Shaughnessy's take:

There are parts of Rhode Island where failing to make good on million-dollar loan payments gets you more than a bloody sock. Red Sox adviser Jeremy Kapstein was out front on the 38 Studios loan scam two years ago when he ran for Rhode Island Lieutenant Governor and told WPRO-AM, “I have serious questions about the viability of that kind of offer to a company that is full of questions.’’

Kapstein was not alone. Massachusetts officials scoffed at the notion of loaning Curt Schilling’s company $75 million. The following appeared in this space in July 2010: “Hats off to the ship of fools known as the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. The RIEDC yesterday pledged a $75 million loan guarantee to lure Curt Schilling’s game company (the one with no games) to the Ocean State. It’s the best demonstration of sports sycophants gone wild with public money since the yahoos in Connecticut promised to give Bob Kraft the world to move his team to Yo Adriaen’s Landing in Hartford.’’

RIEDC director Keith Stokes resigned yesterday.

No thinking person wants to see a company fail. There are hundreds of jobs at stake. But it’s hard to believe that Schilling, who earned $114 million during his baseball career, can’t make a $1.1 million loan payment.

Schilling is the man who railed about government spending, then had his hand out for corporate welfare, and now asks for more help from the confederacy of dunces in Rhode Island. This is not the Rhode Island Enron, and Schill is not Jeffrey Skilling, but it is bad, and it was avoidable if not for public officials losing all common sense in the aura of a baseball player who delivered on a promise to bring us a championship.

"I thought this was the most ridiculous thing I've heard until yesterday when Joe Ricketts (Chicago Cubs Joe Ricketts) got caught in some Super PAC plan to "End His (Obama) Spending For Good." As it turns out, Ricketts is wanting a bunch of public money to make changes around Wrigley Field."

I don't know. As Shaughnessy pointed out, Kraft played the state of Connecticut like a well-tuned violin. Kraft never had any intention of moving the Patriots to Hartford, he just wanted Massachusetts to pay for his new stadium.
He'll be the first one to tell you he paid for the stadium himself, but when he made the Connecticut deal he was able to leverage the state into funding improvements to the highway that leads to Gillette, and he gets $30 a car from the parking lots, some of which are on land the state took by eminent domain and then sold to him for a nominal fee.
When the state took the land, he displaced a trailer park with a couple hundred people. Kraft's quote was, roughly: "We're doing them a favor. They're just trailers ..."

Last edited by artie_fufkin (5/18/2012 12:01 pm)

http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/curt-schilling-38-studios-lays-off-entire-staff-223327485.html

Starting to look like he could have saved himself a lot less in losses by just investing in Facebook...

APIAD wrote:

It isnt like Schilling is the only former baseball player to invest badly and lose his ass.  He has always been a blowharded retard that outside of baseball never made much sense.

This is the absolute truth, but Schilling was way more annoying than anyone outside of Jose Canseco.

tkihshbt wrote:

APIAD wrote:

It isnt like Schilling is the only former baseball player to invest badly and lose his ass.  He has always been a blowharded retard that outside of baseball never made much sense.

This is the absolute truth, but Schilling was way more annoying than anyone outside of Jose Canseco.

I've said this so often that one of my co-workers credits me with a quote, but I'll say it again - there's nothing more dangerous than a stupid person who thinks he's smart.

I am not up to date on this subject.  I assume the government handed out grant money to Schilling?

I see.  I never heard of personally asking a governor for state money in support of a private bussiness.  I am having a hard time understanding the connection between Schilling and video games.  I like the movie Lonesome Dove.  I wonder if Texas will back me starting my own cattle ranch.

Who handle out 75 millvfor video games?  That should go to green energy, curing cancer, road construction or education.  Instead it is like investing against education.

Diablo III is now reporting 6.5 million copies sold. Made by Blizzard. They have had numerous massive successes in gaming. Diablo and Dialo II were considered some of the best games ever made. Warcraft (3 installments), Starcraft (2 installments), and finally World of Warcraft (despite being nearly 7 years old still commands around 10 million active subscriptions). All of them made by Blizzard.

Diablo III will continue to climb in sales, it really is fantastic, but this is a game they spent 1 year polishing. Not developing, they could have released it 2 years ago if they had to, but wanted the final product to really be amazing. They can do this because WoW still brings in around 150M a month, and Starcraft II still plays. Everything they have still has play and sales.

I'm discussing this because I didn't realize Schilling was banking on selling 3 million copies of a game. That claim is complete and utter bullshit, and Rhode Island could have EASILY looked up how many games sell that many copies (ever).

There's less than 200 titles total across all video game platforms (non portables) that have sold 3M copies or more. Far less. I counted 166 using Wikipedia. So just on pure odds, not even taking the quality of the game maker into question here.... On an estimate of 1 million games created across all these platforms. Schilling has a .0166% chance of selling 3M copies of any game he makes, add to that nobody knows shit about his company, or any reason why they should feel compelled to look at his product? He has less chance then .0166% ... Far less.

Here's the highlights of the research though.
Game counts that hit 3 million or better.
3 for the Atari
4 for the XBox
13 for the 360
8 for the Nintendo
5 for the Super Nintendo
11 for the Nintendo 64
4 for the Gamecube
20 for the Wii
3 for the Genisis
29 for the PS
9 for the PS3
26 for the PS2
31 for the PC

Last edited by alz (5/29/2012 2:10 pm)

Actually, if the above list was grouped... It would be even less.

The PS2 list is funny.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Gran Turismo 3: A Spec
Gran Turismo 4
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto III
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy XII

At 9th you have the first Original Title clearing 3 million. Kingdom Hearts (4.78 million)

Interesting, I didn't realize that 38 Studios made "Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning". That was a good game, I played through it (rented though, didn't buy it. It did take about 3 weeks to complete), and got a bit tedious at the end.

Still though, sold over a million copies, and was probably a 7-8 on a scale of 1-10. Not a bad leadoff. Too bad he's shit with the financial side of things.

Last edited by alz (5/30/2012 8:23 am)