lord of the Rings) are so captivating in and of themselves that people want to experience living their own lives in those universes, which is where the attraction of those MMORPGs comes in. Granted, SWG and MO sucked, so hopefuly MEO does a good job of it.
    • Planetside [wikipedia.org] was and is a Sony Online Entertainment production.

      As for Turbine, the real question to ask isn't how many subscribers did the game have, but what was the return on investment for the game? We know that games like WoW and EQ make money hand over fist, and that the bulk of their expenses in the long term roughly scale with the number of users (there may be an economy of scale at work, making a large number of subscribers even more profitable, though). MMOGs also have an advantage over non-served
    • Asheron's Call 2 did suck. It had a horrible combat system. Asheron's Call 1 was fun though, and the action elements found in that game can't be found in other MMOGS. I feel action MMOG is just the beginning of something big you'll see over the next 10-20 years.
      • Asherons Call 1 was ok, but not really that interesting either, although it did not have zones and campers and they tried to push a storyline into it, it did nothing to attract the casual player. The average mission was try to get into a dungeon and get an artefact or die and be reborn outside. There was nothing more in there and the combat system mostly was hack and slay. The only thing which prevented things like campers and looters was, that there never were so many subscribers that it became necessary t
  • From a investor standpoint unless MEO will release shortly or during a theatrical release of the Hobbit I doubt it's going to gain much following.

    DND Online better be damn perfect or the players will go back to paper.

    The expansion pack of AC2 has not sold any copies at best buy they've been sitting there doing nothing. And server pop's are still in the 200's and from a players perspective when I did play if you was not already level 55+ then you have nobody to play with. The game was stupid to make thin

    • Definitely agree with you. AC was probably acquired very cheaply, since it was likely to get killed by Microsoft anyways.

      The game was stupid to make things where high level char's could not really help lower level characters so there's no incentive to help people.

      To a lesser degree, WoW doesn't do the "assistance" game very well either. There are no qualified methods within the game's mechanics to sweeten the prospect of helping lower-level characters.

      City of Heroes has the "exemplar" and sid

  • Nice... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SirBruce ( 679714 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @09:16PM (#12465188) Homepage
    I don't know how Turbine does it. That's like their 3rd or 4th round of VC funding for the company, and AC1 and AC2 were mediocre at best. I agree that DDO and LotRO are powerful franchises, but if someone gave a company like Playnet (makers of WWII Online) that much money they could go out and buy the rights to make games based on powerful franchises, too.

    Bruce
    • My thought was that Turbine bought Asheron's Call from Microsoft, in the face of its impending demise. I would guess that it was a bargain, and essentially allowed Turbine to use the property and its technology to make other games. Viewing it like this, the playerbase for AC1/2 becomes less important, since these are not essential to Turbine's longer term business objectives. With these larger and more powerful franchises close at hand, it would not surprise me that AC1 and 2 were merely used as breeding gr
      • With AC1 and 2 Microsoft was the actual owners of the game. Turbine had developed the game engine and was hired by microsoft to develop the game, Turbine also won additional contracts to continue the additional development and monthly updates. Also AC1 was initialy an internaly designed product; AC2 had alot more hands design on from microsoft.
        Turbine is banking on the Asheron Call name for part of it because they are releaseing expansion packs and currently are in the middle of a heavy advertisement cam
    • the difference is that Turbine is just going to configure thier engine and have thier artists draw up some MiddleEarth/D&D artwork and they have insta-games. I am pretty sure thier plan is to (re-)use thier "Turbine Engine" as the basis for thier new games. Of note, the Turbine Engine, which was a total rework of the AC1 engine used for AC2, has at least one 'successful' game port in the Risk Your Life (www.ryl.net) (which is the Americanized port of some Korean game, and it must be doing somewhat well
    • I don't know how Turbine does it. That's like their 3rd or 4th round of VC funding for the company, and AC1 and AC2 were mediocre at best.

      They're obscenely profitable. The money doesn't go to the good games, it goes to the games which sell well. Generally those are one and the same, but in the case of strong franchises sometimes they differ. AD&D is such a case; there are others (witness the Risk family of software atrocities.)
  • One way to sell Mediocre games... plaster a big name onto the box. EA does that all the time.
  • Obviously this investment wasn't based on Turbines track record of producing and delivering MMORPGs. They have pushed D&D and MEO back many times, the latter falling all the way back to 06.

    This is an investment based on the perceived viability of these two titles regardless of who produces them. Considering that Turbine raised this money indicates they blew through the previous 25m received less than two years ago.

    Apparently Turbine has a very good package they show VCs, most likely relying on some

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