Curious Raven

Really! Change your links and blogrolls, I’ve moved!

Hey guys, I’m moving my blog elsewhere. This page should be going offline in the next day or so.

I’m working to have the domain point to the other blog, so you shouldn’t have to change your bookmarks or anything.

Anyway, check it out: new blog!

See you over there.

I’m not laughing. The team of women representing the US at an international bridge tournament in Shanghai held up a sign at the awards dinner that said “We didn’t vote for Bush”. They claim they were seeking a “moment of levity”.

Yeah? Well, I didn’t vote for you to get up and make our country look bad either. Very gauche Ladies.

You know, I am really getting tired of the anti-American crapI keep seeing on a near daily basis. I don’t agree with everything that our Government has done or is doing, but why has patriotism and national pride gone down the toilet? How is it possible that our nation’s celebrities and leaders hate our country with such fervor? Why do the rest of us let this crap continue without any reaction?

Some of the things that these people (including our own senators and congressmen) are doing would have resulted in charges of treason and heavy penalties not so long ago. Freedom of speech is one thing, but this has gone on long enough. It isn’t about speech or even whether or not we can stand up and be critical of our country…it is about doing things that are directly harmful to our government, our military, our families, and our way of life.

It needs to stop.

Sanction the US Bridge Team. Then, we need to start doing something about this anti-american sentiment spreading like a nasty virus from the radical left. Speaking of which, when are Democrats going to take back their party?

Much respect! Thank you for putting Chavez in his place.

Uhm, wow.

Ok, so EA recently acquired Bioware and Pandemic from Elevation Venture Partners for about $800M. The currentCEO of EA (John Riccitiello) was one of the founders of Elevation Venture Partners, and formerly the EA President/COO.

EA will pay up to $620 million in cash to the stockholders of VG Holding Corp. (Elevation Venture Partners) and will issue up to an additional $155 million in equity to certain employees of VG Holding Corp.

Now, this obviously raised a lot of eyebrows for several reasons (wonder who really cashed out on this deal eh?).

EA has a terrible reputation of destroying studios after acquiring them, and an equally bad reputation in the MMORPG space. There were some doubts when EA acquired Mythic, but promises were made and the world generally had happy thoughts that EA/Mythic would deliver Warhammer Online and have a nice success.

Oddly enough, after the acquisition, EA tasked Mythic with giving good ole’ Ultima Online (over ten years old now!) a cosmetic facelift. Ok fine, but aren’t these guys already busy with a MMORPG project?

So, EA picks up two extremely well respected studios, and more promises are made…they won’t be dismantled, EA is looking for hot new original content, Bioware is rumored to be working on a sweet Star Wars MMORPG (even though Sony already slaughtered that franchise and Lucasarts annoyed lots of people with the crappy last three movies), etc. etc.

Ok, fine, maybe EA has turned over a new leaf since Riccitiello returned earlier this year. But oh no! Rumors are flying about EA laying off a lot of staff (many of them from Mythic), and relocating the Mythic team to Virginia. What the hell?

If they can’t afford to be paying staff and need to cut costs, why the hell did they just blow $620M in cash to acquire two studios (800 employees) and take on the long term financial burden of all that staff? Is EA losing confidence in Mythic/Warhammer? Is this in any way related to the recent beta delays for Warhammer?

What is going on at EA? Are they going to use the acquisition for some accounting trickery for the end of the quarter? I dunno…

I do know that if I was an employee at EA, I’d be damn nervous and I’d start farming my resume out. That company has been a house of cards for too long now, and it wouldn’t surprise me if their stock starts tanking relatively soon. Sure, maybe acquiring Bioware and Pandemic will inject enough new blood to influence and catalyze some change, but EA (and all of their studios) are notorious for burning out talent quickly and replacing it with inexperienced college grads they just farm out of “game design” programs at various Universities.

It seems that EA has been playing the “increase valuation through acquisition” game for a long time..new studios in multiple other countries (including China) have been launched in the last 24 months, and there is even a brand spanking new one here in Raleigh that will be working on a NASCAR title (cause, you know, North Carolina = NASCAR, so developers here would naturally be better at design…it’s a southern thing).

I’m giving EA a big thumbs down. Booo.

Why aren’t the big companies doing it?”

This is, perhaps, one of the most frustrating questions that I have been asked by investors, venture capital funds, and colleagues/mentors kind enough to take some time to look at my business plans over the last decade and a half.

The mentality behind this question assumes that big companies are naturally successful, smart, and have both the will and the resources to continually push for bigger, better, faster. If the “big boys” aren’t doing something, than it probably isn’t worth doing…because of course, you have to assume that they already thought about your idea and have discarded it as unworthy.

Ok, this sounds like it makes sense, but it is a very weak assumption. Big companies are naturally slower than smaller ones, and usually bogged down in bureaucracy, policy, or conflicting interests. More often than not, it is simply easier (and cheaper) for a big company to sit back and wait for someone smaller to do something new and innovative, and then acquire them.

In the game industry, most of the “big companies” are either publishers that made a lot of money with a particular business model (put games in boxes on retail shelves) or they are other large media conglomerates that have bought into the industry through large publisher acquisitions. In both cases, these companies are very successful in their own rights, but are out of their depth when it comes to innovation or different business models. MMORPGs for example are still “new and mysterious” and not quite understood.

EA, arguably one of the most successful game publishers ever, has a horrible and dismal record with online games. They destroyed Origin after acquiring them and nearly destroyed Ultima Online as well. They have a long history of acquiring companies and then dismantling them. I’m not going to get into how they treat their employees or the terrible corporate culture they cultivate, and I’m not going to make a long list of all of the massive amounts of money wasted on funding projects and then canceling them at the last minute (remember battletech online?).

EA’s latest foray into MMORPGs (again) is through their acquisition of Mythic and Warhammer Online. Shortly after they acquired Mythic, they put the team to work on updating the graphics for Ultima Online and give it a facelift. WTF? I still don’t understand why you would divert a team working on a large project like Warhammer to spend time on a completely different game. This is just one example of the odd and backwards things that EA tends to do.

So why isn’t EA making multiple MMORPGs? Why is Sony picking up a lot of half-dead MMORPGs (cough, Vanguard, cough) and aggregating them instead of trying to innovate and push the industry forward? There are other companies, but I think I’m making my point.

The big companies “aren’t” doing X or Y because it simply hasn’t occured to them, or they are too focused on other things than hunting out every new opportunity. Or they are just sitting on the sidelines waiting to make an acquisition play. That is why our ideas are great and why the big companies aren’t doing the same thing.

Big does not equal smart or all-knowing.

Big is risk averse and will continue to do the same thing day after day because it is safe.

Small is where innovation and creativity occurs. Invest in small things, sell out to big things.

I’m not sure I feel like making a list of small ideas that challenged industry goliaths and found success. Anyone familiar with capitalism and industry in America can figure that out on their own. Just look at all of our inventors and scientists, or companies that revolutionized entire industries with a simple idea or process.

The next time you are looking at investing in a small team of people with an idea, don’t ask them “why aren’t the big guys doing this”, instead ask how they will execute and take their idea to market to knock the big guys off their horses, or at least make themselves a hot acquisition target.

Robert Rice

Luciano Pavarotti, 71, died this morning of pancreatic cancer. He was an absolute maestro and one of the most incredible and talented tenors that ever walked the earth.

Even if you don’t like opera, or think you don’t like opera, take some time today and download something of his. Take a minute to close your eyes and experience his voice. It is worth it.

Rest in peace Maestro. Thank you for sharing your voice and passion with us.

I was outside on the porch smoking my pipe around 11:12p eastern when I saw what was probably a meteor East SouthEast from here. It looked fairly large, I initially thought it looked liked some fireworks descending (before exploding) but definitely too fast for a plane or something. The angle of descent was pretty sharp too. It was fairly hard to judge the distance, but I would say that it landed somewhere near the train tracks by capital boulevard or somewhere on the other side of the highway. I did not hear the sound of impact, so who knows.

Pretty cool. I wish I knew where it landed. I’ve always wanted to catch my own meteorite.

Yo!

The really cool folks over at RevolutionG interviewed me not too long ago and the podcast is going live in the next couple of days (or sooner). I had a great time talking to them, although I wonder if I was a little too ranty and longwinded at times. Hey, what can I say, I am pretty passionate about this industry and I have some very strong opinions.

Anyway, they were kind enough to plug my book and mention I blog here. Thank you guys! Also note that I blog under the pseudonym “Nicodemus” over at KillTenRats.

I’ll write more later. I’m still at the beach and heading home tomorrow. Wheee. Back to the grindstone.

Feel free to comment here and say hello, particularly if you landed here after hearing about it at RevolutionG.

Robert

Every year I head out to lovely Topsail Island on the coast of North Carolina for a “working vacation” during the last week in August. While I do get out and grab a little sand and surf, I spend most of my time reflecting on the last year, looking ahead to the future, and doing a lot of writing.

This year my focus is going to be catching up on some writing for Immortal Destiny, as well as polishing off a few areas of the overall design. I still have plenty of other stuff to deal with (mostly on the business side of things), but I find that being at the beach is highly conducive to my creative energies.

One of the things I will be focusing on is some writing for the Twelve Noble Houses of Siran. I’m thinking that I might start off by writing three quatrains (12 verses) for each, probably with a little send of the mysterious and prophetic. Thats the fun stuff. I also need to work out more on the background and flavor of each house, as well as the individual cultures. Fortunately I have a kick ass writer working on this stuff already (Andrea!) so I can focus on the bigger picture and let her take care of weaving the detail in what is going to be an incredible tapestry of lore.

Really, I can’t wait. We have so much really eye-popping stuff planned for Immortal Destiny, that it is very hard to not spill the beans and just post the big design document somewhere. Some of the people I have chatted with (various bloggers, podcasters, etc.) have probably noticed that if they catch me in a talkative mood, I will usually say a lot more than I had originally intended. Heheh.

Some of you have asked how we are doing, what stage we are at, when are we going to start posting screenshots, when is the website going to be updated, etc. etc. Well, the easy answer is “soon”. I was a bit preoccupied with my work at deviantart (Director of Prints) during the first part of the year (hey, we all need day jobs), I was still working heavily on the design stuff long into the night. After I left DA, I was able to focus on things full time…pretty evenly between design (mostly the core mechanics) and stuff on the business end. We found a funding source last September or so and we have finally reached the point where all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed.

I started putting more time into getting the core team expanded a bit and filling in a few holes, but intentionally keeping things small. There are dangers to growing too fast. Anyway, as any entrepreneur with experience will tell you, the funding process is usually a nightmare and the absolute hardest part of getting a new company off the ground. This is very true. The process for us has been much easier than it has been for me at other ventures in the past, but there have still been a lot of delays and unexpected circumstances. You guys wouldn’t believe the sheer amount of paperwork (legal and otherwise) that has to be done for something like this. It is even more complicated when the funding source is overseas (as I am sure anyone that has dealt with venture capitalists in Europe or Asia can quickly attest to). Anyway, we have had our fair share of delays and other problems, but we are finally seeing light at the end of the tunnel. We should be making some announcements relatively soon, and I will probably kick off a hiring spree.

One of the reasons I have been slow to have the team update the website is that we don’t want to talk about the game too much just yet (I’d rather not give our “competitors” too many ideas), and I don’t want to be overwhelmed with people banging on our door for more information, or demanding we put up forums. People don’t like to wait, and it will be a few years before we are even close to a launch. We want to build our community slowly, and we want to focus the website on the story, the setting, the lore, and the gameplay. I don’t want to throw out a few generic screenshots and a few pieces of concept art like everyone else does. Our vision here is much more than another MMORPG on the block…we aim to change the industry. Anyway, judge us by the game, not the eye-candy.

So when will we update the website? Soon, and definitely before the end of the year (don’t be dismayed, we will update it much sooner than that). We will probably start doing monthly or bi-monthly updates at that point and probably feature a small story vignette about a particular character, event, lore, or feature. At some point next year we will open up the forums, and we definitely want to encourage early fan sites, fan fiction, fan art, etc. I think that sort of thing is pretty damn cool, so we will most likely be making some art assets and whatnot available to help out.

Anyway, things are moving forward at a pretty brisk pace with a few bumps in the road. It is pretty exciting and frustrating at the same time. You would be amazed at how many emails I get asking for interviews, updates, screenshots, more information, resumes, etc. etc. Keep em coming folks. I’m being a little picky about interviews and stuff right now (preferring the small guy over the big media sites), and we are NOT HIRING RIGHT THIS MINUTE (but we are collecting resumes!).

I’m going to start posting here more often now, mostly about personal stuff or some opinions on MMORPG design, artificial life, virtual worlds, cybersociology, and the occasional “dev journal” (even though I’m not a programmer heh). As usual, feel free to write to me or message me on skype (rrice919). Even better, buy my book or just donate some cash (my donation link is at the top of the page). Extra cash is ALWAYS a good thing and goes toward increasing my library, dental bills, and other fun stuff. Failing that, you can always send me cookies. I rather like cookies.