There aren't enough active members left in the community to orchestrate a mass mailing,
and there haven't been for months. The fight is never over, but that doesn't mean that we should act like we have an army when we've been reduced to a platoon. I do think individuals should still be writing letters (to wherever and whoever they feel like writing to), referring to themselves merely as fans of the game and not as part of a greater movement. There has been nothing wrong with this since the dawn of fandom. But as a community we should account for the few cards left in our deck, and strategize with a map of our real, actual obstacles. When we don't recognize our capabilities and reach, we become our foremost obstacle, and it will show. To anyone on the outside looking in, our rallying cries and calls to action will ring out as empty platitudes. A few despondent fans clinging to the bleachers long after the game is over. Not exactly an image fit for a motivational poster.
The people lamenting that NCSoft wouldn't be the perfect fit for our game are absolutely correct. And NCSoft assured us that the feeling was mutual when they sunset the game and threw out the studio. Bear in mind that publishers don't always ditch their top talent along with whatever game they're sunsetting...especially when they fully own the studio. It was the ultimate "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" maneuver for NCSoft regarding Paragon Studios, an acknowledgement from NCSoft that they were neither interested (or even empathetic) in the studio's vision or its future.
Enter the long shots. Hail Mary, save us, Disney and Google. Maybe Microsoft is next. Maybe Yahoo!. In reason, not just principle, I'm fully behind any action that doesn't look like just another occupy movement. Not because I think it'll work, but because it makes us look enterprising. And when you've got just a handful of activists left in your cause, that's the best card that you can have up your sleeve. All it takes is a few talented people and maybe some well-oiled connections to try something new and bold. A game community that foregoes writhing around in its disorganized death throes in order to pen pitch packages is enterprising and dare I say, worth reporting on. If it keeps us in the press and in the backs of minds throughout the industry, it doesn't matter if we look crazy as long as we look enterprisingly crazy. And as others have pointed out time and time again, doing these things makes us visible not just to the recipients of the packages, but potentially to their associates, friends (and friends of friends) and other contacts as well--and that's the direction where I wonder if a diamond mine might be located.
As far as strategizing is concerned, Hail Mary isn't a way to conquer the battlefield, as much as just a way to keep our merry little platoon on the battlefield at all. Bear in mind that all of our pitch packages are going to companies for which a few million a year is effectively pocket change. We're practically asking for an act of charity.
Our most likely savior would have been a smaller publisher like Gamers First, any publisher that would see City of Heroes and its profit margin as a jackpot. A handful of smaller publishers might have even reached out to NCSoft. But if they didn't, there's a good reason why: NCSoft never reached out for bids. In business terms, their sudden shutdown and firing of the studio
was the publisher saying, "We're not interested in selling." Regardless, I think we should send pitch packages to smaller studios. It could be a way to keep both their name and ours visible throughout the industry in a good way, for trying a good thing. It could also lead to more bids, if a competing rival studio sought to outdo the recipient of one of our pitch packages. But have no doubt about it, the whole thing would be another long shot. Any smaller studio that wanted to buddy up with us and save our game wouldn't have waited for our permission to do it.
Enter the community server. The last resort for many of us, but the first resort for, you know, the people who began their work in earnest sometime during sunset (and well before). If the intended end result of all of our shenannigans is just to have City of Heroes back, then this probably represents the ultimate shenannigan. This will never stop being controversial for some people, but I guarantee you that its controversy will at least diminish over time. The publisher will either sic its blood hounds or it won't. Either way, I suspect some of us will be playing City of Heroes in the years to come. If the sailing is smooth, then our new community server team will only have its own miniature civil wars to contend with over time.
I've used Earth and Beyond as an example before, because it might be the emulator with the least sordid history behind it. The game was sunset, and the emulator team got to work. They didn't do it because they hated EA. They did it because they loved E&B. They committed themselves to the future, not the past. The team has struggled through moments of in-fighting over the years, but the core team is still there and the same guy who founded the team is the guy who oversees it to this day (he's been leading his team longer than Matt Miller led Paragon Studios!). And although the game was wiped before going into "Live" status late last year, I often grinned to think that my beta characters in the E&B emu outlived the
entire length of time the game was live under EA. I still grin to think that there are features and classes and zones added to the game that were only whispered about while the game was under EA, and some that weren't.
If emulated, City of Heroes will have a long struggle ahead of it, filled with gruesome programming hurdles, but the silver lining is that the game's life could be as long and as exciting as fans maintained passion for it. Gone would be the fanfare days when every new feature was commented on by the media; instead, City of Heroes would become like a good old used book, able to be picked up and read again and again, by anyone, forever.
