Carbine Studio – Gaming•Murasama•net

NCsoft to sunset WildStar on November 28, 2018

Murasama — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 15:00:00 +0000

It is with great sadness that we say farewell as WildStar signs off for good on November 28. We’ve just released an update that turns off purchases, and turns on in-game events and bonuses. More info: https://t.co/xUyIVs7nJS pic.twitter.com/SzJbTpJ9Yv

— WildStar (@WildStar) September 26, 2018

http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/news/2018-09-26-wildstar-signing-off-november-28/

An “insiders” view of the Carbine Studio/Wildstar Shutdown

Murasama — Sat, 15 Sep 2018 10:15:00 +0000

An insider supposedly using a burner account posted in the comments section of Kotaku’s original article the other week in order to “set the record straight”.

https://kotaku.com/1828872909

The basic gist was that like Paragon Studios and City of Heroes, Carbine Studio and Wildstar was being closed by NCsoft because they were given long leashes but ended up wasting the money they were given.

While there is no way to actually verify this was an ex-Paragon Studio and Carbine Studio employee, this also isn’t that far fetched either.

I’ve written before regarding how Bluehole has done the same thing (with their Bluehole Alliances) where they acquire other studios, initially provide them resources including funding, and then a long leash. My primary topic was Ginno Games -> Bluehole Ginno when it came to the Devilian franchise -> PUBG Corp and PUBG.

It’s not unusual to see this given the competitive nature in Asian societies where even internal divisions are sometimes pitted against each other (intra-company coopetition) and allowed to sink or swim. When it comes to a western studio, this is where the disconnect occurs with the Korean leaderships expectations versus the discipline of that western studio. Paragon Studios was founded by NCsoft as a wholly owned subsidiary in Mountain View, California (aka NCsoft NorCal) while Carbine Studios was founded by former Blizzard employees and later acquired by NCsoft.

From my own experience, I’ve witnessed the excess that occurred during the heights of the dot.com era bubble in the 90’s so I can understand what happens when huge sums of money are dropped onto these studios (where more often than not, this money is mismanaged). That is why the closure of Carbine and Wildstar was not surprising especially considering the mismanagement at the leadership level.

With regards to NCsoft, they are justified in shutting things down when the performance isn’t there BUT I also believe there needs to be a better job down by the parent company (Korean leadership) at clearly communicating their expectations especially to western studios which they fund, create, or acquire such that the optics don’t always appear to be seen as a company that is quick to pull the plug on a title (that is the sort of reputation NCsoft has with myself for example).

Note that official developers who were part of Paragon have long denied some of the allegations of such misconduct. That isn’t to say there were issues higher up the chain but that too could be only considered unverifiable speculation. My point is more or less the aspect that subsidiaries at some Korean companies are allowed to operate independently where the possibility does exist for shenanigans to happen.

NCsoft shuttering Carbine and WildStar

Murasama — Thu, 06 Sep 2018 17:00:00 +0000

In what doesn’t come across as surprising news, NCsoft will be shutting down Carbine Studios (a studio created in 2005 by former Blizzard personnel who worked on World of Warcraft and acquired by NCsoft in 2007) as well as winding down WildStar. The MMORPG failed to gain traction after having initially launched as a subscription based game back in June 2014 and went F2P a little over an year later in September 2015.

Back in June 2018, nerdSlayer who creates the “Death of a Game” series on YouTube made the following regarding WildStar (a former developer also made a post in the comments section about the issues faced which added to the player facing issues).

One issue (again, not surprising) was “too many cooks in the kitchen”. To put it more bluntly, “shitty leadership” (or people in positions where they have no clue as to how to effectively lead and/or make the decisions) was a culprit in the development nightmare. His comment (the top comment made by Sam Noone) should just be read in its entirety in the above video.

NCsoft themselves have a history of quickly dropping the axe on games that do not meet certain metrics; which is why it was surprising this was not on the chopping block before Master X Master (their MOBA which was online only for a few months before they announced in November 2017 that it would be closing by January 2018).

It’s partially why I don’t put a lot of time into their titles (Blade & Soul is pretty much their only game I have time invested but not money). Don’t get me wrong, I like what they are doing to push the state of the foundations which many of their games are being built in (moving full on into Unreal Engine 4) but I also give pause to their decision making processes when it comes to pulling the plug on a title. Likewise, the leash is often times way too long where development goes off the rails (as what happened with Lineage Eternal with several design changes in 2014 and then the 2016 closed beta which led to the entire project being rebooted, the development team canned, and a new team put together for Project TL).

Regardless, I do realize there are still people who have been enjoying playing WildStar and are going to be sad to see it go. Hopefully NCsoft will give those players time to bring their in-game activities to some closure (NCsoft has already made a goodwill gesture to offer full refunds for purchases made from July 1st until in-game purchases are shut off).