State of Emergency Developer Never to Riot Again

The “State of Emergency” franchise, which very well could have been subtitled, “The Joy of Rioting,” is in a real-life state of emergency as the Sunday Herald has reported that the developer of the games, DC Studios, has closed its Edinburgh studios. The staff of 29 became dispensable after the poor sales of State of Emergency 2.The original State of Emergency was published by RockStar and received fairly good reviews from the gaming community. The sequel to the first game generated sales that “were substantially lower than we expected,” remarked Mark Greenshields, CEO of DC studios. The rights to the game were acquired from the failed game developer, Vis Entertainment last year. State of Emergency 2 received a dismal average rating of 47%.DC Studios has a larger operation stationed in Canada, which has 55 employees, but the closing of the Edinburgh studio in Scotland will have no effect upon this Canadian studio. Greenshields reflected upon the doomed endeavor by remarking, "We had to pay a lot of money in order to complete the game. A lot of things were discovered after the acquisition. But when you buy something out of receivership, it’s buyer beware."But more than this, it is more of a statement about "consumer beware" as gamers are becoming more discriminate in their tastes of what games they will purchase. Sequels, which were once thought to be automatic cash cows, are no longer a sure-fire business proposition for game studios. In the case of DC Studios, this has become an unfortunately harsh lesson to learn.