First off, an apology for this negative anti-CCP article. Since monoclegate I have tried to avoid using this blog to bitch about negative things... but I just can't stop (sort of like I can't stop playing EVE).
I wrote a while back during the follow up to monoclegate that I felt that the Mitanni had done a marvelous job as CCPs public relations manager. The outcome of the summit, especially the video interview, brilliantly defused what for CCP was a potentially company ending catastrophe.
Now The Mitanni, and the rest of the CSM, realize that they were played. The issue... the minutes from that very summit. It appears that CCP and the CSM are at odds as to the contents of the minutes. Whatever 'accord' between the CSM and CCP appears to have broken down.
This is very discouraging. I had quit EVE over the issue of the door and the crap that was Incarna (yes I know I am back.... but that is another story). Every EVE player is hoping for one thing.. for CCP to realize just how good the game they have accidentally produced is, and how great they could make it if they just gave it a chance. Instead all we hear from CCP is how great some new game-breaking features like the NEX store are, how cool their console game is going to be because it interacts with the EVE players, and then a bunch of broken promises about EVE development.
I don't blame the CSM for trying to work with CCP. Many of them campaigned on taking a cooperative approach with CCP to prevent the breakdown that occurred with CSM 5. But now they realize that CSM 6 has been played. CCP used them for PR and now feels that they can be ignored since they have binding NDAs that prevent them from saying anything that CCP does not want them to say.
Edit: And the Mitanni has now declared war... The mittani declares war. On one hand you have CCP armed with the threat of banning a character and an NDA .... on the other hand you have a retired lawyer with a massive ego and who has a powerful influence over 7000 (goonswarm) accounts and entrenched himself into the gaming media (columnist at ten ton hammer).
In the spirit of the protest here are links to gaming magazine websites that are covering this (basically they all are)..
http://www.next-gen.biz/news/ccp-accused-running-eve-online-ground
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-05-eve-csm-chairman-breaks-the-peace – This site scooped the story, and caused all this.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/09/05/eve-online-stellar-council-head-hits-out-at-ccp PCgamer
http://gamers.5starhot.info/news-eve-csm-chair-mittani-breaks-the-peace GamerZone.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/06/eves-csm-fight-back-and-some-thoughtsRock Paper Shotgun- This one is particularly good. Get it everywhere.
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/eve-online/1192611p1.html
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/news/eve-online-csm-chairman-takes-aim-at-ccp
Edit2: And another bang on commentary from former CCP Game Designer and current CSM representative Seleen
Showing posts with label CCP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CCP. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
The Numbers Don't Add Up
This post started out as a rant about CCP probably being in financial straights due to over-expansion of it's workforce and a drop-off in the rate of increase of subscriptions. However someone posted the CCP financial statements for 2010 (not leaked these documents are public) which clearly shows that although profits are down a small amount on rising revenue, the financials of CCP are fairly healthy. EDIT: People with a lot more idea how to read these things then I have concluded the opposite, CCP is in financial trouble. The profits are on paper only after capitalizing all development costs. Loans are due soon and CCP needs cash.
One thing that has really bugged me about the many misteps of CCP lately is that the numbers just don't add up. Lets look at $99 licensing fee controversy. Thinking it over I can only really think of about 10 to 20 possible customers for this. Things like EVE-FILES, EFT, Capsuleer (I know it doesn't exist anymore) evemon, dotlan, ombey's maps, eve-search, Battleclinic, a couple of killboard apps, and maybe a few others. As I said, about 20 customers. Even assuming there 100 possible customers you are still looking at less than $10,000 per year. This equates to about 1-2 months of salary for a lawyer or a developer, probably much less then the cost of implementation. CCP has revenue for EVE Online of $57,433,934, this represents less than 0.02% of that. Does not seem worth it.
Also lets look at the idea of vanity items within EVE. There is a really great slideshow from EA called Playing To Win. It describes the challenges of getting players in a free to play game to pay for items in the store. At first they only had vanity items, and they had a lot of them. Hundreds of different shirts, pants, shoes, accessories giving millions of possible looks were available. In the end the revenue generated from the just over 1.25% of users who used the store was about $0.25 per user of the game per month. IOW the entire vanity item store in EVE would be expected to generate, if it had hundreds of different items, (360,000 users * 0.25) $75,000 per month or $900,000 per year. This works out to about 1.5% of boost to overall revenue. Assuming that there were 9 or less developers/lawyers/artists/game-designers/GMs working on this feature it might just barely be worth it. But this is assuming that 1. there is a huge variety of items, and 2. users can see the things that are bought. In fact, CCP had to know that many of not most users will be turning of CQ from the get-go due to systems requirements and the desire to multi-box. So the number was most likely going to be much much lower. This also explains the 'Door' screen when you turn off CQ and the refusal to promise to keep the no CQ option in the future. They need your eyeballs to see your character or there is no hope.
As for selling 'Pay to win' items, those that give a player an advantage the numbers clearly make no sense at all. As shown in the above mentioned slideshow, going to a 'Pay to win' model resulted in generating approximately 2x the revenue per player, or about $900,000 additional revenue. However, unlike battlefield in the example, if there was even a 1.5% drop in subscriptions as a result (and there certainly would be considering the outrage that was promised in the past and we have seen this past week), this benefit to CCP would be fully negated.
How on Earth is CCP going to recoup the tens of millions of dollars that they have spent on Carbon, walking in stations, World of Darkness?
Nothing is adding up. What one earth is going on with CCP.
One thing that has really bugged me about the many misteps of CCP lately is that the numbers just don't add up. Lets look at $99 licensing fee controversy. Thinking it over I can only really think of about 10 to 20 possible customers for this. Things like EVE-FILES, EFT, Capsuleer (I know it doesn't exist anymore) evemon, dotlan, ombey's maps, eve-search, Battleclinic, a couple of killboard apps, and maybe a few others. As I said, about 20 customers. Even assuming there 100 possible customers you are still looking at less than $10,000 per year. This equates to about 1-2 months of salary for a lawyer or a developer, probably much less then the cost of implementation. CCP has revenue for EVE Online of $57,433,934, this represents less than 0.02% of that. Does not seem worth it.
Also lets look at the idea of vanity items within EVE. There is a really great slideshow from EA called Playing To Win. It describes the challenges of getting players in a free to play game to pay for items in the store. At first they only had vanity items, and they had a lot of them. Hundreds of different shirts, pants, shoes, accessories giving millions of possible looks were available. In the end the revenue generated from the just over 1.25% of users who used the store was about $0.25 per user of the game per month. IOW the entire vanity item store in EVE would be expected to generate, if it had hundreds of different items, (360,000 users * 0.25) $75,000 per month or $900,000 per year. This works out to about 1.5% of boost to overall revenue. Assuming that there were 9 or less developers/lawyers/artists/game-designers/GMs working on this feature it might just barely be worth it. But this is assuming that 1. there is a huge variety of items, and 2. users can see the things that are bought. In fact, CCP had to know that many of not most users will be turning of CQ from the get-go due to systems requirements and the desire to multi-box. So the number was most likely going to be much much lower. This also explains the 'Door' screen when you turn off CQ and the refusal to promise to keep the no CQ option in the future. They need your eyeballs to see your character or there is no hope.
As for selling 'Pay to win' items, those that give a player an advantage the numbers clearly make no sense at all. As shown in the above mentioned slideshow, going to a 'Pay to win' model resulted in generating approximately 2x the revenue per player, or about $900,000 additional revenue. However, unlike battlefield in the example, if there was even a 1.5% drop in subscriptions as a result (and there certainly would be considering the outrage that was promised in the past and we have seen this past week), this benefit to CCP would be fully negated.
How on Earth is CCP going to recoup the tens of millions of dollars that they have spent on Carbon, walking in stations, World of Darkness?
Nothing is adding up. What one earth is going on with CCP.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
See the fitting on a ship in your hanger without boarding - almost
Looking through the minutes of the last CSM summit (a very controversial one) I came across this rather nice tidbit:
This is a really useful feature that no-one seems to have heard about before. In the past if you several ships of the same type with different fits (say one shield and one armour Hurricane) and you wanted a particular fit, you would have to board each ship one at a time to check the fittings. Since boarding a ship activated a session timer this could be rather time-consuming, especially if trying to rush out for a response fleet. Now you should be able to right-click on a ship (either in you hanger or in your inventory) and choose show info. The last tab in the show info window will be labeled modules and will show what is actually fit on the ship.
That is the theory at least. In practice unfortunately the idea is bugged.
Here is how it works. (slightly differently then described by CCP in their response) While in your hanger you can choose show info from the right-click menu as below...
And this should give you a list of modules under the modules tab as shown below. In the example below I am on-board the Merlin and am looking at the fitted modules on my Ibis. I now know what is fit without boarding it. Yeah!..
If I now look at the Merlin while on-bard the Merlin I get to see what is on it as well...
So far so good. Sometimes it doesn't work so well. When I am on board the Ibis and select the Merlin, this is what I get :( ...
Back to the drawing-board CCP.
View ship fittings in hanger without boarding ship. If you have several ships of the same type in your hanger but with different setups it isn't possible to see which is which without boarding them. A potential solution is to name the ships differently, however Eve has a habit of resetting ships names on session changes. CCP’s response: This is currently possible to do with ships in hangars in other locations (Asset window, Right Click ship, View Content). Adding the option for current hangar will be investigated and implemented when time allows. Session discussion: CSM asked why no one knows about this functionality; CCP acknowledged that it should have been better documented – however the information has been available in the patch notes since Dominion was deployed (http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=194).
-CSM CCP Meetings 23-25-06-2010 (page 27)
-CSM CCP Meetings 23-25-06-2010 (page 27)
This is a really useful feature that no-one seems to have heard about before. In the past if you several ships of the same type with different fits (say one shield and one armour Hurricane) and you wanted a particular fit, you would have to board each ship one at a time to check the fittings. Since boarding a ship activated a session timer this could be rather time-consuming, especially if trying to rush out for a response fleet. Now you should be able to right-click on a ship (either in you hanger or in your inventory) and choose show info. The last tab in the show info window will be labeled modules and will show what is actually fit on the ship.
That is the theory at least. In practice unfortunately the idea is bugged.
Here is how it works. (slightly differently then described by CCP in their response) While in your hanger you can choose show info from the right-click menu as below...
And this should give you a list of modules under the modules tab as shown below. In the example below I am on-board the Merlin and am looking at the fitted modules on my Ibis. I now know what is fit without boarding it. Yeah!..
If I now look at the Merlin while on-bard the Merlin I get to see what is on it as well...
So far so good. Sometimes it doesn't work so well. When I am on board the Ibis and select the Merlin, this is what I get :( ...
Back to the drawing-board CCP.
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