Vague theory about the shutdown

[Quinch]

Something's been bugging me ever since Positron's Q&A. Around the two-minute mark, he talks about the behind-the-scenes goings-on just before the shutdown and while Matt didn't say anything about the reasons themselves, I can't help but see some dots that might be connected.

One of the things I've found to be most telling is that at no point is City of Heroes mentioned - Brian's efforts, once the thread of a shutdown became tangible, were centered around the studio itself and apparently for at least those several months before the shutdown, Paragon Studios was under pressure from NCsoft about something that might not have related to the City of Heroes at all. In fact, Matt openly says that initially, nobody in Paragon Studios thought that those pressures were of the kind that could lead to the entire studio shutting down. Furthermore, given that once a shutdown became a possibility, Hit Streak was attempting to find ways for a buyout means that the studio being axed from NCsoft entity was the more likely eventuality than simply meeting those pressures.

That got me thinking about the secret project Paragon was working on all this time. Is it possible that NCsoft's primary interest in Paragon Studios wasn't CoH, but whatever they expected this secret project to turn out, and maybe - possibly as a result of the Nexon involvement and the pay-to-win philosophy it brought - the project turned out to be impossible to reshape into the newly defined goals? Because if so, and if NCsoft's perception of Paragon Studios' worth was defined solely by "but what have you done for me recently?", then NCsoft might have viewed axing Paragon as little more than cutting off a dead limb, with City of Heroes being seen as nothing more than minor collateral damage.

Any thoughts? Feel free to poke holes in this theory.

[silvers1]

Wouldnt surprise me... they probably had a projection of when CoH would start going into the red based on faliing revenue numbers/subscribership.
And the secret project probably didnt fit into their pay2win game design philosophy.
The combination most likely led to their decision to axe Paragon studios.

[Triplash]

Do we have any idea what the second project actually was? If we know what they wanted it to be, that would tell us more about what they wanted from it. I remember hearing that the work on CoH 2 was cancelled quite some time ago so it wasn't that. I've heard a lot of rumors about what this latest second project was, everything from a new game to a mobile app to a freaking board game, but nothing solid.

I know one thing that would be interesting to learn. The threats to shutdown the studio a few months before the announcement... were any NCsoft executives let go or replaced around the time those threats started? Because if so, then we might have confirmed our theory that there was one particular exec who actively fought to preserve Paragon/CoH. And if the person who "had our backs" was no longer there, that could explain why we lost the fight.

And y'know, as I think about it, it must not have been about money at all. I mean, they had a whole second project's worth of people and resources they could have cut to save on money. But I don't remember hearing about thirty or forty layoffs at Paragon a few months before them shutting down. And if Paragon thought it was about money, then they might not like it but they'd damn sure let the second project go before closing their doors completely.

Speaking of the second project, I know that David Nakayama and a few others left CoH to work on it. Does anyone know when they transferred? If it happened around the same time as these threats started, then launching the second project - or at least ramping up its progress rate - might itself have been an attempted response.

*Wanders off to find the archive of the old forums, to look for Z's post about Noble Savage switching projects*

PS: Where you said Hit Streak, did you mean Crosscheck?

[ColTech]

I had posted something along these lines back on Nov. 10:


Here's a bit of speculation:

What if the supposed legal wrangling has nothing to do with CoH?
What if the (unwitting) target of this action was in fact Paragon Studios, and CoH was a mere bystander?
We know that much of Paragon Studios was engaged in work on the 'Secrit Projekt'.
Perhaps the Sekrit Projekt ran into legal quagmire, and the only effective way out of that mess was to shut down the Studio?
If a Projekt had to be killed, but it had to be done in such a way that did not violate certain conracts, etc., it might have been most effective to kill the entire Studio, in an effort to distract from true motivations...

Granted, I'm theorizing on something here with little to no information, but it might actually explain something.

This was in a different thread, and it really did not generate any discussion then, but perhaps it can lend some thoughts to this comment.
I've been suspicious for awhile that our WORLD was the innocent victim of a bigger, secret crossfire.

[Quinch]

Jgodine, could be. If it is, then due credit for seeing it before the rest of us.

Still wondering if there's anything specific we can dig up from Posi's comments, though. Knowledge is power.

[beveri8469]

it would be interesting to know what was going on behind the scenes these last few months.
of course we will probably never know.

[NecrotechMaster]

it sounds very possible

from all i been reading and hearing, it definitely sounded like ncsoft did not want anything to do with paragon studios/coh anymore, but instead of trying to sell it, they just axed it which i think caused a lot of backlash they did not expect and are now going to try to remedy this situation by potentially selling, but we wont know anything till after the holiday passes

[WildFire15]

I have to admit, I was thinking along roughly the same line here.
City of Heroes seems to have largely run under NC's main radar and when they looked at their titles wondering how to monetize them along the Pay 2 Win lines (again, all theory), they realized that they couldn't monetize CoH that way without not only a massive change of the game's basic design, but also changing the philosophy of Paragon Studios itself. Likely because of that, they decided that simply getting rid of it was the quickest and cheapest option, likely thinking the lose of the relatively small player base wouldn't be much of a real issue.
I dare say if they did purely look at their titles with 'MUST MAKE PAY 2 WIN!' in mind then they didn't take the time to consider how to monetize each game along their individual strengths. Most MMOs encourage you to make an investment in a small number of characters, so encouraging players to buy perks for individual characters works (even if it is bastardly) while City of Heroes activity encouraged players to make loads of characters. Paragon's approach to the Paragon Market was pretty much perfect for CoH as a stream of new costumes and powers led to players naturally making more new characters and purchasing more server slots or simply purchasing costume slots.
There's my two inf on that.

[dwturducken]

<hands out tin foil hats> 'Bout time you guys got here.

[Beltor]

Something i noticed but never got around to mentioning. Way back in June, i got an e-mail from ncsoft saying there was going to be a change in their account system and in a few months, existing game accounts would have to be changed to this new system. Lineage, Aion, and i think GW1 was mention specifically (GW2 wasn't officially released yet). But COH wasn't mentioned. This makes me think that shutting down COH and Paragon studios was planned months in advance by NCSoft and Paragon wasn't notified til the sudden announcement end of August.
 Just figured i'd put a stick in the fire.

[Surelle]

The super secret project was an online strategy war game, at least according to Tim Sweeney's LinkedIn profile, where he mentioned he was lead designer of it.  Someone else on these forums said there was also a board game in the works; perhaps it was based on that same strategy game.

[Perfidus]

My hope is that sooner or later these NDAs will expire, and we can finally, and legally, hear the truth from our beloved developers. I hesitate to do any kind of guesswork until then. We'll never know.

Also, Posi had definitely said in that interview with Maressa that "no one person will ever really know why this happened."

[NecrotechMaster]

Also, Posi had definitely said in that interview with Maressa that "no one person will ever really know why this happened."

thats prolly cause the only ones who do know are the big wigs at ncsoft and they sure as hell wont be telling us (the truth) anytime soon

[Quinch]

thats prolly cause the only ones who do know are the big wigs at ncsoft and they sure as hell wont be telling us (the truth) anytime soon

Also confirming what we already know, which is that NCsoft bigwigs aren't people.

[Ceremonius]

Also confirming what we already know, which is that NCsoft bigwigs aren't people.

But it still works. It works in your local store, it works in goverments and so on. And the people are just taking it without doing any actions.
Well currently here in germany it is this way: prices go up, but not the checks of the people. And if it goes up, there is always some company on wich you depent wich raised it's price. Inside of the people the heat begins to boil against our goverment. Well since the formation of anonymous more and more people joining....just a matter of time when they really enrage .

But that's what we need. All those companies can't survive without the customers. Also an NCS can't survive without any customers. And at this point it's nothing local anymore. We're here at a Network. It is now a completely global front. Wich means if NCS want's to survive they have to do any form of actions to please us rebelling folks . Cause there is no way to shut us down....and they know this. Even by law....I guess NCS knows that alot of us guys here have something to do with the internet...in a legal or not so legal way . And I don't know if NC really wants to fight. But if they want, they'll stand no chance. To many people and organizations are involved .

[DashaBlade]

Also an NCS can't survive without any customers.

In my case (and I think with many other people), it's not even really a boycott. It's more like, there's a restaurant you like that makes your favorite meal, but everything else on the menu is unappealing to you. The restaurant decides that since only one in twenty of its customers buys that meal, they'll stop selling it. Some people are content to keep going to the restaurant, because maybe there *are* other things on the menu they like. And that's fine as long as they're going because they like the food and not because they feel like they owe the restaurant owner something.

For me, it's like walking into what used to be a steakhouse and finding out that all they have now is salad (since the majority of customers prefer salad), and their salad is not even as good as the salad I could get at another place. So, I'll just find somewhere else - maybe I'll settle for the pizza place down the street; it's not as good as the steak, but it's better than salad. By getting rid of the only thing I liked, they've lost me as a customer. If they ever bring the steak back, I might come back too. But first I'll be sure to check and make sure it's actually steak, and not soybeans squashed up to look like one.

[Valjean]

I have a hunch that it may years before the true story ever gets out. That's how things seem to work in situation like this, as they need to get to a point where the current teams' careers aren't going to get hurt by 5-year old gossip coming out into the open.

Whatever it is though, it's probably not going to make NCsoft look good (if they're even around by then), and like most are suggesting, I'm betting that it has more to do with spite than business logic.

[bigdog1111]

Hey Quinch,

With different toons I grouped with you a number of times. I thoroughly enjoyed the way you roleplayed and ran the groups  Thanks!

[Quinch]

D'aww, thanks.  I think I may have been Virtue's resident PUG whore.

[Ironwolf]

I also was a PUG machine. I found the fun of building a team out of random players and then finding how to apply myself to it to make it "click" was what I found most fun.

My last team I had in a Positron run was a thing of beauty, everyone knew what to do and in fact so on top of it we split into 2 4 man teams and STILL steamrolled it.

[emu265]

My hope is that sooner or later these NDAs will expire, and we can finally, and legally, hear the truth from our beloved developers. I hesitate to do any kind of guesswork until then. We'll never know.

Also, Posi had definitely said in that interview with Maressa that "no one person will ever really know why this happened."

There's likely a few things that they'll never be able to say without risking their reputation, unfortunately.  I do recall that Melissa Bianco said she was completely caught off guard by the shutdown.  Though I am sure some of them know more than others.