11-05-2012, 03:01 PM
This comes from this thread here. Read it if you want to get the full context. But this ONE post... Holy shit...
Quote:With all due respect to Ammon, $80 million is not merely a "high" asking price. It is, in fact, not really an asking price at all. If the rumors of this offer have any basis in fact, then the quoted price can only be understood as a message---one that harbors considerable irony.
I do not think for one second that NCsoft has any intention of entertaining reasonable offers for the intellectual property rights of CoX. This is because the closure of CoX was probably not a business decision, at least not in a purely objective microeconomic sense. Indeed, their actions, and the circumstances surrounding them, invite the conclusion that senior management at NCsoft are simply on a vendetta. Throwing a tantrum, in other words.
NCsoft reportedly spent 25 billion won (about $22 million) to develop Aion...from scratch1. Perfect World purchased former CoX developer Cryptic Studios last year for $49.8 million---a price tag that included the intellectual property, assets, employees, customers and goodwill for Star Trek Online, Champions Online and the yet-to-be-released Neverwinter2. Frankly, the only companies that are willing to pay rates in line with what NCsoft is apparently asking are behemoths like EA, which has recently shown interest mostly in portfolios with audiences so large that the entire peak playership of CoX would look like a fly in a hurricane, by comparison. And even the fantastically-spendthrift EA disaster that was SW:TOR “only” cost $200 million to produce3.
No, the rumored $80 million tag should absolutely not be interpreted as an offer-in-good-faith. You see, the US-developed game Tabula Rasa cost NCsoft a widely-estimated 100 billion won to develop. At today’s exchange rates, that would be about $90 million. Of that $90 million, almost half went to just two people: Richard and Robert Garriott, the developers behind Ultima and its many descendants, in addition to several other games. While the Garriotts may have an enviable history in the annals of gaming, sinking over $40 million into just a game designer cannot be called fiscal realism. A better label might be “sugar daddy.”
In essence, the senior management of NCsoft (primarily just Kim Taek-jin) placed a huge bet on the delightful fantasy that the Garriott brothers could walk on water: that they would deliver a WoW-grade property. It was the same fantasy EA-Bioware had about SW:TOR, and like that game, it was not to happen. Tabula Rasa was reported by the Korea Times to have returned only about 10 percent of its development cost, yielding a loss of…wait for it…$80 million. In fact, if the recent compensatory judgment awarded to Richard Garriott for actions taken by NCsoft at the time of his termination stand, the total loss on Tabula Rasa will greatly exceed the entirety of its originally-allocated budget.
Consider also that Robert Garriott, Richard's brother, served as president of NCsoft’s entire North American operation for six years, while Tabula Rasa was in development. He was ousted at the end of 2007 (or “promoted” to global business development, depending on how you look at it) and replaced by an Asian…just after the unimpressive launch of Tabula Rasa. Let it not be said that NCsoft never made an attempt to allow non-Korean management of their North American operations---they did, in a very big way. And by their reckoning, I’m sure they feel mugged, raped and humiliated as a consequence. The later law suits merely added to the indignity.
Robert Garriott’s “promotion” happened to coincide not only with the public release of Tabula Rasa, but with the space escapades of brother Richard, who was the lead game designer. Immediately prior to the launch of Tabula Rasa, at a time when the game was already giving warning signs of public dissatisfaction through its various betas, Richard Garriott began preparations for a $30 million joy-ride to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. The profligacy and timing of his trip unquestionably incensed senior management at NCsoft---even prior to this episode, executives at NCsoft had actually resigned due, at least in part, to dissatisfaction with the Garriotts4. Before Richard’s feet hit Earth again, his future at the company had been decided: there was to be none.
I point all this out not because I care about Tabula Rasa (I never played it, since it was effectively a PvP-only game and I do not like PvP), but to provide some perspective on the closure of CoX. Given the available evidence, the only conclusion I can reach is that CoX was a bystander in what appears to have become a rather ugly, and fairly personal, war between NCsoft and the Garriotts. After NCsoft’s attempt to embrace the American market with doe-like eyes and a reverent belief in miracles, they suffered catastrophic losses at the hands of “outsiders.” Is it really any wonder they have become xenophobic? Their idol turned out to have clay feet. Or maybe lead feet.
Consider it from their point of view: if NCsoft has a history of developing profitable games in Korea for one-quarter the cost of American fiascos, why on earth would they trust another Yankee with their money again? It’s not about Paragon Studios or City of Heroes: it’s about NCsoft Austin and Tabula Rasa. City of Heroes was simply a casualty of war.
Now, a wall-of-text ago, I mentioned irony.
What I see as supremely ironic about the closure of CoX is that NCsoft is visiting our little community with precisely the same kind of treatment they themselves received in their experiences with the Garriotts. Many players of City of Heroes/Villains have made considerable temporal and financial investments in the game. Despite the fact that CoX was able to hold its own weight, it was sacrificed for the losses of another entity---an outsider. Nothing more than collateral damage from a policy reversal brought about by NCsoft’s attempts to wash the bad taste of Tabula Rasa---and its subsequent law suits, which were probably the final straw---out of its mouth.
In the aftermath, I do not feel that NCsoft treated me like an intelligent and valuable customer; to the contrary, they treated me like a lobotomized livestock animal, and I resent it with a visceral animosity unfit to reduce to text. It’s one thing to make a business decision and ask me to suffer for it: I will not call for anyone to operate at a loss on my behalf, as was arguably the case for Tabula Rasa. It is, however, quite another thing to throw a nationalistic---almost racist---tantrum and expect me to quietly pay for it. I have a very, very long memory for such slights.
The poison has come full circle: the injuries NCsoft suffered vis-à-vis Tabula Rasa (without regard to fault) appear to have given rise to their planned divestiture from American-managed game production; symmetrically, the patronizing “nullspeak” I have suffered at the hands of NCsoft---to say nothing of their intransigent “negotiating” position---have led me to divest myself of them, and everything they are associated with, utterly and completely.
Personally, I have spent time and money on Guild Wars, Aion and a tiny sliver of the Guild Wars 2 launch. I tried Lineage II once, but was ganked by a high-level player right outside the starting village and uninstalled the game. I have recommended many of the less sociopathic NCsoft games to friends, and actually purchased a few copies of GW1 to give to people I know. I had even gotten one of my friends who is not an avid gamer to pre-order GW2 before the axe fell on CoX.
What the executives at NCsoft do not seem to fully appreciate is that at least part of the river that flowed through CoX watered the rest of their garden. When those waters are dammed at the source, the losses can easily extend throughout the ecosystem in ways that are not always immediately visible or obvious. Opportunity costs are seldom binary, nor are they always quantifiable in advance.
(1) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/bi ... 54507.html
(2) http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/09/perfe ... quisition/
(3) http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/01/ ... ic-gamble/
(4) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/bi ... 10753.html