It could have meant the end of the World (of WarCraft)

South Park anyone?

But RI gave a massive loan for the development of an MMO to… Curt Schilling?! And people are actually surprised that the studio closed after Amalur sales were strong and Copernicus was in development? Happens all the time in the gaming industry.

Whoever approved that should be investigated, at the very least.

And not a word of sympathy for the people who lost their jobs? Classy, Randy. I guess they can go eat Ayn Rand novels.

From many industry accounts, the MMO market segment is extremely costly to enter with SIGNIFICANT barriers to entry. Furthermore, where is the CFO in all of this? Where is the guy watching the revenue forecast models, cost structure,
business model and long-term business plan?

If you don’t have the forecasted funds to support development of this MMO model in the first couple years of your existence, then you don’t go all-in on that product — you develop it while launching other other products and revenue generating services- such as a follow up to the first game, as was mentioned here.
50Mill is an incredible amount of money to squander and the RI politicians responsible for passing this loan off to them should be escorted out of the State House …..today.

Government and Private Sector: DO NOT MIX.
Career Politicians “trying their hand” at upstart’s and private industry is like you or I trying to play in MLB after age 50. Absurd.

Ah well. The theme song sucked, anyway.

And then destroyed them… but the creation happened!

One of the reasons I’m no longer a registered Republican (I’m officially an independent) is because of situations like this. Here is Schilling, an outspoken arch-conservative who is griping and complaining about government spending, etc., while always screaming about the need for smaller government. Well, if RI keeps losing $49-75 Million on brutal investments like Schilling, there will be a much smaller government, including waste services, fire, police, etc. across the state and municipal levels.

The once-extremist, now more normal Republican is in favor of smaller government when it comes to regulations that impact their businesses (like the EPA for oil companies, financial reform for Wall Street, Insurance regulation for the Insurance industry, etc.) – but are then for much larger government and more government regulations on social / legal issues they don’t like – such as abortion, women’s health (such as planned parenthood), gay rights, tort reform, medicare, etc.

In a word, like Schilling in this case, they are all hypocrites. Or, in three words: D**che-Bag Supremes.