Are we going to hear from Brian Clayton. Positron, War Witch soon ??

[Lily Barclay]

He implied a few coffee talks ago that he might be doing his own thing if nothing panned out, but he wasn't really allowed to say that yet.

[Technerdoc]

Let's hire him for Plan Z   ;D

[Segev]

Let's hire him for Plan Z   ;D

If only we could. However, if the gags come off tomorrow...well, I have a few ways to contact some people and ask what they think of Plan Z and if they have any way we can tune it to work with their future plans. Should their future plans in any way touch on a spiritual successor to CoH, anyway.

[Technerdoc]

When I'm a publisher boss in my next live then I would do it just like that to be the hero: When I can't get the game IP then I try to get the people to let them do a similar game...

...but this is just me, maybe it isn't that simple...

[Segev]

One of the reasons I want to build myself a financial empire to dwarf that of Bill Gates is so that I can do things like that.

[downix]

One of the reasons I want to build myself a financial empire to dwarf that of Bill Gates is so that I can do things like that.

First lesson: high taxes are your friend. Money invested in the company is not taxes, encouraging growth. Gates purposeffully located in high tax areas to keep money in the company rather than extracted by greedy execs.

[Segev]

First lesson: high taxes are your friend. Money invested in the company is not taxes, encouraging growth. Gates purposeffully located in high tax areas to keep money in the company rather than extracted by greedy execs.

Interesting philosophy. You'd want low corporate taxes but high personal taxes, I think, for such a scheme.

[HEATSTROKE]

 well lets hope there is some news to energize the community today.

[epawtows]

Interesting philosophy. You'd want low corporate taxes but high personal taxes, I think, for such a scheme.

Can we PLEASE lay off the real-world politics? 

Sorry for sounding snarky, I really do appreciate everything you're doing for CoH, PlanZ, and all of it.  You're fantastic about all of that.  And it's not like you go on and on about it.  But one reason I like these boards is that it's a haven from politics (as was CoH and the CoH boards, for the most part).

[downix]

Interesting philosophy. You'd want low corporate taxes but high personal taxes, I think, for such a scheme.

Nope, the opposite. Corporate taxes are applied to operating profit, that is, the profit left over *after* you've paid for everything, not gross profit, the money you take in minus direct costs.

Let me take for example the cost of an employee. The difference between the total cost of that employee and the corporate tax rate is the effective cost of that employee. This is a simplified model I'm about to use, but it gives the general idea: If your corporate tax rate is 25%, and the employee's salary, compensation package, etc, comes to $100k a year, you would be paying $75k of it out of profit. However, if your corporate tax rate is 50%, you are only paying $50k out of profit.

This is one of the reasons why nations with the highest percentage of workforce also are nations with high corporate tax rates. China has one of the highest, with, between its various tax codes (China applies 6 different taxes on a corporation) adding up to 62% as of 2011. I understand it has dropped to 53% aggregate since then. Germany, an economic powerhouse, has a total aggregate of 56.9% for manufacturing.

It seems illogical if you don't understand corporate tax structure, but if you do, it is clear, higher corporate taxes means lower costs for employees.

[Segev]

Can we PLEASE lay off the real-world politics? 

Sorry for sounding snarky, I really do appreciate everything you're doing for CoH, PlanZ, and all of it.  You're fantastic about all of that.  And it's not like you go on and on about it.  But one reason I like these boards is that it's a haven from politics (as was CoH and the CoH boards, for the most part).

Sorry, sorry; it's a weakness of mine. I'm generally decent at keeping it to a low philosophical background thing, at least insofar as I can keep from bringing it up myself. Usually. But I'm really bad at avoiding rising to the bait. My apologies, again.

[epawtows]

Sorry, sorry; it's a weakness of mine. I'm generally decent at keeping it to a low philosophical background thing, at least insofar as I can keep from bringing it up myself. Usually. But I'm really bad at avoiding rising to the bait. My apologies, again.

I understand.  I'm pretty liberal, and generally try to avoid political arguments when baited by the other side (which, in this case, would be you, I guess :-)  Partially to avoid flame wars, and partially because I'm just plain bad at arguing in general (which means I don't want to take this to PM's either). 

Don't take this as an insult, I really appreciate what you're doing here, which is way more than me. 

[Terwyn]

Our dear Dr. Aeon has been snapped up by Cryptic to work on STO.

[HEATSTROKE]

oh well..

[KnightHawk Prime]

That's a good thing. He now has a solid paycheck coming in again (always a plus, food's kinda important), and someone we *know* is good is working on STO, also a plus.

Besides, Dr. Aeon with *Star Trek* level technology to play with? Brrrrr. (AE *World*.)

They're going to *need* heroes over there soon, methinks. ;]

2cp. ;]

[Atlantea]

What bothers me is that we've heard of many of the PS Devs going to work on Star Trek.

NONE have been hired to work on Champions Online.

You'd think Champions would get some love. But no - it never ever does. They're basically working with a skeleton crew there struggling just to keep the lights on EVEN NOW!

I'm not very impressed with PWE.

[HEATSTROKE]

That's a good thing. He now has a solid paycheck coming in again (always a plus, food's kinda important), and someone we *know* is good is working on STO, also a plus.

Besides, Dr. Aeon with *Star Trek* level technology to play with? Brrrrr. (AE *World*.)

They're going to *need* heroes over there soon, methinks. ;]

2cp. ;]

Its absolutely a good thing. These are real people with real families that depend on them. Thats more important than anything.

[HEATSTROKE]

What bothers me is that we've heard of many of the PS Devs going to work on Star Trek.

NONE have been hired to work on Champions Online.

You'd think Champions would get some love. But no - it never ever does. They're basically working with a skeleton crew there struggling just to keep the lights on EVEN NOW!

I'm not very impressed with PWE.

Ive tried CO.. hated it.. hate the it looks and plays...

[Codewalker]

You'd think Champions would get some love. But no - it never ever does. They're basically working with a skeleton crew there struggling just to keep the lights on EVEN NOW!

I'm not very impressed with PWE.

That's not a PWE thing, that's a Cryptic thing. The did the same thing to COH when they started working on CO. And I'm sure they will do it to STO when the decide what their "next big thing" is.

[Segev]

Hm. It could be fun, sometime in the future, when Plan Z is functional (assuming things go that direction) as a game, to contact Cryptic about doing limited events with the Plan Z Earth as one of those planets that "looks just like Earth did in the 21st century, but..." so heroes can run into Starfleet and vice-versa. </random musing>