CCP is unmerging with White Wolf, get your beards out

[UnSub]

Back when Cheyenne Mountain Entertinament was working on that Stargate MMO, they were also funding Shane Hensley to make the Deadlands MMO. By the end I believe that Hensley only managed to keep going as long as he did - as possibly paid some other costs on that project - because he was making good money from his pen'n'paper RPGs and subsidising his game development with it.

It's a hard business, but once you've carved out a decent niche, it can be good money for the IP holder. And White Wolf is a great set of IPs to hold.

If CCP sells White Wolf, it's to get CCP out of a hole, not because White Wolf is worthless.

[zabuni]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/05/world-of-darkness-the-inside-story-mmo-ccp-white-wolf

Very long article about WoD, with a lot of internal talk from team members. Looks like the knives are out.

There was another problem. Several members of the WoD development team told the Guardian that this early bump in the road was exacerbated by extreme disorganisation on the part of CCP’s Icelandic management. Very shortly after initial development began, the company started blurring the lines between the World of Darkness and Eve projects.

Repeatedly, staff were shifted over from the former to work on expansion projects for the latter. At times, our sources say, the entire WoD staff was put onto Eve, particularly during the development of 2009 add-on Apocrypha.

Sources report that, over the nine-year period, the game effectively reached alpha – the stage at which all the major features have been implemented - three times, only for each version to be scrapped.

“I tested it myself, on two different occasions out of those three,” says Blood. “With the first playtest, I was amazed at how little of the core game was there – at this point the game had been in development for over half a decade. I mean, there was just nothing, literally nothing, for someone like me, a complete outsider to the WoD IP, to appreciate.

Design meetings were decidedly robust affairs. Lead designers piled into what was known as “The Sweaty Room” and yelled at one another. “It was very alpha-male, whoever shouted longest and hardest would dominate the meetings,” recalls one developer. “This didn't seem to spill out into the rest of the project until later.”

On monocle-gate

Eventually CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson issued an apology to the players. But even this short appeasement wasn’t what it seemed; according to Blood, Petursson didn’t actually write it.

“He had members of our storyline team – a group responsible for writing in-game content and fiction – put it together,” he says. “He was either so out of touch, so arrogant, or perhaps both, that he couldn’t find the words to say himself. They bailed him out big time.”

[Yoru]

And, hot on the heels of that article, CCP axes 50 more people - and not a single executive among them.

As part of our strategy to focus on the EVE Universe, today CCP conducted a restructuring that resulted in the layoff of 49 people in our publishing organization. Though it is hard to say goodbye to our friends and family, this action concludes the process we started several months ago.

I find it hard to believe that the hard times have "concluded" when the company has said the exact same thing at each round of layoffs. Which are currently hitting every two months.

[Hawkbit]

What all were they publishing?  I know there's EVE novels, but I can't imagine those comprised 49 non-exec positions.  Even a content, lore and story portion of the website shouldn't require more than 2-4 people.

[Yoru]

What all were they publishing?  I know there's EVE novels, but I can't imagine those comprised 49 non-exec positions.  Even a content, lore and story portion of the website shouldn't require more than 2-4 people.

"Publishing" is a catchall term for the departments not directly involved in new development, but involved in pushing and supporting the product: Marketing, PR, sales, events, customer service, ops/devops, etc.

[Simond]

Once again: CCP are a bunch of rotten-shark-eaters who got insanely lucky and also have approximately zero idea why their game does as well as it does.
Monocle, anyone?

[Hoax]

I disagree completely. I think CCP and Funcom both were companies that were willing to execute ideas because they sounded inspiring and interesting. They have worried much less about max profits than most dev houses seem to.

They may be in way over their head and may have gotten very lucky that what they thought sounded cool actually turned out to be cool but rotten-shark-eaters seems.. harsh.

I remember I used to read the CCP economist's posts on eve and to me that was a company that was trying hard to steward the player experience in good and more importantly interesting and awesome ways.

[ajax34i]

I think CCP and Funcom both were companies that were willing to execute ideas because they sounded inspiring and interesting.

That explains why everything they release is half-assed, and why they NEVER go back to iterate and add more to a feature that they didn't have time to finish.  Because the work becomes work and they lose interest. 

10 years of this bullshit.

[Fordel]

CCP was founded by a bunch of former UO azz-rape players that wanted to recreate that space, with themselves having all the advantages.

[UnSub]

CCP was founded by a bunch of former UO azz-rape players that wanted to recreate that space, with themselves having all the advantages.

And on that, they succeeded.

[Sir T]

It took them 2 fucking years for them to get POS mechanics working semi-right, even as they built their entire 0.0 experience around them.

[LC]

Once again: CCP are a bunch of rotten-shark-eaters who got insanely lucky and also have approximately zero idea why their game does as well as it does.
Monocle, anyone?

They are starting to look like a one trick pony. I have tried to go back to eve a few times, but it's starting to feel dated. I always hoped they could improve on their design in a modern game, but it seems like that won't happen.

[Kageru]

It was pretty obvious long ago they got accidentally lucky and grew a community (at a time when playing online was exciting in itself) that was durable enough to suffer through their terrible development of the title. Dust, WoD and maybe walking in stations were the chances to show they could grow another franchise and they've all been various flavours of fail.

[schild]

I'm really hoping CCP is the first gaming company that calls it quits BEFORE they go bankrupt and have to layoff EVERYBODY unceremoniously. Take your money. Divvy it out to the employees as a massive severance (or I guess, whatever they have left), and close your doors. Something Awful has decided to fund a different game, one even more likely to fail.

[Sir T]

Heh, the gargantuan egos of the Eve developers would NEVER allow that. They really have been writing checks their talent cant cash for years. And Eve really is their only successful product right now. They simple cant have it go moribund and exist as a few servers in the corner of the office. Right now, if Eve goes so does CCP and the reason for their ego.

If they WERE going in the route you suggest I would hope their last act would be to release the universe as a single player game that you could just roam around in in whatever ship you like and put yup towers and whatnot. That would be a decent end to the game and would keep it alive, and I don't think it would be that hard to program. There really is some staggeringly beautiful sights in Eve, and it would be a shame to have the whole thing go pop

[ajax34i]

I'd imagine there is a massive amount of work required to convert the server software to "single player universe that can run on the same minimum specs as the EVE client," so in the event of closing or bankruptcy they won't spend the effort to do it.

Also, there's no closing ahead of time with MMOs.  You milk the cow as long as possible.  You downsize your staff to a minimum and keep it going, and you do your best to convince the remaining players that it's NOT going to shut down, EVER.  They have the perfect person for that:  CCP Falcon.

They've announced their intentions to do multiple smaller patches per year, so I guess they're focusing on the one product they have that is successful.  The layoffs also seem to indicate that they're trying to shrink down to a size that the EVE income can support.  Problem is that the game IS getting stale, and they don't seem to know how to fix a number of issues, including the state of 0.0.  They're also revamping the industry, and to me it looks like an NGE type patch for it.  So we'll see.

[calapine]

Problem is that the game IS getting stale, and they don't seem to know how to fix a number of issues, including the state of 0.0.  They're also revamping the industry, and to me it looks like an NGE type patch for it.  So we'll see.

I think Walking in Stations as it was originally envisioned would have been their way out of this, but it was killed by a) CCP chronic inability to produce more than a character creator after YEARS of development b) the loud part of the player base that wants 'everything to stay as it is' and which is leads the company by the nose.

[ajax34i]

Actually, we would have had Walking in Stations, but they decided to make a separate game out of it, DUST.  And now instead of WiS they're making another separate game, PC-DUST.

[Stormwaltz]

...killed by a) CCP chronic inability to produce more than a character creator after YEARS of development b) the loud part of the player base that wants 'everything to stay as it is' and which is leads the company by the nose.

I think it's more fair to say that B is a direct result of A. Tons of development resources were thrown at Incarna (for virtually no return), while the part of the game that people were actually playing was left stagnant and buggy.

[Fordel]

Even when all that other stuff didn't exist, the game was left stagnate and buggy. 

[Gets]

Making Eve 2 would have been an innumerably better idea than trying to branch out into other genres simply because it would have solved the whole problem of "We can't do this or that because the guy who wrote the code left a decade ago." Or at least make a game in the same universe that actually complements Eve Online and isn't overly grand in its scope, preferably outsourced to a completely different developer. Because I've almost lost all confidence for CCP being able to create any good video games and that "almost" hangs solely on Eve: Valkyrie looking quite promising in the Star Citizenesque backdrop of things. Instead of Planetary Interaction, an abandoned, unimaginative, tedious, unfun, reiterationless feature, there could have been an entire planet based X4 game for whatever platform that could actually tie into Eve. Yet all we have is something that rewards ISK for clicks and doesn't even look cool, while CCP pretends they never promised to give it meaning by being a link between Dust 514 and sov warfare.

[Nija]

Walking in stations would be such a huge waste of time when you already have "Do everything instantly in stations" - to be replaced with "walk N seconds to do the same thing you could do instantly."

What I would have liked to see was an in-between - a throwback to Xwing/Tie fighter where you had a "lobby" to look at at the stations. Where you'd just mouse over different sections and do different actions. They could take it a bit further and develop different lobbies for different types of stations.

[Sir T]

Yeah, it definitely was NOT the playerbase that stopped walking in stations. Most people were very excited about the idea of the capability of actually walking around and seeing the "real" player inside the ship. Even the people who didn't see the point (like me) would not have minded it. Indeed their excuse at the time was that the resources needed for people to see one another in one station would have crashed the servers. Uh hello? Star trek Online?

What you might have gotten backwards was CCP relenting and putting in a switch to turn off the stupid room which no-one wanted, which stunningly made the station interface and the game run much faster.

[Comstar]

Indeed, if I could walk around in station at VFK Mittanigrad station, and see people and play hookers and pay blackjack, it would be somewhat entertaining to see who was doing what.

What we go instead was a bad game. If it had good gameplay and was more interesting that spinning your ship, it would be a good thing. That was not what we got.

[LC]

...killed by a) CCP chronic inability to produce more than a character creator after YEARS of development b) the loud part of the player base that wants 'everything to stay as it is' and which is leads the company by the nose.

I think it's more fair to say that B is a direct result of A. Tons of development resources were thrown at Incarna (for virtually no return), while the part of the game that people were actually playing was left stagnant and buggy.

Not really. It's more like the old game is just really stale and people are losing interest because technology has evolved.  Eve is still the same old game about turning on modules and watching to see if you won a game of rock paper scissors.

[Furiously]

Indeed, if I could walk around in station at VFK Mittanigrad station, and see people and play hookers and pay blackjack, it would be somewhat entertaining to see who was doing what.

What we go instead was a bad game. If it had good gameplay and was more interesting that spinning your ship, it would be a good thing. That was not what we got.

If you could shoot/hunt down the one red guy that won't leave the station and send them out an airlock it would be worth it.

[Falconeer]

...killed by a) CCP chronic inability to produce more than a character creator after YEARS of development b) the loud part of the player base that wants 'everything to stay as it is' and which is leads the company by the nose.

I think it's more fair to say that B is a direct result of A. Tons of development resources were thrown at Incarna (for virtually no return), while the part of the game that people were actually playing was left stagnant and buggy.

Not really. It's more like the old game is just really stale and people are losing interest because technology has evolved.  Eve is still the same old game about turning on modules and watching to see if you won a game of rock paper scissors.

And still, there is literally nothing like it. That's why plenty are dreaming about Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous, but from what I've gathered they will still fall short of the ambition and achievements of a 11 years old game.

[Aiwass]

Link offers some interesting insight into the inner workings of CCP.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/CCP-Reviews-E159347.htm

[Kageru]

And still, there is literally nothing like it. That's why plenty are dreaming about Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous, but from what I've gathered they will still fall short of the ambition and achievements of a 11 years old game.

I would suspect so. I think there's too much competition for people to become that invested in an online game. But that doesn't really say anything good about Eve other than they were early on the seen and got lucky a community formed to make up for their dreadful game-play.

[Nevermore]

Paradox buys White Wolf from CCP.  Maybe we'll finally get another Vampire: Bloodlines type game!

[HaemishM]

And with Paradox behind it, I'm sure it'll be mostly working and have DLC released daily.

[calapine]

And with Paradox behind it, I'm sure it'll be mostly working and have DLC released daily.

The end result will probably still be better than whatever would have (not) come out of CCP.

But agree about the DLC. Hearts of Iron 3 has 18 DLCs, 3 of which are expansions. Basically a 150 € game if you bought everything at release price.

[satael]

Well, since Paradox has a working relation with Obsidian (since Paradox published Pillars of Eternity for them) you could always hope for a new Vampire game from Obsidian's ex-Troika employees... 

not realistic but you can always dream...

[Nevermore]

not realistic but you can always dream...

Or is it?

By the way, someone should change the title of this thread.

Edit: Oh, maybe move it to PC Gaming too since I doubt Paradox will be making an MMO.  Or maybe I should have just made a new topic there.  Whatever.

[Teleku]

This is good news.  CCP is fucking incompetent, and Paradox has the ability to actually do something with it.

And with Paradox behind it, I'm sure it'll be mostly working and have DLC released daily.

Though I know sarcastic, this is actually not a bad thing if it was true.  The DLC for Crusader Kings 2 and EU4 have been mostly outstanding.  Each of those games has turned into an amazingly deep strategy/simulation experience because of that.  I wish more companies could figure out how to continue to develop their products half as well as they have with those titles.