Another_Fan

I will sound mean. You're full of crap. While most MMO's have surge and decline almost all of them manage to surge for more than 1 quarter at a time. Even MMOs considered to be failures have managed to do better than that

You did. It is as simple as computing the cost of running a studio with 80 people, + cost of hosting, billing, and providing support GMs for the game. You just chose not to accept the facts

Everything points to paragon studios as an entity not being profitable. The fact the game wasn't making enough money to be worth breaking it out as its own entity defines unhealthy.

Just because you are still drawing breath doesn't make you healthy.

So your position is now that it wasn't healthy but that was because it had no advertising budget ?

Interesting. Advertising to the public is something I never was able to get a good grasp of. Marketing in general is one of the most difficult parts of any business because of the difficulty in assessing the results. Here is something I was really aware of though. My best sales came from repeat business and my best markets were prior customers that I could interest in new/improved products.

CoH was unable to seal the deal with its former customers. Look at that graph at best they came back briefly and left.

This leaves you with the proposition

1. Paragon studios can't interest the people who are most likely to buy their products and can be reached with inexpensive advertising.

2. If you can't sell to the market most likely to buy should you spend large amounts of money to reach other markets much less likely to purchase ?

3. How far do you trust people with a record of not delivering ?

Did you adopt that philosophy before or after you provoked the destruction of the praetorian's civilization, or was it an epiphany you had while slaughtering people trying to escape the B.A.F.

well there is this



So we have a game that from the beginning has never been able to grow and has continuously declined despite having a lock on a niche in a growing market.

That pretty much defines poor health/performance

Julius Ceasar "Men willingly believe what they wish"

For 8 years this community has swallowed every developer lie hook line and sinker. You even had volunteer liars like Golden Girl step in to amplify. Even nowm when the devs have admitted they were throwing B.S. at you, the community isn't internalizing the implications.

Think on this, the people who are promoting plan Z are the same people who can't admit that a dead game wasn't healthy, encouraged people to waste money on points, condoned preying on people with a weakness for gambling.

Now they are seeking funding this B.S. ?

Or deliberately misled people to stir up support. Not that paragon studios would ever do that

here maybe these will help.

These

http://www.google.ca/search?as_q=vic...w=1280&bih=588

Btw it's a little telling that casual people are aware of the misinformation the titan forums are spreading but the front men arent

How many failed attempts did Edison have on his inventions ? On a closer to home note, I wish my failed products had the ROI theirs managed

Thread on the titan boards.

Yet they are incredibly successful in the business. So they are either proof that "It's smarter to be lucky than lucky to be smart" or are crazy like a fox

Claiming CoH had profits of 10 mil + a year for one.

Well at least I don't believe people who claim its raining when they are pissing on my shoes.

It depends on the company. I will be the first to admit I don't understand how game companies are organized. I come from a manufacturing background, the companies I worked for could trace their management systems straight back to the railroads and steel giants. My company I expected to know whenever a pin dropped.

Looking at CoH it's like NCsoft didn't bother to manage it at all. Someone posted an anecdote about how a Paragon studios programmer got hired and told to work on whatever bug he thought was important, after spending months on something that was around for 8 years and coming to the conclusion it was unfixable. I know if that happened in my company, the first thing that would have happened is that my fist would have put a new set of dents in my office walls, then I would have had a long talk with whoever hired a person without a clear reason for doing so and an expectation on how they would pay back. Over the years you have also had paragon studios make self serving statements such as "We can't trace players leaving to particular changes". My response to that would have been to ask the division manager why I was signing his paycheck if he didn't understand how the company worked and what was motivating the customers.

We have to remember that NCsoft had access to information about CoH we didn't have. I suspect that the game was in the process of transitioning to a lower plateau again, and NCsoft no longer trusted assurances from paragon studios about the next big thing.

Well for one thing preventing people from developing for a platform involves much work and is often on shaky legal ground.

Actually that guy gave a pretty good rating to the company and that was the only negative thing he had to say. If that is the worst people working for them have to say they are likely an outstandingly nice company

That qoute doesn't say anything like what you are saying. If an employee of CBS in California said that sometimes it felt like they cared more about their New York operations, it would be just as wrong to jump to the conclusion that they were abandoning the Western U.S.

NCSoft derives an overwhelming portion of it's revenues from the asian market. Aion is a gigantic MMO worldwide of course they care more about their big sellers than marginal games.

There is one mention of Asia regarding NCsoft on glassdoor

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/NCs...-E23242_P3.htm

NCsoft just released GW2, has Wildstar coming out is promoting it's asian games as western localizations. The only people that talk about NCsoft abandoning the west are people on the Titan boards who are the same people who have no trouble giving negative reviews to games they have never played and or overstating CoH's profitability.

Matter of fact seeing as this is an unattributed statement on your part and it's something that there is both no proof for and contradicted by NCsofts actions where is your source ?

Really ? I had 110% of the production and got nothing.


Ahh like this one ?

http://betabeat.com/2012/04/this-is-...am-looks-like/

or maybe this one ?

http://betabeat.com/2011/09/when-kic...-a-27637-ride/


TBH I don't get kickstarter. The people with the project get funding, you get something that a carnie guessing game would be embarrassed to give out as a prize.

On a side note, if people are just willing to give away money to have the game alive, that undercuts the notion that the IP is only worth 500k. At that price if you had 4000 people willing to buy a lifetime sub for $120 or just a year sub in advance at that price you have 0 risk on your investment.

As opposed to putting money in a Max Bialystock production ?