Beitrag von: Aura am Juli 03, 2013, 09:01:20 Vormittag
As we all know now, Jon Lander made a lateral move into the new Executive Producer of Mobile Development role.
Today it was announced that Sean Decker (no CCP name, just yet) would be assuming one of Hilmar's many hats, Senior Vice President of Product Development.
Who exactly is Sean Decker? He was Vice President of Electronic Arts' Free4Play division. As the name implies, he headed up EA's free-to-play initiatives. It's reasonably well-known that he once stated: "I see the world as a micro-transaction."
There is some obvious concern in the community. EA's business practices, although successful, aren't well-admired or loved by the general gaming population. Investors, on the other hand, certainly find those practices admirable. As much as gamers might state their wariness of Electronic Arts, they certainly seem quite willing to support the company with their money. It's difficult to fault EA for doing "terrible things", if the gaming community is not so repulsed by those "terrible things" that they keep throwing money at EA. One could argue that those "terrible things" are not all that terrible.
The concern seems to be: how will EA-style business practices impact CCP? One can assume that Sean Decker was not hired simply because he has a winning personality, but because he brings a business ethic that they'd like to see implemented within CCP. A business ethic that worked for EA, and that they hope will work for CCP Games.
How might that effect their current and upcoming titles?
- EVE Online is subscription-based, and its only form of pay-to-win is in the purchase of PLEX and, now, dual training. The Aurum Store has not gone very far, and CCP would certainly like to see that grow.
- DUST 514 is free-to-play, so Mr. Decker will no doubt offer a lot of value to the growth of that game. That game definitely needs some new leadership and some change in direction.
- World of Darkness, still in development, may be where he offers the most insight and value. It's fairly well-known that CCP envisions this game as being heavily microtransaction-based. Might a free-to-play model now be on the table? We'll have to wait to see.
- Mobile development. Mobile gaming has always been a quagmire of micro-transactions, so perhaps he'll offer some clearcut direction to Jon Lander's development team.
- Oculus. It's hard to predict whether Oculus will be a thing or not, even given the success of CCP's space dogfight simulator, EVR. I don't see there being a tonne of money in Oculus game development in the near future, though there's something to be said if EVR is one of the device's premiere titles at launch.
Hilmar assured me that the plan for EVE is still the same plan that was discussed at Fanfest and that fans really latched onto. He promised that nobody will be "making any big kneejerk changes to EVE" and that CCP as a company won't forget the lessons it has learned over the past few years. CCP is currently looking at options that let players "customise the game experience" without upsetting game balance. Options like ship paintjobs are still on the table, but Hilmar explained that the focus right now is on more ideas along the same lines as the dual character training option recently released in EVE's Odyssey expansion.Whereas Sean Decker will certainly add income to the CCP Games bottom-line, CCP certainly needs better leadership and direction in its micro-transaction efforts. Sean Decker will give them that expertise. The need for a Sean Decker was probably pushed forward more by investors than anything else. Whereas EVE Online's prospects are doing well, the potential for more earnings are there. DUST 514 seems to be faltering, and that's likely been an investor concern, so Sean might be able to turn that title around. And a lot of money is going to be headed into World of Darkness development, and the last thing investors want to see is another CCP title making a rough landing on release. Sean will give World of Darkness a much better chance at success.
It'll be interesting to see what Sean Decker starts bringing to the table.
Source: Sean Decker - CCP's New Senior VP of Product Development (http://)