[Poetic] Tablets From The Mount
Tablets From The Mount
You have long-time, highly positioned employees departing. You have CCP bringing in outside talent at the expense of in-house talent. You have CCP continuing to move towards a kinder gentler EVE Online.
As for the Sreegs, Soundwave and Zulu departures, all have left in a relatively short time, all in the same year that a lot of this new direction with CCP Games and EVE Online is taking place.
We can probably take Sreegs out of the equation. I'm pretty sure he left simply to return to the States and to make a bunch more money doing pretty much the same job. As head of security for CCP's gaming properties, he probably had gone as far as he could in the company. Security is a very specific position, and being really good at security (which I will assume Sreegs is), doesn't mean you're going to be qualified at a more general position in the design and development of that game, such as a producer role. I would think he wasn't expecting further promotions within CCP, thus it wasn't a significant reason for his departure. I just think a larger carrot lured him away.
As for Zulu and Soundwave; Zulu was Senior Producer; Soundwave was the Lead Designer. In terms of moving up the corporate ladder, their next promotions would have been into Executive Producer and Producer roles respectively. Zulu was not likely to receive preference on any promotion into Executive Producer, given he'd been "replaced" by Unifex after the Incarna debacle. Zulu had his chance at the head of EVE Online. As for Soundwave, the producer roles were already occupied and CCP obviously was not going to leapfrog him into Executive Producer. Soundwave's promotion opportunities were very limited. If both Zulu and Soundwave wanted to grow their careers, they were going to have to look outside CCP for opportunities. Both did. Both will be working for Riot Games. Zulu in Santa Monica. And Soundwave in Dublin.
Other than Unifex, CCP wants to fill all their big positions from outside the company. Sean Decker from EA as Senior Vice President of Product Development. Owen O?Brien from DICE/EA as Executive Producer of Valkyrie. DUST 514 and EVE Online currently have open Executive Producer roles, and it seems obvious they will not be filled in-house. I would not doubt if Sean Decker already has candidates in mind (he was instrumental in the Owen O'Brien hire), and less surprising if they too have EA connections.
And then there's the new Terms of Service changes. People are blaming the GM department, but that's dumb. These changes come from higher up. This is a change in direction defined at the producer role (at a minimum.) I'd suspect Unifex has a hand in this, as does Seagull. These changes, to soften up the image of EVE Online, have been happening in little increments for the last year. Toughening up the mining barges. Implementing PvP safeties. Changing suspect flagging under Crimewatch. And now some TOS changes to make scamming and con-work much more difficult and much more open to violations of rules.
You don't blame the GM department for those changes. They're simply a convenient scapegoat for the players at the moment. This much larger change in direction is coming from the producer level and higher within CCP Games. You want answers, the people that have the answers are Unifex, Seagull, probably Hilmar. (I'd say Decker too, but he's really new and I think most of his current focus is on making something out of DUST 514.)
Hilmar and his investors want a complete tonal shift in EVE Online. It is the current golden goose, and it needs to be laying ever bigger eggs if CCP Games wants to see through a variety of new projects (which EVE Online funds.) And bigger eggs means attracting more players. And to attract more players, EVE has to develop a different image. There are many people who refuse to play EVE due to its cutthroat image, so it shouldn't be surprising if some people in CCP see that cutthroat image as holding them back.
Source: Tablets From The Mount
EVE is dying!
Ich glaub ich brauch doch wieder nen jita clone, es macht keinen spaß x jumps zu fliegen und nur auf ein monument zu schießen. xD
Erst bringt er etliche gute Argumente dafür, dass die Abgänge einfach nur gute persönliche Gründe hatten, dann deutet er aber doch darauf hin, dass Hilmar, Seagull und die EA-Teufel EVE ruinieren wollen. Hmm. Naja, man wird sehen.
Naja nicht ruinieren sonder nur noob freundlich machen wollen ... wobei das leider oft das gleiche ist. Die behaupten ja auch sie würden das game nicht weniger komplex oder schwer machen sondern nur einfacher für einsteiger... ... ...