Why is NCSoft murdering our Game?

Why is it going away? My understanding is that it is making money. If I were making a hundred dollars a month profit (profit is money after all my expenses) for basically leaving my computer on, I don't turn the computer off. Some money is better than No Money.

Plus the current situation is causing immense Bad Will with every current and past City of Heroes customer. Not only is it an enormous surprise to a community looking forward to I24, but we cannot understand a business reason for the move.

I speculate that they think the intellectual property is worth something in the future. City of Heroes has an expansive Universe. It's also the only Super Hero game to really catch on. CoH is also a game with a fan base that includes a lot more female players than most MMORPGs. Most people that have played CoH would return for a CoH2, the title CoH2 has been reserved. CoH has become a respectable name. But if that's the case NCSoft has done terrible damage to the name CoH.

The right way to transition to CoH2 would be to keep the servers open at least in maintenance mode until the new game was up and running. Closing CoH1 with a new shiny CoH2 waiting for me is far less detestable.

The thought that if you turn off the CoH servers the current player base moves to Guild Wars or other NCSoft titles is laughable. They are not equalivalents and even if the CoH players might be interested in the other NCSoft titles the awful taste they have left in the CoH players mouth will keep them from trying NCSoft titles.

Furthermore, NCSoft is further eroding the illusion that MMORPGs are constant worlds that will never go away so that the digital property that we technically just lease even though we put the effort into creating the Toons and bases we love. With that illusion damaged customers are less likely to purchase future titles from NCSoft and other companies.

My understanding of the cost to putting games in maintenance mode is negligible. While a revenue stream for the game would be small, the effort and expense to keep the game open are also small.

Again isn't some profit better than NO Profit? No explanation I've seen makes sense. Can anyone explain it? Does anyone have a suggestion?

One theory I read on Kotaku was that the CoH servers are needed to convert to more profitable guild war 2 servers, and that that process has already begun. GW2 has sold out its digital copies and they want a faster response to the demand. I don't know if it's true though.

And this decision has more far reaching considerations than just the dollars. I've been thinking about it...

You are the executive who just killed a money making section of your company.

You now have just about 0 reason to ever let that IP escape from your company's grasp. And the company itself has the same 0 reason.

The problem is this: You have declared this game dead. You have declared this game is not profitable enough to continue (wrong as that may be.) And there isn't enough activity to keep it alive (also WATMB.)

IF they were to give it away and it were to flourish in open source/private hands... that would disprove a coporate tactic, and cause questioning of the positions of all who made the decision.

IF they were to sell it off for the 'quick buck'... and it turned into a better, more profitable game in the hands of the new owners... the same questioning happens.

IF they, however, do what they are doing... mothball the game... then there is no way to be questioned except in the horrendously pitiful way they dealt with the customers... which is a small price to pay compared to those other two, and the spin has yet to happen, I think, that will smooth even that piss poor handling situation... and everyone wins at NCSoft.

Until it completely goes bankrupt due to people leaving their games and investors remembering this utter stupidity.

Basically, it boils down to this: Whatever the honest asking price of Co* would be, NCSoft would need to acquire many X more than that to allow for the first two problems the sale would make, should they come to pass: it flourishes, which is a problem, and it's *profitable*, worse.

At least... that's what I was thinking. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Mike

/not being Debbie Downer.. Just honestly trying to get a hold on what the situation is like on their end, maybe.
//Gonna be tough to save it. Tough.

Yet if there really is a profit for the game, reportedly 1-2% of revenues for NCSOFT, it covers those salaries. Is it the time required by administrative personnel to oversee paragon studios that seems so expensive? A spin-off to a buyer would remedy that problem, but the truth is we really don't understand why a profitable game is being shut down.

I keep reading about how City of Heroes is profitable and from a basic money-in, money-out perspective, it makes sense to keep it going. City of Heroes may indeed be profitable. But it's most likely not profitable enough when it's considered against the backdrop of a publicly traded company, which NCSoft is.

Hypothetically, as a department manager for a publicly traded company, I need to report how profitable my department is going to be. That number gets relayed up through corporate and eventually out to Wall Street as part of a bigger report. Investors use that information to help make decisions on how they move their money. Say the average profit for my industry is 15% and I report that I can make 30% but make only 25%, I'm still in "trouble", even though I beat the average. People (investors) made decisions based on what I reported and I didn't deliver. That disappointment affects the company's ability to attract / keep investor dollars. It's about doing what you said you were going to do.

Also consider that if the company needs to make that hypothetical 15% profit to keep money in the company (prevent investors from selling off en masse for more profitable ventures at similar risk), and my department is consistently making 5% profit, then I should expect changes in my position or employment status soon. I'm still making a profit and bringing money into the company, but not enough to maintain the numbers that keep money in the company and the doors open.

That's the basic understanding I have of how profit is looked at in a publicly traded company. It could very well be that City of Heroes as a unit wasn't making enough profit for investors to keep money in NCSoft.

In my opinion, NCSoft's big failure is in managing their clients' (the player base) expectations. This isn't immediately suicidal, especially if the surprises are beneficial. But given bad news, it leaves bad feelings all around. Imagine a client being told at the very last moment that he's not going to get the deliverable he believed he was getting... for the past X months. Done repeatedly, it leads to a bad reputation and no one wanting to do business with you.

I don't know if anyone expected this game to be around forever. Personally I didn't. But after 8 years, you sort of wake up every day and expect it to be there just like the rising sun. I think a more thoughtful and considerate winding down would have alleviated some of the ill will. I have no idea how that would work, since going into wrap-up mode would likely lead to an early exodus of the staff you need to do the wrap-up, and also opens up the operation to possible sabotage by disgruntled soon-to-be former employees.

Maybe there's more to it than this, but I believe that's that basics of it.

Yep, that's corporate logic for you.

"The game doesn't make enough money for our tastes, but just to cover our butts from criticism of our critical thinking skills and basic managerial competence we're not going to give anybody else a chance to actually turn it into a success where we couldn't even though we have no similar competing MMO on the horizon."

The only thing that might save this game and that's a big "might" is massive amounts of bad publicity threatening to hurt their other endeavors.

I'm only moderately pissed that I just spent 60 bucks in the marketplace. If I'd spent hundreds in recent months, I'd be livid. IMO, it is messed up to pull the plug on an MMO with only 3 months notice with a content expansion right around the corner when you were just taking post-subscription money for extras.

Mostly though, I'm just disappointed yet again by an industry that seems increasingly hostile to its customers. DRM, short-notice shutdowns, small-publisher IP-strip-mining followed by pointless IP-hording, subscription models for games that don't update content... WTH is going on?

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...95621&page=136

It appears that the parent company of NCSoft had the head of the North America left August 27 and a new north American CEO was appointed a Dean Takeapooponus. Evidently, CoH only makes $800,000.00 a month in profit.

So $800,000/month is the magic number that is too small to even attempt a reorganization.

Business. They saw that CoX was popular... too popular in their opinion. Perhaps that's because it was the only NCSoft game we knew about?

To OP
Why?

It's business.

2 things:

Laying off folks is immediate measurable expense eliminated from the books. Instant guaranteed profit. Classic everyday corporate stuff that happens all the time.

They need resources for another game. Not servers. (though the will probably be assimilated) Resources can be people. Proven folks can equal less risk than new folks, to fill positions they have to hire anyway for a bigger more upside project.

"Realignment" is the clue.

But hey I'm just guess. Oh, and by the way if at any point someone actually thought it was our game.. Mistaken. 'your favorite game' may be accurate but any rights or ownership of anything...

What I mostly don't get is: They also obviously immediately stop bringing in any money. Since they've repeatedly stated that the game was profitable, that strongly implies that the amount of money they've stopped bringing in is larger than the amount they've stopped spending...

There is Something Wacky Here. I doubt we'll ever know, and that is one of the reasons I am pretty much now highly distrustful of ncsoft.