Star Power

[SithRose]

Failing a sick kid who doesn't want his toon to die....(cynical?  Oh, a tad)

To make this newsworthy we have GOT to get this out of the virtual world and into the real world, and soon.

Um...Actually...

Does a pair of autistic kids who used COH as a tool for speech therapy help much? They don't play much anymore, but they were REALLY huge players during their non-verbal periods. And developed a pretty good amount of language from playing it, listening to the Cape, and talking on the Cape...

(I am actually including that in my paper letter, which I'm working on. And they're going to be REALLY heartbroken to hear that their heroes are going to be shut down, even if they aren't really playing much right this minute.)

[Victoria Victrix]

(crossposted from another thread)

First off, this post is NOT meant to discourage you guys.  Just remember we have to deal in facts as well as hope.

Larry did some fact-checking and money-tracing (he's the brains of our operation, I just do the heavy-word-lifting).  This is what he found.

The essence of it all appears to be as simple as this: NCsoft is owned by Nexon Co. Ltd., and Nexon has a record of only being interested in what benefits Asian gamers, and last quarter, their push was heavy East and EU.

Paragon Studios employed 80 people.  Nexon employs 3,400.  City made $800k clear profit a month.  Nexon's quarterly was $242 million, and their latest 1 of 60 MMOs registered 3 million players in China last month.  Nexon has been at a steady $1.1 to $1.2 billion dollar company for 3 years.

As big as CoH has been to us, City wasn't even a blip seen from Tokyo and Seoul.  Someone 5,000 miles away (who likely never played any game the corporation owns---and even their largest shareholder only has a 21 percent share) said "reduce North American assets," and this happened.  And with a billion people in China as a market for Nexon's free-to-play/micropayment 2D MMOs versus a highly-technical American-based 3D MMO, they saw no reason to bother (or, really, even take notice).

THIS SHOULD NOT DISCOURAGE YOU, especially from writing letters.  But I would suggest to turn the request to NCSoft to "Please consider keeping the game and Paragon Studios--or at least partial staff--running until a new buyer can be found."  there are good economic reasons for this--even at half profit because of dropped subscribers over this, $400k a month is not to be sneezed at for something you are going to sell off anyway, not to mention something you were intending to dump flat.  It's like renting out the house you intend to sell, except that the renters know they are just going to be changing landlords, not getting booted.

[ryuplaneswalker]

(crossposted from another thread)

First off, this post is NOT meant to discourage you guys.  Just remember we have to deal in facts as well as hope.

Larry did some fact-checking and money-tracing (he's the brains of our operation, I just do the heavy-word-lifting).  This is what he found.

The essence of it all appears to be as simple as this: NCsoft is owned by Nexon Co. Ltd., and Nexon has a record of only being interested in what benefits Asian gamers, and last quarter, their push was heavy East and EU.

Paragon Studios employed 80 people.  Nexon employs 3,400.  City made $800k clear profit a month.  Nexon's quarterly was $242 million, and their latest 1 of 60 MMOs registered 3 million players in China last month.  Nexon has been at a steady $1.1 to $1.2 billion dollar company for 3 years.

As big as CoH has been to us, City wasn't even a blip seen from Tokyo and Seoul.  Someone 5,000 miles away (who likely never played any game the corporation owns---and even their largest shareholder only has a 21 percent share) said "reduce North American assets," and this happened.  And with a billion people in China as a market for Nexon's free-to-play/micropayment 2D MMOs versus a highly-technical American-based 3D MMO, they saw no reason to bother (or, really, even take notice).

THIS SHOULD NOT DISCOURAGE YOU, especially from writing letters.  But I would suggest to turn the request to NCSoft to "Please consider keeping the game and Paragon Studios--or at least partial staff--running until a new buyer can be found."  there are good economic reasons for this--even at half profit because of dropped subscribers over this, $400k a month is not to be sneezed at for something you are going to sell off anyway, not to mention something you were intending to dump flat.  It's like renting out the house you intend to sell, except that the renters know they are just going to be changing landlords, not getting booted.

800K a month? really that is actually not a bad amount of profit for a very small studio like that to be making, Did Larry happen to find out the developmental costs that Paragon Studios had? I would love to see the Profit Margins as a whole.

[Tannim222]

Two things.

First being, that 800k in clear profit a month, are we to assume that "clear profit" is to mean after known expenses?

Second, my 5 year old son is deaf and hard of hearing and learned a lot of language sitting with me playing City of Heroes. Other games I've played don't hold his attention as well as CoX does. I doubt he woud've picked up as many words with another game as he has with this one. I've considered putting that in my letter, but am leary of using my son's deafness as a means of gain. I know that saying the game helped him learn to talk is a positive message for the game, I'm a little sensitive about my kid and wouldn't want to unintentionally create a sense of pity for him.

[SithRose]

Two things.

First being, that 800k in clear profit a month, are we to assume that "clear profit" is to mean after known expenses?

Second, my 5 year old son is deaf and hard of hearing and learned a lot of language sitting with me playing City of Heroes. Other games I've played don't hold his attention as well as CoX does. I doubt he woud've picked up as many words with another game as he has with this one. I've considered putting that in my letter, but am leary of using my son's deafness as a means of gain. I know that saying the game helped him learn to talk is a positive message for the game, I'm a little sensitive about my kid and wouldn't want to unintentionally create a sense of pity for him.

Frame it as a positive statement of growth and learning through the medium of the game, as an ideal medium to appeal to learning-impaired children. Kids LOVE superheroes. COH has a more realistic-looking graphics set than the other games, and thus is better suited to both social stories and word/speech practice. It's something that the sword and sorcery games don't provide, because they are less likely to appeal to kids in the 2-5 age range. The situations in COH are simple enough to explain to a small child, and sophisticated enough to provide good social learning to an older 6-9 year old. I'd been planning on picking it up again with my eldest to help him work through some of the problems with action/consequence and social thinking he's been having.

Some folks here may remember the Counting Cape station ID that was used in 2006-7, which had a small child counting to 10. That was one of the first times my oldest actually counted out loud to 10. (Yes, that was my son.)

[Dr Shadow]

My son is 9 and plays CoH.  He has a genetic condition with a very long name. Like you I've been leery of using him. I've mentioned to others he is the reason I've joined this fight. He will never ride a bike, never play sports, and never run in a game of tag, But in City of Heroes he can fly.

[ROBOKiTTY]

My son is 9 and plays CoH.  He has a genetic condition with a very long name. Like you I've been leery of using him. I've mentioned to others he is the reason I've joined this fight. He will never ride a bike, never play sports, and never run in a game of tag, But in City of Heroes he can fly.

Upon seeing this, my pellucid globular lumino-incandescence receptors were inundated with free-flowing, non-gaseous saliferous molecules. I rebooted.

[emu265]

(crossposted from another thread)

First off, this post is NOT meant to discourage you guys.  Just remember we have to deal in facts as well as hope.

Larry did some fact-checking and money-tracing (he's the brains of our operation, I just do the heavy-word-lifting).  This is what he found.

The essence of it all appears to be as simple as this: NCsoft is owned by Nexon Co. Ltd., and Nexon has a record of only being interested in what benefits Asian gamers, and last quarter, their push was heavy East and EU.

Paragon Studios employed 80 people.  Nexon employs 3,400.  City made $800k clear profit a month.  Nexon's quarterly was $242 million, and their latest 1 of 60 MMOs registered 3 million players in China last month.  Nexon has been at a steady $1.1 to $1.2 billion dollar company for 3 years.

As big as CoH has been to us, City wasn't even a blip seen from Tokyo and Seoul.  Someone 5,000 miles away (who likely never played any game the corporation owns---and even their largest shareholder only has a 21 percent share) said "reduce North American assets," and this happened.  And with a billion people in China as a market for Nexon's free-to-play/micropayment 2D MMOs versus a highly-technical American-based 3D MMO, they saw no reason to bother (or, really, even take notice).

THIS SHOULD NOT DISCOURAGE YOU, especially from writing letters.  But I would suggest to turn the request to NCSoft to "Please consider keeping the game and Paragon Studios--or at least partial staff--running until a new buyer can be found."  there are good economic reasons for this--even at half profit because of dropped subscribers over this, $400k a month is not to be sneezed at for something you are going to sell off anyway, not to mention something you were intending to dump flat.  It's like renting out the house you intend to sell, except that the renters know they are just going to be changing landlords, not getting booted.

Thanks for the info, my friend.

I spent a lot of time working out possible theories as to reasons for the shutdown and this is definitely the most likely and also the most difficult to overcome.  Summary: they knew what they were losing and decided it was worth it.

This realigns our focus to "make NOISE~!" because we want them to feel the negative effects of doing this so much so that they reconsider.  Just gotta keep pushing, we'll get it. 

[Victoria Victrix]

My son is 9 and plays CoH.  He has a genetic condition with a very long name. Like you I've been leery of using him. I've mentioned to others he is the reason I've joined this fight. He will never ride a bike, never play sports, and never run in a game of tag, But in City of Heroes he can fly.

....I just ran out of Kleenex again, dammit.

I hate to say this, but your son is exactly the "sick kid" we've been looking for. 

Explain to him what is going on.  Ask him if he is willing to help.

It's up to you and your son if you want to do this, but a YouTube of you explaining about his condition while he plays CoH behind you, ending with you saying "Please, for my son, don't shut this game down.  He will never ride a bike, never play sports, and never run in a game of tag, But in City of Heroes he can fly"....

The writer in me is fist-pumping while I wipe my eyes again.
 
There have to be more kids like him out there.  You're doing this for him, and for them. 

If you do this, post the link to it here, and we start sending NCSoft and every media outlet we know the link and the explanation.

[Tannim222]

Please don't mistake me, CoH has been nothing but a positive experience for my son. He's learned new words, learned how to read new words, the concept of creating a character and giving it a name (he's drawn known heroes such as batman, spider man etc..but after playing with the character creator he's run off to draw his creation). The playing environment is such that I know when I put "child at keyboard with parent", people will be respectful.

I could go on about the positive aspects, but in the end once I bring up him being deaf, it kind of makes me feel like I'm using his deafness to gain attention. Could I leave that out, sure. But the truth of the matter is, the average deaf american has the reading level of a fourth grade child. Currently, my son is reading at his age level and one of the few of his age group at his school who can. CoH is a part of that, and just typing that brings a smile to my face. But the thought of sending out a letter with the intent on changing someone's mind with the use of his deafness in part of the impact, makes a small part of me feel like that's wrong.

It may be just the constant sense of guilt that follows a parent of a child with a disability (if anyone who is in the deaf community please forgive my use of the term), but it's what has stalled me in placing that part of my CoH experience in a letter.

[Victoria Victrix]

Please don't mistake me, CoH has been nothing but a positive experience for my son. He's learned new words, learned how to read new words, the concept of creating a character and giving it a name (he's drawn known heroes such as batman, spider man etc..but after playing with the character creator he's run off to draw his creation). The playing environment is such that I know when I put "child at keyboard with parent", people will be respectful.

I could go on about the positive aspects, but in the end once I bring up him being deaf, it kind of makes me feel like I'm using his deafness to gain attention. Could I leave that out, sure. But the truth of the matter is, the average deaf american has the reading level of a fourth grade child. Currently, my son is reading at his age level and one of the few of his age group at his school who can. CoH is a part of that, and just typing that brings a smile to my face. But the thought of sending out a letter with the intent on changing someone's mind with the use of his deafness in part of the impact, makes a small part of me feel like that's wrong.

It may be just the constant sense of guilt that follows a parent of a child with a disability (if anyone who is in the deaf community please forgive my use of the term), but it's what has stalled me in placing that part of my CoH experience in a letter.

It's also the parent in you not wanting to make things harder on a kid that already has only half a meal on his plate. 

I am not going to urge you one way or the other.  I would say, ask HIM if this is something he wants you to do.  He's old enough to be told what is going on and to make a decision about HIS condition.

If he says "I want to help," then it becomes his decision, not yours, and you can proceed guilt-free.

[emu265]

Please don't mistake me, CoH has been nothing but a positive experience for my son. He's learned new words, learned how to read new words, the concept of creating a character and giving it a name (he's drawn known heroes such as batman, spider man etc..but after playing with the character creator he's run off to draw his creation). The playing environment is such that I know when I put "child at keyboard with parent", people will be respectful.

I could go on about the positive aspects, but in the end once I bring up him being deaf, it kind of makes me feel like I'm using his deafness to gain attention. Could I leave that out, sure. But the truth of the matter is, the average deaf american has the reading level of a fourth grade child. Currently, my son is reading at his age level and one of the few of his age group at his school who can. CoH is a part of that, and just typing that brings a smile to my face. But the thought of sending out a letter with the intent on changing someone's mind with the use of his deafness in part of the impact, makes a small part of me feel like that's wrong.

It may be just the constant sense of guilt that follows a parent of a child with a disability (if anyone who is in the deaf community please forgive my use of the term), but it's what has stalled me in placing that part of my CoH experience in a letter.

Let me... disclaim... before I get to my point.  I'm no stranger to being labeled as a walking spectacle or representation of someone I am not (anyone who may have read my posts closely close, and/or put one and one together, might I have picked up that I am gay).  It sucks when you just want to be seen as a person rather than deaf, or whatever else it is.  I can tell you feel this for your son.  That can't be easy.  It puts you in an even more difficult situation because it's not you that you're speaking for, but your son.

Being said, I have faith that no one here will make you use this angle.  It wouldn't be right for anyone to tread on your conscious like that.  However, this is an extremely compelling point to make.  I won't lie, it could make a real impact if you choose to move forward with it.  But it's your choice.  Don't let anyone bully you.

[Tannim222]

Thanks Victoria and emu265. I will have to think on it some more. Explaining it to him would be rather difficult even though he's almost six, his over-all language is probably that of a four year old. So I could explain that someone is making CoH going away, but if I tell them why he liked it so much, they might give it back. That's probably as simple as I could put it for him. He doesn't even identify himself as deaf. He using a hearing aid and cochlear implant, goes to a special school for hearing impaired kids that are all like him, and has made tremendous strides language wise and socially in the year and several months that he's been there.

He understands that he's different, but has a hero's worth of self-confidence. Recently he told a class of 22 third grade children to stop laughing when he was trying to repeat their names. They weren't actually laughing at him, but more due to having the "cute kid" in their class. He still got them all to promptly stop laughing and went on about his business as if nothing happend afterward.

Lilabird, that brought tears to my eyes.

[Terwyn]

I myself am somewhat autistic. CoX has long been my primary social outlet, and has in fact helped me to establish a greater trust in my own voice in the real world. I've been rather hesitant about being vocal about that fact, considering that it is quite difficult to describe the experience.

I'm slowly working on my own document to assist this project.

[NecrotechMaster]

(crossposted from another thread)

First off, this post is NOT meant to discourage you guys.  Just remember we have to deal in facts as well as hope.

Larry did some fact-checking and money-tracing (he's the brains of our operation, I just do the heavy-word-lifting).  This is what he found.

The essence of it all appears to be as simple as this: NCsoft is owned by Nexon Co. Ltd., and Nexon has a record of only being interested in what benefits Asian gamers, and last quarter, their push was heavy East and EU.

Paragon Studios employed 80 people.  Nexon employs 3,400.  City made $800k clear profit a month.  Nexon's quarterly was $242 million, and their latest 1 of 60 MMOs registered 3 million players in China last month.  Nexon has been at a steady $1.1 to $1.2 billion dollar company for 3 years.

As big as CoH has been to us, City wasn't even a blip seen from Tokyo and Seoul.  Someone 5,000 miles away (who likely never played any game the corporation owns---and even their largest shareholder only has a 21 percent share) said "reduce North American assets," and this happened.  And with a billion people in China as a market for Nexon's free-to-play/micropayment 2D MMOs versus a highly-technical American-based 3D MMO, they saw no reason to bother (or, really, even take notice).

THIS SHOULD NOT DISCOURAGE YOU, especially from writing letters.  But I would suggest to turn the request to NCSoft to "Please consider keeping the game and Paragon Studios--or at least partial staff--running until a new buyer can be found."  there are good economic reasons for this--even at half profit because of dropped subscribers over this, $400k a month is not to be sneezed at for something you are going to sell off anyway, not to mention something you were intending to dump flat.  It's like renting out the house you intend to sell, except that the renters know they are just going to be changing landlords, not getting booted.

this is some very interesting information.  coh while it was making a profit, compared to the rest of the company was a drop in the bucket

since they are primarily focusing on the Asian gamer population, i think if we could convince them to sell it would be able to work

key points would be:

• this game while still profitable was not profitable enough to them so they could receive money for selling it
• if this game was sold then it would not be able to compete with anything else the company sells since it appeals to american/european gamers more than asian gamers

so lets say coh was making $800k quarterly after expenses, if they were willing to sell rights to coh for $800k-1mil  then they would basically get 1 quarter more of revenue from coh and then they wouldnt have to worry about using legal power to try to maintain control over those rights and focus more on their asian games

we still need to hear statements from ncsoft regarding this situation and if they are willing to sell.  honestly though with your declaration that you would be an unpaid spokesperson for their games, NOT selling would be a pretty stupid option since they are giving up free publicity

[Victoria Victrix]

OK, I just started a new thread, "Testimonials" for those of you who don't want to exploit your/your child's condition publicly, but at the same time, know how much the game has helped you/them.  We're going to aggregate anonymous testimonials.  Go!  Post!  Make me cry!

[zoser]

Smarter people than I have already said all that can be said about going public with the truly heart-wrenching stories parents have told here - I just want to add that I now more than ever hope that the NCSOFT people have a heart somewhere and keep the game alive!

Thank you and Larry in particular for diving into the NCSOFT financials and working this out. It is quite interesting that Nexon basically only cares about the Asian market ... does anyone think that it would make sense that we try and reach out to the gaming community and/or gaming sites over there to try and get them to join our cause or at least report on it? We would need the necessary language skills, of course ...

Zos

[Dr Shadow]

Explain to him what is going on.  Ask him if he is willing to help.


He knows what's going on, and I have no doubt he would be willing to help. ( Now, to convince daddy.) He was devastated when I told him.  If I can do this, the problem with him is he is very dramatic. Overly so. Especially if he has an audience.

[Victoria Victrix]

Explain to him what is going on.  Ask him if he is willing to help.


He knows what's going on, and I have no doubt he would be willing to help. ( Now, to convince daddy.) He was devastated when I told him.  If I can do this, the problem with him is he is very dramatic. Overly so. Especially if he has an audience.

Damn it, the poor baby....reaching for Kleenex again...

OK the thing to do is to have him playing CoX in the background without him knowing you are recording.  Or at least, without being aware that he is part of the recording.  Say your speech.  Play it back to him and get his OK.  Then post it.

Also please post your story over on the Testimonials thread. 

[ryuplaneswalker]

this is some very interesting information.  coh while it was making a profit, compared to the rest of the company was a drop in the bucket

since they are primarily focusing on the Asian gamer population, i think if we could convince them to sell it would be able to work

key points would be:

• this game while still profitable was not profitable enough to them so they could receive money for selling it
• if this game was sold then it would not be able to compete with anything else the company sells since it appeals to american/european gamers more than asian gamers

so lets say coh was making $800k quarterly after expenses, if they were willing to sell rights to coh for $800k-1mil  then they would basically get 1 quarter more of revenue from coh and then they wouldnt have to worry about using legal power to try to maintain control over those rights and focus more on their asian games

we still need to hear statements from ncsoft regarding this situation and if they are willing to sell.  honestly though with your declaration that you would be an unpaid spokesperson for their games, NOT selling would be a pretty stupid option since they are giving up free publicity

The one really strange thing is that with NCsofts Second Quarter losses it looks to be an incredibly bad idea to get rid of 800K a month revenue source they can use to subsidize other game, also Nexion likely had very little to do with this decision, even as a large shareholder 11% does not exactly wield a great deal of power in shareholder meetings.