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Fan buy out? New trend?
waveofthefuture
Member Posts: 97 Arc User
I know how every one really doesn't like what cryptic is doing, so why not do something about it? How much could cryptic cost?
This seems insane, but it would be awe for the fans to own cryptic, buys it shares out (if it is sold out on the stock market), or buy it out, and then it would be the fans, and some pie in the sky developers, or some indian owners deciding what happens. We would decide.
Just an idea.
This seems insane, but it would be awe for the fans to own cryptic, buys it shares out (if it is sold out on the stock market), or buy it out, and then it would be the fans, and some pie in the sky developers, or some indian owners deciding what happens. We would decide.
Just an idea.
Post edited by waveofthefuture on
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And people call me nuts...
Heck, we can;t even get users to use the search here in the forums.
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Frakes has business experience and is a producer. He'd be a good face for anything like this. He's interested in online entertainment.
Partner him with, say, James Cameron, who has been blowing large sums of money at the fringes, trying to get into MMOs through Multiverse. (Also, Cameron is into the idea of UGC.) Partner them with a Google guy and get a couple of designers and academics retained as management consultants, handling the business and gaming aspects. I'd say Richard Bartle.
That could have happened, I think.
But it didn't. And I'd imagine the asking price just went up quite a bit.
Because it would require a massive change in PWE's priorities.
That said... You might be able to talk PWE into incorprating some folks like this with the right argument and a business plan.
I think there's actually a really strong case to be made for getting someone like Bartle as a temporary consultant.
There's a REALLY strong case to be made, I think, for getting Frakes involved as a spokesman and "senior engagement producer."
Nobody has that kind of position at any gaming company that I'm aware of. I think there's really nothing that wouldn't be improved by getting people with expertise in media production into PWE and Cryptic. It's a double win if it's a solid voiceover artist with a prominent role in Trek.
Frakes is the one with the mainstream directing/producing credentials outside of maybe Nimoy. Frakes has a greater interest in new media and the business side of things and is less choosy than Nimoy about getting knee deep with a project. (See: His informercial where he played Riker or his involvement with celebrity video poker in the 90s.)
I think PWE might be intrigued. I think Frakes might be intrigued. I think the roadblocks there would probably be at Cryptic, where they'd be scared of handing off power to someone outside of gaming, even for a newly developed division basically designed for a combination spokesman/entertainment consultant. (And, naturally, you tap Frakes for Champions, STO, and Neverwinter voiceover whenever he's on site.)
why just Cryptic? Perfect World's stock has been beaten down. it's at 9.42 USD right now. That means the whole company is only worth 447.28M USD. (less than half what is was 18 months ago.) But if you wanted to do a corporate take over and could get the leverage you would only need 191.07M USD cash for the whole thing.
As above, I can only imagine the horror of the peanut gallery masses in making a "cooperative creative collaboration" game.
I know, right?
It's hard enough to get people to communicate and cooperate for STF's
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Seriously, there are so many ways this is wrong and would go wrong there isn't enough room on this forum to discuss them all.
And that's only five people....
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC] "I weary of the chase. Wait for me. I shall be merciful and quick."
It probably wouldn't be pretty.
I myself thought about buying Cryptic from Perfect World when the Powerball was $200 million in saving a game I admire and expand on it. But at the same time, I wonder if it would be a good business decision given how STO has really lost more than it gained over these two years. Even TOR is suffering baddly.
So if someone was persuasive enough to get Perfect World to depart with STO and Cryptic, they would need the resources to work on the game and invest in the game's expansion to the point that it would grasp the hearts of the Trek and Sci-Fi communities. But given how the state of things are, STO likely be having another slow MMO death. Because at this point I am not confident in how Perfect World has handled STO and even though they bragged about their departments doubling, we really havn't see evidence of that in the game.
So all we can hope is for somekind of miracle where Perfect World changes their ways, or someone takes the risk.
Tons of conjecture follows this initial statement but the main problems are in this statement.
People don't risk their own money on the scale you're describing that often.
Beyond that, nobody would be interested much in STO trying to be something other than what it's set out to be so far. At best, it would succeed at its design goals more. The idea that anyone would spend big money on different design goals is pretty unlikely.
It's not like PWE has choked off resources or development either. The game is sitting on about three times the resources it had a year ago under Atari.
Some of the vision statements by players seem to err on the side of "poor Cryptic, they don't have the resources to do what we want."
Cryptic is being given pretty serious resources for STO specifically. They have pretty broad discretion on how the game is managed aside from monetary goals.
It isn't always that the devs CAN'T do what you (or I) want. Sometimes, perhaps often, they CAN and DO NOT WANT TO. It's not that their hands are tied. And it's not just Cryptic. There are things we as STO players want that would get shot down by game designers at any company, with any amount of money, because of how many game designers, on the whole, think and what they set out to do and what they want their resume to look like. And any exceptions to that (I suspect Thomas and Borticus would be two, Stahl to an extent as well) would get overruled.
Heck, Dan Stahl might want what you want. But he'd be dealing with a mutiny if he asked for it on the time table I think you'd want. And so would any other EP on a Trek MMO, even if every dev was a Trek fan.
I'm relatively certain that Cryptic would have the financial resources to produce a "Star Trek: Phase II" level TV show marketing STO, written by Trek writers. CBS might even let that happen as a marketing event.
The designers aren't interested. That isn't what they do.
I'll point out what we've learned before:
STO was approached by Trek writers who wanted to work on the game. It was not money that caused those writers to be turned away. Cryptic turned them down because they wanted the game to be written in response to game development, not developed in response to writing.
I don't totally like how extreme Cryptic is in its approach to "writing around development." Personally, I'd be a writer in that environment... but as a writer, I'd rather play stuff where writers are driving things more. I think that's one thing I like about WoW. Even the dumb things and the retcon are all driven by Chris Metzen acting as a writer. Sometimes a dumb writer.
But, ultimately, every WoW expansion having at least one good guy (probably more like 5-10) go bad and be killed by players is not driven by engine features or design balance. It's because Chris Metzen is really stuck on that kind of plotline and the design contorts around it.
Point being, STO consciously rejected some of what some players are asking for. It isn't Perfect World. It's that professional game designers would quit rather than do some of these things.
this is not as dumb as it sounds..
FC Barcelona, one of Europes best football club, is owned by the fans.
And that club is worth a heck more than Cryptic.
Exactly what I was conveying. STO itself is just too much of a risk for loss of money due to how it's been handled. It's like buying a half cooked cake from the bakery that needed more time to cook and since been tossed in a cardboard box with mispelled icing lettering.
And I never said that PW wasn't doing it's part, after all the Dev team said their teams have doubled. It's just we as customers really havn't seen much on that budget increase. Just where is that content this game needs? Sure we got Starbases for Season 6, but what else? What content for players who aren't in Fleets?
It's like STO's being added a little at a time every 6 months. And what of the end-game? We been playing the same STFs for 2 years now, 2 years!
I don't care about blaming PW, Cryptic, or the STO team. The problem is someone needs to take responsiblity and expand the game properly that can pull in new people. Else this "little at a time" business isn't going to cut it.
There is a main difference between Football and Star Trek. Fans agreeing what makes a great Football team is a whole lot easier than what makes a great Star Trek MMO. For example, we can't all agree between the choice of lots of content or some great content. Then there is the whole what Star Trek series to we want to base it on. Deep Space 9 is more about diplomacy and warfare. Voyager is more about exploration and survival. The Original Series is more about sleeping with alien women and exploration. The Next Generation is more about exploration and diplomacy. If the series can't agree with what Star Trek is all about, then how can fans do that?
It's a good plot for a film maybe, but this is reality. The game wouldn't exist very long if it ever happened.
The point here is you are talking about 50 people with one million dollars or 1,000,000 people with $50 it is still a lot of money to collect.
Step 2: Make your offer to PWE...
Now that you have your money, you need your lawyers and their lawyers to seal the deal. Nothing on this scale is not done without a ton lawyers. OH and you got to pay them too.
Step 3: Pray that Cryptic talent stays on board.
That's right. Programmers and developers will get very nervous about the deal and jump ship. They will be writing resumes and talking to head hunters on the phone before the deal is done.
Step 4: Sit back and tell everyone how you want it done. Then hope you get results from the team.
Now seriously. If you have all that money to begin with you could hire people to develop your own MMO (Star Trek like but not Star Trek) with less than half of that capital.
Well, nobody in this thread is really suggesting a fan buyout.
Pretty much what I've seen here ranges from:
A wishlist of who could have bought the game.
Individuals or small groups people wish bought the game.
Some folks expressing dissatisfaction with the ownership.
People wishing that they, personally, owned the game.
People pointing out the premise is unrealistic.
Of course, nobody is really discussing the premise outlined in the OP. At most, a few people discuss the idea of 5-6 fans buying Cryptic, which is VERY different than Cryptic becoming a co-op.
Like I say, if one of those "fans" is James Cameron, one is Jonathan Frakes, and the other four are Google multi-millionnaires, sure.
On the other hand, if you mean us, collectively... Oy. You might as well try to earn enough C-Points from dilithium to raise the capital. ;-) And I think it says something that people more than once in this thread discuss winning the lottery as a prelude to the purchase.
I mean, heh, it's wishful thinking at that point. Pretty wishful.
I'd sooner entertain the fantasy of getting a QA job and spending the next 25 years working my way up to being PWE's western market VP. That's more realistic.
Buy CBS
Go look at their debt statement and all the accusations of financial mismanagement.
Sure they play a decent game but their backend has issues.
As others have tried to point out, MMO players are not some monlolith. There are people who primarily solo. There are people who only group. There are raiders. There are people who despise the elitism that often comes from raiders. There are PvPers, and there are people who cannot stand PvP. There are people who play the game primarily to socialize or to role play and to whom the game play is secondary. And on and on and on. Most people are a mix of several of those things.
And that is without even factoring in the fact that there are TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise fans. Then there are the movies, which often take the series they are based on, and sometimes the whole genre, in entirely different directions. And fans from one series may not have even seen episodes from or are openly hostile towards another.
Take a random sample from all that, and they would be at odds with each other trying to get their own visions for the game implemented. There is a massive sense of entitlement among players because they spend $15 a month on a subscription. What do you think would happen if someone dropped tens or hundreds of thousands, not to mention millions, of dollars on the game? Conversely, if they were all of the same mind, say, Raiders who were fans of the original series, their vision would almost certainly be at odds with roleplaying socializers who were Voyager fans.
Having watched what "fans" do to games over the years, I have no desire to be involved with a game run by fans.
By the power of Greyskull, please, more posters like you need to come out of the woodwork.
+ f'ning rep.
Yes it is, if you're trying to compare it to people owning a sports team. There is a very very big difference
and these resources are where?
No they haven't. KDF development and FEs have been abandoned due to lack of resources and funding to do them.
According to who?
That is a pretty big assumption
The thread title is 'fan buy out? new trend?' It sounds like someone is suggesting it. Not that its a good idea, nor would it ever happen
Down the list:
STO has 40 (38?) devs now, a record for a Cryptic game. This is from Dan Stahl.
Where the resources are...? That's a trickier question and one I've pushed for info on.
KDF development is a "dead targ." Story content is being delayed until Season 7 and may not take the exact form of FEs and that missions like Alpha are more likely. In both cases, it's not lack of resources. It's that Cryptic has decided that it will get more bang for its buck elsewhere. They could do either one. They have DECIDED not to do either one because they have decided, with ANY amount of resources, that KDF and FEs are inefficient uses of manpower. Last year, it might have been about lack of resources. Now, they have the resources and made a decision not to do them, even with the resources, in favor of new things. I don't agree but I can't fully disagree without knowing what they have in mind instead.
As for their discretion, pretty much every dev I've spoken with, on or off the record. PWE sets financial goals. PWE gives them ideas for how to hit those goals. Cryptic can deviate (at its own peril) pretty freely. Ultimately, yeah, lockboxes are very much PWE influence. Quest design, the DOff system, PvP, the Foundry... Cryptic calls its shots. PWE isn't saying "do this." They're saying "hit this financial target." If Cryptic was confident they could hit their targets other, better ways (and could justify their decision with hard research), PWE would let them. In terms of the content and systems balancing, PWE is a fly on the wall.
As for the "can and do not want to," it's not a huge assumption. It's what we've been told, repeatedly, about many features since launch. They CAN enable 360 degree flight or bridge travel. They do not think it is wise at this time. This is also ultimately what every "engine limitation" boils down to. The engine can do anything Cryptic wants to make it do. When "engine limitations" get cited, it means Cryptic doesn't think it's worth making the engine do that.
If the top of their bucket list is to go back and create 1-18 unique missions for klingons, they're out of their minds.
It is a less than overwhelming experience for new people to join to not have an uber experience while leveling up, but like with any MMO you power level after the first toon gets max level anyhow, provided you stick around.
And who's sticking around? That puts dollars into the game? The max level players.
No amount of C-store ships will keep people around if there ain't new stuff to do.
If it don't make dollars, it don't make sense.
That actually sounds like a very good idea. Very good indeed. An ad campaign featuring Frakes would be pretty awesome too, might grab some attention around the Web. As for Frakes himself, hasn't he been trying, unsuccessfully thus far (along with some other folks) to get another Trek TV series made? This would give him something Trek-related to do while everyone waits for Abrams to roll out his next attempt to turn Trek into Star Wars and until CBS lets someone else have a go at Trek.
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