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City of Heroes: Breaking: Layoffs Hit Paragon Studios
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
According to an anonymous source, City of Heroes/Villains developer Paragon Studios has been hit with a round of layoffs today, totaling nine people, and also possibly including Senior Animator/VFX Lead Christopher "Back Alley Brawler" Bruce.
We have contacted NCsoft who has confirmed that layoffs have indeed taken place, and they have provided us with the following comment:
"In an effort to put a greater focus on the City of Heroes franchise, Paragon Studios is shifting resources within the studio. In order to optimize the refocus, there has been a reduction in force that has impacted a small amount of people. Paragon Studios is an integral part of the NCsoft West family and will continue to prosper, delivering the world’s most popular superpowered hero MMO game, City of Heroes, to fans around the world.
For more information on City of Heroes, please visit the game's official website here.
Comments
Hmmm.
Nothing about this on the CoH site as yet.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Wait....in order to put a greater focus on CoH, they are reducing the team size? Some one explain how that works to me.
Seems like the focus would remain the same, but content and fixes would come out slower.
"If you're going to act like a noob, I'll treat you like one." -Caskio
Adventurers wear fancy pants!!!
There's not really a long term future in CoH these days. Going rogue was probably the last major paid expansion, and they know that investing a lot of money past this point is futile.
Sadly rogue was not a game changer. It refreshed the graphics and added some content, but it didn't address a lot of things that could keep the game growing instead of shrinking like pvp zones, base raids, and server populations (on some servers).
I enjoyed the game for many months, and hope that other mmo's incorporate some of it's ideas. It's responsive, visceral, and tactical combat was heads and shoulders above 90% of other mmo's
Why do PvPers think it's all about PvP? CoH has been doing great since Going Rogue came out. It's brought a lot of people back to the game. I, for one, have been really enjoying the new content and look forward to the next two updates.
I bought a copy of "Going Rogue" from an ebay seller for about $15, played it for a couple of hours and haven't picked it up again. I've played every major update since release, but there's just not enough there to keep me engaged.
"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
If they are "refocusing" after this last release, perhaps they are trying to bring in new leads for a CoH successor. I think they've pushed CoX along as far as they could, theres no use in trying to improve at this point. The next thing I see them doing is starting from scratch.
Wasn't there some talk a few months back about a possible "City of Heroes 2"?
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
I don't have a link but there was speculation about 6 or 8 months ago that CoH2 was in the works with a new game engine since the current engine is so old. Going Rogue was dressing to take the current game as far as it could.
As an observation, all the servers indicated much higher traffic until this week so it appears the expansion had brought a lot of players either to the game, or back to the game. I think the DC game and, if it ever gets done, the Marvel game will show if there is room for more than one superhero MMO.
Why do companies feel the need to release bullshit statements that are essentially lies.
You are optimizing the refocus (great phrase there) by laying people off, nice. How about bluntly saying "We are downsizing our team to make our resources fit in the budget based off of revnue." Everyone knows layoffs are a way to decrease spending so just say so.
It's like with APB where they made press releases about how they were pulling people off of their other projects to focus on the growth of APB blah blah blah. When really it was "Oh crap we're bankrupt, let's put one last ditch effort to increase APB's player base so we can have any hope of getting out of this hole."
Give me a company that will be straight forward and honest for a change "This is how many people we have working on the project, this is how many players we have, here is what we plan for the future" and they will get my money.
I saw no real speculation about CoH2 beyond the fact that NCSoft had picked up and reserved the rights to the name "City of Heroes 2" and any attendant abbreviations and subtitles.
That said, I'm honestly not surprised that there are a few layoffs, considering the extra manpower that was hired to complete Going Rogue. What is a surprise is if there is any truth to BaBs being among those laid off. Although considering he hasn't been present on the forums since late April (which is a little odd for him) I guess if it is true, he may have known it was coming for some time.
The expansion is done..less labor is needed. Makes perfect sense to me. This isn't something that doesn't happen with virtually every software release, game or not. People are hired on for the development cycle, some of them are let go when that part of the overall product cycle is finished.
Developers are retained if there's additional development planned for the future. For MMOs, when one expansion is released, the next one starts to go into development, so developers typically aren't let go. It only makes sense to fire developers after a release if there are no more major expansions planned, which means the game is near the end of it's life cycle.
Tried the trial but the effect was largely the same, I played from launch til right after COV and for me going rogue seemed to add a whole lot of new quests but the feeling I still got was the game hasn't really changed and that rather low well of fun is quickly going to run dry. I logged in twice but haven't had an interest to play again since unfortunately.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Your going to cut staff, so the rest of the staff will work harder??
Expect more with less, oh well more of the same for mmo's lately.
You are so full of something it is not even funny. First, the graphics refresh was Ultra-Mode. Yes, it was scheduled and developed with Going Rogue. It, however, was not part of Going Rogue.
Second, pvp-zones have been in the game since Wednesday, May 4, 2005. In over 5 years time the PvP-zones have never driven more than low single digit percentages of the player-base. Adding in more PvP-Zones would do nothing for the game. Since you obviously skipped MMO-History 101, look up Tabula Rasa
It was an NCSoft published game developed by Destination Games. After the Game launched the developers decided to do a 180 and turn a PvE focused game into a PvP focused game. The subscriber base flopped, Destination Games folded, and City of Heroes pulled NCSoft's collective rear end out of that fire.
Even looking beyond just NCSoft Citing PvP as something that brings players to games is a brain dead idea. Would you mind opening your eyes and telling me what happened to WarHammer Online? Sony Planetside? All Points Bullitin? Global Agenda? All of these multiplayer PvP-centric games failed in their original markets. The only reason Global Agenda survives as an independent game is that Hi-Rez studios had the brains to figure out that a PvP focus was not going to pay the bills.
Then there's your subject of Base Raids. Again, the player base hasn't been there to support any sort of PvP content to begin with. Implementing Base Raids would do nothing to bring back players that already left, and it's not going to do anything to drive new subscribers either.
Now whether or not you like it, or accept it, and obviously you don't, Going Rogue was a huge game changer that demonstrates what the current Paragon Studios staff can accomplish. It was such a game changer that even DC had the brains to figure out DCUO didn't have a prayer against Going Rogue in it's current state, leaning on SOE for the delay.
Basically Mr. Nox, you can take your trolling SCO style F.U.D. and take a hike. Nobody's buying the lies your selling.
Well said Zerias.Well said indeed.Fact overload.See pvpers like raiders belive the mmo world revolves around them.That no casual game can make it.Heard some casual game has 12 million subs now.Hmm.
I like pvp in coh actualy.But if they produced a whole expansion on pvp it would be a waste.Its rare you find more than 5 in any pvp zone as is.Realy hopen BaB is not layed off.
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." Robert E. Howard, The Tower of the Elephant (1933)
I'm shocked to see this leaked as news so quickly and I'm doubly shocked to see my name associated with it. I don't know who leaked this, why, or how they knew but I'm very uncomfortable with the thought of it leading anyone to the conclussion that I was involved in making this public knowledge.
It's called "doublespeak" and all large companies use this tactic that has been successful for politicians and world leaders for centuries. It's the same reason why the lemming-masses keep buying the same lies of politicians (on both sides of the political aisle) every 4 years.
But hey, whatever works...right?
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
Well your name is part of the article, but I don't think there's any suggestion that it was you that leaked it or that you had anything to do with it. Can i also surmise from your posting that NCSoft/Paragon either has very lax rules about posting on internet forums and/or boards about anything to do with NCSoft/Paragon or that you either don't care or no longer work there? Big jump I know.
It's true that GR will probably be the last major expansion for CoH and if paragon are working on something else then that ca only be a good thing, but I am surprised that if they are working on something else they've laid staff off rather than moving them to the new project. I can't and don't see CoH keeping paragon going ad infinitum so they need something to go with.
"CBruce" joined today. Makes me doubt that handle actually belongs to BAB.
Bruce, you know we heart you, sunshine. Just prod me if you want to chat.
- Jules (yeah, that one, formerly from SIRadio)
Nothing good comes from cutting staff. It means COH is hurting big time.
Isn't this their first round of layoffs? They've managed to last longer than most, considering how difficult it is to keep a business going right now, large or small. My workplace managed until last month, it could be something as simple as that.
Most times it means there is more important work todo.
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You're assuming that they didn't have any other projects in the works...