So, everyone, here's my pitch to you, the community, on my idea for getting our game back, being real heroes, and making our world a better place;
City of Heroes: Give by Gaming
Over the 8 years of City of Heroes' life, one of the most profound things I saw from our community was its spirit for giving. Through realworldhero.com our heroes (& villains) donated $29,276.47 to charity. The CoH community is one of the most giving, kindest, most welcoming in gaming.
CoH has been gone three months now. As we've discovered, there's nothing quite like it out there. I've seen it repeated over and over "I never realized how unique CoH was." I believe there's an opportunity here. Not just in the game, the IP, but in our community most of all. There's a chance here for CoH to come back as something the world has never seen, and give in ways we never thought possible.
I propose we form a Community Studio that will run as a non-profit with all proceeds above operating costs going to charity. We approach NCsoft with the idea of licensing and eventually buying City of Heroes for the purpose of funding our charity. If we can make this work NCsoft gets the good press of helping to launch the first ever charitable MMO, we get our game, and most of all we get to help people.
Why license CoH instead of buying?
At this point our community is unable to buy CoH outright. I propose working with NCsoft on a mutually beneficial agreement that will allow us to use CoH to operate our charity. This gives NCsoft the opportunity to repair their bad press by having their name attached to this and gives us the chance to get our foot in the door and get our game back. As the studio goes on we can look into increasing our ownership of CoH.
Why not just form a traditional studio?
We need something crazy to get NCsoft's attention. They most likely don't want to sell to a competitor, as our profits will be going to charity we could hardly be considering a threat to them. By being gaming's first 100% Charity Run Studio we can generate HUGE amounts of press that would be hard to come by as a traditional studio. I believe this path will get us a lot of attention, a place at the table with NCsoft AND a chance to market the game to an entirely new group of players.
Will you be able to develop CoH?
The hope of course is to one day develop and run CoH just like Paragon Studios did. To begin with I foresee a period of set-up, launch, and maintenance that will not include much new development however. My dream is to one day have a lean studio of an amazing Freem 15 to keep CoH's development active.
So it will be a real studio with real employees?
Yes, employees of this Community Studio will be paid a fair rate for what they contribute to CoH. We will be looking into hiring professionals with industry experience.
So what goes to charity?
All profit. That is money that CoH earns after we pay operating and development costs. I believe if we can get CoH back up to the level it was when it closed we could potentially be donating hundreds of thousands to charity every year.
What charity will money go to?
That's for the community to decide. Will we form our own or will we give to an existing charity like Real World Hero does? Either way, people will be helping by City of Heroes.
So...ideas?