NC West

[WarBlade]

There looks to be a bit of a shake up at ArenaNet and NCSoft...

Source

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

NCsoft Announces Formation of "NC West"

CEO Taek Jin Kim Promotes Chris Chung, Jeff Strain, David Reid, and Patrick Wyatt

SEOUL, Korea, Sept. 10, 2008—NCsoft ® Corporation (KSE: 036570.KS), the world's leading publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), including award-winning franchises Lineage®, Guild Wars® and City of Heroes®, today announced the formation of "NC West™". A wholly-owned subsidiary of NCsoft with operating responsibility for western regions including the US and Europe, NC West will be led by Chris Chung as CEO, Jeff Strain as president, product development, David Reid as president, publishing, and Patrick Wyatt as CTO as well as yet unannounced European executives.

NCsoft's existing subsidiaries NC Interactive, NC Europe, NC Austin, and ArenaNet will be led as a unified organization under NC West with a dedicated focus towards becoming the world's premier western publisher of MMOs. NC West is the tentative name for the organization, and the company expects to announce final naming and corporate structure in the near future. NC West's headquarters is planned to be established in Seattle, WA by the end of 2008.

Chris Chung, previously CEO of NC Interactive, has a long history with NCsoft. He began his tenure at NCsoft's ArenaNet® studio, where he managed that studio's business and helped launch the multi-platinum selling Guild Wars franchise. Chung later went on to become the chief publishing officer for NCsoft's Seoul headquarters. Prior to NCsoft, Chung spent more than five years at Microsoft and later co-founded a marketing research firm. As CEO of NC West, Chung will continue to report directly to NCsoft CEO Taek Jin (TJ) Kim.

"We are confident that by combining our subsidiaries into a unified global organization under Chris Chung's leadership, NC West will become a more powerful force to be reckoned with in the western MMO market," said TJ Kim. "Chris has become a guiding force within our company and has been extremely successful at every position he has held with us. His detailed first-hand knowledge of all aspects of our business is invaluable and will help establish NC West as a global leader."

Jeff Strain was formerly the president and co-founder of ArenaNet, a company he formed with Patrick Wyatt and Mike O'Brien when they left senior roles at Blizzard Entertainment in 2000. Additionally, Strain held the position of executive producer of Guild Wars 2™ prior to taking this new role. Strain will report directly to Chung and manage all NC West development studios across all existing and future products. Strain will also direct the production of NCsoft's Asian-developed titles for NC West territories.

David Reid began with NCsoft in March 2008 as vice-president, marketing for North America. Reid came to NCsoft from Turner Broadcasting's GameTap, where he served as vice-president, marketing. Prior to that, he worked at Microsoft as director of global platform marketing, where he launched the Xbox 360. In his new role, Reid will continue to report to Chung and will lead franchise management, marketing, public relations, sales, and customer support for NC West.

As a founder of ArenaNet, Patrick Wyatt led the development of the network and server technologies for the Guild Wars franchise, and directed the architecture and deployment of ArenaNet's global game network infrastructure. Before co-founding ArenaNet with Strain and O'Brien, Wyatt was the vice president of research and development for Blizzard Entertainment, where he led programming for the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises. As CTO for NC West, Wyatt will report to Chung and will focus on platform technology development, network operations, and systems engineering.

"There is an unparalleled opportunity for growth in the massively multiplayer online market," said Chris Chung. "By combining the strength of our US and European teams, NCsoft has the best global infrastructure to win in new and existing markets, and the best developer talent capable of creating blockbuster MMO franchises."

About NC West
NC West is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation, a world leading publisher and developer of massively multiplayer online games including Lineage/Lineage II, Guild Wars, City of Heroes, Richard Garriott's Tabula Rasa®, and Aion®: The Tower of Eternity™. More information about NCsoft can be found at www.plaync.com.

NCsoft, ArenaNet, Lineage, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, Tabula Rasa, Aion, The Tower of Eternity and all associated logos and designs are trademarks or registered trademarks of NCsoft Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Regina Buenaobra comments...

The formation of NC West has raised a lot of questions and speculation about what this means for ArenaNet, Guild Wars, and Guild Wars 2.


As far as ArenaNet and Guild Wars are concerned, the creation of NC West ensures that we will get all the publishing support we will need to make Guild Wars 2 a success. ArenaNet remains a standalone studio focused on Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. Mike O’Brien heads up the studio and is also the Executive Producer for Guild Wars 2. You may recall that Mike is one of the founders of ArenaNet and was also the Executive Producer for the original Guild Wars.


We’d like to congratulate ArenaNet alums Chris Chung, Jeff Strain and Pat Wyatt and we look forward to working closely with them (and kicking ass!) in their expanded roles at NC West

[WarBlade]

Oh WTF? Shocking news today as NC Soft in Europe is getting shut down.


An official announcement for starters...

Changes at NCsoft West – 11 February 2009

You've probably all heard the game media’s reports about NCsoft West restructuring, and so you've probably got a lot of questions about how this affects Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, and community support. The changes at NCsoft West basically mean we at ArenaNet will have more control over our games and game-related services like community, localization, and QA. With these departments located in-house, ArenaNet will be better positioned to provide world-class quality games and service to our players.

In terms of the Guild Wars Community Team, the NCsoft West changes mean all Guild Wars community managers will work right here at the ArenaNet studio. Unfortunately, in the short term this may mean that Guild Wars Community Team will be a little short-staffed. We will try to ensure the impact is minimal. In the long run, having all ArenaNet community managers at the studio will improve the flow of information between community managers and developers, as well as between community managers and players.

Guild Wars 2 development won’t be affected by the changes at NCsoft West, and in the long term it will mean good things for the quality and support we’re able to give Guild Wars 2.

When asked about Martin Kerstein and Peter Verhelst, Regina had this to say:

Like all the community managers at NCsoft West Europe, they've unfortunately been let go. D-: It was a pretty big shock to all of us, to be honest.

I spoke to Peter earlier and he's trying to stay in good spirits. Martin and the others all went to the pub after the news. I really feel for them. They're all good people.

Sad days. Those guys were great for the game and the community.

So what happens next?

The changes mean good things for the company from a broad perspective. I just wish it didn't have to have this human cost, and especially in this economy.

We are going to be looking into hiring community managers onsite with the language skills needed. Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later, but with this change still being so new, I don't have a time line for you on when we can bring those people on board. We still have to look for them. Looking for the right people can be really tricky, because we're looking for a lot of specific skills.

That's about it for now. I'll see what else I can dig up as the news unfolds.

[ceolstan]

It was a shock to me, to be sure. One day, I was reading about how the NCSoft Europe group was going to be meeting with fans in the UK. I was jealous. The next thing I know, those people got the sack.

This was the same group that did the extremely funny and well-done Quest for GC. My favorite is this one. "You're the Swede. You tell us."

For what it's worth, Martin was a real go-getter for all the GW localization, and a significant number of European alpha testers got part-time jobs as NCSoft freelancers working on the localization for Nightfall. They're credited at the end of the game, too. I think that Martin's idea to use testers was an original one, and quite smart from both a community and an economic perspective.

I'm saddened because I think the NCSoft Europe group provided a great CR team. I've not been nearly as impressed with Regina. I very much miss Gaile Gray, whom I think poured her heart and soul into the GW community.

[FoxBat]

Interesting read: http://t-machine.org/index.php/2009/02/1...-industry/


Bottom line:

- NCSoft fired their Europe development teams a while ago, the Publishing and Q&A was an odd vestige to have hanging around there. So this latest development is quite normal.

- NCSoft bought two large dev companies, the people that made GW, and the people that made Tabula Rasa. TR ended up putting them in the hole, so control of the Western assets is basically being given to the Anet folks who are bringing in the revenues. As the article speculates, this might be because NCSoft is not willing to take risks with other independent subsidiaries at this time, compared to their highly centralized and controlled Asian conglomerate.

[WarBlade]

I very much miss Gaile Gray, whom I think poured her heart and soul into the GW community.

Well, as you well know she's been very involved with the support liaison role and is still very approachable by the community. In the mean time Linsey has really put herself way out there and been active with community discussion, which itself fulfils a community relations function on her own time. Joe Kimmes is starting to sneak out from the rock he's been hiding under as well lately and seems to be enjoying the experience.

I actually feel Regina gets a bad rap, all things considered. She stepped into a two-and-a-half person team and soon found herself being a one person 'team'. Now with Peter, Martin and Julien out of the picture the European community relations needs come swinging back her way. The net effect is this: People accuse her of not being communicative, but I look and wonder how she finds the time to communicate at all at the moment.

And the mention of Martin, Peter and Julien disappearing off the radar brings me back to Gaile. I wonder how much of a role change she's in for now that some of her trans-continental liaising has shifted to liaising within Bellevue.

[FoxBat]

In the mean time Linsey has really put herself way out there and been active with community discussion, which itself fulfils a community relations function on her own time.

Gaile was all over every topic in every single fan forum. Personally I found it pretty obnoxious, especially when she'd get in the fray of flame wars over every GW thing someone has to whine about and put some kind of cheery spin on it. I like hearing the facts, I don't like hearing spin rationalizations that you can't ever trust given the biased source. (Oh god, the epic Loot Scaling thread on guru...)

But she was definitely far more involved in that capacity, at least for a while until she got fed up with being flamed or something. Not to mention much more of an in-game celebrity with the frog talks and so forth. The official Wiki didn't even exist for most of her tenure if that is where you are drawing comparisons from.

In related news, it's looking more that D3 is going to release first. And there might even be a year or two to get bored of it before GW2.

[Seijin]

What is D3 going to be like? I've actually never played any of the Diablos before. I saw some of the preview videos last year. It seems pretty cool. I'll probably get it if I'm really bored with GW and GW2 isn't out yet if you all think its worth it...and if there's more activity there than in GW.

[Lurker Wyrm]

What is D3 going to be like? I've actually never played any of the Diablos before. I saw some of the preview videos last year. It seems pretty cool. I'll probably get it if I'm really bored with GW and GW2 isn't out yet if you all think its worth it...and if there's more activity there than in GW.

Diablo is hack and slash gameplay in an isometric view. Not sure what else you need to know. Just download the D2 demo from Fileplanet (or wherever has it) and try it for yourself. It looks as though D3 will have the same style of gameplay; but it'll have new things to do, like knocking down walls and stuff. The only big change we've seen so far is that the graphics for D3 are a lot cleaner than the two previous games were, which has been a huge controversy ever since the first screens and movies were released.

Oh, and there will definitely be a ton of activity more than there will be in GW. D2 still probably has the same number of people playing it that GW does.