f13.net

Forbes Woman Link (http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceyjohn/2011/09/30/former-mythic-ceo-mark-jacobs-starts-city-state-entertainment/).

Not sure if this is news or simply reporting the inevitable.

 :facepalm:

It's nice to know that failed MMO devs can always go make Facebook games.

Woot, he will make movies and TV shows based on his ideas.

News to me.  Thanks.

He's been away for so long I thought this was about Marc Jacobs at first. Best of luck to him and I hope he makes something fun/interesting on the platforms he's working on.  So much of the casual gaming space is filled with uninteresting crap or revenue models hiding behind a bunch of cow clicking.

It's rare that the free or $1 game I get on my iphone is worth even that lower barrier to entry.

edit:

Didn't see this nugget at first.

Sounds like a great way to piss away your profits and/or set your sights on something that's out of your achievable scope.

Someone trying to be Zynga too hard...

Here's what I got out of it:


Venture capitalists told you your idea sucked. You decided to invest your own money in it anyway. This makes me question why you went to them in the first place unless you knew your idea sucked as well, and were hoping to piss away someone else's cash.


What? You invest your own money AND hire people with no gaming experience? That's the kind of outside the box thinking that will make you billions, my friend.

Accountant, Secretary and Janitor?

Are you allowed to say 'such as' when you list literally every project Mythic ever delivered?

What the fuck did Marc Jacobs do before daoc anyway? I vaguely assumed he'd come over from Morrowind but iiam.

All this 'failed developer' shit is a bit silly though.

DAoC was more successful than any mmog of the last 6 years, developing it and then selling Mythic to EA must have made him an eight figure sum.

From the wikipedia article on Mythic.

Mark's been involved with online RPGs since the mid 80's.  I remember Magestorm being mentioned a lot around the time Dark Age was coming to market.

I've never heard of any of those.

Good, I hope he fails so epically he ends up a street person.

Yes, I still remember what they did to my smite cleric.

Sorry but I just had to go and fix this one.

Neither had I.  Although, I suppose there was/is a decent enough market for them.  My only experience with pay to play muds was DragonRealms, and I think I managed to not pay money for any of it. 

If you hire an accountant that doesn't understand the industry, you're a fucking idiot.

Hell, I'd want my secretary to play games too. If you can't sell casual games to the secretaries of the world, you're going to fail.

As for the janitor, none of the ones in our building spoke really great English, so I'm not sure how to poll that audience.

Accountants should definitely understand game company accounting, but anything else isn't necessarily necessary. I've been at places where HR was handled by game developers, and other places where HR was handled by HR people. The latter tended to be more efficient.

I don't get how people who make Facebook/social-games are willing to admit to this in public. If you're a maker of Facebook/social-games it becomes blatantly obvious really quick that you're only after one thing - as much money as you can possible get away with, at any cost to the quality of your product, the welfare of the people consuming your product and to your integrity as a game developer.

No offense meant to anyone actually in the industry of making social-games.

Probably should have considered that before selling out to EA.  :oh_i_see:

I worked on a Magestorm clone (1:14 mark)  (http://youtu.be/1L3BA0rFaIc) using the Genesses3D engine  (http://www.genesis3d.com/)( Good times ). I am surprised you guys never played Magestorm or Splatterball.

-20 Game cred the lot of you!

Haha! * Finds old ass screen shot *

Mythic striking it rich with DAoC was like the Clampetts discovering oil out of sheer goddamned luck.  Had they not done so, no one would have ever heard about them, as the whole 'indy dev' thing was about 10x smaller compared to today.

Pretty sure selling out to EA is what meant he stopped having to listen to anyone ever again.

It wasn't luck, they did actually know what they were doing at that point.  DAOC was their graphical attempt at using everything they learned from the relatively successful Darkness Falls: The Crusade pay 2 play MUD. 

And IIRC the problems with WAR can all be traced back to the decision to abandon that decade and a half of knowledge and try something else, so as to not hurt the older game.

Lol..So much hate.

I don't see why this is worse than MMOs.

Yes, stray, this crowd fucking loves cow clickers and iOS games to death.  It's taking over the boards.

Seeing as I work in the HR field and with lots of other companies HR staff, I'm calling bullshit on you claiming they're efficient.

I guess that goes either way. A lot of HR people are educated in a generic kind of way, while a game developer would potentially know his field - and how to get people working together.

OTOH, some developers are neckbeards who don't know the first thing about people.

I played and enjoyed silent death online... 8-)  I'm a mark jacobs hipster, I guess.

Yeah, we're not gonna be just another company of old white guys!!

*outsources all programming to India*

That's hilarious.

When I first saw the thread I was confused. I thought Jacobs was Paul Barnett for a couple of minutes.  :grin:

Funding it with his own money is a terrible idea. I'll just leave it at that.

Mark Jacobs pissing away all his money and getting away from real gaming is a GREAT idea.

As best I can tell, the main point of the website is to promote City State's desktop art (http://citystateentertainment.com/media/). That's the only substantive thing on the site.

Admittedly the announcement is only notable because of the Mark Jacobs connection, but what was the point of this particular PR push? "Hi, I've started a new studio and don't really have anything else to talk about"? If Jacobs wants to talk about stuff with no outcomes, he's already got a blog.

Off the site:


I've got no issue with iOS titles or Facebook games, but tidbits like, "We were going to start up in Singapore, but decided to go with Virginia" don't strike notes of confidence to me.

 :grin:

I hope the drawing of the team was done by an 17 year old weaboo. It's... so bad.

I'm sure he got someone who had never done art to make it.  Just like he got people who've never made games to make games.

Kudos.  :grin:

Jacobs comes out in favour of sub-based MMO gaming (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-10-04-why-subs-based-mmos-have-a-future):


... which is why he's going casual / mobile gaming, I guess.

Isn't that colossal business failure, World of Warcraft free until level 20 these days?

Yea but in WoW using the trial prevents you from using global chat channels, so no one sees you cursing and being silly.

Wow, really, Mark? Seriously? That's goddamn rich coming from someone who made two Everquest clones and failed so utterly on the second one, he had to leave video games for a year, only to return with social/casual Facebook gaming.

Le fuck off.

No, no. The best part is where they say "after MMOs for a bit he decided to set his sights a bit higher" or whatever the exact quote. As if he left of his own accord or that making fucking mobile games was ever his goal.

I'd be intrigued to know what you'd expect him to do.

He's just the latest high profile game dev who had one success and a string of fail following it, who believes his own hype and thinks he's the second coming of Jebus. Not like we haven't seen it before.

I don't give a shit what he does. I'm pointing out that the notion that he left MMOs behind is a blatant falsehood. He didn't leave anything behind willingly. He got shitcanned for being terrible.

And you'd put that on your cv, would you?

Didn't think so.

Retire? Spend his years not investing in stupid shit like his own ideas that venture capitalists in the Far East told him were shit?

Perhaps write a book?

Go to space... :grin:

Is there something wrong with you? I'm not talking about his resume. I'm pointing out that there's a blatant (if benign) falsehood in the article.

I wouldn't put it on the CV, but it would have been nice for the "games journalist" to note it.

"Games journalist" heh.

Also if "getting shitcanned" means 'EA giving me millions of dollars' then I'd be cool with that.

At no point did you attribute the quote.  I assumed because of the post above yours that these words came from Jacobs himself.  If you have problems with the Journalist saying 'setting sights higher' and that it's a fluff piece, well, er.... I'm not sure what you expect.  I read it and it seemed like push PR.  You're surprised ?

Or just OUTRAGED because of all the GOOD games journalism out there ?   :oh_i_see:

Yes, you're entirely correct.

Let me know when that happens.  I'll sign up to whatever rag is going with the truth as opposed to Marketing Money.

Who the fuck said I was surprised? Or even so outraged that it's going to ruin my day? I'm pointing out that there's a blatant falsehood there, puff piece or no. And you're swinging from my nuts from it?

(Also, if someone wrote that he left a company when he was fired? On his CV? I'd toss his file in the fucking garbage.)

My, you're an angry little elf, aren't you ?

Be aware :  Everyone says they left a company when they were fired.

Everyone.

True story.

However, I DID resign from my last position.

 :awesome_for_real:

Ironwood, I like how you can write succinctly what would take me paragraphs.

<article> <verb> <noun> <verb 'to be'> cunts.

Not that hard tbh.

I'm pretty sure that's covered in the first year of primary school in Scotland.

I can see it now:

Mom: "What did you learn on your first day at school sweety?"
Kid: "Everyone is a bunch of cunts!"
Mom: "Very good!"
Kid: "Cunt!"

No no, not Scottish enough.

McMam: "Och aye the noo, what did yae learn a' school mah wee bairn?"
Bairn: "All ya ye's are all cunts mam"
McMam: "Aye, that's wee fuckin swell!"
Bairn: "Cunt!" <headbutts mother in cunt>

You've all taken that too far. (http://youtu.be/RD89wjUQZCw)

 :awesome_for_real:

Wha...what?  WHAT?!  Goddamn it, Jacobs...fine!  You get two more minutes of limelight (http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/5684/page/1), then either put out or GTFO!