nc-austin
Latest
Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings responds to David Reid's NCsoft West comments
Earlier today we featured remarks from David Reid, Vice President for Publishing at the newly forming NCsoft West branch. During our discussion we talked about NCsoft's shift from a publisher of games big and small to one focused solely on AAA big-budget titles. One of the individuals impacted by that decision was well known MMO industry commentator and designer Scott Jennings. Sometimes known as "Lum the Mad", Jennings was part of a team that was dispersed as a result of the creation of NCsoft West, and is now working at John Galt Games (makers of Web Wars).We asked Mr. Jennings to respond to Mr. Reid's comments, as an individual personally impacted by NCsoft's decision to move towards a AAA-only strategy. The designer had quite a few things to say about that decision. "It was my belief, and still is, that it is entirely possible to make smaller, less bloated titles that appeal less to the mass market and more to market niches that are underserved to date, which are easier to design and develop for when you aren't married to a $50 million+ budget."Please click through to read Scott Jennings' full response to the NCsoft decision below the cut.
David Reid sets the record straight on NC West: Part 2
Massively: Great. So it's actually more towards NC West as sort of a general umbrella under which these specific studios can have their own names, and really carve out their own places within the company? David Reid: Absolutely. Think about it this way: the reorganization and the establishment of NC West is more of an acknowledgement that we as a company can be doing better on the publishing side, in terms of taking these great products that these veteran leadership studios have been able to crank out, and turn them into much bigger phenomena. Right? I mean, we've had great success with City of Heroes, we've had great success with Guild Wars, but we think it can be bigger. What we're not doing is changing the studio organization, other than the studios all now report in to Jeff Strain, who has moved on from the day to day management of ArenaNet – Michael O'Brien is now the studio head there, and is leading the Guild Wars 2 team and other projects there – but Jeff serves as a manager across the studio organization. "... we've had great success with City of Heroes, we've had great success with Guild Wars, but we think it can be bigger." And in parallel, what I get to do for Jeff and those studios is make sure that we do the best we can to deliver triple-A world class launches across our Western territories, and make sure that the marketing, the sales, the customer support – all the elements that great developers look to great publishers to do – are being done here. There's going to be some common platforms and things on the technology side, and a common team that helps serve the business, but nothing really changes on the product development side. Massively: Okay. So you're saying nothing much is going to change on the product development side, but to that end it seems like as part of the NC West conglomeration, there are some folks moving around. There's a little more... we guess you could say refinement in what people are doing in a couple of these different studios. Could you talk generally about what we're seeing, as far as people moving on to new positions, people moving on from Austin to Seattle, those sorts of things? David Reid: I should say one thing: that the decision about moving out NC West in the way we're doing it is, while there's no real change happening at the studio level, there is this ratification of 'NCsoft is going to be in the triple-A MMO space day in and day out', right? We've done some interesting things and had some success with smaller titles, things like Dungeon Runners and Exteel are doing well for us, but the company by and large is the company that Lineage built, and this reorganization is a ratification of getting back to that business and going all-in on the Lineages, Guild Wars, Aions, City of Heroes, Tabula Rasas, Blade and Souls, those sorts of games are what NCsoft is going to be doing day in, day out here in the West. Now, there's a specific question you asked there about how does this impact certain people. We are planning to – we're in the process of now porting the internal people that we would like to relocate to Seattle, and have offered a healthy number of folks a relocation up to Seattle to be part of what is principally a publishing headquarters. And so that's where the bulk of the North American and global leadership for marketing, for sales, for PR, aspects like that, we're thinking will be headquartered in Seattle. Seattle for us was the logical place to go because of the relationship with Seoul, and Seattle just happens to be the place where you get the best number of non-stop flights to Seoul and to our West Coast studios, and to our UK office, out of Seattle versus any other city on the West Coast. And so we are also relocating what is now our Eastern games studio, the folks that are our North American and European producer team, for bringing games like Aion and Lineage and Blade and Soul into the Western market. Those folks are moving to Seattle, as well as the publishing headquarters. Continue to Part 3
David Reid sets the record straight on NC West
Nobody can have failed to notice the announcement of NC West, which broke recently amid rumors of staffing reshuffles in various NCsoft studios. Although some key concerns were addressed very swiftly, many of our readers had plenty of questions to ask, and so did we.David Reid, appointed President of Publishing, was kind enough to give up considerable time yesterday for an interview. We discussed Guild Wars and Tabula Rasa, but the main focus was on the NC West announcement.Massively: We really do appreciate you guys talking to us, because there are a lot of Massively readers who are concerned with this announcement. It was kind of sudden – the NCsoft West thing just kind of snuck up on them, and they're not entirely sure about what's going on. Although you guys have put out a couple of statements so far about it, I think people are still a little unclear on it. David Reid: That's exactly why we are keen to talk with you. Let us be clear about whatever questions your readers have, and set things straight on that. Massively: Great! As a broad question: NC West sounds like (to us, and we want to make sure we have this clear) a conglomeration of the game development assets for NCsoft in the US, into a smaller number of groups than it is right now. Is that the primary goal?
Tabula Rasa is triple-A and here to stay, says NC West President
Massively recently had the chance to speak with NC West's newly appointed President of Publishing, David Reid. The bulk of the interview concerned the formation of NC West and its implications for NCsoft as a whole, but David also took the time to answer our questions about several of NCsoft's existing triple-A titles, including Tabula Rasa. Massively: Obviously, Tabula Rasa is one of the triple-A titles NCsoft has in its stable. We hope you'll disagree, but we've heard again and again these rumors from players who are talking to people and from people within the industry, that people within the company are looking at Tabula Rasa to perform better than it has in the past, and that if it doesn't, then there might be consequences to that business reality. Can you clarify that for us, or expand upon that?
Austin 'critically important' to NCsoft, says David Reid
With the formation of NC West recently announced, industry professionals and interested gamers alike have been trading rumors concerning the NC Austin studio. Sanya Weathers has a lot to say on the subject, and DJ Jester of w00tradio.net devoted a large chunk of his recent podcast to the events and the gossip surrounding them.Now the President of Publishing for NC West, David Reid, has given an interview with Edge Online. Dismissing speculation as erroneous, he states that 'Austin continues to be a critically important space for NCsoft. The Tabula Rasa team is still there, along with customer service and QA.'
Tabula Rasa goes AWOL from Q1 NCSoft financial reports
When the financial reports for the Q1 performance of NCSoft hit the Massively offices, fingers were quickly pressed to pages with one intent -- finding out what was going on with Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa. Already this year, we've heard dour reports on the status of the game, which were then rebuked by NCSoft, but those reports still planted seeds of doubt. Our hope was that the financial numbers could shed some light on what was happening with the game and perhaps reveal the game's direction. Was the game going uphill, or was it careening toward Auto Assault's junkyard?But finding financial information about Tabula Rasa was like trying to track down Deep Throat. In the whole of the Q1 financial reports, TR appears twice. Even when most of NCSoft's major properties are listed and statistics are given, TR does not get mentioned.But where Tabula Rasa does briefly appear, things do not look good at all.
