Bit of news that's come in via
MMOFringe.com, in turn reporting from
MMORPG.com, in turn reporting from
GamesIndustry.biz.
John Needham has left Cryptic Studios and Jack Emmert has been appointed the Chief Executive Officer of the company. Needham has left Cryptic to 'unspecified other opportunities in gaming'. Emmert is now the top executive at Cryptic and will report directly to Atari.
Wasn't John Needham one of Smedley's proteges? Now he's out the way, how will this affect Cryptic going forward?
Discuss.
Comments
I hope positively. I honestly never cared for the fact that one of Smedley's upper circle was in charge of Cryptic as (IMO) Smedley is responsible for the majority of SOE's MMO game administration issues. But time will tell.
Baaaaa!!!!
Hopefully it won't be too much of a shift from him going from being a creative/executive guy to a top-level exec.
Oh, and STO f2p might come sooner than the end of Q3 as I've predicted.
You make that sound like it would be a bad thing.....
Jack Emmert Taking Over Cryptic As New CEO
from what i gather jack likes star trek online and is quite passionate about it so maybe that will see us in better shape going forward or maybe it will have no impact. who knows. i highly doubt if it does have an effect that it would be a quantifiable one that we as the players will notice.
He's not Bill Roper that all I care about.
He's made good calls and bad calls over the years but he owns up to the bad ones.
In general, he seems to favor a bigger staff for existing games. The "Cryptic listens" mantra was started by him in response to mistakes he made helming City of Heroes. He hates transparent timesinks in games and isn't a fan of C-Stores... but sees them as a necessary evil to keep more people retained on staff. He's one of the biggest critics of unintuitive tooltips at Cryptic. He's got a mythology degree. He's a big fan of Klingons and Romulans. He also has a tendency to promise the moon without consulting what's realistic and, overall, I think he's historically operated under the principle of making big promises and then using that as leverage with his financiers and developers with a kind of "I promised these features! We have to make them happen now!"
I think it's probably a nice thing for Atari stockholders since they hired the founder of the original Atari as their representative/consultant in dealing with Atari upper management and Jack has a lot in common with that guy.
Overall, Jack strikes me as a guy who is probably good for the shareholders and good for the staff. In terms of players, what he'll push for is accessibility for new gamers and ultra-casuals and a bigger staff. He takes care of his staff and has spent his whole computer gaming career trying to keep the biggest staff he can and trying to avoid layoffs through any means necessary. He can be a bit prickly and over-promise but I think a lot of the areas where Cryptic games have fallen short happened when the people writing the checks didn't listen to Jack, when he was arguing for the features that we all drool over and wasn't given the resources to make that happen.
So... I'd advise cautious optimism, especially if Atari does into the black in the next year and Cryptic continues to be a huge part of that. Coupled with Jack in a position where he can take up a bully pulpit, that could be a good thing.
He's incredibly passionate about CO, and STO, and an avid Klingon player. He's been involved in every project we've ever made, and is a fountain of great ideas. On top of that, he has a great deal of respect for our communities, and is always incredibly open to feedback.
We're going to miss John, he's done a great job of leading us the past few years, and we all wish him well in his new role. However, we're not expecting to see any changes in the way we operate here.
Thanks,
Stormshade
He deserves it!
Im sure that its probably not the case, but I remember that was my feeling.
UPDATE: Ive found the interview, appears it cant be downloaded anymore, or at least I cant download it, Cryptics news article about it is here.
I also found the issue I had a problem with, I even made a post about it on that news article thread.
In the interview he states that Star Wars Galaxies actually got BETTER towards the end. (post nge) that at the time and if its still the case now, worrys me a hell of a lot.
SWG was an amazing game until the NGE hit and anyone saying the NGE was a positive move causes me concern, more so now that that person is in charge of STO!!!!
I was about to say that time heal all wounds. But that was exactly the problem with the Regen Scrapper after the changes.
A toast to all the good times, and will try to toggle away the bad ones. Hehe...
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... That's ... that's actually very cool, IMO. Makes me want one now ...
If the answer to your first question is "yes", then the answer to your second question can only be "better".
He has always been a huge supporter for Star Trek Online and still plays the game a lot. He is always giving us great feedback on new episodes and game systems and I'm excited to have such a big STO fan at the helm of Cryptic Studios.
In my opinion this is going to lead to bigger and better things for the game and I'm looking forward to working with Jack even more than we do now.
Classic!
who took is place?
Drinking Pirate Puppies is catching on, eh?
I Don't know Jack
So basically, even though Jack is a big Klingon Fan, we wont' see any increase in the amount of Klingon content generated over the next year than we did over the last year and we'll continue to have thread about Klingon content ignored and/or locked even though many of them include some good ideas. In other words, players of the Klingon faction will continue to be told to go to the back of the bus.
Orly? I hope that means we'll have:
1. B'rel cLOLack fixed so it won't be the only cloak you can actively grief someone (oh hai haz emits! Yes, I've done it both accidentally and on purpose
2. More episodes dealing with the current fed/klingon war (we are still at war with the feddie dogs right?)
3. Get more unique ships and melee weapons (klingon dagger anyone?)
4. FIX MY BLASTED OFFICERS WHO, WHEN YELLING, DECLOAKS MY WHOLE SHIP! (I'm sorry for yelling that, just wanted to get the point across)
5. More pvp additions. Look, the sorties are cool and all, but what if you make those into mini games where the federation defends and klingons attack? Say 20 supply crates where klings need to destroy (bonus if captured instead!) them and feddies need to keep them intact?
I knew there was a reason I ran recluse's task force with fervor. Curse you, Jack, for what you did to x/regen!