Props, equipment from 38 Studios auctioned

GOING ONCE ... : Models, figurines, office supplies and other items from 38 Studios’ Providence office were up for auction last week. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE
GOING ONCE ... : Models, figurines, office supplies and other items from 38 Studios’ Providence office were up for auction last week. / PBN PHOTO/DAVID LEVESQUE

While others eyed the 5-foot Amalurian battle hammer prop ($200), Jamie Gotch, co-founder of Subatomic Studios in Cambridge, Mass., was looking for office supplies.
Gotch’s 4-year-old video game company, which he started after leaving 38 Studios LLC two years before it was lured to Rhode Island, had just moved to a new space and he turned to his former employer’s Providence bankruptcy auction Oct. 23 to help fill it.
“It’s not weird – they’re just power cords,” Gotch said when asked if it felt odd to pick through the remains of his old company for deals, in this case the crate of computer power strips he got for $150. “I think it would be different if I had worked in this building, or if I were buying a signed poster.”
Former Red Sox pitcher and 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling had signed plenty of items for employees around the company’s first office in Maynard, Mass., so Gotch and Subatomic colleague Christian Baekkelund, outfitted in an original 38 Studios “World Domination Through Gaming” T-shirt, didn’t need souvenirs.
Like other video game developers, graphic designers, filmmakers and animators among the 400 at the auction (plus 600 registered online bidders), the Subatomic contingent was looking toward the future. They represented possibly the only silver lining of the 38 Studios debacle, the spinoffs and startups hoping to succeed where Schilling failed.
Among them was John Groh of Warwick, a game designer in his last year at the video game development program at the New England Institute of Technology, hoping to land a high-end computer to help him create a winning video game.
Like several auction attendees, Groh had met Schilling and admired 38 Studios during its brief time in Rhode Island. “He said he would have a job for me,” said Groh, standing between boxes of used 38 Studios desk nameplates with employee names still in them. “It’s sad to me that it hasn’t worked out. But hopefully this is the start of some good coming out of it.”
Travis Atkins, a Newport native who moved to California’s Silicon Valley to pursue a career in mobile-phone technology, stopped by the 38 Studios auction with his sister, a student filmmaker, on a trip home to see family.
The 38 Studios offices reminded him of the tech-sector buildings in the booming Bay Area, Atkins said, only in California they might be filled with dozens of exciting companies instead of one dead one.
“If [Rhode Island] were willing to invest in small-business incubators, this building could be filled with motivated, ambitious people,” said Atkins, who is launching a mobile telecommunications startup called Piggyback. “People should realize that this is not the failure of an entire class of businesses.”
Joining the innovators and entrepreneurs were collectible dealers, prop-shop owners, restaurateurs, curiosity seekers and local residents looking for a bargain at the auction, the proceeds from which will go to 38 Studios’ creditors, first among them Rhode Island taxpayers.
At the urging of then-Gov. Donald L. Carcieri and with the support of General Assembly leadership, the R.I. Economic Development Corporation in 2010 granted Schilling a $75 million loan guarantee in exchange for moving 38 Studios from Maynard to Providence and rapidly hiring hundreds of workers.
By spring of this year, 38 Studios had burned through the $50 million it got from the state-backed loan ($25 million was held in reserve) and defaulted on a fee payment to the state. In May the company laid off nearly 300 workers and filed for bankruptcy with $150 million in debt and Rhode Island taxpayers potentially on the hook for more than $100 million.
“They promised me a statue downtown if I get $75 million,” auctioneer Sal Corio, of SJ Corio Co., said from the podium at the start of bidding.
The reality, however, is the proceeds of the Providence auction, and the $180,000 raised the prior week at 38 Studios’ Timonium, Maryland auction, will only put a small dent in the unpaid debt due to creditors, some of whom will see nothing from the liquidation.
“This is office equipment, but the hope is that the sale of [38 Studios’] intellectual property will bring more for the bondholders,” said Richard Land, the court-appointed receiver in the 38 Studios bankruptcy.
Land said the Providence auction was much more substantial than the Maryland bidding, which didn’t include 38 Studios memorabilia, such as a “Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning” monster figurine ($1,100), Schilling’s model airplanes ($150 each) the company foosball table ($650) or four countdown clocks set to the launch date of 38 Studios’ never-completed massively multiplayer online game “Copernicus” ($200 each).
Munir Rihani, owner of the Royal Gallery on Atwells Avenue in Providence, was “here for the art,” but while he waited to claim a staff-signed Big Huge Games/38 Studios poster ($300), he picked up a pair of drawing easels ($62.50 each).
Lisa Cabral of Scituate bought eight mini-refrigerators for $50 each.
“I have kids in college,” Cabral said, “and I’ll resell the rest.” •

No posts to display