Do you remember City of Heroes?

[WSRB]

First, I'd like to say that the main point of my last post in this thread was that CoH's undignified sendoff was the result of Paragon's failure to do what they had been told to do (prep the game for shutdown so the game could go out on a high note), not because of malicious behavior on the part of NCsoft. I just wanted to clarify because it was late for me when I made my post and I realized that the point might have gotten a little buried in myth debunking.

 

 

Now to the main reason for this post:

 

Andryah you might be miscommunicating something or failing to state an assumption that your point of view is coming from, but frankly you're coming across as saying "CoH was cancelled because NCsoft was all butthurt from Paragon's negotiation tactics, which is the way Koreans behave." The idea that Paragon had no idea how to deal with NC executives is absurd because they'd already been doing so for a decade; and whether you mean to or not, your word choices seem to be ascribing a pettiness to NC's actions, then saying that's how Koreans act during negotiations. I don't want to start getting into accusations, but I'd like to think that there is something being missed and as such your posts have come off as very culturally biased, to put it the most neutral terms I can. I don't think that is your intent, but if it is I will say that is not cool with me and leave it at that.

 

 

The more universal explanation is that it was a confluence of events that had nothing to do with the nationality of the involved parties.

 

- NCsoft no longer wanted CoH on their roster and felt Paragon's projects in development would not be a good fit either.

 

- Executives at NC likely created a timetable with a deadline for the sale or shutdown of Paragon and CoH. Thus to have them gone by the end of the year, they would have to have a deal in place by the end of summer because no one wants to run a transition over Christmas holidays, particularly if it's a game's shutdown; hence an end of August/beginning of September deadline in order to have a 90 day transition.

 

- NC would have kept their deadline and rock bottom price to themselves because otherwise they would have entered into any negotiations from a position of weakness. That's not a Korean thing: that's Business 101.

 

- NC entered into negotiations to sell CoH/Paragon to a third party. Those plans fell through.

 

- Paragon management began to negotiate for a buyout with an unenthusiastic NCsoft. NC not wanting to let the studio buy itself back is also not a Korean thing because unless they're spinning off into an entirely different field, you're creating a new competitor instead of selling a used product to an existing competitor.

 

- Once it was clear that Paragon was either unwilling or unable to make a deal work within NC's deadline and/or price, NC closed the book on the chapter and shut it all down.

 

All of this is pure conjecture, as is everything else, but absolutely none of the above behavior is specifically a trait of Asian cultures in general or the Koreans in particular. Virtually any business would operate this way. And, for good or ill, I believe that is the most likely scenario of what happened.

Edited October 8, 2013 by WSRB