CoH Speculation/Conjecture

[Segev]

I wonder how a "Build-A-Hero Workshop" would do, either as a stand-alone store, in partnership with "Build-A-Bear," or as a paid attraction in Disney World.

[Victoria Victrix]

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.

Now this is where you get into an area in which I have some expertise, and this will depend ENTIRELY on what sort of rights Paramount bought.

If it was standard sequel rights for X number of sequels, then you are correct.

However...it might not be.  There's a clause known as "first option rights" or colloquially known as "right of first refusal" where contractually you must offer a company the first chance to refuse optioning the rights for the next project in line.  ONLY if they refuse to buy that option can the property go elsewhere.

I don't know if Paramount has that clause in their movie contracts with Marvel.  If they do, they can (and probably will) keep renewing the option until the heat-death of the universe even if they never make another movie after "Iron Man 3".

[LadyWizard]

Now this is where you get into an area in which I have some expertise, and this will depend ENTIRELY on what sort of rights Paramount bought.

If it was standard sequel rights for X number of sequels, then you are correct.

However...it might not be.  There's a clause known as "first option rights" or colloquially known as "right of first refusal" where contractually you must offer a company the first chance to refuse optioning the rights for the next project in line.  ONLY if they refuse to buy that option can the property go elsewhere.

I don't know if Paramount has that clause in their movie contracts with Marvel.  If they do, they can (and probably will) keep renewing the option until the heat-death of the universe even if they never make another movie after "Iron Man 3".

Well I know the "out of house" Sony got anything that had ever started in a spiderman comic so long as they make a movie every x number of year... FF4 and Daredevil not sure where those are at I know Marvel was making a deal daredevil for a bit longer for galactus(Daredevil was expiring and reverting if Fox didn't make a movie greenlit by October), Fox has all the mutants with same deal Sony got

[srmalloy]

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.

I'm curious. I remember over the years that one of the things that kept popping up in the forums as an "I want" thing was being able to get a physical representation of your character, à la Blizzard's deal with Figureprints to produce figurines of characters in WoW. The Paragon Studios staff, when asked, always said that this would be too difficult to do (I presume due to the limited resources available for developing the link to make character and costume data available to FigurePrints). Was something like this as a possible marketing option mentioned, or does this fall under the "don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" category?

[Victoria Victrix]

I'm curious. I remember over the years that one of the things that kept popping up in the forums as an "I want" thing was being able to get a physical representation of your character, à la Blizzard's deal with Figureprints to produce figurines of characters in WoW. The Paragon Studios staff, when asked, always said that this would be too difficult to do (I presume due to the limited resources available for developing the link to make character and costume data available to FigurePrints). Was something like this as a possible marketing option mentioned, or does this fall under the "don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs" category?

Pretty much, yes.  We just referenced merchandizing in a general way and pointed out how there was so little of it the players would make their own stuff.  When you have someone who has their own branded stores in malls across America you don't need to do anything other than wave vaguely at the sea of opportunity.

[Colette]

I would sooo love to have this feature. Something to keep in mind for Plan Z.

[srmalloy]

Pretty much, yes.  We just referenced merchandizing in a general way and pointed out how there was so little of it the players would make their own stuff.  When you have someone who has their own branded stores in malls across America you don't need to do anything other than wave vaguely at the sea of opportunity.

That's what I suspected; I'll make sure I couch my letters to merely allude to NCSoft's failure to exploit advertising and merchandizing opportunities, then.

[Tanglefoe]

After the shutdown notice I imagined a small company buying CoH with something like this:  $15 a month, annual new issue release with a .5 release mid year consisting of maybe 2-3 new power sets and costume sets.

[Colette]

"When the game goes dark this Saturday, we can expect that we might hear something by Monday."

I don't wish to be contrary, certainly because I have no more information than the rest of you (save my earlier quoted contact.) But I doubt we'll hear any more from NCSoft at all. They're hoping the stink will go away and not follow them back home. As y'all correctly observed, they did none of the things we'd all expect for cost-cutting, nor even any of the things a non-psychotic company would do to assuage the impact. No, it was just, "we're closing the game, please shut up and accept the inevitable, you'll always have a place in our hearts," in that order.

So they want us to go away, and will likely make no further statements to us to give us ammunition for our meme-mill. (They gave me a doozy last night.) We're officially enemies now, and have been ever since we crossed that line from "save CoH" to "anti-NCSoft."

[Victoria Victrix]

I don't expect to hear anything directly out of NCSoft about CoH ever again.  IF we get a sale, the news will probably come from the buyer via the gaming press.  NCSoft will say nothing except as a footnote in their stockholder report (if that) probably noted as "sale of assets." 

In the Disney pitch (and subsequent others if that one doesn't come through), Team Wildcard has deliberately taken ourselves out of the contact cycle.  We are selling the idea of buying CoH, not CoH itself.  We've put prospective buyers in touch with people who can facilitate that sale, and have negotiated with NCSoft in the past three months.  As such, we properly should be excluded from any negotiations.