Unable to continue funding its product teams, Rocket Science Games has announced that it will cease further development of videogames and lay off most of its staff. With an industry reputation for all-star designers - and hefty all-star costs - Rocket Science found that it couldn't continue making games without a hit. The company's two released titles, Obsidian and Rocket Jockey, were much anticipated, but failed to generate the sales needed to justify costs. Publishers such as SegaSoft have balked at putting up the money needed to fund new projects.
"It's tragic when any collection of talent like Rocket Science assembled is disbanded," Bill Davis, president of Rocket Science since 1996, told Wired News Thursday. "It's a great loss to the industry."
Part of the company's difficulty, Davis believes, stems from publishers, feeling like they know best, dictating all aspects of game development from the creative to the financial, while requiring developers to shoulder more financial risk.
Rocket Science has worked solely with publisher SegaSoft on its two titles, Obsidian and Rocket Jockey. Greg Schiemingo, spokesman for SegaSoft, said that his company was shifting its focus to networked and Internet games and that Rocket Science wasn't going in that direction. Schiemingo added that there was a glut of interactive entertainment in an industry driven by hits.
Davis said, however, "Rocket Science actually developed a great Internet engine, and we showed it to SegaSoft, but they passed."
SegaSoft will publish two remaining games from Rocket Science, Space Bar and Darwin Pond, due later this year.
After deep staff cuts, Rocket Science will finish up current projects, then wait and see how those products are received. If at least one game proves to be a hit, Rocket Science says it will consider staffing up again and launching new projects.
In a statement, Davis assigned some blame to poor industry health in general. "The vast majority of game publishers appear to have taken a financial beating over the past year.... Like most developers, we are not in a position to co-fund development."
Rocket Science
by Burr Snider
