CoH Speculation/Conjecture

[The Fifth Horseman]

I know nothing about code, servers or anything of the sort... but I do recall the devs complaining (multiple of them, on multiple occasions) that they found working with the code to be a nightmare.

This is true for any software that has not been explicitly designed with modularity and future expansion in mind. As they accumulate kludges in their operational lifetime (in some cases there may be a better solution but more expensive in terms of manpower, or the executive meddlers may decide they want a fix NOW, consequences be damned), this eventually becomes true of any software.
Speaking from experience, this can be true for people working with their own old code - let alone for those who are trying to take over a codebase left by a previous team ( a lot depends on the documentation and training they received - or not - from their precedessors)

[wildcat4ever]

With regard to the comment here and elsewhere that NCSoft made a reasonable financial decision in shutting down Coh, I strongly disagree.  They didn't make a financial decision, they made a strategy decision for reasons that are opaque to us since NCSoft hasn't really explained them. 

The first thing you do in business to fix a financial problem is to cut costs: layoffs, trim benefits, close facilities, shrink footprint.  You always target your fixed costs which are personnel and facilities.  And since facilties are often locked into lease agreements, personnel reduction/RIFs/layoffs/restructuring are the textbook means to address this.  In fact, if you don't do these things, Wall Street punishes your stock.

In CoH's case, NCSoft did not cancel the secret development project nor did they consolidate servers.  My back of the crumpled napkin estimate is that they could have cut costs by a third by doing these two things.  I actually suspect its higher in the long-term.  NCSoft did none of these things.  Nor did they go to Paragon Studios and say "Brian, you're in trouble - figure out how to cut costs or boost revenues and have the the proposal on our desk in one week". 

Plus, cancelling the secret project and RIFing that team would have been faster and cheaper than shutting down CoH and Paragon entirely.

All of which is why the shutdown announcement shocked everyone.  There were none of the signs you would expect for a financially troubled business organization.  I also strongly suspect that at the first hint of financial issues at Paragon, the community would have stepped up and basically thrown money at the cash shop and probably other looney things like bake sales and fund raisers.  The Save CoH effort shows that had we been given a path to follow, many of us would have taken direct financial action to support our favorite game and community.

(Seriously - just imagine the boards lighting up as soon as server consolidation was announced)

For these reasons, I don't buy that NCSoft made a strict financial decision since they went about this in the way that basically imposed the most financial cost to them.  Perhaps this is all a set-up for NCSoft selling the IP, but I believe they would have gotten more money from selling off the entire product including a fully functioning Paragon Studio (who were about to release Issue 25 which would probably have bumped up income for the new owner shortly after transition and given the player base an excellent reason to stick through the transition (aka customer retention)) in addition to the game itself.  Its basically an "easy DIY MMO - just add servers!" kit.

I'm not involved in the MMO business and I'm not a finance guy, so maybe I'm missing something, but this all seems pretty basic business 101 stuff about how you run a business.

PS to VV - I will now go re-read "By The Sword" as penance for my abuses of the English language and to enjoy thinking about problems that can be solved with magic swords and really smart horses.   ;D 

[pewlagon]

One thing I discovered recently, while at a game store, I inquired what happened to their CoH Time Cards. I was told they were recalled, back in May! In their place arrived cards that only worked for Aion and Lineage 2. True, some retailers still have the cards on the shelf, but that just means their inventory specialists isn't keeping track of these items, probably due to being in a convenience store of some sort where food expiration is more important than game time cards. What the recall tells me is NcSoft was, at least, prepping to shelve CoH even back then. This makes what they did to Paragon, keeping them out of the loop, all the more heinous.

[Segev]

What we know is that VV and Fansy have both claimed contact with sources who would know, but must remain anonymous, who indicate that NCSoft is up against some sort of legal wall on this. How much this wall forced the shutdown in its entirety vs. how much it "only" forces them to shut it down and close the studio and keep quiet until the game is totally dark is unclear, but whether NCSoft had a choice in closing the game at all or not, they could not be done with it, themselves, without following this path.

This doesn't excuse everything, but it explains a lot, if only by the hand-wavium of "legal concerns." Whatever the spurs of their decisions, they are rational, apparently, if you know what's going on, but they can't tell us for legal reasons. Despite this, hitting them hard for it is good because, frankly, they've not been as forthcoming as they could have been and have made no real effort to mollify their unhappy customers. They've done some good business-practice moves in refunds and such, but their customer response has been ham-handed at best.

When the game goes dark this Saturday, we can expect that we might hear something by Monday. Maybe. Over the next month, we have every reason to wait with baited breath while keeping all of our noise and pressure up everywhere. The game might yet be given defibrillation; they just have to let the heart stop long enough to declare it legally dead before they can pass it on to soembody else. We think, anyway, and VV and Fansy seem sure of this. If you trust them to only be sure after hearing from sources they find incontrovertible, then hope for this, because it seems the most likely course.

Hence the call to action to persuade Mickey Mouse to come swaggering in in his best three-piece suit and drop a suitcase full of money on NCSoft's desk in exchange for the whole kit and kaboodle, and possibly even putting Paragon back together. Because if anybody can do that latter, Disney can.

[Turjan]

Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero movie about the Marvel franchise.  The movie rights belong to another studio and did not come with the purchase of Marvel.  Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero theme park attraction including the Marvel franchise.  Those rights belong to Universal Studios Theme Parks.

If Disney wants to make a superhero movie or have a superhero attraction in a theme park, Disney will have to find some other superhero franchise to do it with. 

This is one of the things that surprised me, not knowing the ins and outs of the Marvel buyout by Disney. It certainly raises and eyebrow along with a dose of chin stroking and "Hmm..."ing doesn't it?

To Disney, it might mean this : an entire world of already time served lore and characters just sitting there, off the shelf ready to be paraded (quite literally) before a new audience. No need to put your Disney writing team to work fleshing out the backstories of heroes and villains, no need to even get your Disney designer squad to spend ages inventing their costumes - it's literally ALL there in front of you, a done deal. It fills that Marvel-Universal image rights gap in your portfolio nicely. All you need to do is make one CoH themed film and roll the characters out at the next Disney parade.

Certainly not something to be sniffed at!

[Segev]

And can you imagine the possibilities of an officially-recognized fan club that could contribute players dressed as their characters to march in those parades? You could charge premium admission tickets for the privilege!

[jagre]

With regard to the comment here and elsewhere that NCSoft made a reasonable financial decision in shutting down Coh, I strongly disagree.  They didn't make a financial decision, they made a strategy decision for reasons that are opaque to us since NCSoft hasn't really explained them.

I agree.  As a business guy, even with only the limited info we have, it's easy to see justifiable reasons for NCSoft to be concerned.  But even though a lot of it can be explained away, there are other aspects that just don't make sense from any perspective. 

If they wanted to end the game, why not do so in a way that minimizes refunds?  Why shut it down so abruptly that you're giving money back, instead of extending things a bit, accepting no future payments, and letting monthlies time out and microtransactions earn adequate value (so you only refund partial long-term subscriptions)?  They only refunded retroactively about a month or so, meaning that the game could have had a natural ending point on New Year's Eve.  The game's abrupt end is a head-scratcher of the first order.

So yeah, there's obviously a lot going on behind the scenes that we're not privy to, and that's fine.  The situation just raises a lot of questions that make for interesting discussion.

[wildcat4ever]

This is one of the things that surprised me, not knowing the ins and outs of the Marvel buyout by Disney. It certainly raises and eyebrow along with a dose of chin stroking and "Hmm..."ing doesn't it?

This probably had nothing to do with Disney.  Marvel had licensed out their character individually, or as packages, and by media type.  In other words, for a while there you couldn't make a Spider-man movie that mentioned the X-men or Avengers.  This was somewhat ironic since the whole concept the the Marvel Universe was that all of their heroes shared a world and Sue Storm could go over and have lunch with Jan from the Avengers and Storm from the X-men.  Or that Beast could go from the X-men to the Avengers and back as each team needed him.

[Segev]

This probably had nothing to do with Disney.  Marvel had licensed out their character individually, or as packages, and by media type.  In other words, for a while there you couldn't make a Spider-man movie that mentioned the X-men or Avengers.  This was somewhat ironic since the whole concept the the Marvel Universe was that all of their heroes shared a world and Sue Storm could go over and have lunch with Jan from the Avengers and Storm from the X-men.  Or that Beast could go from the X-men to the Avengers and back as each team needed him.

I think Turjan's point is more that, due to this gap in the licensing Disney can do with their Marvel product, CoH could fill that gap. Thus, "Hmmm...."

Not because "omg conspiracy," but because "this is yet another way it's a good buy for Disney."

[jagre]

It's actually plausible, in the hands of Disney and with minimal work on Disney's part, for the game to payoff and turn a profit within the first year.

The asking price would have to be very low to the point of being undervalued by NCSoft for a buyer to turn a profit in the first year.  There are dozens of formulas for determining an accurate valuation of a business, but one of the most popular is multiple of adjusted profit, where the value of a profitable business is assessed by determining an annual profit projection and multiplying it by a set number of years (typically 2 or 3 in situations comparable to this one).

Given a projected revenue of under $10m on the year and the adjusted cost of operation by a prospective buyer (in this case a much smaller payroll for starters), the asking price would have to be no greater than $7.5 million to even have a hope of turning a profit in year one, and even then it would be a stretch.  And $7.5 would be a very forgiving valuation given their short-term projected earnings.  They would either have to be very motivated to sell for whatever reason or being very nice to their own financial detriment to price it that low.

Regardless, if the asking price is anywhere in that neighborhood, then I think the prospects for sale would be pretty decent.  Turning a profit in the first year is a lofty goal for any acquisition, but the game's projected shelf life would certainly be an issue.

I used to be a commercial programmer.  You would be ill-advised to go into getting a property like CoH without an experienced studio attached--or at least without the ability to re-assemble one after purchase.  I've seen code like this; you can take up to a year just trying to understand it, never mind bug-fixes and updates.

I totally agree.  I just don't agree that you'd need a staff of 40 of them.  Pure speculation on my part, but I'd guess that there are a handful of folks there that know their way around the code, and that a prospective buyer could get by with just those few.

We can't share the cost-benefit analysis.  It covered a great deal more than you have even guessed at.  I suppose it must be very frustrating to hear, over and over, "Sorry, we can't tell you, you have to trust us,"

I'm not at all frustrated, and appreciate the insight you've shared.  I'm not asking you for any information at all.  I just want to be clear on that -- that this is all speculation on my part.  I'm just sharing my thoughts, not asking you to share anything whatsoever.   :)

As for the value of the IP to Disney, I have four words for you:

Pirates of the Caribbean

You may be too young to remember this, but at one point those words were just about a ride.

The concept of pirate life has been a popular staple in fiction since the invention of the pirate.   ;)  And the idea of pirates being in the Caribbean wasn't something they came up with to make a theme park ride.  Leaving aside that there are still actual pirates in the Caribbean, this is a historically-accurate concept that's been around for a few hundred years and used in fiction for pretty much the same amount of time.

They saw an enormous emerging trend in genre films and decided to ride the wave.  Franchise films were booming again after a 10-year cooling period and they saw an angle worth playing.  Saying that the movie is based on the ride is just a roundabout way of saying it was based on the idea of there being pirates in the Caribbean.  "Let's make a pirate movie!" is pretty much how it went.  A couple scripts went nowhere, then they brought in the Pirate Guy, Ted Elliott, who had done 3 pirate/pirate-era/themed flicks in the past.

My point is that this wasn't Disney creating magic.  This was Disney having a general idea, halfheartedly exploring it, then bringing in Bruckheimer to make it work.  "The Mouse" just collected the money.   ;)

Disney cannot make a live-action or animated superhero movie about the Marvel franchise.  The movie rights belong to another studio and did not come with the purchase of Marvel.

Not exactly.  They DO own Marvel Studios, a very profitable studio making money on Marvel properties as we speak.  The next few movies are being distributed by Paramount, but I think that might be ending with Iron Man 3 or shortly thereafter.  They don't have the rights to Spider-Man or The X-Men, but the rest of the Marvel properties will be fully under the Disney umbrella shortly.

If Disney wants to make a superhero movie or have a superhero attraction in a theme park, Disney will have to find some other superhero franchise to do it with.

Not exactly.  There's nothing stopping them from developing something original through Marvel, Kingdom Comics, or Boom Studios, and the one benefit of there never having been a sequel to The Incredibles is that they've got an entire world of undefined, unexplored superheroes to extrapolate if they so chose.  Doesn't mean the CoH crew couldn't have a home there, too, but you'd have to be able to argue that there are characters and concepts there worth paying for.

I don't disagree that it could be an attractive property for them for the right price, but I highly doubt it would have any value to them beyond the game.  They don't need help in that department, and the CoH characters are thinly-veiled placeholders for characters they now own.

Personally, I love the idea of it.  A sort-of sequel to CoH, but replacing the characters and stories with the Marvel U.  Owning the framework of CoH would be the perfect template for it, keeping all the best elements (character creation, streamlined ATs & powersets, enhancement, crafting, the mission system, etc.) but having Marvel locations, contacts/characters, and so on.  It would be fantastic.

Given the history of CoH development and all the things they did right AND wrong, along with the benefit of seeing what hasn't worked in DCUO and Champions -- It's easy to envision what the perfect superhero MMO would be, and Disney would have all the right pieces if they acquired CoH.  Sadly, I just don't see it happening...

[chasearcanum]

(snip)
Regarding Paragon Studios, there's no question that if the game was to have a future given their Q2 dive in revenue, Paragon Studios had to go.  I've got nothing but love for the folks at Paragon, but the decline in revenue made them almost entirely expendable.  If sales were going to continue to skid despite them churning out pretty solid new content on a regular basis, both in volume and quality, then it made sense for NCSoft to cut their losses.

I know a lot of fans look at the revenue and think of CoH as a cash cow of sorts, but that's really not the case.  Their operating costs were upwards of a third of their revenue and climbing, which is a very bad trend, especially within a year of launching a new business model that promised a sustained increase.  The bump from their free-to-play model lasted little more than 6 months.
(snip)

I'm missing something here...

What Q2 decline in revenue are you talking about?

Comparing the Q1 and Q2 sales reports, Things look relatively stable Q1 to Q2:   2890 to 2855... a drop of a little over 1%

At that time, the combined NCSoft NA & European markets (the only markets CoH operates in) crumbled:
Q1: 2206+6907 = 10,213, Q2: 5783+699 =  6,482
That's over 30% decline!

So, in Q2, while the NA/Euro market plummetted for NCSoft, CoH was stable. 
In fact, it went from representing around 28% of all NCSoft's North America's sales to a whopping 44%. 


So, am I looking at the wrong resource here?  I'm kinda new to tracking financials.

[mikenovember]

Once it's shut down, what is the game actually worth? 

I've worked several corporate IT transitions in the past as a PM and dev at IBM, and have sunset more than one tool/company.  So I have some knowledge of how this plays out generally.  VV's right the valuation of the property will not change for a bit.  It's worth less shut down than as a functioning entity due to 'tribal knowledge' in place, but if you're buying it out - you're most likely going to consolidate it anyway in 9 months or less so ... many of those who aren't essential will be used for documentation and then moved to other posts, reassigned or let go.  (Yes, it's evil, I know.  It's how it's done - I'm sorry but that's what happens generally.) 

There are two types of IP of any value to Disney, the functioning assets of the game - i.e., Character creation process, game play mechanics, things which other groups do but don't do well - or that you can't easily replicate on your own.  Any fucntionality which would be unique to CoH.  If you think about it, there really isn't much at CoH which can't be replicated in another manner or that hasn't been replicated by other competitors in the market.  By purchasing CoH you have the existing systems which is great, but you still have to maintain them and improve on them.  It really depends on if the codes new or what is more likely, you've got bandaids and duct tape code where every time there was an improvement or a bug, instead of having the cash or time to do it right - you just slapped a patch on it with the intent to fix it properly 'in the next cycle'.  Truth is, the 'next cycle' might have new priorities so the buggy code you meant to replace becomes well known work-around-production code.  It's a mass of Spaghetti code that has either no comments and documentation or poor documentation and comments to work from.  Everyone 'knows' it's there so they create work-arounds to work around the work around bits, which also, wind up in the production code going forward.

When you buy a company that makes software you expect this code is in there... it always is.  You also expect your probably going to have to decide either to let it ride or replace it.  Most of the time you let it ride and then plan for a complete rebuild at a later time, so the value of this... is pretty much the functioning process, not the code itself. 

So, what's the value of COH's IP?  Pretty limited.  Its really the functional process and the copyrighted characters and concepts.   

If anyone buys it, now that it's shut down they'll have to do a relaunch, and a reopen... so ... you can expect thats your best time to rebuild from the bottom up anyway, which will include copyrighted works of dubious merit, tying in with your existing corporate plans, etc., so the value of the art, visual presentation, copyrighted Characters... not so much.  Any and all would be up on the chopping block to bring the new relaunch to a success.  They have a value but it's severely devalued at this point.

Which brings us to the second major IP value of CoH, which seems to be overlooked by a lot of people and it's probably the most important one of all.

The second IP value is the fan base.  Seriously.  It's us.  Ever play Champions?  It pretty much has a lot of the same features.  Same as DCUO.  Really, both are superhero based MMO's with customizable characters that let you choose your options for powers and play with others or solo.  Regardless of how we feel about them - they're the same in the eyes of the spreadsheet.

Remember the people buying are not probably players - the 'look' the 'feel' of one game will be pretty much the same to them, as opposed to your view of it.  You're not looking at a spreadsheet that has columns comparing features with an X for "Customized Character Creation" and seeing that DCUO, Champions, and CoH all have this, but they are and that's how they'll rank this and assess it.  Now, you and I and most of the gaming world would never put DCUO, Champions or any other Character Creation process against COH, or a lot of the features.  It's like amatuers and professionals in levels of difference here right?  But they will.  And they will do that for every feature and functionality.  They won't have the time to play all 3 games for themselves.  They might ask someone to - and they'll jump on for a couple hours and do a check list assessment on a spreadsheet and send an email out with the numbers.

That's how they'll do this.  That's reality.  That's how it's done. 

But they won't be stupid.  The people who make these decisions, are not generally idiots.  They will look at volumes of players over a 2-4-8 year period if possible.  They'll bring up the articles and analysis of the games markets by genre over the last many years.  And they will see that CoH is the Grand Daddy of this genre of MMO.  It's the oldest and it's been there the longest and yes, it's lost users and it's more than a bit grey in the technology beard... but they will also see over and over reports of the community being 'what makes CoH so special'. 

I don't think you ever read anything without that being mentioned.  So yeah, that gets a special column in the spreadsheet.

They will know that as each new competitor came out, CoH held ground and it wasn't for the technology in the game.  Seldom anywhere will you ever read a rave about the tech in CoH.  (I've looked.)   They'll know that if all of the DCUOs and the Champions have similar features ... something made CoH's work better at holding on to the fan base than the others or it wouldn't have lasted 8 years now would it??  It wouldn't even be marginally profitable after 8 years in the gaming world with the minimal advertising and so on... So, they will then ask, what was it? 

And they look at the column or section which is frequently entitled 'human factors' which is us.

We're the fan base, and then, they get into why CoH's functional processes have valuation - which is because they evolved around us, and our play.  But more importantly they evolved around something which is subjective.  The value only becomes a value to the subjective buyer of the product (once again that's US).

The bottom line and that means, the actual value to a prospective buyer is, "How many fans will come to the 'new' CoH we're buying?".    How many will stay?  How many will call a friend, a buddy, a coworker and say, "Hey check this out...". 

How much work will our marketing people have to make this profitable?  How many people can we expect as our core base?  That's our end of the IP evaluation equation.   That's what will be key to the purchase.  We're are very much the equivalent of Browncoats to the movie Serenity, or Trekies to Star Trek. 

And how many, now that the game has closed - will return if they reopen the doors?   Thats a very very important number.  How many of us, will come back?  How many of us will fight to reopen the doors? 

How many potential Trekkies are they buying?  How many potential Browncoats? 

That, is frankly, the only IP of any real value to them right now - everything else is important to be sure, but we're the trump card.  We're the big value. 

Anything else will need to be replaced, rebuilt, deconstructed, or will move to another job anyway in the next 12-24 months so the actual valuation is pretty much the fanbase itself at this point. 

[JaguarX]

Not everything that Disney touches turns to gold. To shamelessly borrow VVs style of post, here, I would point out one other example:

Haunted Mansion

This one had a decent crop of arguably bankable stars in it. This may seem like a counter example, but the point is that they are willing to risk. It may not seem like it, given the culture that surrounds them, but one doesn't have to look very far into their library to see that not everything in it is an "instant classic."

Also, one of my alts was a robot mastermind called Animatronic Lincoln. :)

true.

Well no entity is perfect.


Yeah I remember Pirates of the Caribbean pre-Depp days. It was a ride that was basically off to the side but good stuff.

When I heard they was making a movie off the ride I was one of the few that told people that movie, if they do it right, will make a lot of money. There wasnt many good adventure pirates movie out in those recent times. Of course many said I lost my mind (they didnt realize that I lost my mind years ago prior to that :p).

Well it's feasible that a Disney movie based off of COX will come out and but unlike Pirates of C. they have stiff competition from DC, Marvel, and where ever the X-Man stuff falls (Marvel I think). Unlike the gaming world a lot of people like Super Heroes, well known super heroes, comic book heroes. There have been inside less known super heros movies made in the past, most didnt do too well, others, brought the character into the mainstream but that was usually due to qualities that was not seen in standard mainstream super heroes. COX, friendly friendly relatively (I guess many cat girls wont make the final cut), but really most of the hero and villian background is no different than many of the mainstream heros and might be viewed as a mere rip off. Statesman-Superman. Manticore-Batman, any claws regen probably will compared to as a rip off of Wolverine. They have to be very careful with Sister Psyche and other psi powers or be compared to as  arip off of Jean Gray even if Disney owns  the rights to those things but they have to do some restructure to make it not seem likea water down version of Justice League. At the same time, I dont think we want to them to switch it over so much that the players of the games and or people familiar with the game do not even reconize it besides the name. Those might have been the reason why the original plan for the movie went into development hell or never came to be, it just might be.  But the same can be said for Resident Evil franchise were many fans felt it moved too much away from the actual game but still did very well (although I know more than my fgair share of people that didnt even know Resident Evil wasa video game and thought it was just another cool zombie movie.). It could go either way but lets not count the chickens before the egg hatch. We have to see if Disney is even interested or not in buying. They may be looking beyond DCUO and CO and looking at how they can make killer money for years to come and that may entail making this game a lot more grindy like on the multi-million dollar player base grind level, a level that most of us seem to not be used to and may be COX in name only. Or they might be ok keeping it relatively small and seeing what happens from there.

Hope for the best but prepare to deal with the worse.

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Everyone keeps talking about super hero movies.  And I get that's where some big bucks can be made.  But I honestly don't see them going that route with States, et al, out of the gate. It'd take a big marketing campaign, years of development, etc. to get out the door and to turn a profit.  And let's face it:  It wouldn't be cheap to make.  The special effects would be pricey.

Where I see Disney going with the franchise (is it OK to refer to it as a franchise?) is.. wait for it...  TV.  Think about it:  They have at least four channels that I can see a "Super Hero Show" being appropriate for:  ABC (Saturday cartoons, do they still have those?), Disney Channel, Disney Kids, and ABC Family.  All of them need content.  Cartoons (because I see this as more of a "Justice League" type show) can draw both kids and their parents.  And it's 30 minutes of advertising for THEIR OWN GAME.  Then, the tie ins:  Disney store merchandise (although I seem to recall their having DC items for sale in there a while back), toys, Disney World attractions.  Shoot, the game would then become more of a product supporting the entertainment beast than the other way around.  Mom and Dad want to fight crime along side Jimmy in a family friendly co-operative environment.  There's no grind.  It's casual.  Try it out!  $15 for a month's worth of fun alongside the characters from your favorite show!

They did do "No Ordinary Family," so they're at least open to the prospect of non-known heroes.  I just hope that didn't leave a bad taste in their mouth about super heroes.  And I don't think it did.  Didn't that fanbase try to save that show, too?

[dwturducken]

I think the idea is that having full possession of the IP and rights would let them fill in gaps that they don't currently have access to in the Marvel rights. Movies are just "dreaming big." :)

[saipaman]

As long as you are playing the game, the code base survives.

Actually MOST of the code lives ON your computer.  The server (technically mapserver) only holds two things:

The code that allows you to know where every other non-permanent object, NPC and PC is on the map that lives on your computer

and

SOME of the NPC dialogue.  The dialogue was moved before Who Will Die to avoid spoilers.

Everything else is still on your machine.  Basically if you can see it when you run a demorecord, it represents the code on your machine.

Where does the combat resolution take place?

[Codewalker]

Where does the combat resolution take place?

Server.  But the client has all the information present; and it's a system that has been picked apart by players for years to understand the intricate details of how it works.  That would probably be the easiest part to recreate if it came down to it.

Still a lot of work, but easier than recreating all the mission content from scratch.

[Victoria Victrix]

Just as an FYI, Team Wildcard made the deliberate decision NOT to mention movies or television.  Disney has decades more experience in seeing film and video potential than we do, and aside from a very few slips (all of which in the end broke even at worst) they are monumentally better at such things than we are.  We merely pointed out the 8 years worth of story-arcs in the game as evidence of rich content and we'll let them extrapolate from there.  As the old saying goes, "You don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs."  Talking about movie potential could have led to us being taken less seriously.

[Ammon]

The only thing where I did mention in the pitch about TV and other media that Disney already run successfully, was in the part about advertising, simply to point out the obvious that they could advertise the heck out of CoH once aquired for basically nothing more than production cost and opportunity cost, making it far cheaper for them, and with a stunningly high retention rate to the game (people who subscribe one month still subbing the next) this would make such advertising incredibly cost-effective for them.

Not said to teach them anything, just a small part of a small section outlining the basic SWOT analysis I contributed to the pitch. :)

[CrimsonCapacitor]

Shoot, in the real world, I'm a chemist.  I'm just thinking that IF Disney was going to do anything on film with the IP, it'd be on TV to start.  And that's where my thought process ended. 

From what I've seen, the arguments you've posted, Team Wildcard/Hail Mary has done a stellar job with the proposal.  Thank you for even making the attempt.