The new MMO Atlas is experiencing launch difficulties. Some players are already groaning: “This is off to a good start.” Let’s take a look at it: an extraordinary software studio where creative chaos is part of the business model.
Who is developing Atlas? Behind Atlas are the two main minds from ARK Survival Evolved, lead designer and lead programmer Jeremy Stieglitz and art director Jesse Rapczak.
In 2014, together with Stieglitz’s wife Susan and Doug Kennedy, they founded the studio “WildCard”, landing a massive hit with ARK Survival Evolved in the summer of 2015, and now they jointly manage the subsidiary studio Grapeshot (via GameStar). Grapeshot was specifically created for Atlas.
This is how it has gone so far: Atlas is a sort of surprise attack from the creators behind ARK Survival Evolved. The pirate MMO was presented at the “Video Game Awards” on December 7.
The joke: It was supposed to launch just a week later, on December 13.
But that did not happen. A few days before the actual release date, it was announced: “We need more time. We will not start until December 19.”
Yet even this date is now being pushed back. The new release date is December 21.
What is the reason for this? This postponement marathon wasn’t particularly surprising. The last project of the team, “ARK Survival Evolved”, already exhibited a casual approach to deadlines.
Patches frequently received only rough release dates and were postponed multiple times.
With ARK, it was common for the lead developer, Jeremy Stieglitz, to share optimistic target dates on Twitter just before going to bed. However, he didn’t consider that console patches had yet to undergo approval from Sony and Microsoft.
This often led to delays. Even now with Atlas, it seems that extremely optimistic target dates are being thrown out without truly knowing if they can be met.
Was the postponement a PR stunt? The creators behind Atlas can certainly be credited with clever PR strategies. They launched the dino MMO ARK Survival Evolved in the wake of “Jurassic World” to capitalize on the anticipated dino hype.
The question arises whether there was ever a genuine plan to launch Atlas on December 13.
The actual “promo campaign” with screenshots on Steam only started shortly before they pushed the game to December 19. Even the first teaser trailer only came out after the postponement.
Did the team really plan to promote the release on December 13 with screenshots on Steam just starting December 10? We don’t know. The eight extra days have certainly been filled well by the team with additional promotional actions.
Wildcard – the slightly different studio
Here’s why the creators behind Atlas are different: While most software studios that distribute large MMOs maintain clear structures and control mechanisms, the creators behind ARK and now Atlas are essentially a “start-up” composed of college friends who founded a company together and have been highly successful.
ARK grew so quickly that there was no time to expand the team further, leading employees to take on entirely different roles.
In addition, their business practices are often unusual. Stieglitz behaves differently in interviews than is typical in the industry.
Stieglitz also made jabs at Sea of Thieves when announcing Atlas right away. When asked how Atlas would be better than Sea of Thieves, Stieglitz laughed and said the more accurate question was in what ways it wouldn’t be better than Sea of Thieves (via rockpapershotgun).
With ARK, there were often contradictory signals sent to the press, for example regarding legacy servers, where the direction changed multiple times.
Legendary and mysterious is the story that Stieglitz could not identify himself as the lead developer of ARK at its release due to contractual obligations to another company.
He let his wife co-found the studio and only appeared as a “loose consultant” or under the alias “Drake”.
When this later came to light, a settlement was allegedly reached behind closed doors with Stieglitz’s former employer for 40 million US dollars.
At the same time, a Chinese company got involved in the studio Wildcard and reportedly paid several million for it. Snail Games also bought the rights to develop numerous “dino games with ARK licenses” for the Asian market or to publish a game that looked like ARK in a dragon’s guise.
Why is Atlas so surprising? The special thing now is that Atlas was announced almost without warning. Only a few months before the announcement, a trailer briefly surfaced, which quickly disappeared from the internet.
Regarding the planned launch in a short time, Stieglitz said (via MassivelyOp): They found it pointless to let players speculate for six months or a year about what a game brings. Therefore, they believe it is better to simply announce and release games.
Does the chaos have a positive side? Even if much of this sounds like pure chaos in hindsight, the team behind ARK has often been praised for its closeness to the community, for the constant changes in the game, and for quickly implementing feedback.
Even before the launch, it looks like Atlas will be something very special again. The studio behind Atlas relies on creative chaos as a business model – turbulence can be expected.
Update December 21, 21:55: As announced on Friday evening, the studio has postponed the early access start of Atlas for the third time.
