SilverAgeFan

This remark makes me want to try and articulate a few things I've been thinking over this weekend in order to broaden people's minds to fit more accurately the range of solutions that may be possible in terms of ownership and management of this (or in worst case, the spirtual successor to this) MMO moving forward.

This is not meant to single out you, Alexis_NA nor any other poster. I do not seek to offend nor grab attention in this hour of relative crisis for this MMO and the community that comprises it. Just to inform.

There seems to be a decent amount of bias, understandably given our current cultural climate, that there are basically two options: corporate owned for profit capitalism and all else filed under unprofitable not-for-profit charity thingies.

The landscape of possible business and ownership models is more diverse than that with a range of precedents.

Yes, there is our current situation which our solution may ultimately mirror: IP ownership and distribution via a multinational media corporation who will extract a percentage of profit each year in return for their initial investment of a lump sum of capital to save the IP and the game. This could be a number of the other existing corporate entities people have already brainstormed in this thread or others, from SOE to VALVe.

Not too far from this, and not to be confused with a cooperative, there is shared ownership of a newly formed public company where capital for the initial rescue purchase is made by sale of shares to a VERY wide, diverse swath of people with the thought that if you sell to enough supportive persons within a community that has vested interest in the continued existence of whatever the capital was raised to form, build or purchase, that a majority will never sell their piecemeal shares allowing a hostile takeover. This sort of effort takes advantage of existing laws and regulations both permitting and governing the creation and sales of shares in a corporation. The most famous case of this happening is the local and distributed ownership of the Green Bay Packers. I'm honestly not informed though about how profit and loss margins (P&L) are handled with respect to shareholders for the Packers.

Then there are cooperatives. Coops for short. (Pronounced co-op, two syllables not to be confused with coops for chickens.) These come in many diverse forms and can demand a range of responsibilities, both physical and financial. A few examples:

• Here in NYC, there are cooperatives that own buildings, where similar to a condo fee, you pay into a general fund monthly in addition to your mortgage. A coop board is formed and required to manage and deliberate important building related decisions including new roofs, boiler maintenance, meeting building regulations, deciding on and paying for amenities like doormen. One important factor that many people outside of NYC might not realize: a cooperative has the legal authority to block any pending sale of a unit. This might scare the bejeezus out of some reading right now. But it is there as a protective measure. It is an authority that can and has been abused most certainly in the past. But there are good reasons that a quiet building may not want a professional drummer or a person with 41 cats or a person who's credit history looks like they may be foreclosed upon within a year to move into the building. A fine distinction: with a condo, you own your space wall to wall while a private corporation owns the infrastructure of the building (plumbing, boiler, elevators, etc.) while with a coop, you own the space within your unit, but the building infrastructure including the shared walls between units, are owned cooperatively amongst ALL the other building residents.
  
  
• There are also owner operated cooperatives. I happen to be a member of the largest and most successful one in the Unites States: the Park Slope Food Coop. Say what you will about hippie eats, when for working just under 3 hours a month you can get all sorts of good, safe mostly local foods and food products at wholesale +21% compared to other prices in NYC, there is no need to argue. To take some air out of the notion that non-corporate business cannot be profitable, the PSFC has long since bought out its mortgage on its expansion space. Our rotating active membership (as some members drop out and new ones join) of 12k-20k people brings in enough proceeds to cover a full time daily staff of about a couple dozen people with both healthcare and a good living wage for Brooklyn. Prices only go up when our suppliers raise their prices. And the coffers are currently so full that the PSFC is exploring via our general meeting and open democratic management structure becoming a lender to provide outlays of initial capital to help other fledgling owner operated cooperatives launch. (This outlay could be in the form of a several $100k loan to purchase a reasonable space for example.) There are disadvantages to something like this in terms of it being sometimes VERY difficult to start due to lack of capital. But once established and culturally rooted, these sorts of organizations can be tremendously flexible and display pragmatic longterm management decisions that prioritize the continued existence of the entity. And again, this is one example that demonstrates that non-corporate does not equal not profitable.
  
  
• Another example is the worker owned cooperative. This is not to be confused with the owner operated described above that expects a level of volunteerism and labor from all those that use the services of the entity. Nor is it to be confused with stock options granted to workers by some corporations. Imagine if everyone that worked at New Paragon Studios (for lack of a better name currently) was given partial ownership over the game and the studio that produces it. Positron, War Witch, Zwill, Dink, Honey Badger, Synapse, all the way down to their janitor if it is a full time non-external contractor, et al.--all of them partial owners. Now imagine that there is no investor bracket. No external board of directors or shareholders tithing the annual profits. Imagine the workers at Paragon voting to keep their salaries roughly where they are with benefits (hopefully respectable living wages). Now, all that extra capital coming in can go directly back into the game, ensuring its longevity, allowing for capital improvements, etc. More management authority is placed in the hands of those that are directly working in the trenches in terms of where the wisest place to invest those funds would be. There are several examples within the United States of work forces pooling monies and buying out beleaguered manufacturers and demonstrating that the business is actually sustainable if you simply trim back the owner-class in terms of profit distribution. An industrial bakery in the Northwest and a window company in the Midwest leap to mind. Additionally, there are a number of new growers cooperatives being set up in Africa and South America providing all of us here with out of season delicacies like great pesticide free coffee and organic blueberries. As with other cooperatives, the initial hurdle is that first bump of cash to buy out the infrastructure (factory, farm, etc.) that is close to being shuttered.
  
  
• Another example is the consumer cooperative. This involves cooperative ownership by those that actually use the service of the entity. I am not as familiar with the history of these, but regional cooperative power supply and distribution is one solid example of this sort of cooperative and there are still several regions of the country whose power grid is served and maintained by such an organization. If anyone has more direct experience with these, please chime in. It's important to remember that shared ownership does not equal free usage of all services offered by that entity as if it were your father's candy store. It simply means that you collectively have some input on governing decisions, perhaps things as important as will this regional gas company frack in our counties or not. Or more trivial but still impactful: the day on which your favorite MMO shuts down.

This is far from an exhaustive list of the myriad types of alternative ownership models with functional precedents out there. There are already numerous business laws set up to help establish and regulate these different sorts of bodies. I'm not trying to insinuate that any one model is THE right model for our collective efforts to find a new home or spiritual successor for CoH. But I hope we can keep an open mind to some of these wide ranging options and realize that once established, some of the alternatives may prove to be even more long-lived and more fruitful for the game itself and those who would continue developing it.

When the time comes, go BEYOND gaming news sites. NPRs Marketplace might be interested as well as NYTimes, Washington Post or Wall St. Journal. Not in the game shutting down but particularly in a group of customers saving and maybe helping buy out a profitable American business that a foreign investor decided to close for balance sheet reasons. And "in this economy" of all times.

Depending upon where this story goes, there is a story there.

^ ^ ^ A little bit of this.

These sorts of offers really make me wonder if a game development community could be run as a hybrid cooperative labor force with a central paid staff, part open source and mod friendly with an official QA release and conforming pipeline.

Very true and would agree with this.

From what I understand, members of the team behind Torchlight worked on Diablo I and II. I personally prefer Torchlight to Diablo III by far and am still cautiously optimistic about Torchlight II.

So much has changed in ten years since CoH started its initial development. And despite NCSoft being a behemoth, Cryptic/Paragon was indeed a small to medium sized studio for much of its duration and in relation to CoH development. In my opinion, the most interesting stuff happening in gaming right now involves things being done by these smaller studios who are not beholden to large money hungry publishers. My hopes is that if a short term buyout does not happen is that several experienced members of the team and talent from Paragon dare to launch an indie studio that could push the multiplayer superhero experience even further.

Games/platforms like Minecraft have proven that persistent, multiplayer, and massive are not mutually bound concepts anymore. Similarly, gaming world physics and voxels have come a long long way in the past 10 years. The fall of CoH leaves a big hole IMO in the market. The other two options for persistent super hero play have not held my interest at all, despite being newer engines. At best, CO felt like CoH 1.5 with a graphic update and some cautious experiments. Hopefully this vacuum will be filled though by a bold experiment that pushes preconceptions and innovates as much as CoH has over its history.

Nope the image load is blocked from the original site on the forum.

So I got all interpretive dance on the theme. And yes, I'm applying an ad hominem attack vilifying this decision as one of greedy mismanagement with NCSoft lopping off a foot just so they can appear to be unloading ballast on their balance sheet.

Guess I've once again returned to the "anger" stage of the grieving cycle.

Humor is good. Forgive my general anger at NCSoft in return.

I'll be here ON the last day and maybe try to be here leading up to it if real life permits.

For better or worse, responsibilities are cranking back up again and I wouldn't be able to play much between now and mid October even if I were motivated to.

But I do plan on dropping in from time to time and seeing what's on in a few channels. Catching a few friendly global names to say farewell.

I feel this way some months. And I feel some similar strangeness in the synchronicity of this announcement with my own personal life.

But I must admit I'm also quite fond of indie games these days. I played Terraria when it came out. I still drop into Minecraft from time to time. I've been enjoying HOARD on steam. And if Project Zomboid gets Steam greenlighting, I may play in the mplayer version of that once it is developed.

If anyone is interested in staying in touch or teaming small server-wise in any of these or similar on Steam, even if we haven't teamed before, feel free to send me a friend invite.

SilverAgeFan on Steam.

Yes. If you can please do. Here or on some unofficial forum!

Sure. If you're gonna go, go all the way!

You don't even need to go that far. Log into your account via the game, get the shop window to come up. There is a redeem code field in the upper right. Use that. I've seen it reported in game that this works as a means for applying the codes.

We haven't seen these tanks yet, have we?

Please tell me that at least one has a window with animated bubbles and tintable interior liquid!

I've been wanting a chemical tank for so long.

Also a suggestion if it's not too late in the process, can we have a few skins for these including a biohazard symbol, radioactive symbol, classic poison skull and crossbones, a flammable symbol, and of course a symbol-less version?

Try using the "enter promo code" field at the top right of the store interface in game then. See if that gets you results!

It's not a power. It's an aura in the costume creator. Listed under auras as Dark Matter.

You won't see it if you we're logged in at the time of redemption unless you log out and log back in. If you weren't logged in, it should be there in the costume creator on any and every character, regardless of level, once you log in.