EVE General Discussion

Eve Online as a 'game' may be doing okay, but one has to wonder how well or not, CCP as a company is doing.

The good folk from CCP simply posting that they are 'super excited' in support of each other in the forums with each new addition to the game, (loot spew for example) is not the same thing as getting approval from us, you know, the folk who pay their wages.

I have played Eve Online for quite some time now and I really want CCP to be successful, for them, because it pays their wages, and for us so we have a good game to spend money on and play.

Between staff leaving and layoffs, reading the tea leaves, it all seems a bit worrying right now.

The TL;DR of The Guardian's article is: 'WoD was not flawlessly managed'. Which we already know, else in all probability it wouldn't have been cancelled after 9 years and a good bunch of people would still have thier jobs.

The rest, including the 'apology letter' story is just sensationalism, which I agree with you that is many journalists' bread and butter, but I don't really find it interesting.

Nerf Ivory towers ?

I'm not a gaming industry expert, but with Legion being a PC 'port' of an existing game (instead of an entirely new game on a different platform) and Valkyrie seeming - to me at least - a less ambitious project than WoD, they do seem to be focussing more.

Also, the 'one universe' could greatly help cross-selling, on the revenue side.

Just this....

...with all respect.

So they might have used the people in their company who are the best writers to help with the most important public letter in the history of the company. Shocking.

As always my discontent level goes up and down with the quality and direction of the game. If the game continues to deliver, I don't care too much how it's being delivered to us. If their actions threaten to ruin it, I don't care if CCP is the bestest company ever and a dream job in the industry. Therefore I'm largely unfazed by this.For years CCP has been plagued with taking on projects they've been unprepared to handle. Now they're admitting the reality and doing the needed pruning. It's not fun for anyone and it can be hard to see misfortune happen to familiar faces, but that's the nature of restructuring.

About the management issues, I've talked to a lot of people about their jobs and the number of people not complaining about incompetent and out-of-touch managers is currently zero. Doesn't mean it's a good thing or something you don't need to address at some point, but it's nothing special either.

Reading the Gurdian article, not really sure you can think of CCP as the black sheep of game developement.

I used to share an office with a guy, he was designing the lead character for a game. He'd done dozens of facial concepts at the behest of the game's director, change the jaw line, different eyebrows, that sort of thing. One day, after weeks of work, the director comes in looks at the concepts and says "Make him look more edgy!" The guy ask what he meant by "edgy" to which the director simply replied "you know, Edgy!" and walked off.

This director had one other game under his belt (a poorly received one), dozens of complaints against him and people had left the company over having to work with him yet management kept him on, I never found out why. Company went bust about four years later.

My point (if there is one) is that management in games companies never seems to explain themselves to the rank and file, which leads to resentment over how thngs are run. It's not just CCP.

I dont pay much attention to who is who in CCP. However, if ccp still has the same CEO who was CEO back during Incarna, then there is something seriously wrong at CCP. That CEO should have stepped down a long time ago and someome else should be at the helm.

It's common for a PR person or team to help shape a statement for someone, it's incredibly unusual to pull lore/ingame-text/fiction writers off their work to come up with that kind of thing though.

That is too harsh. Over the years CCP have provided you with more than one train wreck to watch.

CCP does deserve praise for continual improvement to EVE over the years. They didn't sit back and basically freeze development like Anarchy Online to fund development of another game system. EVE Industry plus Trading does need to be overhauled which may provide another train wreck for your entertainment.

The bit of the Guardian story I wondered about was the White Wolf staff that were used as temporary developers for EVE. Next crisis hits and that pool of talent is no longer available.

CCP should have said how many people had been redeployed within the company. I've been through company restructures, downsizing and redundancy. Last couple of times when my teams were made redundant I stayed at the company in another role without loss of pay or benefits. It looks a lot better if the company can say the redundancies were unavoidable, x number of employees were redeployed, y number left voluntarily and the company had no choice for the z number of staff.