10 Gaming Flops Much Better Than Their Reputations

Not many games have the honour of tanking so hard, they almost collapse a state economy. But Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning not only grasps this accolade with both hands, it does so whilst also being a good game.

The State of Rhode Island gave ex-NBA pitcher and 38 Studios head Curt Shilling $75 million dollars to make Kingdoms Of Amalur, with the original idea being to grow an IP into a world full of the same complexities and wonders as Blizzard's World of Warcraft. The marketing team behind the game used the money in interesting ways though. Shilling sought celebrity endorsements from the likes of ex-N.W.A member and film star Ice Cube. 38 Studios were, to incorporate a baseball pun, swinging for the fences. They needed to sell 3 million units to break even, after all.

Once all was said and done, Kingdoms Of Amalur sold 1.2 million units at the 90-day mark. For a game of this financial scale, this was just not good enough and forever marked the franchise as a failure, even though some of the mechanics in the RPG, such as the ability to instantly switch character classes, would later appear in smash hits like Divinity: Original Sin.

If you would like to read more on this, quite frankly bizarre story, please follow this link to Jules' fantastic 2018 article.