The game(s) associated with this NCSOFT Master Account are no longer available. Please create a new NC Account.
This is what i got when i tried to log in to the NCSoft master account my City of Heroes game was on...... so now just because they get rid of one game i have to create a new account all over again???????? forget that
Quote from: sorinkon on June 30, 2013, 01:57:16 AM
The game(s) associated with this NCSOFT Master Account are no longer available. Please create a new NC Account.
This is what i got when i tried to log in to the NCSoft master account my City of Heroes game was on...... so now just because they get rid of one game i have to create a new account all over again???????? forget that
Why on earth would you WANT to?
Quote from: sorinkon on June 30, 2013, 01:57:16 AM
The game(s) associated with this NCSOFT Master Account are no longer available. Please create a new NC Account.
This is what i got when i tried to log in to the NCSoft master account my City of Heroes game was on...... so now just because they get rid of one game i have to create a new account all over again???????? forget that
dang.
I never bought into the scorched earth philosophy where NC$oft is concerned; I just don't really care for any of their other games. I had fun with GW1 until it wasn't anymore, then I stopped playing it. Nothing else in their stable looks remotely interesting. I really couldn't give a flying f@#$ what they do with my account, as I no longer need it.
Somehow they fubared up my account last week. But I had Guild Wars and Aion attached to my account, so I went through support to get it working again. They, being non-douchebag management, were very helpful. I did notice that there were no CoX games attached to the account anymore.
It would not surprise me if they deleted our game data. Oh, I hate those bastards so much.
as far as im concerned, NC$oft can go jump out the nearest airlock all i care.
Until my avatar can, once again, stand in Atlas Park and flatten a Hellion's nose, NCSoft and I have nothing to talk about.
Quote from: goodtime on June 30, 2013, 04:30:53 AM
It would not surprise me if they deleted our game data. Oh, I hate those bastards so much.
Yeah, if our accounts are gone, you're probably right :-\
Oh well, at least we have icon now. We don't need their servers or accounts for that.
Quote from: Super Firebug on June 30, 2013, 07:12:40 AM
Until my avatar can, once again, stand in Atlas Park and flatten a Hellion's nose, NCSoft and I have nothing to talk about.
This.
The last time I accessed my NCSoft account was to pull my CC information out of it. That was, oh, about a day or two before shutdown. I've kept a link for it on my computer (just in case, you understand) but it looks like I won't be needing that any longer.
It was obvious they didnt care when the shut the game down. My hope is now for them to sell the IP. If not I will wait until someone gets an emulator running or one of the three Projects succeeds. Until then I am going to go enjoy real life. As much as I miss CoH my being upset over it and pining away over it isnt going to change anything. I am going to enjoy life.. have fun.. and think fondly of a game I love..
NC Soft will never ever ever ever get another dime from me.. EVER.
Gentlemen and Ladies.
Whether you or I or anyone else would want to give NCSoft another dime is immaterial to the point being made. There may be a studio that makes such an impressive game, that unfortunately NCSoft is in control of... or that in the future, NCSoft reverses course and becomes less asshole... whichever the case is, there may yet be a day where we'd want to get into that game.
The point of their requiring a new account to play that new toy when you already had one in the first place is the very weirdest thing a company can do... especially in less than a year. And they have free games, not requiring one red cent, so there's that, we could play those because we want to.
If there's anything that proves NCSoft is trying like hell to shrink back to a Korea/Asian only company, foregoing and forsaking accounts for only being used for CoH is definitely a smoking gun.
Man. I just don't GET that. That's just... oddball.
---
So, I went there, and verified it myself. I had to reset my password, it did, verifed I'm me, got in... bam. Create a new account. o.0
Ok, so here's the real deal. Apparently, the old account ways of having a specialized account name were still allowed, but sometime ago, NCSoft decided that they weren't gonna do this anymore, and require you to sign in with your email, sorta like Netflix or Pandora or such.
BUT, the old, grandfathered accounts, such as CoH, were left in there as a legacy thing.
As soon as they purged the game from their records, and you had no other games to play on that account, the account effectively died right then.
The 'create new account' now requires you to have your email. That's all. It's not some conspiracy, it's a washing away of an old system they'd rather you didn't use anymore.
Mostly I see it in Aion boards, and not a lot of that, but if you really wanted to play Lineage or whatever, you can contact support and get your old account moved to the new one... However, if it says "you have no games that work anymore" there's no point to this, just start over. I think I had Exteel and Autoassault once, and CoH. So yeah, mine's not good anymore, and I don't have an email version account there. T
Terminated.
Not taking sides, just hadda figure that one out, it's just that kind of weird to me.
And yes, it is exactly as the thread is titled. NCSoft doesn't care about us. And the account info is likely gone gone gone, so anyone with a hope of 'maybe we can get our stuff back...?' No. Not unless you had Sentinel+'d or whatever'd your stuff beforehand and can get it imported into whatever comes back as CoH.
/In case that matters. :p
Hmm... I suppose that means my twin accounts are likely both gone then, since the only other active NCSoft game I had associated with either of them was Aion (On the primary account), and at some point, not sure when, NCSoft decided to outright ban that game's account without telling me about it... Seriously, I logged into my master account a little over a year ago, and it had Aion listed as "banned", while City of Heroes was still perfectly fine and usable in "premium" status, and I never got an email about it from them as to why or even that I had been banned from Aion....
Was weird, but I never bothered to fight to fix it, because I didn't play the game for very long before I realized it was just another generic Korean grind fest with gimmicky wings that don't work the way you'd think wings should... (Seriously, they promoted the game as though flying was going to be a huge focal point and offer true exploratory freedom like in City of Heroes, and then they turn around and slam it in your face in the actual game when you finally get your wings that flying isn't what they told you it would be, and just how limited your ability to do it was... I was like "Seriously? There's a timer on flying for how long I can do it before I'm forced to rest?" Screw that, I'd rather be playing Heroes; at least they were able to truly fly... At least for the moment, Icon scratches that itch...)
While nothing has changed on a practical level, it just feels like another "We Don't Want You People Here" punch to the gut.
Especially since it's clear that they haven't actually deleted our accounts (since it recognizes the username and password), they just won't let us log into them. (I'm glad I changed all my information to nonsense when the game closed)
It's like the picture of the COH/Aion/Blade and Soul/etc dogs that was circulating around here: "That account is OLD. Here, you will like this NEW account better."
Pretty sure server information and game account information was linked to the master account but not entirely tied to it. The account systems were separate, as any number of instances of issues between account side and game side not linking up showed us. I think it might still be possible to get our stuff back on the servers and even log into our game accounts if they don't delete these too.
Also, just because they now have the old system shelved and are asking people to make a new account, doesn't mean they don't have the old system and info backed up some where.
Just saying, if NCSoft were to sell the IP and servers, stuff might still be there. Then again it might not, but this is not evidence of anything yet, other than NCSoft wanted a new system and could care less about inconveniencing past customers.
Quote from: houtex on June 30, 2013, 05:17:30 PM
Gentlemen and Ladies.
Whether you or I or anyone else would want to give NCSoft another dime is immaterial to the point being made. There may be a studio that makes such an impressive game, that unfortunately NCSoft is in control of... or that in the future, NCSoft reverses course and becomes less asshole... whichever the case is, there may yet be a day where we'd want to get into that game.
The point of their requiring a new account to play that new toy when you already had one in the first place is the very weirdest thing a company can do... especially in less than a year. And they have free games, not requiring one red cent, so there's that, we could play those because we want to.
If there's anything that proves NCSoft is trying like hell to shrink back to a Korea/Asian only company, foregoing and forsaking accounts for only being used for CoH is definitely a smoking gun.
Man. I just don't GET that. That's just... oddball.
---
So, I went there, and verified it myself. I had to reset my password, it did, verifed I'm me, got in... bam. Create a new account. o.0
Ok, so here's the real deal. Apparently, the old account ways of having a specialized account name were still allowed, but sometime ago, NCSoft decided that they weren't gonna do this anymore, and require you to sign in with your email, sorta like Netflix or Pandora or such.
BUT, the old, grandfathered accounts, such as CoH, were left in there as a legacy thing.
As soon as they purged the game from their records, and you had no other games to play on that account, the account effectively died right then.
The 'create new account' now requires you to have your email. That's all. It's not some conspiracy, it's a washing away of an old system they'd rather you didn't use anymore.
Mostly I see it in Aion boards, and not a lot of that, but if you really wanted to play Lineage or whatever, you can contact support and get your old account moved to the new one... However, if it says "you have no games that work anymore" there's no point to this, just start over. I think I had Exteel and Autoassault once, and CoH. So yeah, mine's not good anymore, and I don't have an email version account there. T
Terminated.
Not taking sides, just hadda figure that one out, it's just that kind of weird to me.
And yes, it is exactly as the thread is titled. NCSoft doesn't care about us. And the account info is likely gone gone gone, so anyone with a hope of 'maybe we can get our stuff back...?' No. Not unless you had Sentinel+'d or whatever'd your stuff beforehand and can get it imported into whatever comes back as CoH.
/In case that matters. :p
I wasnt really intending on using them, but I guess there goes the free keys/trials I had under my city account name.
Storage is cheap, and maintaining old, basically unchanging data costs a company next to nothing. I'd be very surprised indeed if our accounts and game/character data from CoH were deleted.
Quote from: Dollhouse on July 01, 2013, 02:34:06 PM
Storage is cheap, and maintaining old, basically unchanging data costs a company next to nothing. I'd be very surprised indeed if our accounts and game/character data from CoH were deleted.
While I on the other hand can see a regular audit of contracts and services reveal that they are paying an off-site archive service to hold backup data for a now defunct game and to save money, doesn't matter if it's a lot or a little, will cancel, or simply not renew, that contract in which case the off-site service will repurpose the backup media that was being used for us for a paying customer.
This isn't that pile of tapes/floppies/Zip disks/DVD-ROMs/Blu-Ray ROMs that you have laying around your home or office that says "BACKUP <data> 1 of X" on it.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 01, 2013, 08:31:39 PM
This isn't that pile of tapes/floppies/Zip disks/DVD-ROMs/Blu-Ray ROMs that you have laying around your home or office that says "BACKUP <data> 1 of X" on it.
There's actually no way to know for sure what exactly they have. You'd assume so, but you'd also be surprised at how some companies--even big companies--operate.
If they're doing it "right", they have a data retention policy that says something like, "After
X days, we will delete all of this data." After that many days, they instruct their backup company or in-house group to delete the data. That protects them from legal liability if someone sues them two years down the road (assuming that
X < 2 years) for destroying data relevant to a lawsuit.
But I have personally witnessed large companies keep what I'd consider important information on things like Zip disks or tapes labeled "BACKUP", hoping for the best in case a server crashes. While I don't think such a thing is likely, I also know it's not unheard of.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 01, 2013, 08:31:39 PM
This isn't that pile of tapes/floppies/Zip disks/DVD-ROMs/Blu-Ray ROMs that you have laying around your home or office that says "BACKUP <data> 1 of X" on it.
My floppies don't don't say that... Wait, are we talking the 3.5" or the 5.25" ones? Maybe those 5.25" ones do... Hm. Haveta go look...
Mine just say, "Hey, remember when you could double your storage capacity with a holepunch?"
They're weird that way.
They're likely keeping something, but to be honest I remember going back to the sunset page and noticed that they had said the shutdown was permanent. I don't remember seeing that when the Sunset page originally went up.
"After hosting the final heroic battle between good and evil, the City of Heroes servers shut down permanently on November 30, 2012.
The Heroes and Villains have taken to the skies of City of Heroes for the last time, but the game and community will forever remain in our memories and hearts.
We thank our fans for their years of support. We couldn't have gone this far without you."
Yeah. I pulled this from the front page. Hard to believe it has been so long since November 30th. But I have faith in the Teams working on the new projects. Just a bit antsy. All good things take time.
Quote from: Botzo on July 02, 2013, 05:40:14 AM
They're likely keeping something, but to be honest I remember going back to the sunset page and noticed that they had said the shutdown was permanent. I don't remember seeing that when the Sunset page originally went up.
If it didn't say "permanently" right away, it was changed within the first week (at least by December 6):
http://web.archive.org/web/20121206015610/http://www.cityofheroes.com/en/sunset.php
QuoteAfter hosting the final heroic battle between good and evil, the City of Heroes servers shut down permanently on November 30, 2012.
Why so serious, NCSoft? :P
Quote from: houtex on July 02, 2013, 01:12:38 AM
My floppies don't don't say that... Wait, are we talking the 3.5" or the 5.25" ones? Maybe those 5.25" ones do... Hm. Haveta go look...
8" floppies. My most recent backup of my CP/M system.
Man those were HUGE. I was always afraid I'd bend them putting them in the drives.
Quick story about 8" floppies...
I wasn't yet with the company, but they told it so good that I remember all the details. One of our guys kept getting a call from this woman who was using the database software we sold. She had an interesting accent too.
"Dave, I keep typsin this stuff in, and back it up to that floppy on Friday, and then when I come in Monday, it's all GONE."
"Huh. Well, Mary, try backing it up tonight and see what happens."
"Ok."
This continued for a few calls, and she has to reformat the floppies every time this happens. Finally, Dave decided to go there and see what the fuss was all about (she was in town, and was HELLA mad at this point.)
"Ok, Mary, show me what you do."
"Awrighty. See here, I just types this stuff in... and then I save it to that floppy like y'all say..."
"Ok, hold on, Mary. Let me have a look."
Dave proceeds to verify the data is good. He then dismounts the drive, then mounts it again... checks the data on it... yep, all is good.
"Ok, well that looks ok. Hm. Ok, what do you do with the floppy when you back it up?"
"I take it out of the floppy drive, put it in the sleeve, and then put it up against this here file cabinet."
Whereupon she does this very act, and plonks a big magnet right on top of the floppy disk, and voila, handy storage.
Needless to say, back then, it was a HOOT to hear this story. And of course, the problem was solved, she got taught about magnetic media and how not to store floppies. :)
/Fracking magnets. How do they work!?
//Aand I'm sorta showing my age, but I fail to care these days. Heh.
They pissed away ten million-ish a year and alienated everybody who ever liked COH for reasons that are still a mystery to all. Why would you expect reason, intelligence or competence from such people? And yes, absolutely scorch that Earth. I don't know about the rest of the world but if Americans weren't such wusses about wielding their spending habits like a weapon, we wouldn't get half the abuse from the corporate world that we do. I will never ever play another NCSoft game. Why would I? I might like it a lot and it might get shut down for no discernible reason whatsoever.
Quote from: Pherdnut on July 04, 2013, 09:21:35 PM
They pissed away ten million-ish a year and alienated everybody who ever liked COH for reasons that are still a mystery to all. Why would you expect reason, intelligence or competence from such people? And yes, absolutely scorch that Earth. I don't know about the rest of the world but if Americans weren't such wusses about wielding their spending habits like a weapon, we wouldn't get half the abuse from the corporate world that we do. I will never ever play another NCSoft game. Why would I? I might like it a lot and it might get shut down for no discernible reason whatsoever.
yup.
Quote from: Victoria Victrix on June 30, 2013, 03:07:35 AM
Why on earth would you WANT to?
There is no answer (other than, "I wouldn't," that is) that will ever make sense to me if it comes from a former CoH player. I want nothing but bad luck and trouble to visit their HQ until they have to release the IP.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 05, 2013, 12:23:34 AM
There is no answer (other than, "I wouldn't," that is) that will ever make sense to me if it comes from a former CoH player. I want nothing but bad luck and trouble to visit their HQ until they have to release the IP.
well sometimes people figure it was coming, or they knew it could happen, or maybe they feel its just part of the risk of playing an MMO, and or they think the next NCSoft game is worth the risk, or they dont feel like thye got burned, or it even could be that they didnt put their heart and soul into it and possible other games and think it's just another game, or various other reasons.
Even as it stand other game companies can still shut down their games at any time. Some people after this is put off from MMO period maybe do that reason, some moved on to other games, where the possibility of that game getting shutdown some time in the future is tsill there. Some people refuse to play any mmo now. Others, just went to the nearest super hero mmo port in this storm. While others still cant bring themselves to play anything any game. There isa reason for everything and with every reason there is some that dont see the reason and or understand the reason. Neither is wrong just different views feelings and ways of dealing with what happened.
Me personally, if NCsoft came out with a game I'd like to play I would gladly do it as I have before playing COX after learning they had a penchant for shutting down games, and even when other games not COX got shut down. It didnt stop me then, it wont stop me now. It's a risk I was aware of for a long time before even playing COX. But then that was based on my experience and my view. With another it will vary. Some didnt know and it hit them like a ton of bricks and they wont play another ncsoft title ever again. While some wont play another title ever again unless ncsoft somehow release COX again and some will be right back in game like nothing happened and like they never said they will never play another ncsoft title again. It's their way of dealing with it and view based on their experiences.
Quote from: JaguarX on July 05, 2013, 12:29:22 AM
well sometimes people figure it was coming, or they knew it could happen, or maybe they feel its just part of the risk of playing an MMO, and or they think the next NCSoft game is worth the risk, or they dont feel like thye got burned, or it even could be that they didnt put their heart and soul into it and possible other games and think it's just another game, or various other reasons.
Even as it stand other game companies can still shut down their games at any time. Some people after this is put off from MMO period maybe do that reason, some moved on to other games, where the possibility of that game getting shutdown some time in the future is tsill there. Some people refuse to play any mmo now. Others, just went to the nearest super hero mmo port in this storm. While others still cant bring themselves to play anything any game. There isa reason for everything and with every reason there is some that dont see the reason and or understand the reason. Neither is wrong just different views feelings and ways of dealing with what happened.
Me personally, if NCsoft came out with a game I'd like to play I would gladly do it as I have before playing COX after learning they had a penchant for shutting down games, and even when other games not COX got shut down. It didnt stop me then, it wont stop me now. It's a risk I was aware of for a long time before even playing COX. But then that was based on my experience and my view. With another it will vary. Some didnt know and it hit them like a ton of bricks and they wont play another ncsoft title ever again. While some wont play another title ever again unless ncsoft somehow release COX again and some will be right back in game like nothing happened and like they never said they will never play another ncsoft title again. It's their way of dealing with it and view based on their experiences.
Spoken like one of their admitted shareholders.
CoX was a profitable game. They never considered selling it-- they just took it away for no humanly discernible reason (unless you want to believe the bullshit line they fed us). There is NO justification they can give for this move. It defies logic and sanity and most of us have no interest in Lucy's promise that the football will be there when we arrive to kick it.
Hardly anyone here is interested
at all in what one of NCSoft's
admitted shareholders has to say about why we should want to give them any money. By definition, you have a stake in this happening. I have no such stake, and therefore wish the aforementioned bad luck and trouble to visit their HQ daily.
Understand this: Neither me nor anyone else who is still upset over this senseless act of corporate stupidity is interested in any after-the-fact justifications or reasons to continue trusting NCSoft. That kind of misplaced trust benefits
you. In the meantime, I'm hoping the company is revealed to have been engaging in the kind of shady accounting practices that came to light with Enron. If that or anything remotely similar happens, you better believe I am going to throw my own personal Mardi Gras over the fact that NCSoft is dead. I am literally going to drink champagne and bake a huge friggin' king cake and dance in the god damn street.
If that means you lose your whole investment, well, your loss would just be collateral damage, and I can live with that. In the meantime, please be advised that your constant defending of NCSoft is as boring as it is transparent.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 05, 2013, 01:29:39 AM
Spoken like one of their admitted shareholders.
Are they really? That explains a lot.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 05, 2013, 01:29:39 AM
Spoken like one of their admitted shareholders.
CoX was a profitable game. They never considered selling it-- they just took it away for no humanly discernible reason (unless you want to believe the bullshit line they fed us). There is NO justification they can give for this move. It defies logic and sanity and most of us have no interest in Lucy's promise that the football will be there when we arrive to kick it.
Hardly anyone here is interested at all in what one of NCSoft's admitted shareholders has to say about why we should want to give them any money. By definition, you have a stake in this happening. I have no such stake, and therefore wish the aforementioned bad luck and trouble to visit their HQ daily.
Understand this: Neither me nor anyone else who is still upset over this senseless act of corporate stupidity is interested in any after-the-fact justifications or reasons to continue trusting NCSoft. That kind of misplaced trust benefits you. In the meantime, I'm hoping the company is revealed to have been engaging in the kind of shady accounting practices that came to light with Enron. If that or anything remotely similar happens, you better believe I am going to throw my own personal Mardi Gras over the fact that NCSoft is dead. I am literally going to drink champagne and bake a huge friggin' king cake and dance in the god damn street.
If that means you lose your whole investment, well, your loss would just be collateral damage, and I can live with that. In the meantime, please be advised that your constant defending of NCSoft is as boring as it is transparent.
Well then all you have to do then is ask the people that did return to theg ames like GW series. I believe there is a whole thread about people asking "who else is playing GWs" right here on this forum. If thier reason and Logic and sanity is so beyond your understanding, then why not just and ask them. You dont have to take it from me.
And I bought their stock afetr the shut down, which I was going to do either way regardless of the shut down or not. Business is business. Altough I should of did what my friend said and did and got into it way back in 2008-2009 period, but better late than never.
And in that post I wasnt defending NCSoft at all. You asked why someone would go to those games after this I gave reasons. Some are what others told me some are just guesses, nothing to do with NCSoft.
I was one of those that years back said that NCSoft have a tendency to close games, I said that MMO can close, be careful, and guess what, people like you refused to listen. Now look at ya. MAd at the world and think everything is about defending NCSOFT. What's boring is your contant putting down of NCSOFT because they took your game, a game you dont even own by the way. When years ago, when Itold about NCSOFT business practices, people like you completely ignored, the same business practices that put you in a fit right now as we speak. So I figured well either they already know the risk or dont care and left it alone. Now dont come back at me with defending NCSOFT when you asked the question why people still play NCSOFT because you are personally pissed at them and wish to not play. The true answer is because that is what they choose to do and if you choose not to. Fine, but those that do doesnt make them insane or illogical. It's insane to expect everyone now to leave because now you are just now catching on to what I been saying for yeasr since they closed down Auto assault and again when they shut down Dungeon Runners and once more when they shut down Tabual Rasa. You aint have a single regret or ill feeling towards their business practices then and now you cant expect everyoen to jump on your bandwagon because NOW you have a problem with it, something they been doing for years prior to COX shut down.
As I said, you want to know the reason, go ask the players that decided to move on to another game like GW and other NCSOFT offerings instead of choosing ot be like you and trun everything into about NCSOFT and getting on anyone case that isnt drinking your kool aid. I want COX back, it was profitbale it shouldnt have been shut down. But it has. Now what? I'm hoping these three replacements fill that void now. Not everyone is going to carry that hate and anger like you forever against NCSOFT. For someone that dont care about them you sure do talk about thwem alot. You think NCSOFT give a crap about you? Nope. Think they give a crap if they never get another dime from you?> Nope. So be mad, stay angry, dont play MMOs every again for all I care and probably for all NCSOFT care. Your problem not mine, not NCSOFT and not anyone else that choose to play another game NCSOFT or not. Deal with your anger before it consumes you.
And I guess it never even occured to you that as I invest, that mean as a shareholder I can actually bring up the issue of COX closing down at the annual meeting? Might be able to shed some light to other stockholders and get their view on it and go from there and question their business practices and see if it's good for business or not. From what I gather from the other few that I know in the states that I came across, they have no idea about you, how you feel about it, the community here, or even ever played COX. They might not even give a crap. But they cant care about something they do not know about and quite frankly you are not giving me anything to work with besides "you hate NCSOFT and everyone else is supposed to also now that you do" but prior to the announcement you probably would have and probably was one that defended NCSOFT all day and night even when it was told about their business practices towards games they no longer want. So now because you are pissed I am and everyone is supposed be too? Get over yourself. You're pissed that is fine and that is your decision. And others have made theirs. Some decided to partake in other games like GW, some have not. Some hold no animosity towards NCSOFT for that shutdown some do. Get over it. It's called real life. What you do, is your choice. If you decide to stay angry forever until you die, fine with me and many others, I wont shed a single tear or try to convince you as I have never done, to partake in another one of those games. But dont try to convince me to be all of a sudden pissed at them just because you are.
Unlike you I am able to separate my emotions from business mindset. With your mindset where anger and emotions rules your every move, you might want to stay out of the business world, in fact stay out of the MMO world because the truth is that any of them can be shut down anytime any where for any reason NCSOFT game or not. I'm sad that COX is gone, emotionally but it wont stop me from looking at it from a business stand point too. That is more feeling many people I know that also played COX have for it. Some dont give a crap that it got shut down it was another MMO that got closed due to lack of business in their minds.
Pretty sure nobody ever said they are a shareholder in NCSOFT, at least not currently.
While the game generated $10 million in sales it wasn't a lot compared to their other properties.
They decided that the costs they had supporting the game would be better used to support newer games with much higher short term sales potential.
IMO their action is equivalent to a restaurant removing a rarely ordered item off the menu and replacing it with one that is likely to be considerably more popular. Sucks if you went there for the item they removed but in the long run they are willing to lose your business if it means replacing you with 5 new customers.
Was NCSOFT "morally" obligated to keep it open regardless? Or sell it? Of course not, businesses are only obligated to their owners, keeping the customer happy is merely a nicety along the way to the true goal which is increasing profits. They saw no growth in profitability in the game or potential for a new source from the studio and they decided to take those resources and invest them into projects and games they thought had better short and long term potential for profits. So that means we and Paragon got the short end of the stick. Guess what, that's how large businesses work. Bigger picture, not individual projects or customers. If a company is smaller, wasn't public which would allow the owners to include other considerations other than profits in their decision making process it may have been a different story. It's not, it wasn't, they killed the game, the studio and locked up the IP for a rainy day or simply to deny a competitor.
Guild Wars stayed alive because of the investment they had made toward the development of Guild Wars 2. Paragon Studios didn't have a successor (just another MMO, didn't need to be CoH based) that NCSOFT thought was worth developing further. If they did then in all likelihood CoH wouldn't have been shut down.
Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa never had a big enough following to pay back the development quick enough so were shut down. Dungeon Runners was another case of too little income to be bothered with keeping it running.
So again if you believe that a corporation has any obligation to their customer, employees, community where they are located beyond what's necessary to maximize profit then you might as well live in an MMO surrounded with other mythical creatures. Say hi to the unicorns, elves and dragons for me.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 05, 2013, 02:29:47 AM
While the game generated $10 million in sales it wasn't a lot compared to their other properties.
They decided that the costs they had supporting the game would be better used to support newer games with much higher short term sales.
IMO their action is equivalent to a restaurant removing a rarely ordered item off the menu and replacing it with one that is likely to be considerably more popular. Sucks if you went there for the item they removed but in the long run they are willing to lose your business if it means replacing you with 5 new customers.
Was NCSOFT "morally" obligated to keep it open regardless? Or sell it? Of course not, businesses are only obligated to their owners, keeping the customer happy is merely a nicety along the way to the true goal which is increasing profits. They saw no growth in profitability in the game or potential for a new source from the studio and they decided to take those resources and invest them into projects and games they thought had better short and long term potential for profits. So that means we and Paragon got the short end of the stick. Guess what, that's how large businesses work. Bigger picture, not individual projects or customers. If a company is smaller, wasn't public which would allow the owners to include other considerations other than profits in their decision making process it may have been a different story. It's not, it wasn't, they killed the game, the studio and locked up the IP for a rainy day or simply to deny a competitor.
Guild Wars stayed alive because of the investment they had made toward the development of Guild Wars 2. Paragon Studios didn't have a successor (just another MMO, didn't need to be CoH based) that NCSOFT thought was worth developing further. If they did then in all likelihood CoH wouldn't have been shut down.
Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa never had a big enough following to pay back the development quick enough so were shut down. Dungeon Runners was another case of too little income to be bothered with keeping it running.
So again if you believe that a corporation has any obligation to their customer, employees, community where they are located beyond what's necessary to maximize profit then you might as well live in an MMO with other mythical creatures. Say hi to the unicorns for me.
Basically.
Peopel forget that the point of a business is business. Not to please their every single desire and make business decison on every other product except the one they like.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 05, 2013, 02:29:47 AM
believe that a corporation has any obligation to their customer, employees, community where they are located beyond what's necessary to maximize profit
They do - the fact that so many of them think that they don't is the reason so many people feel such contempt for big business.
Quote from: Golden Girl on July 05, 2013, 02:56:42 AM
They do - the fact that so many of them think that they don't is the reason so many people feel such contempt for big business.
This is quite right GG. Until the 1980's, the thought of a company without concern for its customers or employees was enough to force companies out of business.
Quote from: Golden Girl on July 05, 2013, 02:56:42 AM
They do - the fact that so many of them think that they don't is the reason so many people feel such contempt for big business.
Probably. But the way to show approval and disapproval is with money. A person can hold contempt for a corporation all they want but it do no good if they give them money unless they want it to stay the same where corporations dont care and they continue to hold contempt. Remember most corporation decision makers dont put too much time in reading review sites and such. They see charts and graphs. As long as it looks good to them, as far as the yare concerned they are doing an excellent job.
When those lines start going down and below expectations, then someone is not doing a good job and someone is about to get fired if things dont turn around.
Like EA and Bank of America. Known on review sites of not giving two craps about their customers, to many reviews out there, yet they bring in big money each month. For all the hate for BOA, still their Q1 profits rose by 2.3 billions. As far as those people look at that and make the decisions, their practices are working and just. Ground level is it? From the customer reviews it doesnt seem so. But opinions dont put food on the table. Money do.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/bank-of-america-q1-2013-earnings_n_3099126.html
Well in the case of BoA, like other megabanks the average customer's checking and savings is a pittance compared to what they really make their money on. We really need to go back to the day where investment banks and commercial banks were two separate entities again. That's when banking went south, when they allowed investment and commercial banks to merge as well as insurance companies.
GG, as for corporations, generations of management taught and reinforced with rewards based on simple dollars and cents. Is it better for a car company to recall a model line for a defect or settle with the families that the defect help kill a family member? Is it cheaper to offer health insurance or switch over to part time employees that don't qualify under the ACA? Is it cheaper to properly dispose of industrial waste or hire some shady guys to dump it in an old quarry two towns over? And all of that because stock market analysts expect the impossible goal of yearly sales and profit growth and will savagely beat your stock price down if you didn't meet their expectations. And as a public company your owners are stock holders and most likely they include senior management and the Board of Directors.
It all boils down to what metric is being used to determine your rewards. And frankly we have a tendency to reward the wrong behavior while punishing the right.
As an aside, I found this study (http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/why-good-deeds-dont-go-unpunished/) interesting.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 05, 2013, 07:28:32 AM
It all boils down to what metric is being used to determine your rewards. And frankly we have a tendency to reward the wrong behavior while punishing the right.
As an aside, I found this study (http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/07/why-good-deeds-dont-go-unpunished/) interesting.
Yup.
Wasa topic that I chose to write a report about that in a psy. class. Found some interesting stuff on it and had to do some interviews of people about this. One answer that I still remember till this day about why a person is suspicious of someone offering help. They said well "it have become the norm that everyone is trying to rip you off or use you to get over so when somone come along that is trying to help more than likely they are looking for something in return. These days, no one does good deeds to do good deeds." That got me thinking has society fallen so much that you cant even help one another without looking irregular? While other answers was relatively the same, none was really as in depth to the reason.
I'd argue there are plenty of people who do good for the sake of doing good, they just are never called attention to. The Mass Media of our age has become so violent and petulant ("If it bleeds, it leads." as my old instructor used to say) that getting a positive story out on the airwaves is frankly a rarity any more.
That, in turn, has shaped public perception of reality to be a far darker, abysmal place then it actually is. It still is dark, but the kindness of strangers is not a dying art. Just a quiet one.
Quote from: Rust on July 05, 2013, 01:19:16 PM
I'd argue there are plenty of people who do good for the sake of doing good, they just are never called attention to. The Mass Media of our age has become so violent and petulant ("If it bleeds, it leads." as my old instructor used to say) that getting a positive story out on the airwaves is frankly a rarity any more.
That, in turn, has shaped public perception of reality to be a far darker, abysmal place then it actually is. It still is dark, but the kindness of strangers is not a dying art. Just a quiet one.
yup.
Quote from: downix on July 05, 2013, 03:03:19 AM
Until the 1980's, the thought of a company without concern for its customers or employees was enough to force companies out of business.
But we have been educated. That started around the 1950s -- the educational push to transform Americans especially into corporate capitalist cheerleaders ready to line up in defense of companies that do anything possible within the law to maximize returns.
Of course, the modern publicly traded corporate entity has been the same for much longer; every time an independent human entrepreneur built a major company and allowed it make this transformation it became a beast, subjugating or forcing out the founder(s) and their families and divorcing itself from any humanity that it's lucrative "brand" may have been built on. Most people in our grandparents' and great-grandparents' generations were wise to the problem, because they were educated to prize humanity over fiscal optimization. But then, after WWII, the major corporations took advantage of ties they'd gained with the government during the war to push a soulless fiscal philosophy on wide swaths of young people in the name of 'business.'
I may not have a great deal of affinity with the hippie movement, but I can see why they rebelled against that indoctrination at the time. Of course, I can also see that most of those who "dropped out and tuned in" in the late 1960s still wound up selling out and buying in by the 1980s. There was only one Ralph Nader, and I suspect being the Don Quixote for so long might have driven him insane...
So it's hard to have a lot of faith in the current generations turning decades of pro-corporate education around, now that probably a majority of the population grew up in the wake of the '80s. Heck, most of the new major companies our generation has spawned start out behaving no differently. It seems more likely the human herd will only become better manipulated and better managed by it's corporate masters for centuries to come.
^^^
Not particularly speaking about NCSoft and CoX, though Kim's decision does reflect the sort of cold business that gets more knee-jerk cheerleading than criticism these days.
"If it bleeds, it leads" has been around forever in the press Rust. It's just now if there isn't anything local we'll go national and imply in the headline or bump before commercial that it is local. The news media only purpose isn't to convey the facts about an event but also to make money or at the very least break even. It that means we will present the facts in such a way to sell more papers, keep viewers watching or cause someone to click on a headline, then so be it.
What WWII did for manufacturing was to find ways to optimize production to maximize goods for the war effort. And that meant in some cases cutting corners and a blind eye was turned. It's tough to go back doing things "properly" once all your current metrics indicate that "properly" means lower output and higher cost.
Corporate management went from trained from within to taught at universities where it didn't matter what you were managing because you're taught to manage by the numbers. That every business's processes can be distilled into cold hard numbers without the need to be knowledgeable about your customers, employees or product. And these jerks have taken over. CFOs instead just being head of accounting, again being promoted from within, becomes someone who's trained in fiscal tricks to maximize apparent value so the stock analysts are happy, even if these tricks damages the company's fiscal condition in the long term.
Quote from: Golden Girl on July 05, 2013, 02:56:42 AM
They do - the fact that so many of them think that they don't is the reason so many people feel such contempt for big business.
Thank you. Maximizing profit without regard to your consumers can (and does) verge into sociopathic territory.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 05, 2013, 02:29:47 AM
Pretty sure nobody ever said they are a shareholder in NCSOFT, at least not currently.
Then perhaps you should check the "Stockwatch" thread.
As to the rest of it, I don't give one tenth of a rat's ass whether or not NCSoft had a moral obligation to keep a profitable game open or sell it. The sum total of my position is not doing so was a gigantic dick move, and I can't see subjecting myself to that kind of thing in the future from the same damn people.
Edit: To further clarify: I can't see why anyone who was subjected to the aforementioned dick move would do so either, and I am-- once again-- not interested in an answer from someone with something to gain from that kind of stupidity.
Do we need to take a poll and grab the numbers about who here would and would rather not give NCSoft one more dime for anything NOT CoX?
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 08, 2013, 12:33:22 AM
Thank you. Maximizing profit without regard to your consumers can (and does) verge into sociopathic territory.
yup.
But then again, if thier regards in maximizing profits is not the consumer but another group then by definition they are not socipathic. Just like many feed their family but dont give two thoguhts about the guy that is starving four blocks away. Although the moral responsible thing to do would be give him plate each meal. But people feel they are morally responsible for some groups but not always all groups and dont deemed themselves sociopathic, or else really we all would be by definition sociopathic.
a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
Okay, I'm not quite sure what happened there, but whatever. :o
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 08, 2013, 12:43:47 AM
Okay, I'm not quite sure what happened there, but whatever. :o
You hit quote instead of modify :) I fixt it for you!
(I usually do the opposite...no idea how many times I've almost obliterated someone's post because I modified it instead of quoting. I've
actually obliterated a couple posts, but it's been a long time since I did that because I'm much more careful now! lol)
Quote from: Rust on July 05, 2013, 01:19:16 PM
That, in turn, has shaped public perception of reality to be a far darker, abysmal place then it actually is. It still is dark, but the kindness of strangers is not a dying art. Just a quiet one.
Damn right :)
One of the biggest offenders in skewing public opinion like that is the emergence of 24hr rolling news stations. They have time to fill, and while nature may abhor a vacuum, it's got nothing on a news channel! If there's a hole in their programming they fill it immediately with wild speculation, repetition, and hyperbole.
What a lot of people tend to forget (or perhaps never considered in the first place) is that almost by definition, stories appearing on tv news are 'aberrant'. News media isn't in the business of giving column inches or airtime to the mudane and everyday, they want sensationalism, they want it NOW, and if there isn't any around they'll just make some up.
You don't see news articles saying "A lady dropped her credit card today while shopping. Fortunately a helpful person found the card and handed it in to the store staff who were able to contact the lady and she was reunited with her card within minutes." - because small acts of kindness like that happen
all the time, so they're not newsworthy. In fact I
was the 'helpful person' in that exact scenario just a couple of days ago in my local supermarket. Such acts of kindness are the very glue that keeps society together.
How do I know? Because people continue to live in cities and towns and to go about their business every day. And every day is much like the day before, and the day after will be much the same as today.
And it's perhaps because of this that no one would want to read a book that
started with the phrase "And they all lived happily ever after". People prefer to watch news stories about crime, car chases, war, health scares...basically the same kind of exciting stuff they'd find in a novel or action film.
Because they're not watching the news for information, they're watching for
entertainment.
The trouble comes when people allow the media to fill their desire for such entertainment at the expense of their objectivity. When too many people subjectively believe that what they see on tv news is actually representative of reality, then the aberrant becomes the norm - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However - never forget that if the world was
really as dark as the media try to paint it, there'd be no civilisation, no communities, just anarchy.
So here's the most ironic part - in a way I'm actually happy for the media to keep vomiting out their black bile.
Why?
Because as long as their dark stories draw viewers, it means they
still are aberrant. If the dark really was the norm, no one would watch the dark news stories because they'd be boring and mundane.
So the mere fact the news is dark reassures me that
humanity itself is not.
Quote from: Aggelakis on July 08, 2013, 01:20:39 AM
You hit quote instead of modify :) I fixt it for you!
(I usually do the opposite...no idea how many times I've almost obliterated someone's post because I modified it instead of quoting. I've actually obliterated a couple posts, but it's been a long time since I did that because I'm much more careful now! lol)
Thank you, kind Administrator being! Question: does this forum allow for polls?
Quote from: Turjan on July 08, 2013, 01:27:10 AM
Damn right :)
One of the biggest offenders in skewing public opinion like that is the emergence of 24hr rolling news stations. They have time to fill, and while nature may abhor a vacuum, it's got nothing on a news channel! If there's a hole in their programming they fill it immediately with wild speculation, repetition, and hyperbole.
What a lot of people tend to forget (or perhaps never considered in the first place) is that almost by definition, stories appearing on tv news are 'aberrant'. News media isn't in the business of giving column inches or airtime to the mudane and everyday, they want sensationalism, they want it NOW, and if there isn't any around they'll just make some up.
You don't see news articles saying "A lady dropped her credit card today while shopping. Fortunately a helpful person found the card and handed it in to the store staff who were able to contact the lady and she was reunited with her card within minutes." - because small acts of kindness like that happen all the time, so they're not newsworthy. In fact I was the 'helpful person' in that exact scenario just a couple of days ago in my local supermarket. Such acts of kindness are the very glue that keeps society together.
How do I know? Because people continue to live in cities and towns and to go about their business every day. And every day is much like the day before, and the day after will be much the same as today.
And it's perhaps because of this that no one would want to read a book that started with the phrase "And they all lived happily ever after". People prefer to watch news stories about crime, car chases, war, health scares...basically the same kind of exciting stuff they'd find in a novel or action film.
Because they're not watching the news for information, they're watching for entertainment.
The trouble comes when people allow the media to fill their desire for such entertainment at the expense of their objectivity. When too many people subjectively believe that what they see on tv news is actually representative of reality, then the aberrant becomes the norm - it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
However - never forget that if the world was really as dark as the media try to paint it, there'd be no civilisation, no communities, just anarchy.
So here's the most ironic part - in a way I'm actually happy for the media to keep vomiting out their black bile.
Why?
Because as long as their dark stories draw viewers, it means they still are aberrant. If the dark really was the norm, no one would watch the dark news stories because they'd be boring and mundane.
So the mere fact the news is dark reassures me that humanity itself is not.
Good stuff.
Yeah overall, society is mundane and quiet, but there are some people's lives are stranger than fiction. I know a guy who always had a bleak out look on the world. I wondered why so one day I did the unthinkable, I actually simply asked why instead of making up my own reasons and assumptions. He basically told me that every single week for the past 5 years someone he knows is either being buried after getting shot or off to jail for shooting. And yeah his world, it's bleak. Ad ironically none of those cases even made it to the news. It was so common that the news didnt bother with it. But someone shoots up a theater, they are over it. People expect people to get shot in certain places but who expects to get murked at a movie theater?
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 08, 2013, 01:35:34 AM
Thank you, kind Administrator being! Question: does this forum allow for polls?
Don't be in too much of a hurry. A lot of people here dived immediately back into NCSoft's arms following the closure. I don't bring this up because I think those people are terrible human beings, I'm bringing it up because I think these people would love to show up in your poll as an unwelcome surprise. The only thing I know for sure about those folks is that it's their life, their money, their lessons, their business. Not yours or mine.
Quote from: Captain Electric on July 08, 2013, 01:43:34 AM
Don't be in too much of a hurry. A lot of people here dived immediately back into NCSoft's arms following the closure. I don't bring this up because I think those people are terrible human beings, I'm bringing it up because I think these people would love to show up in your poll as an unwelcome surprise. The only thing I know for sure about those folks is that it's their life, their money, their lessons, their business. Not yours or mine.
yup.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 08, 2013, 12:36:56 AM
Then perhaps you should check the "Stockwatch" thread.
There are 30 posts with the word "stockholder" in it in that thread. None that said or implied the poster was a stockholder. Same is true with the word "own". Perhaps you should check that thread and link to the post where someone says they own NCSOFT.
If you can't provide proof then don't accuse.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 08, 2013, 01:57:11 AM
There are 30 posts with the word "stockholder" in it in that thread. None that said or implied the poster was a stockholder. Same is true with the word "own". Perhaps you should check that thread and link to the post where someone says they own NCSOFT.
If you can't provide proof then don't accuse.
Look at the post
immediately above yours (the one Pinnacle quoted) in
this. JaguarX says in the second paragraph that he bought stocks, apparently a decent amount of them from multiple previous comments on the topic. :p
Quote from: Aggelakis on July 08, 2013, 02:37:03 AM
Look at the post immediately above yours (the one Pinnacle quoted) in this. JaguarX says in the second paragraph that he bought stocks, apparently a decent amount of them from multiple previous comments on the topic. :p
yup.
Quote from: Captain Electric on July 08, 2013, 01:43:34 AM
Don't be in too much of a hurry. A lot of people here dived immediately back into NCSoft's arms following the closure. I don't bring this up because I think those people are terrible human beings, I'm bringing it up because I think these people would love to show up in your poll as an unwelcome surprise. The only thing I know for sure about those folks is that it's their life, their money, their lessons, their business. Not yours or mine.
For the record, I don't think they're terrible people either-- but if Lucy takes their football away-- excuse me,
realigns her focus-- when they go to kick it, what are they going to say? That they really thought she wouldn't
this time, no matter what her past actions indicate?
That said, I'm not expecting it to be three or four people who say they would give NCSoft money again. I don't
have expectations here. A poll would be just that: a poll. If it skews in a way I personally don't like, I can deal with that. But I would at least like to know where the community stands, or at least where the portion of them that answered the hypothetical poll stands.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 08, 2013, 01:57:11 AM
There are 30 posts with the word "stockholder" in it in that thread. None that said or implied the poster was a stockholder. Same is true with the word "own". Perhaps you should check that thread and link to the post where someone says they own NCSOFT.
If you can't provide proof then don't accuse.
Minimal investigation is all it would have taken you to find this out, as this is on the very last (i.e., most recent) page of the stockwatch thread:
Quote from: JaguarX on June 10, 2013, 06:31:00 PM
looks like it's going up today some compared to Friday.
Did the math on what my friend invested in way back in 2009, 4,000 shares, then andn ot sure nor didnt ask how many they bought recently but just by that 4,000 shares from 2009, and if they sold today they would pocket about a decent sum of money. Still wished I put in way back then. If my math is correct about $500,000 odd for their about $180,000 investment.
But me, I'm still in the red by about $8-$9 a share. :(
Apart from the link in the quote, here's the link to said page of that thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5250.2100.html
Also please note that the illustrious Mr. JaguarX never denied owning any shares, as that would have been ludicrously disprovable, and an admin is backing me up as having seen same. I believe we can move on from this now.
Jaguar, if you cash out on a relative high point, then use all of it to fund Plan Z kickstarters (all three projects), then I'll forgive you. :P
Quote from: Captain Electric on July 08, 2013, 04:01:41 AM
Jaguar, if you cash out on a relative high point, then use all of it to fund Plan Z kickstarters (all three projects), then I'll forgive you. :P
Will get there eventually. :p
Added with some of the other stuff cashed out at high point. Some of course is for when I start to turn gray and to have fun with later.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 08, 2013, 03:29:52 AM
Minimal investigation is all it would have taken you to find this out, as this is on the very last (i.e., most recent) page of the stockwatch thread:
Apart from the link in the quote, here's the link to said page of that thread: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,5250.2100.html
Also please note that the illustrious Mr. JaguarX never denied owning any shares, as that would have been ludicrously disprovable, and an admin is backing me up as having seen same. I believe we can move on from this now.
It was a two thousand plus post thread so I used search on what seemed to be the two most obvious keywords. Sorry.
And aren't you saying that since nobody can disprove they don't own shares then isn't everyone a possible filthy NCSOFT shareholder? Or am I reading that last statement wrong.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 08, 2013, 04:48:34 AM
It was a two thousand plus post thread so I used search on what seemed to be the two most obvious keywords. Sorry.
And aren't you saying that since nobody can disprove they don't own shares then isn't everyone a possible filthy NCSOFT shareholder? Or am I reading that last statement wrong.
Not only are you reading it wrong, I can't even figure out how you arrived at that reading.
By teaching people to accept the fact that businesses are not obligated to "care" about anything other than maximizing profits is wrong. It's how we got to the current state of affairs as it is.
Also, it's really none of anyone's businesses who owns what stocks. I'll bet there are people here who own stocks that don't even know what stocks they own because they're managed by someone else. If someone else also wants to support a game by NCSoft, that is also their right and their own business. If you don't want to like somebody because of these reasons, then you're missing the big picture here.
With that out of the way, RE: OP
My account was closed too, and I only had CoH in it. I sent in a support ticket to see if they could give me an official reason, but after reading through and doing some research, it appears it was nothing more than "cleanup" time when they switched over to dropping "NCSoft Master Accounts" in favor of email-based "NC Account" accounts.
I don't know if anyone here has other games WITH CoH that can shed some light on what their account status is or looks like, but I am curious for my own curiosity.
NCSoft would have to delete/close or completely remove any/all information about CoH in your account anyway even if a sale DID occur of CoH.
It would be weird being able to log into CoH to see a copy of the same billing history and so on of your CoH subscription if the same thing showed up in a new owners account system.
I'm not hinting that this is what has happened, but it's one less step in the process.
I'm also pretty sure account usernames and passwords were stored in the game's database for the account in question and that the NCSoft accounts for CoH within the Master account simply had a web module that accessed it.
Again, there's nothing here that says to me "Oh, they deleted all of our game data."
I firmly believe there is a backup somewhere, at least, as Tony mentioned, for a limited time.
Quote from: downix on July 05, 2013, 03:03:19 AM
This is quite right GG. Until the 1980's, the thought of a company without concern for its customers or employees was enough to force companies out of business.
It still is. To claim otherwise is to be spreading propaganda, not facts. A company that doesn't care about its customers or employees is a doomed company, because a company without customers has no profits, and a company without employees has no products nor services. The attitude that either is expendable destroys companies, and rightly so. It tends to come from MBAs who only studied business and didn't learn the industry they are going to manage, who were taught by pure academics who never ran a thing in their lives or who also only ran a company or two into the ground because they never learned the industry.
They make the mistake of assuming that any business is the same at the top level as any other, and that a balance sheet tells you the whole story, so all expenditures and intakes are as fungible as the dollars written beside their entries. This is demonstrably false, and companies that fail are the ones that make this mistake more often than not.
There
are concerns beyond what makes a customer happy, mind. There is truth to the counter, "the customer is
not always right." In truth, people often have just enough information to get in their own way. They think they know what they want, but miss the forest for the trees. Successful marketing people who do proper research
and feedback to the parent company don't simply find ways to manipulate the customer base, but rather report back what really
went over well and have expertise to isolate and identify what made customers genuinely happy. To find what customers really are talking about when they express pleasure. Often, they find these things are not what customers say with a blank question of "what do you like?"
Again, Extra Credits has a couple of good episodes dealing with analyzing your players during play-testing at all stages. This analysis applies rather well to any customer-testing of any product or service. Obviously it requires adaptation, but the overall philosophy of really trying to break down the customer experience to find out what they liked and didn't like is crucial.
Apple does so well because they decide what they're going to make, then see how their customers use it, and adapt it to be even better at that. They do listen to customer requests, but they don't take them blindly, and some of their behaviors really irk their customer base. And yet, their customer base are practically rabid fans for their products. It's not that Apple disrespects their customers, but that Apple behaves like a professional who knows its business better than those who use it. They focus it all on serving their customers, but they do not do so at the expense of doing what they know works better than what their customers necessarily demand. And they can make mistakes. Everybody can. Everybody does.
But to say that businesses have philosophically moved to a "customers don't matter" position is to demonize needlessly. It dehumanizes businesses, and that's wrong, because
businesses are run by humans, worked by humans, and patronized by humans. Are there "business men" who run things stupidly and greedily? Heavens, yes. Is this because of some mythical philosophy that was instituted in the 80s? Perhaps, but if so, only because those who are pro-regulation decided that deregulation meant it was a free-for-all and that they should take THEIR piece of the pie by whatever unethical means they could think of before somebody else beat them to it.
Actual businessmen - the men and women who run companies to make products and succeed overall - don't behave in this way, as a general rule. They have a passion for their product or service, and they want to make money by proving it
works.
If I were a business person..and I had been the one to order a popular game to be taken offline..and for some strange reason couldn't make a sale amid a sea of bids...I'd find some way to harvest the mechanics and general structure of that game and turn it into cold hard cash. If this sort of thinking holds true, NCSoft will exploit the popularity and success of City of Heroes and use its infrastructure to shape future ventures. Following this sort of thinking, I believe NCsoft would sit on the rights to COH indefinitely, just for the sake of avoiding IP rights disputes, should they develop something out of the content of COH.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 05, 2013, 02:29:47 AMWhile the game generated $10 million in sales it wasn't a lot compared to their other properties.
They decided that the costs they had supporting the game would be better used to support newer games with much higher short term sales potential.
IMO their action is equivalent to a restaurant removing a rarely ordered item off the menu and replacing it with one that is likely to be considerably more popular. Sucks if you went there for the item they removed but in the long run they are willing to lose your business if it means replacing you with 5 new customers.
The problem with that analogy is that it does not match what NCSoft did. To be a good analogy, the closure of City of Heroes would have resulted in the entire Paragon Studios staff being reassigned to work on a new project. Or, inverted, taking the rarely-ordered item off the menu, firing the chef who prepared it, the sous-chefs who assisted him, and the waiters who served the item, and then hired a completely new set of personnel to prepare and serve the new item, even though the sales of that menu item were more than sufficient to pay the salaries of the chef, the sous-chefs, and the waiters. It's
barely possible that your analogy is viable, but only if you posit that you only have a fixed amount of preparation space, and you don't have
room to be able to prepare both this rarely-ordered item and a more popular one, and the cooks preparing the former item are unsuited to preparing any other dish -- neither of which are likely to be relevant to game development.
Killing CoH and Paragon Studios
cost NCSoft an ongoing profit source. If the various statements -- that CoH was turning a profit, while Paragon Studios
as a whole (i.e., including the staff working on the undisclosed and unreleased project)
wasn't, then normal business practices would be to kill the part of PS that is causing the studio to operate at a loss, which leaves a trimmed-down Paragon Studios turning a profit, which can be used to help bankroll the better-performing game. Closing the whole studio, rather than just the part causing PS to run at a loss, meant that they would have to divert more funding from somewhere else for another project.
Unless you argue that the people managing NCSoft are incompetent to run a business, and would make bad business decisions out of ignorance or stupidity, there has to be some other reason why NCSoft shut down Paragon Studios, and CoH with it -- a reason that made sense to
them. And when dealing with people from other cultures, aspects of that culture's mindset can influence decisions. And without data we can trust out of NCSoft, we may never know
why they made that decision; we can only be sure that it was
not made on the basis of proft-and-loss. Although I can see a low-probability situation where someone up the chain in NCSoft sees that 'Paragon Studios' has been running a loss for the last several years and decided on that basis to close the company, without knowing that Paragon Studios was two separate groups of developers, one of whom was responsible for the studio as a whole running at a loss -- and either no one paid any attention to this fact, or the person who made the decision was sufficiently highly-placed that their mistake was glossed over and the closure left to stand, rather than embarrassing them over it.
Quote from: Sleepy Wonder on July 08, 2013, 10:18:55 AM
By teaching people to accept the fact that businesses are not obligated to "care" about anything other than maximizing profits is wrong. It's how we got to the current state of affairs as it is.
Agreed.
QuoteAlso, it's really none of anyone's businesses who owns what stocks. I'll bet there are people here who own stocks that don't even know what stocks they own because they're managed by someone else.
Disagreed. Personal business is not quite personal when the person whose business it is publicly announces it. Also, there's a big difference between owning a stock because it's in your 401(k) and deliberately purchasing it. Furthermore, that information goes to motive, but I believe I've already said all I need to regarding that.
QuoteIf someone else also wants to support a game by NCSoft, that is also their right and their own business. If you don't want to like somebody because of these reasons, then you're missing the big picture here.
I understand that that's their right and their own business. But I'm pretty sure I'm not violating anyone's rights by expressing bafflement regarding that decision. Incidentally, making that decision
does not make me dislike a person.
To clarify, when NCSoft shat out "realignment of focus" as justification for shutting down a profitable game, it was a massive insult to the intelligence of the portion of their customer base that played CoX. When they flat out lied to us and said they had exhausted all options for selling the game? That made me slightly annoyed. When they demonstrated what they think of their employees by firing the devs just before Labor Day weekend? I became slightly less inclined to have anything but a burning hatred for that company. So when somebody-- and I'm not saying it's anyone in particular-- says with an ostensibly straight face that CoX is gone because NCSoft realigned their focus? I tend to, shall we say, not view that person in the best light, but that's on me. I'm the idiot who assumed this forum would be a sanctuary free from that particular insult to our intelligence again.
Such unpleasantness, however, is merely that, and everyone who wants to give money to a company that perpetrated all that AND forged Richard Garriot's resignation letter after firing him should feel free to go absolutely nuts. I can't possibly imagine what might conceivably go wrong placing one's trust in such an ethically run corporation.
QuoteWith that out of the way, RE: OP
My account was closed too, and I only had CoH in it. I sent in a support ticket to see if they could give me an official reason, but after reading through and doing some research, it appears it was nothing more than "cleanup" time when they switched over to dropping "NCSoft Master Accounts" in favor of email-based "NC Account" accounts.
I don't know if anyone here has other games WITH CoH that can shed some light on what their account status is or looks like, but I am curious for my own curiosity.
NCSoft would have to delete/close or completely remove any/all information about CoH in your account anyway even if a sale DID occur of CoH.
It would be weird being able to log into CoH to see a copy of the same billing history and so on of your CoH subscription if the same thing showed up in a new owners account system.
I'm not hinting that this is what has happened, but it's one less step in the process.
I'm also pretty sure account usernames and passwords were stored in the game's database for the account in question and that the NCSoft accounts for CoH within the Master account simply had a web module that accessed it.
Again, there's nothing here that says to me "Oh, they deleted all of our game data."
I firmly believe there is a backup somewhere, at least, as Tony mentioned, for a limited time.
It's just wishful thinking on my part, but I also hope that-- if the limited time expires-- certain clusters of data were furtively backed up and taken offsite.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 08, 2013, 11:46:35 PM
I'm the idiot who assumed this forum would be a sanctuary free from that particular insult to our intelligence again.
tHIS FORUM-- EXCUSE ME, CAPSLOCKING OVER HERE-- that's better--
This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy NCsoft's other games or people who don't think NCsoft are a giant pile of horse pockey. This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy bukakke either, but that toes the line a little over the "PG13" atmosphere we *try* to keep around here.
Expecting to see or not see a particular viewpoint on this forum because of what it's based on (the love of CoH and information surrounding CoH) is setting yourself up for disappointment. We don't stifle people unless they become disruptive.
Quote from: Aggelakis on July 09, 2013, 12:08:24 AM
tHIS FORUM-- EXCUSE ME, CAPSLOCKING OVER HERE-- that's better--
This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy NCsoft's other games or people who don't think NCsoft are a giant pile of horse pockey. This forum isn't forbidden from use by people who enjoy bukakke either, but that toes the line a little over the "PG13" atmosphere we *try* to keep around here.
Expecting to see or not see a particular viewpoint on this forum because of what it's based on (the love of CoH and information surrounding CoH) is setting yourself up for disappointment. We don't stifle people unless they become disruptive.
Oh, I don't expect that any more, believe me! I had only been checking in here occasionally, instead of daily, so I was a bit disturbed and disheartened to see what had been going on in certain quarters. I understand now that that's just how things are around here, and that they don't rise to the level of disruption.
As for me? As long as the IP remains under lockdown, I will remain hostile to NCSoft. Others may feel differently.
The game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years. Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit. That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year.
If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus". If those funds being spent on CoH and Paragon could speed up the release of a new game by even a few months, those few extra months could easily bring in $2-2.4 million, probably many times more. It's the same cold logic that goes into closing one manufacturing facility over another or discontinuing a product because some unique part is now too expensive.
The decision was made during a time when NCSOFT had a loss in a quarter for the first time in over 7 years. Now you could say that it was because the bought a GD baseball team (but Ma! all the other game companies were doing it) so they looked to where they could tighten belts or shift resources to improve future cash flow which for a game company means new products. GW2 was almost done. Wildstar was demoing at E3. Blade & Soul was finally out in Korea (and promptly fell on it's face, I think it was top heavy and the long moment arm, well leg, didn't help with the balance). If the money taken from CoH and Paragon for a year moves up Wildstar's release so it's out in the fourth quarter this year rather than next, then they did the "right" thing for their shareholders.
And did it ever occur to people that maybe Jag is yanking your chains about being an NCSOFT stock holder? He still thought you could trade it on the Nasdaq and that hadn't been the case for years. Some people just like to start fights. They say it makes the survivors stronger.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=images2.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090720162410%2Fbabylon5%2Fimages%2Fthumb%2F8%2F81%2FMordenShadows_01.jpg%2F640px-MordenShadows_01.jpg)
No matter how you spin it, it still seems to me that they could have cut costs without closing the game entirely (especially since, as I understand it, it wasn't CoH that was using all the resources, it was the "secret project"), keeping the income while still moving resources elsewhere.
Or that if it's just cold hard cash RIGHT NAO that they want, they'd get more from selling it than killing it, sitting on it, and pretending it never existed.
Thunder Glove isn't the first person to notice this very big hole in the "business as usual" theory. Someone notices that hole every time this discussion comes up.
Publishers don't always ditch their top talent along with a realignment, especially when they fully own the studio. Sometimes they do; But let us not forget the way in which this all went down. Paragon Studios wasn't just a casualty of a well-oiled machine. It was the ultimate "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" maneuver on the Friday before Labor Day, because Paragon Studios wanted to buy themselves out, and at the top of the well-oiled machine, there is a gaggle of repugnant dickheads and they just weren't having that.
Now there's a theory that makes sense.
Quote from: Segev on July 08, 2013, 01:11:05 PM
It still is. To claim otherwise is to be spreading propaganda, not facts.
The problem with this argument is more clarity of language. When we say that companies lose their humanity to fiscal concerns we are generally referring to motive, as well as operation.
What you point out about market research is just that: an external gauge of subject (customer) response in the tradition of BF Skinner. It is exactly how the corporate machine deals with the "customer" as a quantifiable and manipulable business factor to be optimized, rather than a human being deserving of compassion and respect. The human entrepreneur, barring he or she is already operating under such a business philosophy, tends to operate on a more personal social philosophy, guided by moral principle. The human entrepreneur is more likely to accommodate employees beyond the demands of optimum performance, and more likely to consider the moral implications of any business decision
before it's purely fiscal sensibility.
Take Sam Walton as a major contemporary example. In his lifetime, Wal-Mart was a very strong franchise, but apparently due to his guidance as a moral human figurehead the company was rarely considered predatory, and even had a fair reputation for employee relations. After his death, the company became much stronger, but has become so viciously predatory that it poses a threat to any small town that dares zone a super-center within city limits, and their franchise employees now feel that a union may be the only hope for fair treatment.
Wal Mart does plenty of market research. They know how to make consumers short-term happy, and they also know how to continue exploiting markets once competition has been eliminated. But that does not equate to "caring about" their customers. It's just business optimization.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 06:08:00 AM
The game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years. Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit. That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year.
If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus". If those funds being spent on CoH and Paragon could speed up the release of a new game by even a few months, those few extra months could easily bring in $2-2.4 million, probably many times more. It's the same cold logic that goes into closing one manufacturing facility over another or discontinuing a product because some unique part is now too expensive.
The decision was made during a time when NCSOFT had a loss in a quarter for the first time in over 7 years. Now you could say that it was because the bought a GD baseball team (but Ma! all the other game companies were doing it) so they looked to where they could tighten belts or shift resources to improve future cash flow which for a game company means new products. GW2 was almost done. Wildstar was demoing at E3. Blade & Soul was finally out in Korea (and promptly fell on it's face, I think it was top heavy and the long moment arm, well leg, didn't help with the balance). If the money taken from CoH and Paragon for a year moves up Wildstar's release so it's out in the fourth quarter this year rather than next, then they did the "right" thing for their shareholders.
And did it ever occur to people that maybe Jag is yanking your chains about being an NCSOFT stock holder? He still thought you could trade it on the Nasdaq and that hadn't been the case for years. Some people just like to start fights. They say it makes the survivors stronger.
(https://images.weserv.nl/?url=images2.wikia.nocookie.net%2F__cb20090720162410%2Fbabylon5%2Fimages%2Fthumb%2F8%2F81%2FMordenShadows_01.jpg%2F640px-MordenShadows_01.jpg)
I bought mine with the bank account that I still had in Korea that I aquired when I got stationed there through direct of the Korea stock exchange. Assuming that most people dont have a Korean bank account, I was answering it in a way that I thought most people here would be able to get their hand on it. Most stock that I own is Asia and most I bought while I was stationed in Korea. Originally the account was to sock away a bunch of Won and sit on it but then found dual purpose use for it. I also still have the german account from when I was statuoned there. Mostly just sitting on Euro there until I decide I want to buy European and surrounding areas currency and stock.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 06:08:00 AM
The game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years. Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit. That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year. If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus".
This seems a bit confused because it doesn't quite know if it's about capital investment or ongoing income; the second sentence reads as if about capital.
Either way, no, you don't. If a business needs capital to run a profitable subsidiary, or if the capital tied up in that profitable subsidiary stops it running something still more profitable, borrow it at a lower interest rate and pocket the difference - NCSoft's market capitalisation is well over 3 billion USD even after the stock issues, it cannot possibly have trouble borrowing a few million.
If it's actually about ongoing income I'm afraid that makes less sense. If you get day to day returns on that $8 million - as you do with MMO subs - it's just a net profit, it doesn't in any way stop you doing something similar elsewhere. If you pay 5 quid to get the train to work and get paid by the day, you in no sense have to make a choice between Monday's train fare and Friday's, unless you actually didn't start the week with 10 quid; each train fare pays for itself.
And (in either event) the profitable subsidiary has value. If for some mysterious reason you can't afford to run an income-generating asset, what do you do with it?
Quote from: Mantic on July 09, 2013, 12:09:22 PM
Take Sam Walton as a major contemporary example. In his lifetime, Wal-Mart was a very strong franchise, but apparently due to his guidance as a moral human figurehead the company was rarely considered predatory, and even had a fair reputation for employee relations. After his death, the company became much stronger, but has become so viciously predatory that it poses a threat to any small town that dares zone a super-center within city limits, and their franchise employees now feel that a union may be the only hope for fair treatment.
Wal Mart does plenty of market research. They know how to make consumers short-term happy, and they also know how to continue exploiting markets once competition has been eliminated. But that does not equate to "caring about" their customers. It's just business optimization.
Not to derail into a debate over Walmart, but this is actually untrue. Walmart's policies have not changed all that much since Sam's days, and most actual Walmart employees to whom I speak are quite happy there. Unsurprisingly, most of those who speak poorly of their experiences at it are
ex-employees. Unsurprising because - humans being rational animals - they
left a job they didn't like. Walmart clearly offers something that its employees cannot get elsewhere, or they wouldn't have any; their employees would
work elsewhere. Yes, even in this economy. People can live QUITE comfortably on government assistance (and this isn't the place to discuss why that's a bad idea; suffice it to say I have a friend who would make about $100/month more if he quit working and fully exploited all the govt. benefits to which that newly unemployed state would entitle him, but who has other reasons for continuing to work. And he lives comfortably right NOW, and not even paycheck to paycheck).
What Walmart has done that has earned them a bad reputation is pissed off the unions and the pro-union politicians and press by refusing to work with unions. Propaganda, not any truth in their policies, has foisted upon them a reputation as "predatory." Personally, I have lived in two small towns, and the Walmart there has been nothing but a boon to the quality of life for its customers in each. Anecdotal, of course, but so are the stories of "destroying" small towns. Especially since I've not actually seen evidence that they're more than stories.
Quote from: JaguarX on July 09, 2013, 01:03:16 PM
I bought mine with the bank account that I still had in Korea that I aquired when I got stationed there through direct of the Korea stock exchange. Assuming that most people dont have a Korean bank account, I was answering it in a way that I thought most people here would be able to get their hand on it. Most stock that I own is Asia and most I bought while I was stationed in Korea. Originally the account was to sock away a bunch of Won and sit on it but then found dual purpose use for it. I also still have the german account from when I was statuoned there. Mostly just sitting on Euro there until I decide I want to buy European and surrounding areas currency and stock.
Figured that was the most likely scenario if you did own stock. Buying from over here is a tad convoluted.
They're still a bunch of jerks. It's no one here's fault. You don't have to defend them. Those of you defending them, they're worth 3 billion dollars, they can shut down the game you loved for 8 years, fire 80 developers without notice, and look at em, they're STILL getting the cha-ching outta your wallet. They're on top of the world. They answer to no one. They don't need you to defend them. Just keep your wallet open! :P
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 01:43:06 PM
Figured that was the most likely scenario if you did own stock. Buying from over here is a tad convoluted.
yeah.
Quote from: Captain Electric on July 09, 2013, 01:54:38 PM
They're still a bunch of jerks. It's no one here's fault. You don't have to defend them. Those of you defending them, they're worth 3 billion dollars, they can shut down the game you loved for 8 years, fire 80 developers without notice, and look at em, they're STILL getting the cha-ching outta your wallet. They're on top of the world. They answer to no one. They don't need you to defend them. Just keep your wallet open! :P
If I'm defending them it's from those who believe what they did was due to some sadistic malice and not what they saw as a sound business decision. They thought it made sense and was their best course of action. Doesn't matter if we think they're crazy.
And market cap, that $3 billion you say they're worth, doesn't really matter because it's based on stock price and stock price is influenced by so much more than actual "worth". It's actual "worth" (shareholder equity) is only $930 million at the end of the first quarter. EA was worth $5 billion ($5.3 billion market cap) and Activision-Blizzard was worth $13.7 billion ($16.3 billion market cap) in the same quarter. My point being is that it's not the big company you make it out to be. No means it's small but a number by itself with no reference to where that falls among others of it's ilk is meaningless.
Quote from: Segev on July 09, 2013, 01:38:55 PM
Not to derail into a debate over Walmart, but....
My anecdote is a bit more than talking to a few employees: my own hometown saw every possible competitor to the Wal Mart put out of business in the last two decades by a super-center. I have witnessed first-hand over a long period of time the consistent use of franchise power undercutting competitors, probably at a loss, until they were gone. Followed by reductions in stocking variety and increases in prices. The most asinine move was the installation of a mechanical service department to compete with local services, and then reducing it to a part-time, barely available department once they had achieved a local monopoly. Some local employees do complain about their treatment, but in a town that is now unable to field anything but fast-food franchises without being targeted by Wal Mart, it apparently remains their best option.
When Wal Mart has competition, their stores are great. But you don't want to deal with them when they have become the only option within fifty miles.
I am not aware that any unionizing effort is being tolerated here. It is a very conservative State and people are more leery of union corruption than rough working conditions. The situation of predatory Wal Marts is real, however, as many small towns can now attest.
I did not bring it up to start a tangent argument, as from my vantage it was an obvious example. Maybe I should have cited Disney...?
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 06:08:00 AMThe game had sales of $10-12 million a year in it's last two years. Lets say that after everything, including the cost of Paragon Studios, the game had a 25% profit. That's $2-2.4 million a year on costs of $8- 9.6 million a year.
If NCSoft decided that $8-9.6 million being spent can make more than $2-2.4 million a year somewhere else you end up with a "realignment of focus". If those funds being spent on CoH and Paragon could speed up the release of a new game by even a few months, those few extra months could easily bring in $2-2.4 million, probably many times more. It's the same cold logic that goes into closing one manufacturing facility over another or discontinuing a product because some unique part is now too expensive.
The problem with your assessment is that NCSoft is getting that profit of $2-2.4M only
because of that $8-9.6M in costs -- as soon as they shut down Paragon Studios and CoH, that $10-12M a year
vanishes; it's not available to be dumped into some other property that would produce a higher return.
Quote from: srmalloy on July 08, 2013, 06:15:33 PMUnless you argue that the people managing NCSoft are incompetent to run a business, and would make bad business decisions out of ignorance or stupidity, there has to be some other reason why NCSoft shut down Paragon Studios, and CoH with it -- a reason that made sense to them. And when dealing with people from other cultures, aspects of that culture's mindset can influence decisions. And without data we can trust out of NCSoft, we may never know why they made that decision; we can only be sure that it was not made on the basis of proft-and-loss. Although I can see a low-probability situation where someone up the chain in NCSoft sees that 'Paragon Studios' has been running a loss for the last several years and decided on that basis to close the company, without knowing that Paragon Studios was two separate groups of developers, one of whom was responsible for the studio as a whole running at a loss -- and either no one paid any attention to this fact, or the person who made the decision was sufficiently highly-placed that their mistake was glossed over and the closure left to stand, rather than embarrassing them over it.
And I just ran across an interesting reference on how much culture can affect business practices that relates back to comments I made in the past suggesting that NCSoft's actions in closing Paragon Studios and announcing the shutdown of CoH (and their subsequent nonstatements about the closure) were all consistent with Korean cultural predilections. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book,
Outliers: The Story of Success; one chapter is titled "The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes". In an interview with
Fortune magazine, Gladwell described a cultural impact that is specifically appropriate to the CoH shutdown:
QuoteF: "You share a fascinating story about culture and airline safety."
G: "Korean Air had more plane crashes than almost any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. When we think of airline crashes, we think, 'Oh, they must have had old planes. They must have had badly trained pilots.' No. What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical. You are obliged to be deferential toward your elders and superiors in a way that would be unimaginable in the U.S.
"But Boeing and Airbus design modern, complex airplanes to be flown by two equals. That works beautifully in low-power-distance cultures [like the U.S., where hierarchies aren't as relevant]. But in cultures that have high power distance, it's very difficult.
"I use the case study of a very famous plane crash in Guam of Korean Air. They're flying along, and they run into a little bit of trouble, the weather's bad. The pilot makes an error, and the co-pilot doesn't correct him. But once Korean Air figured out that their problem was cultural, they fixed it."
The Associated Press says that Gladwell "examines the role of culture in the crashes of Avianca 052 and Korean Air Flight 801 in 1997. In addition to weather and pilot fatigue, he blames those crashes on crew members whose cultural legacy made them too deferential to communicate clearly that the plane was about to crash."
Finding this reinforces my belief that NCSoft carried out its shutdown of Paragon Studios the way it did because, within the cultural mindset of deference to authority, they believed that terminating everyone out of the blue was sparing them the shame of coming in to work with their failure hanging over their head, and that we, as 'subordinates' of Paragon Studios and NCSoft, would deferentially accept the shutdown no matter how much we disagreed with the decision. And it raises my suspicion that Paragon Studios was shut down because it failed to demonstrate the proper deference for its position in the corporate power structure by attempting to buy itself out. All of which is just more fuel on the "NCSoft can't be bothered to understand that there are other cultures than their own" fire. We may never know for sure, but the more I find out about Korean business practices, the more NCSoft's actions look like ethnocentric blindness on their part.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 03:09:01 PMIt's actual "worth" (shareholder equity) is only $930 million at the end of the first quarter.
I am enlightened. Clearly quite unable to borrow $8 million to make $12 million, then, as a princely 1% of their worth.
Quote from: srmalloy on July 09, 2013, 06:29:01 PM
The Associated Press says that Gladwell "examines the role of culture in the crashes of Avianca 052 and Korean Air Flight 801 in 1997. In addition to weather and pilot fatigue, he blames those crashes on crew members whose cultural legacy made them too deferential to communicate clearly that the plane was about to crash."
Not to derail this thread completely, but this same question has now come up in reference to the recent Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/korean-culture-may-offer-clues-asiana-crash-6C10578732?ocid=msnhp&pos=1
Quote from: thunderforce on July 09, 2013, 01:22:58 PM
This seems a bit confused because it doesn't quite know if it's about capital investment or ongoing income; the second sentence reads as if about capital.
Either way, no, you don't. If a business needs capital to run a profitable subsidiary, or if the capital tied up in that profitable subsidiary stops it running something still more profitable, borrow it at a lower interest rate and pocket the difference - NCSoft's market capitalisation is well over 3 billion USD even after the stock issues, it cannot possibly have trouble borrowing a few million.
If it's actually about ongoing income I'm afraid that makes less sense. If you get day to day returns on that $8 million - as you do with MMO subs - it's just a net profit, it doesn't in any way stop you doing something similar elsewhere. If you pay 5 quid to get the train to work and get paid by the day, you in no sense have to make a choice between Monday's train fare and Friday's, unless you actually didn't start the week with 10 quid; each train fare pays for itself.
And (in either event) the profitable subsidiary has value. If for some mysterious reason you can't afford to run an income-generating asset, what do you do with it?
Yea you're right, I'm thinking more in terms of companies with large capital investments with lots of overhead costs. MMO is more like a service industry.
Quote from: thunderforce on July 09, 2013, 09:37:38 PM
I am enlightened. Clearly quite unable to borrow $8 million to make $12 million, then, as a princely 1% of their worth.
Companies try to avoid borrowing money if the can. Plus since their Q2 of 2012 earnings was negative, during a global economic downturn, the terms would for borrowing was likely not be favorable.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 11:19:06 PM
Companies try to avoid borrowing money if the can.
True but misleading. Sure, if you've got the capital anyway, use it; if you haven't, you won't hesitate to borrow it in order to make a return better than the interest rate. A non-huge company that doesn't borrow is simply going to be outgrown by one that does and succeeds.
QuotePlus since their Q2 of 2012 earnings was negative, during a global economic downturn, the terms would for borrowing was likely not be favorable.
Depends. I can think of an obvious choice of asset to secure the hypothetical capital loan for CoX on.
The "better investment of capital" argument is bunk. We went thorough this after the announcement. NCSoft financial reports clearly show a huge excess of cash. They have more that enough to finance whatever project they want. 8m a year in expenses is a drop in the bucket compared to their cash reserves, even over 5+ years.
The only reasons that make sense are misguided corporate pride (a la Japanese series that prefer to go out on a high note rather than fade into mediocrity on a shrinking budget), disagreement and complete lack of confidence in Paragon management (or signs of outright defiance if it turns out the "secret project" wasn't approved by the right people), or possibly a tax write off.
Seeming unwillingness to even discuss terms of a sale points strongly to non-financial motives.
Quote from: Codewalker on July 10, 2013, 01:23:15 AM
Seeming unwillingness to even discuss terms of a sale points strongly to non-financial motives.
Yes, this, exactly. If they had had a clear financial motive, then I could forgive them. But if they had had a clear financial motive then they would've sold the IP already.
Quote from: Blondeshell on July 09, 2013, 10:09:42 PMNot to derail this thread completely, but this same question has now come up in reference to the recent Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/korean-culture-may-offer-clues-asiana-crash-6C10578732?ocid=msnhp&pos=1
The Slashdot article about the crash was what brought it to my attention. Interestingly, several of the comments to the article raised the point that Korea Air, as a short-term solution to the problem, hired a large number of Western pilots for their aircrews, which suggests that the issues of power distance in Korean culture were too heavily ingrained to correct quickly.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 10, 2013, 02:58:42 PM
Yes, this, exactly. If they had had a clear financial motive, then I could forgive them. But if they had had a clear financial motive then they would've sold the IP already.
And this goes back to my point that game companies rarely give up their IPs. NetDevil wanted to buy back the rights to Auto Assault when the plug was pulled and NCSOFT said no then. A game that never had enough of a following to facilitate an acceptable payback of development costs, a "failure" from a bean counter perspective, you would think NCSOFT would be more than interested in getting back more of their investment yet said no.
And here we were. We made them money. We could be called successful. Now if they didn't want to sell to the developer a failed MMO. Why would they want to sell a successful, although small, MMO? Your contention is money wasn't the issue. They were willing to do without $10-12 million of sales a year which is what the shutdown would cost. You all suggest that diverting the costs that it took to run Paragon and the game to other projects doesn't make sense.
So lets play "what if". What if it was decided at corporate that they only want support MMOs that can also do well in Asia, their primary market. That could be a "realignment of focus". Or that CoH was now had too small of a following or believed that DCUO and CO would divide the potential players of that genre so there was no hope of future growth. Or maybe people are right, the game had a "white knight" at NCSoft and he fell out of favor and couldn't shield us anymore.
In the end it really doesn't matter as to the why, they closed the studio which killed the game and they locked up the IP that they bought and paid for. It's not personal, it's business.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 10, 2013, 08:47:55 PM
So lets play "what if". What if it was decided at corporate that they only want support MMOs that can also do well in Asia, their primary market. That could be a "realignment of focus". Or that CoH was now had too small of a following or believed that DCUO and CO would divide the potential players of that genre so there was no hope of future growth. Or maybe people are right, the game had a "white knight" at NCSoft and he fell out of favor and couldn't shield us anymore.
In the end it really doesn't matter as to the why, they closed the studio which killed the game and they locked up the IP that they bought and paid for. It's not personal, it's business.
basically.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 09, 2013, 03:09:01 PM
If I'm defending them it's from those who believe what they did was due to some sadistic malice and not what they saw as a sound business decision. They thought it made sense and was their best course of action. Doesn't matter if we think they're crazy.
Coca-Cola thought ditching old Coke for New Coke was a sound business decision. Just sayin'.
"It's business, Superman. There are always trade-offs."
While I may have sworn off any NCSoft backed title due to what happened with City, I'm not burning with hatred for them.
By all reports, NCSoft's accountants said they needed to nix a MMO from their line up with Guild Wars 2 coming out. They opted to nix City of Heroes. Why? Because in the Asian Market - where NCSoft is primarily focused - City of Heroes was an abysmal failure and not even a blip on the MMO landscape radar.
I can't really blame NCSoft's decision that City was the one to go, when you stand back and look at it objectively. Heck, being honest about it, City of Heroes was a pretty niche game even here in North America. It did well, but I've heard more about it since the shut down then three years prior to.
"It's not personal to them" is entirely accurate. I think the big sting with CoH's closure was it came on the heels of a major content update. So not only did we never get to see the promised changes, but those who played the beta version got a sample of what was to come. It's like being offered a juicy steak and a little bite...and then watching it being thrown in the trash can.
But in regards to it not being personal for them - it wasn't. It's not like NCSoft's directors were sitting around a smoke filled board room deciding which game to axe and cackling evilly when they saw how happy the City of Heroes player base was.
In some ways - I thank NCSoft. They could have held off until after Issue 24 went live. That would have stung even more. "Here's a brand new content patch! By the way, the game's shutting down. Baaaaaaaaaaai!"
The only thing that makes no sense to me with that is why does a new game coming out mean they have to get rid of an old one? Is there some obscure Korean law or something I don't know about that'd massively penalise them for having more than x games active at once?
Quote from: Rust on July 11, 2013, 08:58:13 AMI can't really blame NCSoft's decision that City was the one to go, when you stand back and look at it objectively. Heck, being honest about it, City of Heroes was a pretty niche game even here in North America. It did well, but I've heard more about it since the shut down then three years prior to.
I can blame them.
(1) They were one signature away from selling the game to Paragon Studios, and instead decided not to sell and kill the IP again.
(2) Superheroes are becoming a big hot property all over the world (not that they were ever NOT at least somewhat a hot property), so killing one of only three big superhero games in favor of yet another generic Elves And Wizards game seems counter-productive.
(3) CoH was my favorite game of all time. Not MMO, favorite game. It had every feature I've ever loved from every other game (video game, tabletop RP, freeform IRC/MUX RP - even playing "pretend" as a little kid!) I've ever enjoyed, all combined into a satisfying whole.
It's 3 that really gets me. It's like saying "Sure, your favorite restaurant that served all the food, from appetizer to desert, exactly the way you like it has been closed down even though it was successful, but don't worry! A new restaurant just opened up in its place, and the drinks in this new restaurant are EVEN BETTER than the old one, so you'll like it even more! Of course, there's only two items on the menu, the actual meal is rancid, the waitstaff ignores you (until it's time for their tip), the cooks only come in for five minutes a week, people at adjoining tables will constantly throw things at you, the lights are all positioned to be directly in your eyes, you have to wear a clown nose and hat that they give you at the door, and the food costs five times as much. But the drinks, man! THINK OF THE DRINKS! (P.S., Eating a full meal of rancid food is mandatory in order to be allowed to have a drink every now and then)"
Quote from: General Idiot on July 11, 2013, 10:09:26 AM
The only thing that makes no sense to me with that is why does a new game coming out mean they have to get rid of an old one? Is there some obscure Korean law or something I don't know about that'd massively penalise them for having more than x games active at once?
No law, but the company was in the red for the first time in 8+ years in the 2nd quarter 2012. The stock price had dropped 45% from their peak 7 months ago, that low being hit right after the first quarter numbers were released which showed the profits down again for the 4th straight quarter but at least still positive. That usually means the company has to show they are doing something to turn things around. That usually means trimming costs.
You can't cut costs from the dev teams behind your leading money makers, that'll be dumb. You can't cut costs from the studios that are on the verge of releasing their new games, that'll be dumb since they represent new sources of income. Incentives taken, contracts signed and ground broken for your new building in the "New Korean Silicon Valley" district just south of Seoul, so you can't cut there. So what was left?
Helloo. /em Queen wave
Paragon knew a couple of months before the closure announcement that they were in trouble. In hindsight I guessing by the time Paragon heard they were on the chopping block the die was already cast and it was going to be a nearly an impossible task to convince NCSOFT otherwise. Before the announcement, according to the Gamasutra piece back in April, Paragon looked for other publishers but in the end "NCsoft wasn't looking to sell". So they tried the management buyout idea, which was rejected in the 11th hour (I guess NCSOFT meant it when they said they weren't looking to sell). The rest we know.
So it's not that there's a law but NCSOFT simply cut the asset that was big enough to be noticed but would impact the bottom line the least to show stockholders and analysts that they were doing something to turn profits around until the new titles started to bring in the bucks.
Except as far as I'm aware CoH was still making a profit, though Paragon as a whole may not have been since they were developing new stuff as well. But that's not a reason to kill them entirely before trying literally anything else. Cut one or both of the new games or scale them back until the studio's profitable again, but closing a game that was still producing a profit in the name of getting back in the black just seems stupid to me. Wouldn't losing CoH, however minor a loss it was overall, still just put them further into the red? Is there something I'm missing here?
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 11, 2013, 11:27:43 AM
No law, but the company was in the red for the first time in 8+ years in the 2nd quarter 2012. The stock price had dropped 45% from their peak 7 months ago, that low being hit right after the first quarter numbers were released which showed the profits down again for the 4th straight quarter but at least still positive. That usually means the company has to show they are doing something to turn things around. That usually means trimming costs.
You can't cut costs from the dev teams behind your leading money makers, that'll be dumb. You can't cut costs from the studios that are on the verge of releasing their new games, that'll be dumb since they represent new sources of income. Incentives taken, contracts signed and ground broken for your new building in the "New Korean Silicon Valley" district just south of Seoul, so you can't cut there. So what was left?
Helloo. /em Queen wave
Paragon knew a couple of months before the closure announcement that they were in trouble. In hindsight I guessing by the time Paragon heard they were on the chopping block the die was already cast and it was going to be a nearly an impossible task to convince NCSOFT otherwise. Before the announcement, according to the Gamasutra piece back in April, Paragon looked for other publishers but in the end "NCsoft wasn't looking to sell". So they tried the management buyout idea, which was rejected in the 11th hour (I guess NCSOFT meant it when they said they weren't looking to sell). The rest we know.
So it's not that there's a law but NCSOFT simply cut the asset that was big enough to be noticed but would impact the bottom line the least to show stockholders and analysts that they were doing something to turn profits around until the new titles started to bring in the bucks.
Except, again, they cut a PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE. Sure, it was 2% of their total income, but saying to the shareholders "See? Now our income has dropped to 98% of what it was before, which means we're somehow making more money! 98 is larger than 100, right?" is not a logical argument.
Neither is "And also, we're going to make even more money by refusing to let people give us money for this property we're not using anymore!"
Neither is "superhero films are really popular right now, so we plan to capitalize on that by closing our superhero game - #1 on the market! - and instead putting out yet another clone of World of Warcraft that can never hope to achieve even 0.1% of its popularity."
So logical arguments just don't work.
If they were one signature away from letting Paragon buy itself out, then the question has to arise: what changed to make them balk at that last signature?
It may be nobody's fault; some point may just have been unable to be reconciled to everybody's satisfaction. Tragic when it comes down to the last moment and somebody realizes they just can't sign off. I suspect everything was tried, at least for the Paragon self-buy-out, but something just wouldn't work. (I won't speculate as to outside buyer efforts.)
Quote from: Rust on July 11, 2013, 08:58:13 AM
I can't really blame NCSoft's decision that City was the one to go, when you stand back and look at it objectively. Heck, being honest about it, City of Heroes was a pretty niche game even here in North America. It did well, but I've heard more about it since the shut down then three years prior to.
Well, they could've given CoX a
decent marketing budget. Reinvesting a some of the profits it generated into TV ads would have done a lot more to increase subscriptions. CoX definitely has its selling points-- off the top of my head, the game had something for everyone from casual players to harcore number-crunchers, exhaustive lore, endgame content, and the best goddamn costume creator to have ever existed. Oh, and let's not forget a community that was, at its core, helpful and not inclined to parrot "LOLOLOL n00b u suck" at new players. The content wasn't nearly as grindy as anything I've seen in Everquest.
It was the best superhero MMO on the market, but properly advertised? It could have been one of the top MMOs in America.
Oh, definitely; there are mistakes that NCSoft made with CoH that we can learn from.
Quote from: Segev on July 11, 2013, 02:01:54 PM
If they were one signature away from letting Paragon buy itself out, then the question has to arise: what changed to make them balk at that last signature?
It may be nobody's fault; some point may just have been unable to be reconciled to everybody's satisfaction. Tragic when it comes down to the last moment and somebody realizes they just can't sign off. I suspect everything was tried, at least for the Paragon self-buy-out, but something just wouldn't work. (I won't speculate as to outside buyer efforts.)
Probably is the case. Something came up that couldnt be worked out to both parties' satisfaction.
It happens more often than people think especially with government contracts.
It didn't matter if the game was profitable. It was theater. They had to show stockholders and analysts they were doing something, anything, instead of waiting for the new product sales, which they've been saying will be coming soon for two years now, and the stock price was way down because nobody believed that anymore. And what's better than closing some overseas studio and their game with tiny sales, a game that users in Korea and the rest of Asia wouldn't be impacted by. Look everyone, see, we're cutting costs. It doesn't have to be logical. It just has to look management was doing something to turn things around.
If Paragon knew a few months before the announcement, that would explain the sheer dearth of new stuff we were getting right up to the shut down announcement. Bless Paragon Studios and their big hearts, but I half wonder if they ended up doing more harm then good. I know it's all to boost up the bottom line and maybe make NCSoft look elsewhere for the sacrificial lamb, but the stuff we were promised or didn't have the time to fully explore (Street Justice, Staff Fighting, Hydro Power, Nature Affinity...all powers I purchased and never got around to making toons for)...
It made the closure announcement all the more brazen and sudden. There was so much stuff on the horizon...
Like I said, Bless Paragon Studios and the great people there, but maybe the lack of new toys we never really got to play with would have lessened the sting a bit.
Either way, I don't hate NCSoft for the decision. I may be boycotting their products, but I understand what they did. I just don't like it.
To the last two posters:
How do you reconcile what you said with the fact that NCSoft is playing the most hateful, spiteful game of "keep-away" possible by sitting on the IP and refusing to sell it?
Business.
Troika Games was one of my favorite developers back in the day (Which isn't saying much since they only put out three games), with Arcanum being a great RPG in concept (It had issues storywise and gameplay wise, but the dynamic of choosing to go Technology or Magic with consequences for your choices was a welcome new element) and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines being an all around great game (If Buggy, but the Unofficial Patch takes care of those elements).
I've desperately desperately wanted a new Arcanum title for over ten years now, but when Troika folded in 2005, the IP went to Activision - which has since done nothing with the property and I know at least one overture by Obsidian Entertainment to buy the IP has been rejected.
This behavior isn't exclusive to NCSoft.
As an aside, I've always felt Troika was a unfortunate studio in terms of the RPG scene. Their games had a lot of ambition and innovation...but just were so very buggy. Vampire wasn't helped by releasing on the same day as Half-Life 2. I can't speak of Temple of Elemental Evil as I never played it.
Quote from: Rust on July 11, 2013, 10:25:12 PM
Business.
Troika Games was one of my favorite developers back in the day (Which isn't saying much since they only put out three games), with Arcanum being a great RPG in concept (It had issues storywise and gameplay wise, but the dynamic of choosing to go Technology or Magic with consequences for your choices was a welcome new element) and Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines being an all around great game (If Buggy, but the Unofficial Patch takes care of those elements).
I've desperately desperately wanted a new Arcanum title for over ten years now, but when Troika folded in 2005, the IP went to Activision - which has since done nothing with the property and I know at least one overture by Obsidian Entertainment to buy the IP has been rejected.
This behavior isn't exclusive to NCSoft.
I guess I was vague in my question. Let me try this again:
Rust, how does not selling the IP "boost up the bottom line" of NCSoft?
Father Xmas, why does your theory necessitate NCSoft NOT selling the IP?
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 10:31:39 PM
Rust, how does not selling the IP "boost up the bottom line" of NCSoft?
You misread my comment. I was talking about Paragon Studios releasing so much "stuff" up to the closure announcement as a way to boost
their bottom line.
Quote
Father Xmas, why does your theory necessitate NCSoft NOT selling the IP?
Because Companies are viciously protective of Intellectual Properties, even ones not currently in use.
Quote from: Rust on July 11, 2013, 10:58:00 PM
You misread my comment. I was talking about Paragon Studios releasing so much "stuff" up to the closure announcement as a way to boost their bottom line.
Mea culpa. But this requires us to assume they (Paragon) knew the shutdown was coming, or that the ex-devs lied when they said they didn't. I'm not comfortable with that.
QuoteBecause Companies are viciously protective of Intellectual Properties, even ones not currently in use.
I kind of have to disagree with this as a blanket statement, considering the only reason NCSoft has the IP in the first place is because Cryptic sold it to them.
yeah some companies like to hold onto IPs and rights to old products, some dont so much. While some do a mixture of both. Selling some while holding onto the others. Probably why wont see Pontiac anytime soon unless GM wants to remake them but they are trying/tried to sell Hummer.
NCSOFT always had a hand in COX since the beginning. It was the publisher and cryptic was the developer. Thus when Cryptic wanted to go on to other projects aka dumping COH, NCSOFT had a choice right then and there. Shelf COX way back in 2005 or keep it around and try to make it grow. Cryptic already made their choice. So if NCSOFT didnt buy, this game would have been dead in 2005. But that led to an NCSOFT owned studio being made which eventually came to be named Paragon Studios. Now when the decision about the game this time around unfortunately this time the devs. didnt get much say in the matter and since they were already NCSOFT employees by definition. And then became the victim of realingement focus. And from the looks of it, they are doing just that and dont seem to have any focus on the American market much outside a few offerings that are doing well in Asia.
But what if it's not time for super hero games yet? The largest and probably the greatest of them one managing 180,000 players at peak in 2009 isnt exactly nothing to brag about in the MMO world overall. But suppose that the time just aint arrived yet? Maybe there will be a time in the future that it will be the day of the super hero mmo. A lot of fantasy MMOs are losing players, super hero lore in other media is rising, but unfortunately COX as it stood was getting long in the tooth and the graphics if brought out today as a new game, better yet, if a new game with COX graphics came out today, it hardly would be considered cutting edge and might be a turn off. But graphics can always be updated. But IP/trademarks/etc and any other name that it might be called that are sold, not so much, not for the seller. For the buyer yes it would be wonderful. For the seller, they have to start over when they otherwise didnt have to. And it wouldnt be a smart move especially when not hurting for money to give up something that is rare even if there isnt a current use for it yet.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 10:31:39 PM
I guess I was vague in my question. Let me try this again:
Rust, how does not selling the IP "boost up the bottom line" of NCSoft?
Father Xmas, why does your theory necessitate NCSoft NOT selling the IP?
It doesn't necessitate it. It's just that game companies rarely sell off their IP unless they go out of business. Companies sit on it until they run out of ideas and someone suggests they dust off that old IP in the back closet and give it a go. And I'm talking about games that vanished and returned, not just sequeled immediately or simultaneously. Games like XCOM, Syndicate, System Shock, Mechwarrior are examples of game IPs that sat idle for years before they tried to remake them and leverage their reputation. They may license the IP to another studio to handle the remake but they don't sell the IP.
IPs get moved around through mergers and bankruptcies, rarely direct sale. Yes Microsoft sold off the Asheron's Call IP back to Turbine in 2003 but Microsoft is schizophrenic where PC gaming is involved. Now unless it's an XBox port forget it. EVE's IP was sold back to CCP when Simon and Schuster decided the PC gaming/edutainment business wasn't a good match for them anymore and went back to just selling books.
And for those who don't remember where to find it, the
Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/189896/behind_the_scenes_of_the_paragon_.php?page=1) article. That's where the following quote was found.
QuoteThe sad saga of Paragon actually starts a couple of months before the doors were closed. Clayton, Bales, and Borden were told things were not looking good for the studio. NCsoft management was planning some changes and they were ordered to begin planning for the end of City of Heroes.
Reading that Gamasutra article is way depressing. Basically we the players have no power whatsoever. The publishers have all the gold and so they make all the rules, and the only thing we can do is sit there and take it.
I was starting to think that maybe I'd be kind of interested in the new Neverwinter MMO, but that will probably get closed down too eventually. They all will. I'm not even going to bother looking at it.
We can only hope. Twinkies are back, Why not Coh? :P
Maybe if you had enough money to buy NCSoft several times over then you could attempt a hostile take over. But I'm pretty sure no one here is Donald Trump.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 12, 2013, 07:23:14 AM
Maybe if you had enough money to buy NCSoft several times over then you could attempt a hostile take over. But I'm pretty sure no one here is Donald Trump.
Well, hypothetically, if someone had a blank check to purchase CoH, around the ballpark of $80-$90m (All IP rights + All game code and player data) - what do you think NCSoft would do?
I mean, if that amount is inflated, surely NCSoft would be in a bit of a position, wouldn't they? They would face pressure from shareholders for saying no, but on the other hand, actually having someone who is seriously interested in paying that amount might cause them to re-evaluate the property more closely because they would be curious about what makes it so "lucrative" to the buyer.. and may end up holding onto it until they figure that out.
Plus, I have to wonder what other factors come into play, or if it doesn't matter at all. NCSoft said they couldn't find a "suitable new home" at one point, which may have been a polite way of saying "We didn't get the money we asked for" or maybe they really wouldn't sell the IP to some Joe Blow who just say, won the lottery.
Would it matter where the money came from, who was really buying it, etc? For the sake of argument, if Google was willing to pay $100m for it - wouldn't NCSoft be stupid not to think really hard about WHY? I mean, what if Google wasn't interested in profiting, but rather, turning CoH into a thriving, innovative community for the sake of the greater good, and NCSoft simply couldn't understand those sorts of reasons?
I'm just wondering how "hostile" it would have to be (price wise) for different scenarios, and if the price would be different depending on the purchaser or reasons for acquisition.
I keep coming back to the one-last-signature ordeal and I'm really wishing I knew what "compromise" nobody could agree on.
Quote from: Segev on July 11, 2013, 02:01:54 PM
If they were one signature away from letting Paragon buy itself out, then the question has to arise: what changed to make them balk at that last signature?
Well, a question to lead with would be, "did they intend for the sale to be a viable prospect in the first place?" It could have been thrown out right at the very end, or it might have been something unacceptable that Paragon thought they could bargain down to something acceptable.
One thing that makes me think that NCsoft was playing a foul game is one thing that
hasn't been said, and who it hasn't been said by.
Quote"I'm not exactly sure where the sticking points were, but in the logistics of business there's always some sticking point somewhere [on which] people just aren't willing to budge and I think that's where we ended up. There were one or two points where neither side could budge"
I'm sure Matt is aware that NCsoft is being raked over the coals by CoH's players. If NCsoft had been dealing fairly, all it would have taken to defuse most, if not all of that bad will towards them would have been simply to say so - even an offhand comment how whatever the sticking point was reasonable or at least understandable would have worked wonders for a company they held no ill will towards. Instead, all he said was there was something NCsoft was asking for that Paragon wasn't able to give, and that it was one single thing, right at the finish line when all other windows opportunity were closing makes me think the negotiations failure was premeditated and the decision was made long before they began.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 12, 2013, 06:38:02 AM
Reading that Gamasutra article is way depressing. Basically we the players have no power whatsoever. The publishers have all the gold and so they make all the rules, and the only thing we can do is sit there and take it.
Look at it this way - CoX's closure and the community response to it was such that we probably shifted the landscape for this sort of thing. Guild Wars' recent move to pure Automation may have very well been a direct result of the campaign to save the City.
We may not have saved City of Heroes, but I'd like to think maybe we saved someone else's favorite game from immediate shut down.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 11, 2013, 10:31:39 PM
I guess I was vague in my question. Let me try this again:
Rust, how does not selling the IP "boost up the bottom line" of NCSoft?
Father Xmas, why does your theory necessitate NCSoft NOT selling the IP?
Actually, it's pretty simple: as long as they own the IP, it is an asset against which they can leverage financial value. It doesn't boost the
bottom line, but it boosts the "value of the company" line. As long as they own it, they
could liquidate it (in theory) at any time. The moment they
do liquidate it, they get a one-time boost to the bottom-line that is clearly a one-time boost to any stock holder interested enough to bother complaining in the first place.
Add in that there
was an effort that - so we are given to understand, anyway - came down to one more signature before something blew up, and we see reason to suspect that NCSoft may not be confident that any of these hypothetical prospective buyers will be able to meet their requirements to make the sale "okay," either. Negotiations are not cheap; failed negotiations cost everybody except the lawyers money. It's easier to reject when you don't think there's a fair chance of success, than to explore it.
Now I though their reply to it was "unsuccessful in finding a suitable partner". Key word there, partner. Meaning they wasnt ready to totally let go of the IP and stuff, but seemed to be looking for development team, probably one they dont have to pay but still can make some side money from as publisher and lease. If that is the case, no telling what the terms were, and given that even Paragon people started to have trouble sometimes with the code even after working on it for years, I wouldnt be surprised if "a suitable partner" meant someone that knew what they was doing or was willing to allow a plant of ncsoft ex-guys, but the new studios have to pay them, to show them how to get around the inner workings of the game.
Or no telling. When looking for partner, both parties come into the deal looking for specific stuff and many times it just dont line up.
One thing's for certain-- when the various NDAs expire, we'll find out for sure what really happened.
And I think we're all going to get freshly pissed off about it.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 12, 2013, 04:37:31 PM
One thing's for certain-- when the various NDAs expire, we'll find out for sure what really happened.
And I think we're all going to get freshly pissed off about it.
Who says the NDAs, whatever NDAs you are talking about, have an expiration date.
Sign here and you aren't allowed to disclose the contents of this agreement under the penalty of us suing you for all you are worth till the your end of days.
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 12, 2013, 05:55:57 PM
Who says the NDAs, whatever NDAs you are talking about, have an expiration date.
Sign here and you aren't allowed to disclose the contents of this agreement under the penalty of us suing you for all you are worth till the your end of days.
So if you disclose the information the day before you die, there will be no consequences. That's assuming you're aware of your impending death.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 12, 2013, 06:19:22 PM
So if you disclose the information the day before you die, there will be no consequences. That's assuming you're aware of your impending death.
and assuming they actually kick the bucket as scheduled.
"Good news. We made a mistake, you will not die tomorrow. You actually have at least ten years left. Why are not smiling? I just said you will live. :p
Quote from: FatherXmas on July 12, 2013, 05:55:57 PM
Who says the NDAs, whatever NDAs you are talking about, have an expiration date.
Sign here and you aren't allowed to disclose the contents of this agreement under the penalty of us suing you for all you are worth till the your end of days.
As I understand it, the reason we haven't had full disclosure is because the NDAs were tied to various assorted severance packages. I could be wrong. What I really want is for someone to violate the hell out of them, but that'll never happen.
If as I read it, Cox was spinning off 2mm usd a year post expenses, at most, its worth 20-40mm usd as an 'asset'; 5-10% return on a given investment. IP has value but realistically, what value(?), its a 3d rendering/model game which, frankly, is a dime a dozen for tech. If I were a shareholder and I found out they turned down a 20mm bid, I would be very unhappy - at the moment that asset is making nothing and its likelihood of making anything is dropping by the day. I wouldn't be 'oh no, xyz software inc now has the tech for rendering a game of 40 year old men in spandex in 3d over a server' because so does everyone (including NCsoft). If xyz software could then turn that 2mm post expenses into 10 by changing the game or whathaveyou, that's because NCsoft wasn't smart enough to do so, but as an NCsoft shareholder, that's irrelevant to maximizing their current share price (I am not a NCsoft shareholder!).
If I were a billionaire, I would bid NCsoft 20mm usd for the rights/tech/software/updated software and frankly, would be expecting that bid to get absolutely blasted/hit. If it were relaunched tomorrow by CC SK TT Software Inc, there is no way it would net 2mm a year given people have moved on, heck, it likely wouldn't net anything in a rebuildup period. 20mm in their bank account would be a great deal for them vs an 'asset' making them precisely zero in the meantime.
edit - if I were a billionaire, I would bid 10mm because there is no way it could have a chance of pulling 2mm a year net post expenses. The value as a not going concern is basically zero outside the 'yea, but I could make a movie based on the ideas' or somesuch craziness. Now that NCsoft has pissed away almost a year, the value of Cox has almost become zero to be honest. As this billionaire, I would only buy it because maybe it could make me some money down the road and I love the game but it would never beat just buying a corporate hybrid bond and calling it a day and taking 6% for not even using my brain, let alone trying to figure out how to get all of us to monetize this asset. NCsoft basically flushed most of the value a year ago and by not monetizing it when there were subscribers paying, has turned an asset into nothing more than a big zero. Witness their stock price and yea, that's pretty telling.
And this is why capitalism sucks.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 14, 2013, 12:06:34 PM
And this is why capitalism sucks.
Not at all. This could be done by the caprice of government under any other system. Without capitalism, we likely never would have had CoH to begin with.
It should perhaps be noted that without NCSoft we would likely have never had CoH to begin with, or for as long as we did. We can justifiably be annoyed with them for closing it well before its time, but until that decision was made they were pretty good to the game.
...I'm still not buying any more of their games, though. Unless Wildstar by some miracle turns out to be the next CoH, anyway.
Quote from: Sleepy Wonder on July 12, 2013, 08:17:46 AM
Well, hypothetically, if someone had a blank check to purchase CoH, around the ballpark of $80-$90m (All IP rights + All game code and player data) - what do you think NCSoft would do?
I mean, if that amount is inflated, surely NCSoft would be in a bit of a position, wouldn't they? They would face pressure from shareholders for saying no, but on the other hand, actually having someone who is seriously interested in paying that amount might cause them to re-evaluate the property more closely because they would be curious about what makes it so "lucrative" to the buyer.. and may end up holding onto it until they figure that out.
Plus, I have to wonder what other factors come into play, or if it doesn't matter at all. NCSoft said they couldn't find a "suitable new home" at one point, which may have been a polite way of saying "We didn't get the money we asked for" or maybe they really wouldn't sell the IP to some Joe Blow who just say, won the lottery.
Would it matter where the money came from, who was really buying it, etc? For the sake of argument, if Google was willing to pay $100m for it - wouldn't NCSoft be stupid not to think really hard about WHY? I mean, what if Google wasn't interested in profiting, but rather, turning CoH into a thriving, innovative community for the sake of the greater good, and NCSoft simply couldn't understand those sorts of reasons?
I'm just wondering how "hostile" it would have to be (price wise) for different scenarios, and if the price would be different depending on the purchaser or reasons for acquisition.
I keep coming back to the one-last-signature ordeal and I'm really wishing I knew what "compromise" nobody could agree on.
Actually, I don't think NCsoft would hesitate to sell if an offer for 80-90 million was made. Here's the rub: the only way something like this would EVER happen is if the person/entity making the offer was operating out of passion rather than profit motive, because there are such better ways to make money, like just starting a new game from scratch.
NDAs are effectively a gentleman's agreement in this age of internet anonymity. Just saying.
Quote from: Segev on July 15, 2013, 12:30:56 PM
Not at all. This could be done by the caprice of government under any other system. Without capitalism, we likely never would have had CoH to begin with.
Actually you can't really be certain that it would not exist without Capitalism. I suppose it all depends on the reasons a person or group of persons have for undergoing such a large creative endeavor. Not everyone is always in it for the money. Though sometimes, that's the only reason they're in it for.
Certainly we would all still be in love with this game even if it were obviously failing. How many nice things can you no longer enjoy, because of "market pressure" or "shareholder politics" or whatever it is called. Tyrannies of both the majority and the minority. Just because someone else doesn't like it means you can't enjoy it anymore. How is that fair?
"City of Heroes" could just as well fall into the category of an interactive art piece. Almost every video game could be interpreted in that way. The few that are done as art pieces could be engaging and sublime. But what do you get when your motivation is purely profit? Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing. Perhaps a bad example, but a bad game like that would have never even happened if money was not the ultimate, underlying goal.
Yeah, maybe I'm just dreaming. Maybe I'm just tired of losing things I like because someone else didn't like it. Maybe I'm tired of big business acting like big bullies and taking their ball home when things don't go their way. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Quote from: General Idiot on July 15, 2013, 03:08:23 PM
It should perhaps be noted that without NCSoft we would likely have never had CoH to begin with, or for as long as we did. We can justifiably be annoyed with them for closing it well before its time, but until that decision was made they were pretty good to the game.
...I'm still not buying any more of their games, though. Unless Wildstar by some miracle turns out to be the next CoH, anyway.
This.
NCSoft helped make City of Heroes the great game it was, and were a company I enjoyed dealing with. Their major shareholder, Nexon, is another company that I have long enjoyed dealing with. Something was obviously happening internally to set NCSoft America on this self destructive path even before Paragon Studio came under the axe. Considering the complaints levied by many former US employees, relationships were often strained with the Korean management, and possibly growing hostile generally between the US and Korean offices. Also, the leadership was apparently changing at the US branch, and new people may have simply been eager to sever as many legacy affiliations as possible, since they felt no affinity with nor responsibility to anything that came before.
So, although I never had any other complaint about NCSoft, they have lost me as a future customer barring some pretty significant backtracking and customer relations effort. It's no major loss to me at this time, though, as they are no longer offering anything I would be interested in (having already done away with several other games in addition to City of Heroes which I did find appealing...)
Fair enough; I don't care about them, either.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 15, 2013, 09:51:21 PM
Actually you can't really be certain that it would not exist without Capitalism. I suppose it all depends on the reasons a person or group of persons have for undergoing such a large creative endeavor. Not everyone is always in it for the money. Though sometimes, that's the only reason they're in it for.
You miss my point.
Without capitalism, there is no ownership save that of whatever empowered entity exists. So the only way we'd have CoH under a non-capitalistic system is if the powers-that-be, the few that they were, dreamed it up and commanded it be built. And then it would have been taken away just as easily when they got bored with it.
So not only would it have required that a smaller group of people with a narrower set of interests decide to create it (rather than any of the vast population of the world with a vast array of interests serving as potential originators), but there would be no pressure to put on them to keep it up except their own caprice.
Capitalism is the ultimate crowd-sourcing. It may not look like it, because we get occluded by the risk involved to the people who try new things, but it engenders the freedom TO try new things. None can gainsay a spunky developer who uses his own computer and resources, paid for with his own money, to try to build a game. But without capitalism, use of that computer to develop that game becomes "theft" of the time and productivity to which that computer could be put for whatever ruling body there is, whether the King, the Party, or "Society." And what is "proper" use of that productivity is at the whim of whoever rules it.
We'd honestly better hope it's a King, at that point, because at least then somebody's tickled fancy can be provoked into donating those resources. It would be corruption for the steward given power by Society for Society's good to devote those resources without first getting clearance for resources like those to be devoted to activities such as those. Especially risky ones like a game that it's uncertain anybody save the steward and the guy using the resources would want to play.
This is why individual ownership and responsibility to oneself is the most efficient use of resources; those who squander them will wind up with few, and they are still largely unwasted as they flow to those who do useful services. Those who happen upon productive, beneficial uses of them wind up getting the crowd-sourced support they need to maintain those services and continue producing those goods. Supported by the very people who benefit from them, who are alone the most qualified to determine whether the service is in fact worthwhile.
Not saying there aren't problems that can arise in the system. Far from it. Bad choices happen at every level. It's just the most robust against it. Witness the Plan Z successor projects: what we believe to be a bad decision was made, and we are building things to fill the void left behind. Were this not a capitalist system, it would be irresponsible waste or outright theft for us to be devoting Society's (or the King's) resources to producing something Society (or the King) determined was not worth it.
They never actually ever cared about us, you should remember. We were just walking, talking sacks of money to them. Once they declared our well dry, they moved on without so much as a blink.
Quote from: Segev on July 16, 2013, 02:12:48 PMWithout capitalism, there is no ownership save that of whatever empowered entity exists. So the only way we'd have CoH under a non-capitalistic system is if the powers-that-be, the few that they were, dreamed it up and commanded it be built. And then it would have been taken away just as easily when they got bored with it.
But that's exactly what happened, isn't it? The people who initially had the idea for City of Heroes were unable to move the project forward with their own meager resources, so the only way for their idea to survive was if they signed away to a much more powerful entity. And what happened when that entity eventually lost interest?
Quote from: Segev on July 16, 2013, 02:12:48 PM
This is why individual ownership and responsibility to oneself is the most efficient use of resources; those who squander them will wind up with few, and they are still largely unwasted as they flow to those who do useful services. Those who happen upon productive, beneficial uses of them wind up getting the crowd-sourced support they need to maintain those services and continue producing those goods. Supported by the very people who benefit from them, who are alone the most qualified to determine whether the service is in fact worthwhile.
Those who squander individual ownership and responsibility to oneself... you mean people who give away their possessions and put others in front of themselves? Those are bad qualities? I don't think I like the implication here.
This sets a dangerous precedent. One that could and has been easily manipulated by those already in power to maintain their little oligarchies. I'd be willing to bet the odds of any one random person being able to break through such a barrier would be on par with winning their state lottery.
It is necessary to separate mere capitalism from "corporate capitalism," or corporatism.
Quote from: Mantic on July 16, 2013, 10:13:24 PM
It is necessary to separate mere capitalism from "corporate capitalism," or corporatism.
More importantly, from "crony capitalism" or
mercantilism. Beware when governments start to regulate industries, because you can bet the biggest fish in those industry pools will wind up being the "experts" who are in charge of "helping" set the standards. Standards they can afford...but which raise the price of entry to keep out smaller competitors. An educated populace is the best defense, and private groups who make their living on the trust of those to whom they report are the best researchers.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 16, 2013, 08:57:27 PM
But that's exactly what happened, isn't it? The people who initially had the idea for City of Heroes were unable to move the project forward with their own meager resources, so the only way for their idea to survive was if they signed away to a much more powerful entity. And what happened when that entity eventually lost interest?
Oh, like I said, bad things still can happen. But note that we now have Plan Z's successor projects starting up. Because we have a system wherein the ownership of resources is all you need to justify their use towards any (constructive) project you want, with no need to justify it to others. If we didn't, then the caprice and (we would argue) poor decision of the CoH owners would have been the last word on anything in its vein.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 16, 2013, 09:06:22 PM
Those who squander individual ownership and responsibility to oneself... you mean people who give away their possessions and put others in front of themselves? Those are bad qualities? I don't think I like the implication here.
I didn't say they were necessarily things that made you a bad person. Note that I said, too, "squander," which is not the same as "give charitably." Conflating the two is, indeed, quite dangerous, as it equates waste with charity, when the two are vastly different.
Those who give charitably of themselves and their possessions are, indeed, laudable. It is wisest if they also produce more than they give, so that they might continue to have more and more TO give, but that is their choice.
No, my point was that
waste of resources on foolish projects leads to those resources flowing into the hands of those who produce useful things and will use them to magnify their value into still more useful production. Charity can be such, if done foolishly, but even then it harms little. I judged nobody. I merely make the empirical observation that, if all are free to own what they earn and use it as they wish, good use of it will lead to more wealth for all, while poor use of it will lead to it flowing to those who will use it better.
Arguments over violence, theft, extortion, and scams are distractions, here: nobody is saying these things are "good," and to conflate them with productive activity is, itself, a scam perpetrated by those who would use it as an excuse to claim the right to simply take that which belongs to others, and call it generosity on their own part.
You speak of people using justification to maintain their "little oligarchies." This is a tendency, but it typically happens through the auspices of "protecting" people from "evil capitalism." Those who already have theirs miraculously are not affected by the new rules, but those who want to break in to higher wealth levels find barriers erected.
This is what is called by some "corporatism" today, but it's misleading. It's really mercantilism: government picking certain businesses to "win," to be "too big to fail" or otherwise important because they cater to government policy. Those businesses buy access, support the rulers, and get to make the rules that give them government money taken from their competitors and from other industries entirely, while dictating new rules to keep competitors from being able to get a foot in the door.
It's not capitalism at all.
Quote from: Rust on July 12, 2013, 08:38:35 AM
We may not have saved City of Heroes, but I'd like to think maybe we saved someone else's favorite game from immediate shut down.
It's a small thing, but it's something.
It's not all mercantilism. It's also simple monopoly control, and tail-wagging-the-dog government influence which feeds back into subsidies and other favours, but just as well into selective deregulation.
Regulation in itself has no polarity; it can be necessary and good as surely as it can be exploitative. Sometimes it isn't immediately obvious which is which, but it isn't all one way or the other. Surely you don't damn all consumer protection, and all environmental protection, just because government is the only means available to the people (whose interests only the government, by way of the law, is able to represent at such levels) to enact and enforce such things.
You argue as if business -- publicly traded corporations in particular -- can do no wrong outside the use and abuse of government, when in reality the publicly traded corporation can not only do wrong, but faces far less punitive consequence even when caught clearly breaking the law. It is not possible to jail a corporate entity. The CEO is a dispensable and replaceable appendage (a mere employee acting at the behest of the remote and liability-free investors), as is even the corporate entity's name and legal identity. If a corporate identity is ever damaged significantly to threaten it's survival, it can morph, merge, re-brand itself, and continue on as if it were a perfectly respectable citizen, rather than a psychopathic felon.
These are all things that no human has the power to do. If it is all the government to blame, it is because corporate personhood should never have been established.
Quote from: Mantic on July 17, 2013, 10:20:27 AM
It's not all mercantilism. It's also simple monopoly control, and tail-wagging-the-dog government influence which feeds back into subsidies and other favours, but just as well into selective deregulation.
Added emphasis to point out where the actual problem arises.
Quote from: Mantic on July 17, 2013, 10:20:27 AMRegulation in itself has no polarity; it can be necessary and good as surely as it can be exploitative. Sometimes it isn't immediately obvious which is which, but it isn't all one way or the other. Surely you don't damn all consumer protection, and all environmental protection, just because government is the only means available to the people (whose interests only the government, by way of the law, is able to represent at such levels) to enact and enforce such things.
Actually, yes. "Consumer protection" - outside of simple prevention-of-theft measures - is immediately going to be exploited by the biggest fish in the pond. It invites and nearly guarantees the "tail-wagging-the-dog government influence," precisely because it makes government influence essential to do your business.
Let's assume a perfectly innocent version of this, just to illustrate how the problem is all but inevitable: The biggest purveyor of packaged meat obviously has concerns when they learn that certain meat-packing plants are unsanitary by any standard. He even agrees with the government's decision to regulate this. Knowing that he maintains factories so clean he would happily eat steak tar-tar straight off the machines, he is determined to
help make sure that the regulations do the intended job. (After all, if Dilbert teaches us anything, bureaucrats who don't understand what they're managing create nothing but obstacles and often make problems
worse.)
So he lobbies - both in contributions to politicians who are engaged in this noble, consumer-protecting effort, and in "soft" money spent to help educate the public and create a PR press to assure people that this problem is fixable - and gets himself involved in the writing of the regulations, using his own factories' policies as a guide.
Now, all the way through, he's acting in good faith, and we can even assume all government actors are, as well. But you can already see where this could gain the
appearance of corruption. Coincidentally, when these new regulations go into place, his factories
already meet all standards because they
set it. His competitors - the big ones - have sudden expenses to bring things in line. Some may genuinely deserve this, because they were running the grotesqueries depicted in
The Jungle. Others may have had perfectly clean facilities, but their standards were
different from the biggest meat packer's, and so they also incur costs to come into compliance. Maybe it's just that the metrics are different (and, if they'd lobbied successfully to get on the board, our hypothetical "biggest meat packing mogul" would have had to spend money despite being established as perfectly clean), but still, they must spend money.
And then there are the local butchers, the small one-town factories, or the growing hub-village surrounded by ranches where a few intrepid ranchers' sons and daughters were going to build a new meat-packing plant. They were going to hand-clean everything every night; it is a small facility. Unfortunately, meeting the new regulations is not something that "hand-cleaning every night" will fix. "And so they shouldn't be in business!" you might argue, but they weren't going to run a filthy sty. Just different, smaller.
So, by the logic that they shouldn't be in business,
only those wealthy enough to afford the cost-of-entry artificially set by this regulation can even BEGIN to compete. And that may seem right and fair to you; if so, then you should approve of the current gaming industry; if you're "indie," you've no business being in business.
Now, let's remove the thought-experiment-imposed assumption that the mogul is ethical. I'm sure you can see where this becomes a problem.
And it's not because the mogul is engaged in capitalism: it's because there is an avenue whereby the mogul can legally exert force or threat thereof to crush competition. That legal use of force (or threat thereof) is the exclusive province of the government.
You want less corruption and "tail-wagging-the-dog influence" in the government? Restrict it to only having power to make and enforce laws that deny anybody the right to use force, threat, or guile to take something that a fully-informed owner thereof would not part with. (No burglary, pickpocketing, mugging, extortion rackets, or scams selling something other than what is represented.)
The government doesn't "represent the people" when it tries to pro-actively regulate HOW people may produce products. It is best handled by private concerns doing the investigation, and making their money off of selling their findings to the consumer. Why do we need "FDA-approved Meat?" The FDA could easily be one of possibly several private agencies, paid by the companies themselves (and in brutal competition, always looking for each other to give lax reviews so they can undermine their competitors' public trust), or even paid by consumers who subscribe to their newsletters/blogs/magazines/whatever in the interest of buying "the safest meat" or what-have-you.
Regulation is needless at that point (beyond "you're going to jail if you promote working conditions that lead to people getting hurt or dying, and it can be shown to be criminal negligence"). Consumers have professionals who are doing the deep-level investigations for them, and those professionals will investigate each other, as well. The professionals are discouraged from lying to the consumer because, when caught, they will be ruined (as nobody will trust them and thus their rating system will be worthless). The industry is encouraged to live up to the best standards they can, because consumers look for good ratings from those private agencies.
And the corruption you likely fear? The idea that these agencies would actually take bribes from the industry to lie about its cleanliness and other standards? That already happens with the government regulatory agencies, but there's no recourse. Nobody else is looking into it. Government agencies are made of people just like private ones; government ones just also have no competition, and the legal power to use force against you if you do not comply. And if they decide you're not in compliance for any reason (say, trying to call them out on corruption), they can abuse that power to use force to shut you up.
Quote from: Mantic on July 17, 2013, 10:20:27 AMYou argue as if business -- publicly traded corporations in particular -- can do no wrong outside the use and abuse of government, when in reality the publicly traded corporation can not only do wrong, but faces far less punitive consequence even when caught clearly breaking the law.
What do you think a "publicly-traded corporation" is? It's made of people. Do we have far too many stockholders in such companies who are wholly disinterested in the actual running of their property? Yes. But if you think that getting people together to beg (or command) the government to regulate them is doable, why do you think it
not doable to rally the shareholders against a company that is actively failing to serve their interests (or, worse, as they're often also customers of the same, is abusing them)?
The truth is, there are power-brokers who
want to use you to get the government more power over the private sector. No, this isn't conspiracy; this is simply the government officials and those already in bed in crony "capitalist" - i.e. mercantilist - practices using their power of PR to convince people to cede them more power. If the same PR mechanisms were used to encourage stockholders in publicly-traded companies to demand compliance from the companies they own, the companies would change much faster and more responsively as new leadership was hired by said shareholders. But that empowers the individual people and doesn't kill off the competition of the power-brokers. It's something you and I need to push for, along with pushing for greater personal awareness on an individual level. It's hard work managing one's own fate, rather than turning it over to an all-powerful entity, but it's more effective and worth it.
Quote from: Mantic on July 17, 2013, 10:20:27 AMIt is not possible to jail a corporate entity. The CEO is a dispensable and replaceable appendage (a mere employee acting at the behest of the remote and liability-free investors), as is even the corporate entity's name and legal identity. If a corporate identity is ever damaged significantly to threaten it's survival, it can morph, merge, re-brand itself, and continue on as if it were a perfectly respectable citizen, rather than a psychopathic felon.
CEOs who actively engage in criminal activity can and are punished. Less so in today's highly regulated environment, because the CEOs of the biggest groups are often the ones most in bed with the government (conflating regulation and enforcement of genuinely needed laws and leading to cronyism protecting the criminals from things they could never get away with without it).
The "liability-free" shareholders still have liability in the form of their ownership in the company. And, again, are you saying that many of us on these very boards are evil corporate masters because we own stock in publicly-traded companies? No, our largest guilt is in assuming there's nothing we can do, or that it's too much work, when in reality, if we educate ourselves and push our fellow shareholders to do the same - if we can initiate a culture shift away from the thought that government solves our problems towards a thought that we can solve our problems and that it's our responsibility to do so - we will create a better situation overall. People, individuals, will be educated on matters of concern and tangentially informed on matters peripheral. And then grass-roots efforts alone will push the "corporate giants" to better behavior as the stockholders don't tolerate the company they own acting irresponsibly with their money, or worse, with their health as consumers of said companies' products.
Quote from: Mantic on July 17, 2013, 10:20:27 AMThese are all things that no human has the power to do. If it is all the government to blame, it is because corporate personhood should never have been established.
Nonsense. Everything "corporations" do is something people can do. Same with the government. The government is the body with exclusive legal right to use force to compel behavior. It should not be given broader areas in which it can do so, because that encourages the worst aspects of humanity to seek control of it. It encourages the corrupt union of private interests with government power, and removes the equality under the law that is promoted when you don't need "industry experts" to tell you how best to regulate their industry.
I'm no anarchist; government has its place and its purpose. Without it, we devolve into despotism as
anybody can use force to take whatever they want. But its purpose is to prevent
that, and little to nothing more. When it gets involved elsewhere, the temptation of its exclusive legal right to use force to compel obedience becomes too great, and corrupt or corruptible people gravitate towards it.
Corrupt or corruptible people may achieve power in private industry, in corporations or as moguls who own private enterprises. But without the ability to use force to compel obedience and to forbid competition, their ability to act on their corrupt impulses is curtailed. Separate the ability to dictate
how business is run from the ability to use legal force to compel obedience, and the separation of powers creates a competitive environment such that even the corrupt at both ends are policing each other to prevent exploitation of their power, lest it be used against them. Unite them through the power to regulate being combined with the need for experts to write the regulations, and they reinforce each others' corrupt power against the "little guy."
Quote from: Segev on July 17, 2013, 01:47:51 PMYou want less corruption and "tail-wagging-the-dog influence" in the government? Restrict it to only having power to make and enforce laws that deny anybody the right to use force, threat, or guile to take something that a fully-informed owner thereof would not part with. (No burglary, pickpocketing, mugging, extortion rackets, or scams selling something other than what is represented.)
Of course this properatarian position does invite the question of why exactly, if government should do nothing else, it should enforce property rights. What's sacred about those?
To forestall the obvious answer, yes, for example, I feel pickpocketing is bad. I also feel many other things that government presently addresses, like poor people dying of readily treatable diseases, are bad. So you'll have to do a little better to establish what's special about property.
(Also, mercantilism is a word with a specific meaning.)
Quote from: Segev on July 12, 2013, 12:38:57 PM
Actually, it's pretty simple: as long as they own the IP, it is an asset against which they can leverage financial value.
This seems to miss the point that if they sell it they get an asset which itself has financial value, ie, money.
Quote from: thunderforce on July 17, 2013, 02:52:19 PM
This seems to miss the point that if they sell it they get an asset which itself has financial value, ie, money.
And the longer they sit on it, the longer it depreciates.
Quote from: Pinnacle Blue on July 17, 2013, 03:54:06 PM
And the longer they sit on it, the longer it depreciates.
Quite so. The game was worth far more as a running concern than it is now; with every year that passes more of the old playerbase will forget it, get committed to other games, die...
Quote from: Segev on July 17, 2013, 01:47:51 PM
...he is determined to help make sure that the regulations do the intended job.
This kind of corporate leadership in lobbying
for regulation strikes me more as a response to crusaders like Ralph Nader, and other like him, who were often true believers acting independently in the interest of their fellow citizens. I don't doubt that corporate leaders are intelligent in their use of any competitive tactics, and the CEO of a corporation that has no ties it's human origin (once founders have lost majority control and/or been pushed out of leadership entirely) is merely doing a job with the singular goal of maximizing returns. Mainly short-term returns, as his or her future is always uncertain, aside from any golden parachutes. It's a job made for psychopaths.
Quote from: Segev on July 17, 2013, 01:47:51 PMWhat do you think a "publicly-traded corporation" is? It's made of people. Do we have far too many stockholders in such companies who are wholly disinterested in the actual running of their property? Yes. But if you think that getting people together to beg (or command) the government to regulate them is doable, why do you think it not doable to rally the shareholders against a company that is actively failing to serve their interests (or, worse, as they're often also customers of the same, is abusing them)?
That is like saying that "the members of a mob are people." A partial truth. Stockholders are not
fully human in the same sense that a lone proprietor or small family business owners are, because they are almost entirely remote and hold only so much sway as they can convince the Legion of fellow stockholders that their demands will have positive fiscal results. Short term. Stockholders come and go daily. Their "investment" is rarely one of principle. Liability begins and ends with the money they gamble, and even that has some protection.
Regulations cannot undo that first sin of granting legal personhood to these very inhuman entities. That isn't usually the intent, so much as managing the beasts, or merely enforcing ethical obligations.
Regulations such as global price controls are lobbied for by small competitors, if such exist. Even if a potential monopolistic giant could turn with price controls into a means of leverage, it would only hobble them once they gain monopolistic control. In most cases, price controls create a balance wherein no major moneyed entity can exert the force of
loss-leading anti-competitive price wars. A very typical consequence of completely unregulated business. The market is not ethical, or particularly intelligent, when offered what looks like a good deal, and will always take the gamble on immediate benefit over long-term consequences.
Case in point: the telephone industry. SW Bell became a giant even in a relatively primitive age, when it was difficult to justify entering many small districts. They did so arguably by leveraging patent protections. Government was also propping up phone service in rural areas, and many communities established coops by taking advantage of that drive to connect every household. Then SW Bell realized they had a complete monopoly on long-distance network access and decided to squeeze the local coops, resulting eventually in the breakup of their monopoly and the establishment of price control regulations.
The general public did not see dramatic results from this action. The price regulation locked things at a reasonable level, so phone service merely continued at a steady rate. Innovation may even have been stifled a bit, but almost every household in the country could still justify the expense, of a party line at least.
Then, in 1997, the regulations were eliminated. Big money interests knew by now that this was an opportunity. They also knew that there would be only one survivor. What consumers saw looked like a boom of technological innovation and insane price wars. Did consumers think of where this was bound to wind up? O r did they just try to game the system from month to month? Yeah... the latter. So eventually AT&T not only rebuilt most of the old Bell monopoly, but bought out the majority of local coops.
Now the government is in the telephone subsidy business bigger than ever (both land and cellular), because AT&T's near monopoly, now encompassing all the remote rural districts that never were very profitable, made telephone access an impossibility for more and more households.
On the other hand, you have situations like the minnows in California. Major agricultural interests were able to use an environmental regulation as a weapon against small competitors. At the same time, lack of regulation protects those same giants from consequences for their already draconian grip on water rights in the Southwest.
Right now, the big environmental issue is fracking. Here in Oklahoma we are right in the middle of that issue, and I can tell you from personal experience that the complaints are
not baseless. Laws are needed in relation to this the same way that laws were needed to make oil companies liable for the dangerous garbage and substances left behind on dead drilling sites. The companies actively refuse to clean up the messes they make without legal pressure. Fracking does cause short-term pollution of the water table, primarily by flushing crude oil and other natural filth into the water, which kills a lot of wildlife and makes the water undesirable for drinking or serving to livestock at the very least (having to bathe or shower in it is not nice, either). My own well did not recover for about two years, though the pollutants might have settled sooner had further fracking not been going on in the area. It also causes a dramatic rise in seismic activity (not surprisingly; the process is practically designed to grease and stress the faults). So regulation (law) is obviously necessary in order to make the fracking companies liable for the real damages they cause. They are doing anything but accepting responsibility without such measures. The cost of addressing the damage would not put them out of business; it would merely enforce moral obligation to those whose property is damaged in the course of their business.
While everything you point out about the abuse of regulation is true, it is not a
universal truth.
I'm beginning to think Segev really wants Robocop* to become a reality. He might have missed the point of the movie!
*(I'm not talking about the cyborg!)
Quote from: Segev on July 17, 2013, 01:47:51 PMI'm no anarchist; government has its place and its purpose. Without it, we devolve into despotism as anybody can use force to take whatever they want. But its purpose is to prevent that, and little to nothing more. When it gets involved elsewhere, the temptation of its exclusive legal right to use force to compel obedience becomes too great, and corrupt or corruptible people gravitate towards it.
Corrupt or corruptible people may achieve power in private industry, in corporations or as moguls who own private enterprises. But without the ability to use force to compel obedience and to forbid competition, their ability to act on their corrupt impulses is curtailed.
I believe that's oversimplistic to the point of being obviously wrong. Speaking generally, the nominally agreed upon role of government is to protect the intrusion of one's rights by another, but rights can be intruded upon without the use of force in lots of ways. For example defamation is an intrusion of rights without the exercise of force. Tossing pollution in the water supply is an intrusion of rights without the exercise of force. If I choose not to hire you or allow you into places of business because of your race, that can be done without any exercise of force.
The issue is that exercise of *power* doesn't always require an overt exercise of force. Curtailing the abuse of power is probably a better mission statement of governmental oversight than curtailing abuse of force.
The real problem though is that not all rights are private and therefore not all threats to those rights involve an exercise of power against a single (set of) individuals. If I burn down a forest I've attacked no specific individual's rights and exercised no specific power over any particular individual. I've damaged a commons. What a society decides are commons worthy of government protection significantly extends the requirements of government oversight.
I'm ignoring the issue of delegation here as being not central: the notion that the people will, as a rule, delegate authority to the government to handle matters they do not want to do themselves and cannot compel the responsibility to anyone else. For example, large metropolitan areas delegate fire fighting services to the government on the assumption that people do not want to literally do that themselves and cannot compel someone else to do for them. Rights and responsibilities tend to go hand in hand and if no one wants the responsibility to put out fires they surrender both the responsibility to do it and the rights to (directly) manage the service to the government.
Its worth noting that imperfect though they were, the framers of the (US) Constitution were no dummies either: my own opinion of the history of the Constitution is that the framers were aware that the issue of rights arbitration was the central issue of governance. That's why we have a Bill of Rights, for example, and very specifically why we have a Ninth Amendment to the Constitution. If it was an easy task to *know* what are rights were, relative to other people, the US Constitution would simply enumerate them. The Ninth Amendment in effect admits the Constitution and the Bill of Rights itself is imperfect, incomplete, and subject to future interpretation and extension. The implication is that human rights might be intrinsic, but they aren't always legally obvious. And that's why even if the theoretical limit of government authority is small, it must contain the machinery necessary for self-governance. It must have the power to make laws and enforce and adjudicate them, because what rights we have, how we are allowed to execute them, and what sort of disputes can occur, is always going to be a messy and complex subject.
If this wasn't true, government could simply reserve the right to enforce what we all knew to obviously be our rights. But because this is true, no government that is so minimal in its nature will ever be workable.
Quote from: Arcana on July 18, 2013, 12:25:30 AM
It must have the power to make laws and enforce and adjudicate them, because what rights we have, how we are allowed to execute them, and what sort of disputes can occur, is always going to be a messy and complex subject.
Yup.
The Ninth Amendment has generally been regarded by the courts as negating any expansion of governmental power on account of the enumeration of rights in the Constitution, but the Amendment has not been regarded as further limiting governmental power
And the root of mnay debates of personal rights vs making of the laws is the interpretation of the 9th admendement, such as the abortion debate.
WHile some believe the 9th admendment does not confer substantive rights but is simply a rule of how to read the Constitution.
And it all boils down to interpretation and how those in power, elected usually, interprete the Constitution and the Admendments. Which, ironically, many elected officials are from a business corporate background, have ties to corporations or various fields of law. Which in turn result in interpretation through the eyes of many people that run businesses and how to effectively enact those laws that they can relate to.
Most of the environmental laws started off as a corporation or two actually lobbying to get those laws passed and it was easy for them, as Sergev pointed out, because it was based on what that particular company was already doing. While their competition had to spend in some cases millions to follow the new laws, which many ended up with heavy fines that either set them back and or put them out of business. Even opening up an mechanic shop that is privately owned can be a pain in the butt now because of laws lobbied by major corporate automotive industry experts. Although many have still survived. Now, without laws, many car companies are increasingly making cars that require special tools and liscenses to work on, in order to decrease competition while enabling them to raise their prices for the same work. It was no accident. In the past it was easy asa phone call or letter to request schematics of a car now, most car makers refuse to send out schematics to any one but the corporate owned dealer repair shops. Which resulted in for example a peticular car costing nearly 2 thousand for brake pad replacement but the brake schematics got leaked and people started to realize that it wasnt worth 2 grand worth of work and merely required disconnection of tha battery waiting for 15-20 minutes for the servos and abs computer to discharge, which then causes the brake calipers to go into default mode (open), and the brakes can be removed and replaced in 5 minutes. Then recconection of the battery, about 10 minutes for the brake pads and computers to reset and off you go. But without the knowledge and the car maker holding a monopoly of that knowledge, they charged over 1500 for that knowledge without challenge. Now on the surface that could be called price gouging, and people have, but it was brushed off as part of the laws of capitalism and a free market.
Quote from: JaguarX on July 18, 2013, 01:32:51 AMAnd it all boils down to interpretation and how those in power, elected usually, interprete the Constitution and the Admendments.
The Constitution, and its meaning, has always been a messy thing in spite of attempts by some to portray it as a simple obvious document.
Consider article 4, section 4 of the Constitution. Article 4.4 states that the United States shall guarantee to every State a Republican Form of Government (meaning: representative). However, see: Pacific States Telephone vs State of Oregon (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/223/118/case.html) and Luther vs Borden (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/48/1/case.html). The Supreme Court holds in two separate cases that Article 4 Section 4 isn't a *legal* statement, but a *political* statement, and thus can only be judged by Congress.
In other words, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that a specific clause of the Constitution makes certain acts of Congress beyond judicial review. That "checks and balances" thing you learned in grade school has interesting limits.
On the subject of the role of government relative to its people, Article IV naturally leads to Federalist 10 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10). Federalist 10 is interesting in that so much of the contemporary facts upon which both it and its counter-arguments rest have been mooted by history, but the actual problems identified by F.10 itself still exist in other, modern forms. The industrial revolution, for example, nullified the notion that property owners needed to be defended from direct democracy, but it didn't invalidate the overall idea that the minority needed protection from the majority, vis-a-vis the Civil Rights Act.
Quote from: Arcana on July 18, 2013, 04:12:48 AM
The Constitution, and its meaning, has always been a messy thing in spite of attempts by some to portray it as a simple obvious document.
Consider article 4, section 4 of the Constitution. Article 4.4 states that the United States shall guarantee to every State a Republican Form of Government (meaning: representative). However, see: Pacific States Telephone vs State of Oregon (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/223/118/case.html) and Luther vs Borden (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/48/1/case.html). The Supreme Court holds in two separate cases that Article 4 Section 4 isn't a *legal* statement, but a *political* statement, and thus can only be judged by Congress.
In other words, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that a specific clause of the Constitution makes certain acts of Congress beyond judicial review. That "checks and balances" thing you learned in grade school has interesting limits.
On the subject of the role of government relative to its people, Article IV naturally leads to Federalist 10 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_No._10). Federalist 10 is interesting in that so much of the contemporary facts upon which both it and its counter-arguments rest have been mooted by history, but the actual problems identified by F.10 itself still exist in other, modern forms. The industrial revolution, for example, nullified the notion that property owners needed to be defended from direct democracy, but it didn't invalidate the overall idea that the minority needed protection from the majority, vis-a-vis the Civil Rights Act.
yup.
Quote from: CoyoteSeven on July 17, 2013, 11:26:44 PM
I'm beginning to think Segev really wants Robocop* to become a reality. He might have missed the point of the movie!
I did wonder about that when Ken Macleod got a Prometheus Award (for "libertarian" SF) for The Stone Canal. Did they fail to notice it's a dystopia written by a Scottish Trotskyite?
Quote from: thunderforce on July 18, 2013, 11:12:39 AM
I did wonder about that when Ken Macleod got a Prometheus Award (for "libertarian" SF) for The Stone Canal. Did they fail to notice it's a dystopia written by a Scottish Trotskyite?
I've often screamed at the TV when news of current government shenanigins is on: "Orwell wrote
1984 as a warning - not a manual!"
Please.
Everyone knows that Scotland is a fiction created by the UN to keep people from asking what is really lurking there.
Well their new building is done-ish. They're moving in in August.
I envy not. Let's go to the Pangyo Valley! (http://news.mt.co.kr/mtview.php?no=2013071809103234049&type=2&sec=tech) (via Google Translate)
You are going to need to feed it to Google Translate if you want to read it. It's not just about NCSOFT but other companies located there and how they provide all these amenities to their workers and families ala Google. What caught my eye was the picture of the completed building.
I forgot to post in this topic way back when it was first started. At the time, I could log in just fine at the time, so I assumed the issue was for people who had only CoH on their account. Before I posted just now, I went to verify I could log in - I couldn't, and got the same error. However, I had tried logging in with my username - logging in with my email in the account name field worked just fine, and I can see my account info. In both cases, I got emails saying I was logging in from an unknown IP.
Just thought I'd share for those that do want to log in.
So... I told myself in the past that I would never go ahead and play another NCSoft game..
Well for the first time since COH closed, I went ahead and tried.
Joke's on me! In that time apparently they feel I broke their policies and operations guidelines and they suspended/blocked my account.
???
...Dies laughing.
NCsoft hasn't made a dime off me since Nov 2012.....
been playing Mahjongg :roll:
Quote from: Arcana on July 18, 2013, 12:25:30 AM
I believe that's oversimplistic to the point of being obviously wrong. Speaking generally, the nominally agreed upon role of government is to protect the intrusion of one's rights by another, but rights can be intruded upon without the use of force in lots of ways. For example defamation is an intrusion of rights without the exercise of force. Tossing pollution in the water supply is an intrusion of rights without the exercise of force. If I choose not to hire you or allow you into places of business because of your race, that can be done without any exercise of force.
The issue is that exercise of *power* doesn't always require an overt exercise of force. Curtailing the abuse of power is probably a better mission statement of governmental oversight than curtailing abuse of force.
The real problem though is that not all rights are private and therefore not all threats to those rights involve an exercise of power against a single (set of) individuals. If I burn down a forest I've attacked no specific individual's rights and exercised no specific power over any particular individual. I've damaged a commons. What a society decides are commons worthy of government protection significantly extends the requirements of government oversight.
I'm ignoring the issue of delegation here as being not central: the notion that the people will, as a rule, delegate authority to the government to handle matters they do not want to do themselves and cannot compel the responsibility to anyone else. For example, large metropolitan areas delegate fire fighting services to the government on the assumption that people do not want to literally do that themselves and cannot compel someone else to do for them. Rights and responsibilities tend to go hand in hand and if no one wants the responsibility to put out fires they surrender both the responsibility to do it and the rights to (directly) manage the service to the government.
Its worth noting that imperfect though they were, the framers of the (US) Constitution were no dummies either: my own opinion of the history of the Constitution is that the framers were aware that the issue of rights arbitration was the central issue of governance. That's why we have a Bill of Rights, for example, and very specifically why we have a Ninth Amendment to the Constitution. If it was an easy task to *know* what are rights were, relative to other people, the US Constitution would simply enumerate them. The Ninth Amendment in effect admits the Constitution and the Bill of Rights itself is imperfect, incomplete, and subject to future interpretation and extension. The implication is that human rights might be intrinsic, but they aren't always legally obvious. And that's why even if the theoretical limit of government authority is small, it must contain the machinery necessary for self-governance. It must have the power to make laws and enforce and adjudicate them, because what rights we have, how we are allowed to execute them, and what sort of disputes can occur, is always going to be a messy and complex subject.
If this wasn't true, government could simply reserve the right to enforce what we all knew to obviously be our rights. But because this is true, no government that is so minimal in its nature will ever be workable.
The only issue I have with the US Constitution is there are no penalties enumerated for violations.
For example the US budget - there has been no determined Federal budget for 6 of the last 7 years in direct violaton of the Constitution. There should be penalties established for these failures. Continuing resolutions are very poor substitues. When the president violated the Constitution by appointing labor board members by him declaring that the Senate was in Recess - when in fact they were not and the Supreme Court agreed - it should be set that automatically a vote for Impeachment is forced to be made within 60 days for any members who do these actions.
If Impeachment was the cost for violation of the Constitution, they would pay far more attention to it. Currently they (both parties) do what they want and give lip service at the most to the Constitution.
I would like to see the money drained out of politics by making ALL donations to the main party and never to one person.Then the party could divide the cash up but no one person would be in debt to any individual.
(https://i.imgur.com/4Zeah.jpg)
Quote from: Ironwolf on September 08, 2014, 03:15:04 PM
The only issue I have with the US Constitution is there are no penalties enumerated for violations.
For example the US budget - there has been no determined Federal budget for 6 of the last 7 years in direct violaton of the Constitution. There should be penalties established for these failures. Continuing resolutions are very poor substitues. When the president violated the Constitution by appointing labor board members by him declaring that the Senate was in Recess - when in fact they were not and the Supreme Court agreed - it should be set that automatically a vote for Impeachment is forced to be made within 60 days for any members who do these actions.
If Impeachment was the cost for violation of the Constitution, they would pay far more attention to it. Currently they (both parties) do what they want and give lip service at the most to the Constitution.
I would like to see the money drained out of politics by making ALL donations to the main party and never to one person.Then the party could divide the cash up but no one person would be in debt to any individual.
Actually Ironwolf, the Constitution does not require an enumerated budget. What is requires is "a regular Statement and Account of Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money" to be published from time to time. This has been done, by the Congressional Budget Office.
The Budget as we know it today did not exist until 1921 in fact. And it was always a formality, not a legally binding anything. Expenditure bills are the only binding statements.
(Sorry, father was a politician, and he wrote a piece on this)
Yeah....let's not go there on a game forum.