Let me ask you all a question. Picture yourself five years from now. If CoH closed this year, but reopened five years from now, would you be interested in playing?
You might have to start from scratch with your characters. You might have to deal with a new monetization scheme. You might have to settle for no development or very slow development.
But you'll have it: everything you have now, under new management.
Would that be something you could enjoy? Would that be something you'd pay to experience?
Because that, to me, looks to be really possible and--more importantly--really probable. Let me explain.
People say that NCSoft hasn't released Exteel, Auto Assault, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners, and so on. But let me ask you, has anyone really, as far as you know, tried to acquire them recently?
I mean recently, like this year, a few years after the games closed. Because everybody and their uncles are interested in "saving" every two bit title when the services are still running. But what about years afterword?
Because I'd have to imagine if there was any serious interest in those games from a buyer, a serious plan, and a fair price, NCSoft couldn't ignore the offer. They can't, because the only thing a publisher can do with an out of print title is to unload it, if they can, for whatever they can get for it.
Publishers aren't archivists, and they don't even have an exclusive right to their IP after a certain time. Not even patents and IPs last forever. So, if they aren't making money off of running it, the only way they'll be able to make money off of it is to sell it. And if they don't, the IP becomes worthless as it falls into public domain.
See, you have to understand the dynamics of publishing, because it really doesn't change as much as we think it does between film, books, music, films, or even games. No matter what the medium may be, publishing is about the "backcatalogue" just as much as its about the "works in print." And a work like a game, just like the work of a novelist, falls into obscurity over time, making the work less valuable the longer it stays "out of print" and out of the public eye.
Now I think there's a reason that nobody in 2012 has stepped up to buy Exteel, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa off of NCSoft's backcatalogue: they were perceived as underdeveloped failures that are now, regrettably, too old and too obscure to be viable to most buyers. But I'd have to imagine that if someone wanted them, they could get them, and at a steal, compared to what it would take to develop them from scratch.
I have no doubt that if someone wants this game, they could have it. The rub is that it might take some time before it approaches the price they want.
