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Page 20: Absofrickinglutely

"Our current to do list is 29 items long," wrote Devine in a January 13, 1998 e-mail to the Extreme Warfare team. With issues such as online chatting, shadows, and music still to be addressed, Extreme Warfare was starting to face significant development delays. At the same time, Trilobyte developed another concept for a game, first called Extreme Racing (later renamed Baja Racing) that was also signed with Red Orb. Although Trilobyte was in need of an additional revenue stream, to most inside Trilobyte, there were bandwidth issues.

Baja Racing was another game signed with Red Orb that would use the Salvation 3D engine.

"We had a very small team in the first place for Extreme Warfare," says producer Jean-Marc Chemelda, "and when we added on Extreme Racing and didn't hire any new employees, I think our bandwidth wasn't capable of handing both products at the same time."

In February, Devine posed the question, "Will we be here in a year?" in an e-mail. His response? "Absofrickinglutely." But to some inside the company, trying to meet milestone dates with a skeleton team proved a daunting task. "Red Orb started to taunt us," says programmer Marien. "'They'd say, 'Give us your milestone and you'll get your money.' We ended up just cramming features into the game to get our money," a common problem some developers face under a milestone model.

As Trilobyte continued work on Extreme Warfare, Devine forwarded a GameSpot news story to the entire team on March 3. The subject was telling: "Ah, the Wheels of History." In the enclosed story, GameSpot said, "Unconfirmed reports on the Web indicate that Cyan Inc., the creative team behind Riven and Myst, has lost two of its key partners." Later that week, it would be learned that Rand and Robyn Miller, the co-creators of The 7th Guest's biggest competitor Myst, had decided to go their separate ways and dissolve their partnership.

"Virgin secretly planned an Unreal-engine based 7th Guest project code-named The 13th Warrior, to be developed by Legend Entertainment."

Speaking of The 7th Guest, in early 1998 Virgin Interactive tried to reinvent the franchise in real-time 3D with a top-secret project code-named The 13th Soul, which was built as a third-person real-time 3D game that took place inside the Stauf mansion. "Legend Entertainment built us a prototype using the Unreal engine," recalls Virgin's Keith Greer. "It looked really promising," he says, but due to changes at Virgin (including the sale of the company by parent Viacom), The 13th Soul was never put into full-scale production.

At Trilobyte, the primary focus was to deliver Extreme Warfare to Red Orb. The publisher was so excited about the game it promised Trilobyte the same marketing muscle that had been given to Riven: The Sequel to Myst, if Trilobyte could deliver it on time. "The deal with Red Orb is simple," explained Devine in an e-mail to the team in April 1998. "We must finish the game in four months."

Extreme Warfare promised gamers the ability to pilot a number of vehicles in huge multiplayer battles.

However, Extreme Warfare would slip again; after a less-than-impressive showing at the 1998 E3 show in Atlanta, the project lost momentum. "Unfortunately, Extreme Warfare went the same way as The 11th Hour," says investment representative Ralph Derrickson. "There was a continual schedule creep, and what Graeme didn't realize was that because he was doing something for online, it didn't have to be perfect, like a CD-ROM. If people responded to it, then you could update it and give them more."

Despite the schedule creep, June of 1998 would bring the $420 million purchase of Broderbund by The Learning Company, which was a crushing blow to the Extreme Warfare project. Although the team continued to work on the game through the summer, it quickly became clear that The Learning Company wasn't interested in picking up Trilobyte's two online-based projects. By September, Devine was telling the company over e-mail, "We are 95 percent cancelled." At the time, The Learning Company said it didn't want to develop any games for the Internet, regardless of the developer. Still, the long development delays and stalled progress on the game were no doubt important contributing factors in The Learning Company pulling the plug.

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Although The Learning Company wasn't interested in the game, it did give Trilobyte the ability to go out and see if it could sell the projects to other publishers. By the fall, Trilobyte was talking to a list of publishers that spanned the alphabet from Acclaim to Ubi Soft. Although Red Orb had contributed $800,000 toward both games, the amount wasn't enough to finish the titles. Any publisher that picked up both titles would have to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars to put the final spit and polish on them.

Complicating the situation was Trilobyte's insistence on finding a partner to acquire the company, not just publish its products. Although Trilobyte had numerous offers from publishers to pick up Extreme Warfare, it held out for a company that was interested in buying the whole kit and caboodle.

That acquisition would never materialize.

Next: The Bitter End