KICKSTART(er) Coh back to life. Vote w/ $$
By
AxiomMan,
Posted on: 2012-08-31 13:23 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
Global@SteelDominator
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A petition is not what we need. A means to purchase the studio outright is what is required, and that necessitates a direct line of communication with NCSoft. Even if you have 100000000 signatures on the petition, unless you have an organized communication thread with NCSoft with proper legal representation, it will do you no good. The point of this thread is to not talk about, but actually do.|
Originally Posted by SteelDominator
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Taking each signature and converting it to a 5$ donation via kickstarter for the outright purchase of the studio goes much further than a signature alone. And again, that can only happen with open discourse with the owner of the IP.
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Hew in drag baby
If there's some way legitimately get a kickstarter going to purchase the CoH IP, I'm am in for sure. Someone with the legal knowledge and know-how, please look into this!
...I forgot what experience means.
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There are definitely legal eagles in the community. We just need to procure there services. We also need a separate kickstart fund to pay for their services in an official and documented way, or find enough who are willing to work the case pro bono. (Free please!!! )
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Originally Posted by SpaceNut
If there's some way legitimately get a kickstarter going to purchase the CoH IP, I'm am in for sure. Someone with the legal knowledge and know-how, please look into this!
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Hew in drag baby
I absolutely think this is the best way to go to continue. I'd happily put money on it on KS, but I have no knowledge with which I could assist.
_Victory_
Character List
Agree that a petition will not change anything. Unfortunately as the old saying goes "Money talks, [censored] walks." A communication needs to be established to see IF NCSoft is willing to sell Paragon Studios and the City of Heroes IP. If so then a price needs to be established and see if it's possible to raise said funds in a certain amount of time.
Paragon Unleashed Forums
Twitter: @Alpha_Ryvius
Kickstarter was the first thing that came to mind. I have never started one, but absolutely will for this game unless someone with more experience wants to open it. We have to get NC Soft in discussion of selling the IP. If they're cutting it for monetary reasons, selling may be appealing to them. After all, they bought it from Cryptic.
The best thing to do here would be to PM Zwillinger and ask him to pass the information on Legal.
I see a couple of issues with this.
First, even with generous player donations, I don't think it's possible to run an active MMO. The funding for even one "server maintenance guy" position is probably beyond what the community can pay. Moreover, there's the cost of server space, hardware, etc.
Second, what I think this thread is asking for is not that, but the more reasonable position of buying the intellectual property rights to the Paragon City/Rogue Isles setting. The problem here is ... what is NCSoft's incentive to sell it? From the publisher's point of view, why throw away the chance of creating a new product (MMO or otherwise) years from now by letting those rights out of its grasp? This, as much as raising the money to pay for it and getting the legal forms followed, is the real challenge here. And no, I'm afraid I don't have any solutions.
EDIT: Forgot the most important part. I am an attorney, but IP and transactional work in general are not my field. Any of the other lawyers in the community will tell you that one thing any lawyer has to be really careful of is not to give legal advice on matters on which the attorney is not qualified. For that reason, I'm not going to list some of the other attorneys in the community of whom I'm aware. Further, if the people posting here are serious, the best thing to do is probably to conduct something like this off-fora, through e-mail or the like.
"Bombarding the CoH/V fora with verbosity since January, 2006"
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I sent an email to kickstarter to ask if something like this would be permitted through their service. It doesn't look like it, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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If they don't, there's some other crowdsourcing services we can also try, like Indiegogo.
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Originally Posted by Sapphire7
I sent an email to kickstarter to ask if something like this would be permitted through their service. It doesn't look like it, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
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There's sooooo many reasons why this wouldn't work - and it starts with NCsoft agreeing to sell/give up the IP and brand franchise to someone else before anyone would be allowed to save it. Its a great idea and I'd contribute if I could but I don't think NCsoft would let it happen.
I'm really ashamed of NCsoft and I will never buy another one of their products again.
A funding campaign, you say? How about this one I whipped up? http://www.indiegogo.com/cityofheroesforever?a=1164894
Any help with ideas on improving it would be great! Save this friggin' thing!
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I'd suggest taking that down, we're simply not ready for a funding campaign yet.|
Originally Posted by Ultimate Wrath
A funding campaign, you say? How about this one I whipped up? http://www.indiegogo.com/cityofheroesforever?a=1164894
Any help with ideas on improving it would be great! Save this friggin' thing! |
You've made a flexible funding campaign, so you could end up holding, say, $4602 of other people's money, when you haven't even made it clear where that money will go if NCSoft isn't willing to sell - either because there isn't enough money, or they refuse to negotiate.
Well, if this does go through, there IS a precedent here:
When 3DO shut down Meridian 59 in 2000, two M59 developers essentially maxed out their credit cards to buy the game and re-released it in 2002, keeping it alive until 2010.
I think that CoH might be a tad to expensive for a similar push... and all the middleware licenses wouldn't transfer.... and there are likely lotsa other issues... but it isn't a TOTAL fantasy
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This is right on target. Currently the game has a community which provides a monthly stipend. However, because of the way its income is married to the NCSoft model, getting an accurate idea of what that income is and how it really breaks down is _very_ difficult. Starting with the IP owned in a community format would go far in trying to resurrect or keep functioning in an alternate setting. |
Originally Posted by Olantern
The best thing to do here would be to PM Zwillinger and ask him to pass the information on Legal.
... First, even with generous player donations, I don't think it's possible to run an active MMO. The funding for even one "server maintenance guy" position is probably beyond what the community can pay. Moreover, there's the cost of server space, hardware, etc. |
Interestingly, the real cost is not the "server maintenance guy", server space,or hardware... It is the cost of bandwidth, which can run in the tens to hundreds of $k a month. Bandwidth providers such as the MS cloud or Amazon cloud might be very viable options, if the IP can be purchased. Buying off-the-wire from a major bandwidth provider is not going to be very likely.
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Hew in drag baby
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Fair enough; I've sent IndieGoGo the takedown request.
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Originally Posted by AxiomMan
I'd suggest taking that down, we're simply not ready for a funding campaign yet.
You've made a flexible funding campaign, so you could end up holding, say, $4602 of other people's money, when you haven't even made it clear where that money will go if NCSoft isn't willing to sell - either because there isn't enough money, or they refuse to negotiate. |
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Not as much as you might think - still you're right that a cloud provider is the obvious choice for a project like this.|
Originally Posted by OneFrigidWitch
Interestingly, the real cost is not the "server maintenance guy", server space,or hardware... It is the cost of bandwidth, which can run in the tens to hundreds of $k a month. Bandwidth providers such as the MS cloud or Amazon cloud might be very viable options, if the IP can be purchased. Buying off-the-wire from a major bandwidth provider is not going to be very likely.
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A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that running COH would cost about 0.1 cent per player-hour in AWS for bandwidth.
At $15/month, even a player that played a ten hours a day is only costing $0.30 in bandwidth, or 2% of revenue.
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I would think the best plan would be one where people fund to purchase the studio and keep running it as a business, using the current sources of income from the game to keep paying the people to run it. Basically, you would try and found a holding company to raise funds to purchase paragon studios, then run it and pay dividends back to the people that put up the funds for the purchase (if it is able to turn a profit). Unfortunately, I bet there are a ton of legal issues in something like this, but I think an offer to invest in the game and share in its profits would make people more likely to consider large sums, as it becomes an investment rather than a throwaway purchase.|
Originally Posted by Olantern
The best thing to do here would be to PM Zwillinger and ask him to pass the information on Legal.
I see a couple of issues with this. First, even with generous player donations, I don't think it's possible to run an active MMO. The funding for even one "server maintenance guy" position is probably beyond what the community can pay. Moreover, there's the cost of server space, hardware, etc. |
I would put up $100 to save city of heroes, but I would consider putting up $1000 or more if it bought me equity in the company, as I think it has potential for good long term earnings.
If you Really wanna keep it alive, the folks at Titan are seriously looking into it and are the most promising route to a survival strategy.
Titan needs to set up a kickstarter or whatever, and hire someone to represent them to NCSoft.
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Yeah. It should be through the Titan Network.
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Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
Titan needs to set up a kickstarter or whatever, and hire someone to represent them to NCSoft.
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Storylines:
Introductions, Obey,
All. CoH is coming to an end.
However, kickstarter is a way for us to vote with our dollars.
A concerted effort must be made to _purchase the studio outright_.
To do this, a communication channel must be established with NCSoft to discuss possible terms for sale/purchase.
We need to open that line of communication directly, ASAP.
Pebble/Andy/Whomever: we need to establish this. Please help.
We need _a formal_ organization which can process and formulate our concerns into a single response stream.
Discuss how we can approach this.
Lawyers in the community SHOUT OUT. We need you.
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Hew in drag baby