You know all of the things you listed are more under control of a developer's publisher, NOT the developer itself, right?
Firesale - Nickle and Diming : Usually because a publisher is leaning on a dev house to make more money.
Understaffed: Almost universally the fault of the publisher putting overhead restrictions on a dev house.
Huge Losses: Could be the developer, but do you remember how fast STO went through development? That smacks of publisher forcing it out the door unfinished.
I am not saying Cryptic is great, but I don't think all fault is theirs. Atari has a terrible track record, so I would say it is at least 50/50 Atari's fault but probably more.
I would say it closer to 50/50, or slightly leans towards Cryptic: After all, it was Cryptic that sold Atari the line that they could produce quality, AAA MMOs; Atari merely held them to that promise. It also explains the small staff; Cryptic was promising that its Cryptic Engine 2.0 was a versatile, reusable engine that would greatly cut down on manpower and development costs. That being said once CO launched and Atari had a good look at the work Cryptic was doing, they had absolutely no excuse for allowing STO to launch in the shape it did. Atari definately got the hint after STO launched (and remember, Cryptic had arranged the development of that game, in addition to CO, before Atari bought them), which was why Cryptic's future games were being billed as OMGs and not MMOs. Cryptic is definately as much to blame in all of this, if not more, than Atari.
I think you overestimate the decision making power of wholly-owned development houses.
Release dates, marketing, deadlines, revenue generation, even development schedules, all these things are imposed on development houses, not decided by them. The Cryptic/Atari relationship wasn't a developer/publisher deal (and those are restrictive enough on developers), Cryptic was wholly owned by Atari and Atari called the shots.
Not a suprise at all. When you put out mediocre games which people had to pay for AND pay sub AND pay more money to get all the content in an item shop you will have problems getting the player base. Do you think EVE would be as popular if it was 59.99 15 dollars a month and you had to pay real money to get all the content......hell no.
Cryptic early on revieced a bad reputation and all there f2p and free content couldnt fix it.
Playing: PO, EVE Waiting for: WoD Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Not a suprise at all. When you put out mediocre games which people had to pay for AND pay sub AND pay more money to get all the content in an item shop you will have problems getting the player base. Do you think EVE would be as popular if it was 59.99 15 dollars a month and you had to pay real money to get all the content......hell no.
Cryptic early on revieced a bad reputation and all there f2p and free content couldnt fix it.
I think developers trying to have the best of both worlds (box purchase *and* sub *and* cash shop) is going to seriously backfire down the road somewhere.
Publishers are really pushing more and more to milk players any which way they can, for as much as they can... without actually giving back any more content or entertainment than we were getting before that trend began.
I mean, you used to play a RPG and it could last you 80+ hours, easily, to complete.
Now, they maket he same game, but break it up into 25-30 hour segments, selling each as a separate product... thus getting more money for the same thing. And in many cases, the games aren't even as deep or involved as their predecessors were.
I have a feeling the greed is going to reach a critical mass and it's gonna seriously blow up in everyone's faces.
Some of these publishers and/or developers are seriously getting way out of hand with this nickel-and-dime crap.
"If you just step away for a sec you will clearly see all the pot holes in the road, and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
What it boils down to is Atari thought STO was going to be hugely successful . It didn't turn out that way. Atari has decided that Cryptic really will never produce the kind of game it needs to rescue it. It's projections for Cryptic games obviously don't look encouraging. It therefore has decided to sell , before it costs Atari any more capital , which incidently it doesn't have. This leaves all the future Cryptic projects high and dry, until an investor/s comes along. Atari is savvy enough to understand that Cryptic plan of having these game on consoles , where it thought the true potential was , is not going to materialize. It's cutting it cost. The only question remaining is, does Cryptic get sold in parts or as a whole ?
Oh....well, Obsidian wasn't very successful with NWN 2...hated that one.
Yea, NVN 2 was just aweful by comparison to the first...was depressing.
Still the best Obsidian game (I have nightmares about their crappy Elder scrolls game "Battlespire"). In fact if they named it something else and hadn't pretended to be a follow up to one of the best games ever it would have been pretty good.
BTW, now when I think about it, didn't NWN2 almost had the exact same story as Dragon age?
I think developers trying to have the best of both worlds (box purchase *and* sub *and* cash shop) is going to seriously backfire down the road somewhere.
Indeed but the rumors say that NWNO will be B2P, not P2P. Of course that was a while and I can admit to not keep myself updated about Cryptic but hopefully have they learnt the lesson from CO and STO for this game.
A good Forgotten realms MMO, or even an average one can become a huge hit, the IP is still one of the most popular around and unlike Star trek is it hard to mess up a game like that.
I don't see how any game could make the Trekkies happy, even though cryptic really messed it up.
FR is an IP that more or less writes itself, and the D&D rules are made so you can translate them straight off into a computer game meaning that the balance, mechanics and a lot of the content is already made for you. You have to be pretty incompetent to mess something like that up.
Sounds to me like a company with two highly profitable games doing development that required a pittance in parent company investment. Yes, I think most shareholders who looked as those books would be excited to get onboard, and the financial outlook is quite good.
Cool lifetimer comment from the buried thread @ STO forum. 2 Highly profitable games, sure, making loss for several years is comptelety similar to profitable, right? Geez, I thought april fool's day already went by.
Where it'll get half-hearted "support" of a skeleton crew keeping it going 'til they decide to pull the plug.
I'd rather not think of that lol.
Erm, isn't that the situation STO is currently in?
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
I think you overestimate the decision making power of wholly-owned development houses.
Release dates, marketing, deadlines, revenue generation, even development schedules, all these things are imposed on development houses, not decided by them. The Cryptic/Atari relationship wasn't a developer/publisher deal (and those are restrictive enough on developers), Cryptic was wholly owned by Atari and Atari called the shots.
Where did I mention in my post that Cryptic was in any way independent of Atari's control after the buyout? For that matter, where did I post that Cryptic was calling the shots? What I did state was that Cryptic was hyping its new engine and its supposed ability to quickly make (in a 18-24 month timeframe) quality, AAA MMOs, before Atari bought them. Once Atari bought them up, they held Cryptic to that schedule. In fact I clearly stated that Atari was at fault for making Cryptic keep that schedule after CO launched.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Sounds to me like a company with two highly profitable games doing development that required a pittance in parent company investment. Yes, I think most shareholders who looked as those books would be excited to get onboard, and the financial outlook is quite good.
Cool lifetimer comment from the buried thread @ STO forum. 2 Highly profitable games, sure, making loss for several years is comptelety similar to profitable, right? Geez, I thought april fool's day already went by.
It's the cheerleading section that bases it's comments on empirical observations of instanced zones of no more then 50 players at a time. That and they live and die by what the CM's and Dev say on the forums. If they're told the sky is red , then it's red.
It is funny, how it's two highly profitible games . One game goes F2P , no numbers are ever revealed and it's highly profitible. The other I suspect has more LT subs then actual paying subs on the server at any given time and that somehow translates to highly profitible? CDF members provide me with endless comic relief.
I can hardly wait for the main attraction to rear his head and assure the masses ! Jack will probably show up and claim he's saved the day somehow. I just wonder who the next sucker is ?
Indeed but the rumors say that NWNO will be B2P, not P2P. Of course that was a while and I can admit to not keep myself updated about Cryptic but hopefully have they learnt the lesson from CO and STO for this game.
A good Forgotten realms MMO, or even an average one can become a huge hit, the IP is still one of the most popular around and unlike Star trek is it hard to mess up a game like that.
I don't see how any game could make the Trekkies happy, even though cryptic really messed it up.
FR is an IP that more or less writes itself, and the D&D rules are made so you can translate them straight off into a computer game meaning that the balance, mechanics and a lot of the content is already made for you. You have to be pretty incompetent to mess something like that up.
Of course this is Cryptic...
When he announced the NWN game they're working on, Jack said that it wasn't going to be a MMO; instead it would be an OMG (Online Multiplayer Game). He made it sound more like a single-player/co-op game that you needed to log onto their servers for. I'm guessing this would entail a cash shop and/or DLC.
As for a Forgotten Realms MMO? I've been waiting for one of those for over a decade now, but I would prefer they use the Pathfinder rules rather than 4E. What ever they do, I don't want to see another DDO where you're stuck in one city; I'd like a world I could actually explore.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Sounds to me like a company with two highly profitable games doing development that required a pittance in parent company investment. Yes, I think most shareholders who looked as those books would be excited to get onboard, and the financial outlook is quite good.
Cool lifetimer comment from the buried thread @ STO forum. 2 Highly profitable games, sure, making loss for several years is comptelety similar to profitable, right? Geez, I thought april fool's day already went by.
It's the cheerleading section that bases it's comments on empirical observations of instanced zones of no more then 50 players at a time. That and they live and die by what the CM's and Dev say on the forums. If they're told the sky is red , then it's red.
It is funny, how it's two highly profitible games . One game goes F2P , no numbers are ever revealed and it's highly profitible. The other I suspect has more LT subs then actual paying subs on the server at any given time and that somehow translates to highly profitible? CDF members provide me with endless comic relief.
I can hardly wait for the main attraction to rear his head and assure the masses ! Jack will probably show up and claim he's saved the day somehow. I just wonder who the next sucker is ?
Damage control has been in full swing since early yesterday: Comments like the one posted above, STO fans going on about how populated the game is, and then there was Wishbone's post about how Gamasutra's headline was somehow misleading. Sorry but I saw Gamasutra's headline, as well as the headlines on several other gaming websites; none that I saw were misleading at all. Each one was basically saying the same thing; Atari is looking to sell off Cryptic.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Damage control has been in full swing since early yesterday: Comments like the one posted above, STO fans going on about how populated the game is, and then there was Wishbone's post about how Gamasutra's headline was somehow misleading. Sorry but I saw Gamasutra's headline, as well as the headlines on several other gaming websites; none that I saw were misleading at all. Each one was basically saying the same thing; Atari is looking to sell off Cryptic.
That damage control is pointless for them IMO. That kind of censorship on the STO forums has been going on since launch and has only served to further damage Cryptic's already poor reputation.
I find it completely fascinating that when following any given thread on this subject over at the STO Forums, you will see more than a substantial amount of posts with the "This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Atari Community Rules and Policies ~WishStone" whereas the surviving posts are all glowing, happy happy joy joy cheering for Cryptic. It is fairly obvious to the reader that Cryptic is desperate to spin this. Personally, I think they should be ashamed of themselves for insulting the intelligence of people.
One has to wonder if the folks at Cryptic are at all surprised with how things have turned out for them?
I'm pretty sure that when Emmert pitched selling Cryptic to Atari, he pointed to City of Heroes and claimed he could do the same thing with another superhero MMO, just with a quicker development time. Kind of like Mark Jacobs did with EA when he sold them Mythic. It doesn't seem that these big companies do any real homework before they buy these indie companies saddled with management that says, "We're experts. We know what we're doing!" and then can't deliver a full-featured product.
It's bad enought already, but if something happens that GW2 and SWTOR don't create a renewed interest in players, developers are going to have a hard time getting investors for much of anything.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II "People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
The official STO forums were sure good for some lulz. There's like one or two people mildly doom and gloom that aren't getting their posts censored in the "official" thread about this news, and everyone else is spinning this as good news...as if it's Atari's fault that Cryptic fails and that magically some big pockets will buy Cryptic and everything will be unicorns and glitter ROLFMAO. What is also telling to why Cryptic is losing money is about 3/4 of the posts in that thread are lifers and are playing for free now.
That damage control is pointless for them IMO. That kind of censorship on the STO forums has been going on since launch and has only served to further damage Cryptic's already poor reputation.
I find it completely fascinating that when following any given thread on this subject over at the STO Forums, you will see more than a substantial amount of posts with the "This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Atari Community Rules and Policies ~WishStone" whereas the surviving posts are all glowing, happy happy joy joy cheering for Cryptic. It is fairly obvious to the reader that Cryptic is desperate to spin this. Personally, I think they should be ashamed of themselves for insulting the intelligence of people.
One has to wonder if the folks at Cryptic are at all surprised with how things have turned out for them?
At least they learned to be smarter about the censorship; when the game first launched they would make a statement, someone would point out that the statement went against what was said earlier, that poster (or another) would quote and post a link to the prior comment, and the Cryptic dev would happily ignore that. About two months after the game launched they finally wised up and started edited the quoted posts.
I am not surprised that the only surviving posts are those happy, glowing ones either; after all, this is the company whose Devs and forum Mods were actively encouraging the faithful to attack any post criticizing the game when I launched. As for being ashamed just look at their history just in STO, and some o the actions they have taken; Cryptic has never shown a high regard for their players.
I highly doubt this is that big of a surprise; after all even the rank and file devs would have had at least a general idea of the real numbers, such as number of players and number of lifetime subscribers. I suspect this is why John Needham jumped ship right before Atari's 2010-2011 4th fiscal quarter ended.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
The official STO forums were sure good for some lulz. There's like one or two people mildly doom and gloom that aren't getting their posts censored in the "official" thread about this news, and everyone else is spinning this as good news...as if it's Atari's fault that Cryptic fails and that magically some big pockets will buy Cryptic and everything will be unicorns and glitter ROLFMAO. What is also telling to why Cryptic is losing money is about 3/4 of the posts in that thread are lifers and are playing for free now.
Never underestimate the Cryptic faithful's ability to spin it so that anyone but Cryptic is at fault. People were blaming Bill Roper around STO's launch, but he was only in charge of CO at that time and had nothing to do with STO's development. People were blaming Atari for making it ship too early, when it was Cryptic who had been going on about how they could quickly turn out quality AAA MMOs, before Atari bought them.
As for the lifetime subscribers? LotRO (pre-free to play, of course) showed that lifetime subscriptions can be continuously offered, as they generally only make up a small percentage of the player base. However, for that to work, you need to release a fairly solid game that will retain regular subscribers. Unfortunately, HellGate: London, CO, and STO have tarnished the image many people have concerning lifetime subscriptions.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
No job openings at all. Usually healthy studios always have some kind of posting.
It would be a bit of goodwill if, in the event someone does buy Cryptic, they honor the lifetime subscriptions. However they very well could decide not to, since that money is Atari's. I wonder what would have happened if Cryptic's executives hadn't been greedy, and only focused on making one thing at a time: Since Atari bought them, Cryptic has had projects overlapping in development; CO and STO had their development cycles overlap some, and now NWN and whatever the secret one is also have overlapping development cycles. You would have figured after the mess they found themselves in with CO and STO, that Cryptic would have had enough sense to not stretch themselves that thin again.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
thats what happens when you leave a really great game and a hand full of devs that help make that great game and try to make another. cryptic and paragon studios need to get back together and work on city of heroes 2 and learn from the hundreds of mistakes they made with those two mediocre games.
You know cryptic F's up alot on their games but I think CO and STO would of been a million times better if atari had not been involved. I hope another company with a real interest in investing in the games gets control of them.
Both games were understaffed and launched too early and incomplete thanks to atari.
I find it funny that everyone is so shocked Cryptic is in trouble. How many times have they made these huge promises with overly ambitious titles only to have them be complete bombs in the eyes of gamers. City of Heroes/Villians is still around but no longer owned by Cryptic. Champions, a game with huge potential was so bad that they had to convince people by making it F2P. Star Trek, a game that could have been new and refreshing was boring and weak. I'm actually rather surprised the company has lasted this long. People keep giving them these great IP's to work on and I'm really not sure why. With their track record I'm sure Neverwinter would have been a huge disappointment.
Both games were understaffed and launched too early and incomplete thanks to atari.
Cryptic sold themselves to Atari by promising a new MMO every 2 years. STO and CO were launched incomplete, because Cryptic couldn't keep their promise to the publisher.
Comments
Where it'll get half-hearted "support" of a skeleton crew keeping it going 'til they decide to pull the plug.
I'd rather not think of that lol.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I think you overestimate the decision making power of wholly-owned development houses.
Release dates, marketing, deadlines, revenue generation, even development schedules, all these things are imposed on development houses, not decided by them. The Cryptic/Atari relationship wasn't a developer/publisher deal (and those are restrictive enough on developers), Cryptic was wholly owned by Atari and Atari called the shots.
Not a suprise at all. When you put out mediocre games which people had to pay for AND pay sub AND pay more money to get all the content in an item shop you will have problems getting the player base. Do you think EVE would be as popular if it was 59.99 15 dollars a month and you had to pay real money to get all the content......hell no.
Cryptic early on revieced a bad reputation and all there f2p and free content couldnt fix it.
Playing: PO, EVE
Waiting for: WoD
Favourite MMOs: VG, EVE, FE and DDO
Any person who expresses rage and loathing for an MMO is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
I think developers trying to have the best of both worlds (box purchase *and* sub *and* cash shop) is going to seriously backfire down the road somewhere.
Publishers are really pushing more and more to milk players any which way they can, for as much as they can... without actually giving back any more content or entertainment than we were getting before that trend began.
I mean, you used to play a RPG and it could last you 80+ hours, easily, to complete.
Now, they maket he same game, but break it up into 25-30 hour segments, selling each as a separate product... thus getting more money for the same thing. And in many cases, the games aren't even as deep or involved as their predecessors were.
I have a feeling the greed is going to reach a critical mass and it's gonna seriously blow up in everyone's faces.
Some of these publishers and/or developers are seriously getting way out of hand with this nickel-and-dime crap.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
Yea, NVN 2 was just aweful by comparison to the first...was depressing.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
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What it boils down to is Atari thought STO was going to be hugely successful . It didn't turn out that way. Atari has decided that Cryptic really will never produce the kind of game it needs to rescue it. It's projections for Cryptic games obviously don't look encouraging. It therefore has decided to sell , before it costs Atari any more capital , which incidently it doesn't have. This leaves all the future Cryptic projects high and dry, until an investor/s comes along. Atari is savvy enough to understand that Cryptic plan of having these game on consoles , where it thought the true potential was , is not going to materialize. It's cutting it cost. The only question remaining is, does Cryptic get sold in parts or as a whole ?
Still the best Obsidian game (I have nightmares about their crappy Elder scrolls game "Battlespire"). In fact if they named it something else and hadn't pretended to be a follow up to one of the best games ever it would have been pretty good.
BTW, now when I think about it, didn't NWN2 almost had the exact same story as Dragon age?
Indeed but the rumors say that NWNO will be B2P, not P2P. Of course that was a while and I can admit to not keep myself updated about Cryptic but hopefully have they learnt the lesson from CO and STO for this game.
A good Forgotten realms MMO, or even an average one can become a huge hit, the IP is still one of the most popular around and unlike Star trek is it hard to mess up a game like that.
I don't see how any game could make the Trekkies happy, even though cryptic really messed it up.
FR is an IP that more or less writes itself, and the D&D rules are made so you can translate them straight off into a computer game meaning that the balance, mechanics and a lot of the content is already made for you. You have to be pretty incompetent to mess something like that up.
Of course this is Cryptic...
Cool lifetimer comment from the buried thread @ STO forum. 2 Highly profitable games, sure, making loss for several years is comptelety similar to profitable, right? Geez, I thought april fool's day already went by.
Erm, isn't that the situation STO is currently in?
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Where did I mention in my post that Cryptic was in any way independent of Atari's control after the buyout? For that matter, where did I post that Cryptic was calling the shots? What I did state was that Cryptic was hyping its new engine and its supposed ability to quickly make (in a 18-24 month timeframe) quality, AAA MMOs, before Atari bought them. Once Atari bought them up, they held Cryptic to that schedule. In fact I clearly stated that Atari was at fault for making Cryptic keep that schedule after CO launched.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
It's the cheerleading section that bases it's comments on empirical observations of instanced zones of no more then 50 players at a time. That and they live and die by what the CM's and Dev say on the forums. If they're told the sky is red , then it's red.
It is funny, how it's two highly profitible games . One game goes F2P , no numbers are ever revealed and it's highly profitible. The other I suspect has more LT subs then actual paying subs on the server at any given time and that somehow translates to highly profitible? CDF members provide me with endless comic relief.
I can hardly wait for the main attraction to rear his head and assure the masses ! Jack will probably show up and claim he's saved the day somehow. I just wonder who the next sucker is ?
When he announced the NWN game they're working on, Jack said that it wasn't going to be a MMO; instead it would be an OMG (Online Multiplayer Game). He made it sound more like a single-player/co-op game that you needed to log onto their servers for. I'm guessing this would entail a cash shop and/or DLC.
As for a Forgotten Realms MMO? I've been waiting for one of those for over a decade now, but I would prefer they use the Pathfinder rules rather than 4E. What ever they do, I don't want to see another DDO where you're stuck in one city; I'd like a world I could actually explore.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Damage control has been in full swing since early yesterday: Comments like the one posted above, STO fans going on about how populated the game is, and then there was Wishbone's post about how Gamasutra's headline was somehow misleading. Sorry but I saw Gamasutra's headline, as well as the headlines on several other gaming websites; none that I saw were misleading at all. Each one was basically saying the same thing; Atari is looking to sell off Cryptic.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
That damage control is pointless for them IMO. That kind of censorship on the STO forums has been going on since launch and has only served to further damage Cryptic's already poor reputation.
I find it completely fascinating that when following any given thread on this subject over at the STO Forums, you will see more than a substantial amount of posts with the "This post has been edited to remove content which violates the Atari Community Rules and Policies ~WishStone" whereas the surviving posts are all glowing, happy happy joy joy cheering for Cryptic. It is fairly obvious to the reader that Cryptic is desperate to spin this. Personally, I think they should be ashamed of themselves for insulting the intelligence of people.
One has to wonder if the folks at Cryptic are at all surprised with how things have turned out for them?
I'm pretty sure that when Emmert pitched selling Cryptic to Atari, he pointed to City of Heroes and claimed he could do the same thing with another superhero MMO, just with a quicker development time. Kind of like Mark Jacobs did with EA when he sold them Mythic. It doesn't seem that these big companies do any real homework before they buy these indie companies saddled with management that says, "We're experts. We know what we're doing!" and then can't deliver a full-featured product.
It's bad enought already, but if something happens that GW2 and SWTOR don't create a renewed interest in players, developers are going to have a hard time getting investors for much of anything.
"Soloists and those who prefer small groups should never have to feel like they''re the ones getting the proverbial table scraps, as it were." - Scott Hartsman, Senior Producer, Everquest II
"People love groups. Its a fallacy that people want to play solo all the time." - Scott Hartsman, Executive Producer, Rift
The official STO forums were sure good for some lulz. There's like one or two people mildly doom and gloom that aren't getting their posts censored in the "official" thread about this news, and everyone else is spinning this as good news...as if it's Atari's fault that Cryptic fails and that magically some big pockets will buy Cryptic and everything will be unicorns and glitter ROLFMAO. What is also telling to why Cryptic is losing money is about 3/4 of the posts in that thread are lifers and are playing for free now.
At least they learned to be smarter about the censorship; when the game first launched they would make a statement, someone would point out that the statement went against what was said earlier, that poster (or another) would quote and post a link to the prior comment, and the Cryptic dev would happily ignore that. About two months after the game launched they finally wised up and started edited the quoted posts.
I am not surprised that the only surviving posts are those happy, glowing ones either; after all, this is the company whose Devs and forum Mods were actively encouraging the faithful to attack any post criticizing the game when I launched. As for being ashamed just look at their history just in STO, and some o the actions they have taken; Cryptic has never shown a high regard for their players.
I highly doubt this is that big of a surprise; after all even the rank and file devs would have had at least a general idea of the real numbers, such as number of players and number of lifetime subscribers. I suspect this is why John Needham jumped ship right before Atari's 2010-2011 4th fiscal quarter ended.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Never underestimate the Cryptic faithful's ability to spin it so that anyone but Cryptic is at fault. People were blaming Bill Roper around STO's launch, but he was only in charge of CO at that time and had nothing to do with STO's development. People were blaming Atari for making it ship too early, when it was Cryptic who had been going on about how they could quickly turn out quality AAA MMOs, before Atari bought them.
As for the lifetime subscribers? LotRO (pre-free to play, of course) showed that lifetime subscriptions can be continuously offered, as they generally only make up a small percentage of the player base. However, for that to work, you need to release a fairly solid game that will retain regular subscribers. Unfortunately, HellGate: London, CO, and STO have tarnished the image many people have concerning lifetime subscriptions.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
Well I hope CO and STO stay around. I am life for both
Though it doesn't look good if this is any indication:
http://crypticstudios.com/openings
No job openings at all. Usually healthy studios always have some kind of posting.
It would be a bit of goodwill if, in the event someone does buy Cryptic, they honor the lifetime subscriptions. However they very well could decide not to, since that money is Atari's. I wonder what would have happened if Cryptic's executives hadn't been greedy, and only focused on making one thing at a time: Since Atari bought them, Cryptic has had projects overlapping in development; CO and STO had their development cycles overlap some, and now NWN and whatever the secret one is also have overlapping development cycles. You would have figured after the mess they found themselves in with CO and STO, that Cryptic would have had enough sense to not stretch themselves that thin again.
"Oh my, how horrible, someone is criticizing a MMO. Oh yeah, that is what a forum is about, looking at both sides. You rather have to be critical of anything in this genre as of late because the track record of these major studios has just been appalling." -Ozmodan
thats what happens when you leave a really great game and a hand full of devs that help make that great game and try to make another. cryptic and paragon studios need to get back together and work on city of heroes 2 and learn from the hundreds of mistakes they made with those two mediocre games.
You know cryptic F's up alot on their games but I think CO and STO would of been a million times better if atari had not been involved. I hope another company with a real interest in investing in the games gets control of them.
Both games were understaffed and launched too early and incomplete thanks to atari.
I find it funny that everyone is so shocked Cryptic is in trouble. How many times have they made these huge promises with overly ambitious titles only to have them be complete bombs in the eyes of gamers. City of Heroes/Villians is still around but no longer owned by Cryptic. Champions, a game with huge potential was so bad that they had to convince people by making it F2P. Star Trek, a game that could have been new and refreshing was boring and weak. I'm actually rather surprised the company has lasted this long. People keep giving them these great IP's to work on and I'm really not sure why. With their track record I'm sure Neverwinter would have been a huge disappointment.
Cryptic sold themselves to Atari by promising a new MMO every 2 years. STO and CO were launched incomplete, because Cryptic couldn't keep their promise to the publisher.