Its probably no surprise that I agree with Arcanaville's posts in this thread, but I'll go further and even question the OP's claim that this was smack talk. I don't see Jack "talking smack" in this interview at all. at all. By comparing the game (STO) with the business model he once disparaged with his visible "high water mark" of his most visible product, he's making a comparison on what he's learned over the years and how that has impacted him.
Some people put every post where Jack mentions CoH as if he has a vendetta against it, which doesn't reflect what I've heard about Jack at all. I talked to Jack personally only once, but it was clear at that time that he saw CoH as one of his crowning achievements. It was his baby, and even when it broke away on its own and actually was in competition with one of his other babies, he took pride in what it accomplished. I've seen him speak since then and while we didn't have a chance to talk directly, it still becomes apparent that he is proud of his first great creation and proud of what became of it. That said, it WAS his first title and there WAS a lot of winging it, a lot of learning moments, and a LOT of "if I could do it over" moments. He's an academic at heart and does try to be open where he can be open. He tries to be frank and sometimes his observations are incorrect or but they've never been malicious. Combine all that with an ego not unlike many academics- and the tendency to use one common ego-massaging trick is to re-brand "I was wrong" into "I've learned a lot since then."
- I always thought Free to Play models were bad, so when I did my first MMO (City of Heroes) we stuck to subscription
- We then switched to Free to Play in Star Trek Online at a very early stage in its lifecycle.
- Under Free to Play, STO has his play levels that far exceeded the userbase than CoH did.
See? He could have said "I was talking through my ass back then and totally missed a way to drive user adoption and bypass the 'first payment' barrier." Instead he turned the "I was wrong" shame into a "I've learned so much!" proud moment. Another trick in this is you tie your "failure" to something that turned out rather well (one reason he probably didn't use CO as his counterexample):
"Yeah, I was wrong to doubt the F2P model and it hampered my first game's adoption, so that first game only was able to make tens of millions annually, be widely received within the gaming media, and gave us the revenue to launch the studio's efforts in several other games. What a screwup, eh?"
If that's the worst screwup you have, you don't look too bad, do you?*
Additionally, keep in mind the context of these posts. Jack's out there building hype for a new game. He's making the circuit. When you do this you try to broadcast your resume, and slip them in where you can. You want people to say "Hey, he made City of Heroes and Star Trek Online. I liked those. I wonder what the next one will be like?" The fact that he mentioned COH- a recently SHUT DOWN game, means that he doesn't see anything to be shameful of in the game's rich lifespan. Its one that he's still proud of, otherwise he wouldn't hitch his wagon to it while peddling his next big thing.
*You see that in job applicant interviews all the time: Q: "what is your biggest weakness?" A:"Oh, I tend to take on too much work myself and end up having to stay late and work weekends to make the deadline. I've got to get better at that before I ride myself ragged...." ...so... your worst quality is that you accept too much work and put in voluntary overtime to make sure deadlines are met? Yeah, no employer's gonna like that..