NCsoft Brighton to Axe Dev Team
By
Aero_,
Posted on: 2008-09-10 13:53 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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I'd have thought you would use 1 publishing group that publish the same magazines in multiple languages to avoid that being the case.
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Buying the space isn't generally the bit that causes issues. It's the translation, checking the translation, altering the German artwork because something is three times as long in German as it is in French, getting the legal disclaimers on each different national ad written by lawyers from each country, getting the legal disclaimers on each different national ad checked by different lawyers from each country, getting the German artwork changed again because the creative has decided that the new version ruins his vision, checking the translation for a final time and changing the stuff that got missed the first time, meaning the whole process has to be started again, dealing with flak because you only had a Flemmish ad in Belgum, not a French one as well, several magazines being sent the ad in the wrong language, and then after everything has been published, some git on the internet spotting that some perfectly innocent text on the English one means something very, very rude in Slovenian.
Dead Calm's Defender Manifesto
I am gutted really, too gutted to know what to say, except best of luck to all that is affected. I hope good fortune comes everyone's way really and I will say that even small ones are a blessing to take hold of. Redundancies happen to the very best of people, and I hope it brings out the best in people, I hope you all find a new role somewhere soon.
He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.
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Buying the space isn't generally the bit that causes issues. It's the translation, checking the translation, altering the German artwork because something is three times as long in German as it is in French, getting the legal disclaimers on each different national ad written by lawyers from each country, getting the legal disclaimers on each different national ad checked by different lawyers from each country, getting the German artwork changed again because the creative has decided that the new version ruins his vision, checking the translation for a final time and changing the stuff that got missed the first time, meaning the whole process has to be started again, dealing with flak because you only had a Flemmish ad in Belgum, not a French one as well, several magazines being sent the ad in the wrong language, and then after everything has been published, some git on the internet spotting that some perfectly innocent text on the English one means something very, very rude in Slovenian.
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I see, cant imagine for the life of me why companies do it then.
Maybe in practice done by people that know what they are doing, and do it every day as part of their job, its not the nightmare it looks in your block of text.
Or maybe it is i dunno, all im saying is a bit of EU advertising cant hurt can it.
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What would be the point in advertising in Greece? there is no greek localisation, no greek GMs, Greece has a tiny population anyway. Face it, you aint worth thier while.
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If you was trying to make a joke or been sarcastic, I am sorry but you failed to do so.
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No, I was pointing out a fact. The same is true for any Eurpean country. The only way they can target the EU as a market is to treat it as a single entity, which is rather scuppered by the different languages and media.
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Yes, we are the 1/6 of you, but then think again:
Germany and France have (individually) more population than UK.
(the rest of my post is offtopic)
You couldn't stop at the point where you were advertising that Germany and France support is better to be cut off, you had to go beyond that, eh? (unprovoked too!)
Greek people never asked or needed Greek localization, you came up with that artifact to diminish us more so you can conclude easier that we don't worth anyone's while.
It is you that does this, not NCsoft or any other company.
I gave you the opportunity to amend your action and you didn't take it.
Generally, you seem to enjoy degrading most of the people you meet in these boards (although I never expect you to do that to entire countries at once). I can't tell why you do that, but it does make you popular in ignore lists.
Goodbye...
*plonk*
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What would be the point in advertising in Greece? there is no greek localisation, no greek GMs, Greece has a tiny population anyway. Face it, you aint worth thier while.
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If you was trying to make a joke or been sarcastic, I am sorry but you failed to do so.
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No, I was pointing out a fact. The same is true for any Eurpean country. The only way they can target the EU as a market is to treat it as a single entity, which is rather scuppered by the different languages and media.
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Yes, we are the 1/6 of you, but then think again:
Germany and France have (individually) more population than UK.
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True but the fact that most of the support for EU CoH is in English is that English is the most widely spread spoken language, true more people speak Chinese, but mostly in China. In this thread alone I see a German, a Greek and MaX who I think is Finnish (Scandinavian certainly), we are all conversing in English.
And in France and German there are a lot of people who speak, read & write English. I'd be willing to bet that as many Germans and French who speak English enough to get by as there are people in the UK who do.
You obviously speak, read & write English, the only other Greek who plays that I know (Tainted Greek) is also an English speaker, I wonder how many of the other non UK people who play on the English language EU servers can speak English?
I for one understand a bit of Dutch, Italian and Spanish and I'm only an English speaker.
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(the rest of my post is offtopic)
You couldn't stop at the point where you were advertising that Germany and France support is better to be cut off, you had to go beyond that, eh? (unprovoked too!)
Greek people never asked or needed Greek localization, you came up with that artifact to diminish us more so you can conclude easier that we don't worth anyone's while.
It is you that does this, not NCsoft or any other company.
I gave you the opportunity to amend your action and you didn't take it.
Generally, you seem to enjoy degrading most of the people you meet in these boards (although I never expect you to do that to entire countries at once). I can't tell why you do that, but it does make you popular in ignore lists.
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His point IMO is right, the extra support needed in the EU has been something of a white elephant. The additional costs required to market and support the game in two languages that haven't seen a sensible return for that investment. That is not to mention running two vastly underpopulated servers or actually fixing them so that they work in other languages (FFM was right game was poorly designed for localisation).
Bottom line is if the game had been released in EU with only official English language support, then the savings could have been spent on better/greater advertising, or just been saved. Instead NCSoft over extended themselves which has now resulted in job losses.
((Sorry if I misunderstood Praf's point, but that is what I think he's trying to say...))
Edit: Hit submit and wanted to check I'd quoted right 
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I see, cant imagine for the life of me why companies do it then.
Maybe in practice done by people that know what they are doing, and do it every day as part of their job, its not the nightmare it looks in your block of text.
Or maybe it is i dunno, all im saying is a bit of EU advertising cant hurt can it.
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Oh, it's doable, and if you have a Proctor and Gamble size budget you can cover the world in your logo to your hearts content.
However, just if you are a newly merged organisation who's remit covers the US and Europe, and have a budget of $1m, that $1m is going to go father in the US than in Europe.
That's not to say that they won't advertise in Europe. The UK is the obvious place due to language, and presuming they are keeping the French and German servers, then they should certainly be targetted as well. Other countries that are English/French/German speaking would also be worth considering as the localisation costs are less.
However, the amount of return on investment NCsoft would get advertising in a country that thats first language isn't a server language is going to be a lot less, so I'd consider it unlikely in the extreme they'd advertise there.
It's not that those countries are rubbish or worse or not worthy or anything like that, it's just that the money doesn't strech that far, so they have to use it where they are going to get the most sales per $ spent.
Dead Calm's Defender Manifesto
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Considering the fact that there are living as much people in europe then say the US I say you are very wrong.
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Yes, but with 20+ different languages it costs around 20 times the amount to market to the whole EU than it does to the whole of the US. And if you start providing servers in the individual langages it pushes costs up astronomiclly.
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Given that the game is web based, it probably doesnt and never did make sense to set up a euro division.
It's still unpleasant news. Never fun to leave a job you enjoy and people you like working with, even if you are very employable elsewhere.
So I'm sorry for everyone who is potentailly caught in this unfortunate turn of events.
Don't get into a flap. It's only my opinion and I'm thick
Arc 56763 Lord Anarchys heaven
2 mission arc. Bring friends cause Lord Anarchy means business...
Partly the reason Blizzard never released another MMO, it would compete with their own biggest succes. Europe/US based their game alreadyd dominated the market, there is no need for a 2nd one.
There are several succesgames that made advertisement in Europe but remained 100% support on english only. They did however gave each country their own forumbit, each having free moderators to communicate incase a player is bad in english. GameMasters actualy did pretty good on getting a succes (and upcomming one) in europe.
Giving full support (client and backend) in a certain language always remains tricky. US is easy, asia widely is easy (either chinese or english - with exceptions), Europe is a mix of roughly 10 language's.
Personaly, and no flame or feeling towards them, i would have gone for a plain english client but with multi-language backend support.
50)Sinergy X/(50)Mika.
(50)MaceX/(50)Encore
Sign the petition, dont let CoH go down! SIGN!
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Yes, we are the 1/6 of you, but then think again:
Germany and France have (individually) more population than UK.
(the rest of my post is offtopic)
You couldn't stop at the point where you were advertising that Germany and France support is better to be cut off, you had to go beyond that, eh? (unprovoked too!)
Greek people never asked or needed Greek localization, you came up with that artifact to diminish us more so you can conclude easier that we don't worth anyone's while.
It is you that does this, not NCsoft or any other company.
I gave you the opportunity to amend your action and you didn't take it.
Generally, you seem to enjoy degrading most of the people you meet in these boards (although I never expect you to do that to entire countries at once). I can't tell why you do that, but it does make you popular in ignore lists.
Goodbye...
*plonk*
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Agreed with your post Saxtus, think a line has been crossed, can understand you being upset.
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Bottom line is if the game had been released in EU with only official English language support, then the savings could have been spent on better/greater advertising, or just been saved. Instead NCSoft over extended themselves which has now resulted in job losses.
((Sorry if I misunderstood Praf's point, but that is what I think he's trying to say...))
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Nope, you have got it spot on.
I really should do something about this signature.
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Agreed with your post Saxtus, think a line has been crossed, can understand you being upset.
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I'm sorry, I don't understand. All I said was Greece has a low population. This is a point of fact. It does not imply anything negative about the country or it's people. I'm Scottish. It has an even smaller population than Greece. There is nothing wrong with being a small country.
I'm sorry if I caused offence, there was none intended.
I really should do something about this signature.
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Bottom line is if the game had been released in EU with only official English language support, then the savings could have been spent on better/greater advertising, or just been saved. Instead NCSoft over extended themselves which has now resulted in job losses.
((Sorry if I misunderstood Praf's point, but that is what I think he's trying to say...))
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Nope, you have got it spot on.
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Having this kind of autopsy while people are sweating on their jobs is just bad taste, plain and simple.
you got any tact?
Don't get into a flap. It's only my opinion and I'm thick
Arc 56763 Lord Anarchys heaven
2 mission arc. Bring friends cause Lord Anarchy means business...
No, I don't think I have any tact.
I really should do something about this signature.
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No, I don't think I have any tact.
[/ QUOTE ]It's quite overrated.
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No, I don't think I have any tact.
[/ QUOTE ]It's quite overrated.
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It's actually highly underated as most people don't see it happening, but I might suggest your combined statement make an interesting 'motto' for the Cartel
There is no "Cartel". That's just a stupid (and rather abusive) word the the board software puts under our names. If you have been posting on there forums for 3-4 years, you are going to aquire a high post count. Especially those of us who are stuck at work with access to the internet but unable to play games. We do not always agree, we do not always back each other up.
I really should do something about this signature.
True enough 'Cartel' is hardley an appropriate phrase IMHO what is that supposed to represent something somewhere between the Mafia/A South American Drug organisation, Sorry mate didn't mean to cause any real offence the irony of it just tickled me and I felt I needed to share.
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There is no "Cartel".
[/ QUOTE ]Indeed, there's just a clique.
I still don't know if I'm in it or not though.
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There is no "Cartel".
[/ QUOTE ]Indeed, there's just a clique.
I still don't know if I'm in it or not though.
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I'd say there's the clique, and then there's you 
@SteelRat; @SteelRat2
"Angelina my love, I'm a genius!"
"Of course you are darling, that's why I married you. Physically, you're rather unattractive"
http://faces.cohtitan.com/profile/SteelRat
Is that one of rules of the cartel if anyone actually says anything about you use /em jedi hand wave and say 'this is not the cartel you where looking for!,In fact there IN NO CARTEL' 
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you got any tact?
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Hello Mr Pot! Meet my friend, Mr Kettle! 
@FloatingFatMan
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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There is no "Cartel".
[/ QUOTE ]Indeed, there's just a clique.
I still don't know if I'm in it or not though.
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I'd say there's the clique, and then there's you
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Actually, there's one clique per member of the Cartel.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
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you got any tact?
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Hello Mr Pot! Meet my friend, Mr Kettle!
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Uh oh....
*sits back and grabs some popcorn.
My sympathy goes out to all involved with all the changes at Brighton. I hope you'll stay around the forums maybe playing the game or something
I don't know the Aero, Kerensky, Rockjaw and the others well enough to judge what kind of people they are but from what I read you made quite the impression
The M.A.D. Files - Me talking about games, films, games, life, games, internet and games
I'm not good at giving advice, can I interest you in a sarcastic comment?
@Lyrik
I too sympathise with the guys at NC - having been through a similar time with a well-known UK Mobile Network a few months ago it can be a testing time! As much as I didn't know any of the guys who are leaving particularly well they are kinda like the foundations of my house. I know they exist although I have never seen them but I am damn sure without their support of the past few years my house would have crumbled 
Good luck to all who are leaving for pastures new - I hope you find somewhere rewarding to work and get great enjoyment from wherever this takes you! Hopefully you will stay ingame (although I probably wouldnt know any of you if you whupped me in RV)!!
Golden-Phoenix - Lvl 50 Fire/Fire Tank
Oodja Nikabolokov - Lvl 50 SS/WP Brute
Baby-Phoenix - Lvl 50 Peacebringer
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could Chuck Norris?
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Yes, but with 20+ different languages it costs around 20 times the amount to market to the whole EU than it does to the whole of the US.
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I'd have thought you would use 1 publishing group that publish the same magazines in multiple languages to avoid that being the case.