Brillig
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Posts
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Joined
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Quote:For one thing, you need to remember that no matter when you killed CoH, you'd incur the three-month dead period. So if you think the game is going to go into the red soon (for example, you foresee a substantial exodus after you lay off half of Paragon due to the demise of Secret Project), killing CoH pre-emptively has a lot to recommend it.Originally Posted by CannonballJack
I've been wondering if maybe this was NCSoft's rationale.
From all of the numbers and arguments I've seen tossed around, it seems like City of Heroes was profitable, but not very, and was gradually shrinking. It doesn't seem likely that it was actually losing money, or even that it was just one bad month away from it, but it's pretty clear (mostly from all of the research Father Xmas has done) that it wasn't growing, either. Still, if it was providing a reliable profit, what kind of reasonable businessperson would shut it down, especially with the dead loss of three months of uncompensated maintenance costs tacked on? That's just throwing money away.
Paragon wasn't growing, though. If NCSoft lacked confidence in the Secret Project, then cutting it would leave Paragon as a branch of the business that would, at best, turn in a gradually-diminishing profit year after year: Profit without growth. To a certain kind of business philosophy, that's a liability rather than a flawed asset.
So could that be the reason NCSoft pulled the plug on Paragon? It seems goofy, but I can picture some of the MBA-types I've known arguing for it. -
Quote:Except the rumor du jour is that the sale is on hold until the game shuts down in order to clear contractual entanglements. To me, that sounds a lot like NCSoft didn't want to get involved with the mess of transfering accounts, subscriptions, points, character data etc...Originally Posted by houtex
If the game is sold, it will be sold lock, stock and barrel. The same as if the game was live and wasn't shutting down.
My bet would be - even if the long-shot comes through, it'll be a fresh start. -
Quote:It doesn't work on 64-bit - I ended up running it in Chrome.Originally Posted by Forbin_Project
It's interesting. I wish I had a budget that allowed me to contribute some cash to them. For some reason it only runs on Firefox for me. On IE it doesn't work at all.
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Quote:You can always pull a KOTOR and move the timeframe to before the books.Originally Posted by GadgetDon
Harry Potter would be a terrible source for an MMO, because everything important in that world in that timeframe is happening to Harry.
Even when the Ministry fell, everyone else just fell in line or went in hiding until Harry saved the day. -
Quote:I'd bet on Harry Potter, myself.Originally Posted by BrandX
I think the next big IP to really get a huge player base built in, would be Pokemon.
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Quote:Well, let's see - figuring the development for CoH at 40 headcount, average $70k/year salary, adding overhead, the studio cost is 4.2M/yearOriginally Posted by Evil_Legacy
yeah forgot about that part. There is a minumum threshold.
About what would be the minimum population at about $15/month threshold for income for an MMO in order to survive with development on COX level, decent bug support, updates as often as here and minimum support to keep things going?
Customer support (outsourced), let's say 4 agents 24x7 with one escalation agent. About 0.4M/year. (This is quite light support)
Servers (EC2) 8 shards, each with 12 zone servers and 2 database servers. 0.6M/year. (A fair degree of spitballing here)
Bandwidth, about $5 customer/year. Assumes about 800 connect hours, a client download/year, and about the same as a client download/year in patches.
Add it all together and the break-even point (at $15/month) is 30,000 subscribers. -
Quote:You lose scale efficiencies in a small game. There's no way an MMO-style game could work with 800 people playing under the current economics. That'd be $12k/month, or $144k/year.Originally Posted by Evil_Legacy
I think even a small game can be a success, even with 800 people playing if the cost to make that game run is on scale with 800 people. While it sounds good to spend millions and millions on updates for a game, staff and stuff to keep a game running, but if the game is only bringing in a few thousand subs, then maybe a cutback in staff and running costs is in order and when setting up a game, especially one that is in an untested market, or niche market, then the ability to adjust is a wise move.
You could run servers in the cloud, but you would still end up with hardly any development or bug fixes, no updates, and no support.
Now if you could charge them $100/month, you might barely manage to limp along.
No matter how small the business, you need a certain minimum number of customers to make it work. -
Quote:I think the problem is that the price-point for getting *everything* is set at $15. So if you need more per month, how do you do that?Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
But if you offer more subscription choices - and flexibility in swapping between them, plus bonuses for longer term subs - and those options offer perceived value for money (especially in tough times as we're in now) then you can set price points for every pocket.
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Quote:Not exactly.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
If a game today had 200k subs, that would be considered niche. Pre-WoW, that would be considered a smash hit.
Today, that would be a healthy number. Niche is < 100k.
Pre-Wow, that would be a good number. A smash hit would have been 500k. -
Quote:No, it's the problem of publishers. And unlike most, I don't mean that in a pejorative sense.Originally Posted by Scarlet Shocker
I think you nailed it. If it's not growing into the next big beast, it doesn't matter that it's pulling in enough money to pay its costs and give the shareholders a dividend - it needs to do MOAR NAO PLX!
This is the problem of corporations.
If CoH was run by a small unit of about 40 staff in a less expensive location it'd probably be doing really nicely and making that management team a good living.
Publishers have a problem in that they might back ten games, one becomes a hit, two more do okay, and the other seven were money holes. It's a circumstance where you have to keep chasing hits, because you swing and miss so often. (Let's not forget that Paragon Studios failed on new projects multiple times on NCSoft's watch.) -
Quote:Except the whole thing with a niche is that it's a niche. When you lower the price, you're hoping to gain more consumers, which isn't going to happen because you're a niche.Originally Posted by Gangrel_EU
Even if it is a niche title, there is only so far you can drive the price up before you just start pricing people out of playing the game, even if it is free to obtain.
I do feel that Buy to Play (Guild Wars model) or F2P/Hybrid is the way forward for the industry, but I also feel that lowering the "typical" subscription fee for games that choose to be subscription only is another avenue for publishers/developers to look at.
The thing with a niche is you have a limited base, so you have to charge enough to make a reasonable profit even with that base, which means more per user. And if the consumers won't bear the freight, then the niche isn't big enough or rich enough to support your product. -
I tried it out for a couple of hours.
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I think their devs have achieved a remarkable feat with limited resources. It's reasonably fun, but it's hard to know exactly what you're doing beyond a graphical whack-a-mole.
Skills, traits, equipment, etc... all seem to have a considerable amount of detail and very little explanation. Graphics are very nice, right up until the point you take an action. The animations are very crude and jerky, and many things end up looking like 2d sprites (example - destroying a box). Obviously, they don't have a AAA budget to have a big staff of animators, or design and documentation people.
Also, the limitations of browser delivery have come up a few times.
All in, I think it could do with a lot of polishing, but it's not bad for the price point. -
Quote:I know my spending rates went up with F2P too, but I don't think we can draw any conclusions given that anyone still posting here has to be an outlier.Originally Posted by Valdous
It's probably true to an extent here. I know that if such a contribution from myself and others would save our game, I'd drop $300 today. I would have loved to see a lifetime sub to this game. They would still have gotten my money because I bought a lot more in the store than a monthly stipend covered. I hardly ever had a sub going but I had everything in every reward tier and still continued to buy points in the store, so I largely didn't need a sub. That's where they made their money from me, and it definitely averaged out to more than $15 a month.
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Quote:Except this is pretty much what every MMO costs, so even if you feel like you were paying a premium, you really weren't.Originally Posted by gec72
$15/mo for seven years, $15/mo for a second account for six years, box expansions for each account, assorted booster packs...I don't know, but that seems to be a fair premium.
/would have been much better off financially just playing the dickens out of the Civ series -
Quote:Yeah, lifetime memberships are a totally different direction, they're actually *bad* for a niche game, imo - to succeed, a niche game needs a rabid fan base willing to pay a premium for many many months/years.Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
An interesting question, but who knows if it's even true that they wouldn't? I don't believe any company has ever tried it, unless you want to count "lifetime memberships." But I've seen those as more being about inflating initial sales, rather than trying to extend long-term viability.
As to whether it's been tried... I don't know how many companies have looked in to it. I do know that Turbine did a customer survey at one point, back when DDO was flailing, asking some interesting questions about whether I would want a DDO server with custom rules or premium support/GM events, how much would I pay for such a server etc...
Obviously, nothing came of that other than the move to F2P, but I thought it was interesting that they at least investigated the possibility.
Unfortunately, we'll never be able to get at it, but this data exists for CoH. You could data mine and figure out if the CoH subscribers (pre-F2P) ended up paying more or less, on average, after F2P launched. -
Quote:Star Citizen is definitely looking like what you're talking about. I'm not so sure it will be a success in terms of monetization though.Originally Posted by Iron_Emerald
Sure, but my point is that the chasing after WoW isn't something that I think can work. It's not how big companies are working these days, but I don't believe that traditional MMORPG's are going to be successful long term for anyone who isn't interested in niche games. How many more big companies are going to take a tilt at that WoW player base before they make the conclusion that it will never move en masse? Or if it does it will only be to a new Blizzard game?
And even now the thinking you indicate is only really prevalent for 'triple A' games. Plenty of game companies go out to make a game with a narrower focus, and I predict that most traditional MMOs will come from those sources. I also suspect Triple A MMO style games will become more and more of an online/offline blend. -
Quote:Well, so here's the thing. In the real world, one of the main reasons niche products survive is that their customers are willing to pay a premium for them. Why isn't this true of MMOs?Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
How lucky for everyone who isn't an impulsive teenager.
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Quote:Well, that's because it *is* inefficient. It will always cost less to run 1 game with 10x customers than 10 games with 1x customers. And as 'x' gets smaller, the cost differential becomes greater...Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
I had thought of tha too, the idea of having a bunch of niche games, one each targeting a different demographic. Somehow that too is looked down upon as inefficient. "Why not just have a big one, and target the widest demographic possible?" That would be bad enough in a different branch of entertainment or video games. But as long as WoW is out there to make everyone drool, it's going to lure people into trying to achieve that same level of success. Even EA practically killed themselves chasing after El Dorado.
And: wow... I just realized that somehow half of my original post isn't there, merging pieces of two of my sentences and making the whole thing look REALLY weird. -
Quote:Or a data entry error in the powers spreadsheet.Originally Posted by Tunnel Rat
My punching transcends space and time. It is wonderful, magical thing.
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Quote:Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
I did, however, follow many threads and read over there and there wasn't a single element of endorsed anti-Korean racism/culture-attack.Try to keep up. Doesn't matter if it's cherry picking if the claim is "there wasn't a single element."Quote:Originally Posted by Paladiamors
Hang on, hang on! Let's all go cherry pick examples from a couple of emotionally charged people, then try to claim the entire movement is a hatred movement!
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Quote:Technically, Labor Day was instituted to celebrate the contribution of blue-collar workers. Paragon wouldn't qualify.Originally Posted by Ogi
It's your defense for the Labor Day insult, so other people don't get that defense?
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Quote:Wait, so as long as it wasn't intended to be sent to NCSoft, it's okay?Originally Posted by TimTheEnchanter
Nice try. Though if we were to look at the private files of anyone involved in international 'anything', we'd probably choke.
Those little bits you posted were never planned to be sent to NCsoft.
It's on the Internet. It's effectively published to the world. -
Quote:And here's your spokeswoman.Originally Posted by Golden Girl
Correct - there was a hint of pink to that shade - it should really have looked more like this:
NCsoft
Still think you deserve to be taken seriously? -
Quote:From:Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
I Burnt The Toast's claims are just simply not true, folks.
...
I have a longtime friend who works as a diplomatic liaison and this is exactly how they respectfully go about dealing with people from all over the world. It's not an attack to attempt to understand and use the culture of the person across from you in negotiations and/or discussions.
http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index....ic,5449.0.html
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Post #7Quote:Writing a person's name in red ink is tantamount to saying they are dead or will die soon.
Nothing disrespectful there. I'm sure that's how all "diplomatic liasons" respectfully go about dealing with other cultures.Quote:
Red enough? -
Quote:The likelihood of NCSoft closing GW2 due to the stock price dropping is exactly the same as the likelihood of NCSoft closing CoH due to the stock price dropping. Zero.Originally Posted by Ogi
For the people concerned that SaveCoH is going to shutdown GW2 I'd recommend being more concerned about NCSoft shutting it down in their attempt to pull out of their stock nosedive if it continues as it is.