I take it most of you have heard of this, that WW has been bought out by CCP, the makers of "EVE Online".  

Does anyone know more about that latter company? Not being a videogame player, I'm pretty in the dark about it. I know that they're from Rekjavik, which could explain the fascination with buying out a gothy gaming company years after it was past its peak, but other than that I pretty much got nothing.

Will this be good for White Wolf? Bad? Are the CCP people uberswine buying the company because of their adoration for all things gothy-pretentious?  What's the story here?

RPGPundit

You might want to check this thread.

Eve is a very unusual MMORPG, it's space based and very much player driven.  Think of it I guess as being like Elite, but every ship is PC flown.

All players are in the same universe, people build corporations, chase pirates, become pirates, mine, all sorts of things.

I don't see much in common with White Wolf to be honest, but I imagine the draw for the computer guys is cheap access to creatives who can help generate new content.

Ok, then given that I somehow forgot about the other thread, the purpose of this new thread is to analyze CCP's motivation. I mean, what's the story here? Why buy a failing second-place RPG company who's glory days are well behind them?

Is EVE a swine game? are these guys just WW fanboys and the whole deal is just a vanity purchase? What?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditIs EVE a swine game? are these guys just WW fanboys and the whole deal is just a vanity purchase? What?

RPGPundit

No, Eve is a massive space simulation, it's about as far from what you term swine games as you can get really.

Thing is, there are a lot of good content writers in White Wolf, I imagine that's what they're buying.

Also, they may want to leverage the Eve property into rpgs and more profitably CCGs.  White Wolf knows those business and has a proven track record in them which might be very attractive.

I doubt this has anything to do with the WoD properties.

Ah, ok.

RPGPundit

Actually I suspect it's the other way round.  The RPG industry is too small and too unprofitable to make it worth the effort to buy up a major player in order to start flogging RPGs of your IPs.  If you wanted to do that you'd just sell a license.

I suspect that they're buying WW in order to get access to their IPs for the purposes of making an MMORPG out of them.  That way, rather than bother with negotiations and licenses, you just buy up the company and you get to do what you want with their IPs (especially seeing as WW was privately owned).

Now they have a world all worked out with an existing fanbase that also like MMORPGs, a bunch of staff who can write content AND no need to negotiate licenses or deal with lawyers.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalActually I suspect it's the other way round.  The RPG industry is too small and too unprofitable to make it worth the effort to buy up a major player in order to start flogging RPGs of your IPs.  If you wanted to do that you'd just sell a license.

I suspect that they're buying WW in order to get access to their IPs for the purposes of making an MMORPG out of them.  That way, rather than bother with negotiations and licenses, you just buy up the company and you get to do what you want with their IPs (especially seeing as WW was privately owned).

Now they have a world all worked out with an existing fanbase that also like MMORPGs, a bunch of staff who can write content AND no need to negotiate licenses or deal with lawyers.

I concur.

Imagine channeling all the angst from all the LARPs into an MMORPG.

That's gotta be their interest.

To be clear, they won't do this just to do an rpg, you could do that much simpler.  I think the key driver will be to get access to White Wolf's content generators, the path from rpg designer to computer game content designer is well trodden.

CCGs seem an odd fit for Eve, but they do make money still, more than rpgs anyway.

But I would imagine it's access to content providers that's the driver.

White Wolf's IP Lawyers went after the movie "Underworld" which suggests that if you wanted to do any MMORPG with vampires and werewolves, it might be easier to strike a deal with them than have drawn out legal battles.

The CCP guys released a collectible card game based on their MMO at GenCon. They're eager to get into table top gaming, as are most MMO producers. After all, there's a World of Warcraft RPG and a TCG. It's much cheaper, easier, and faster to produce a tabletop game than an MMO, especially if you are already maintaining and expanding an active, profitable MMO to being with.

Whenever you have an IP, like WoW, D&D, Star Trek, or whatever, people who are into that IP have a variable amount of fandom that the IP producer can monetize.

For example, Bob likes Star Trek, but he only watches it on TV when he happens to come across it. Otherwise, he doesn't buy Star Trek stuff. Paramount can monetize $0 directly from him.

Sue really loves Star Trek. She buys the series on DVD, goes to the movies, and has a Captain Kirk action figure on her desk at work. Paramount can convert her fandom for Star Trek into $200 in sales each year.

MMO producers are betting that they have lots and lots of Sues in their audiences, people who are paying $15 per month but have a greater, untapped reservoir of fan energy that they can monetize. Hence, TCGs, boardgames, RPGs, and so on.

CCP wants to monetize their players' love of EVE Online, and WW offers methods by which they can attempt that. Given the timelines for producing MMOs, it'll be years before we see a WoD MMO unless one was already in the works. OTOH, we should see EVE table top games within the next year or so.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a situation where both companies faced stagnant or sagging growth, and decided to team up and grow into each other's market (WoD MMO, EVE RPG and TCG).

This likely had nothing to do with getting expertise in game design so much as expertise in warehousing, printing, production management, and so on. If EVE needed designers, they'd just hire some. Most of WW's writers are freelance. From a gamer's point of view, it's easy to underestimate the value in knowing how to produce an RPG book, from art, to layout, to warehousing, to dealing with distributors. A good manager is worth a dozen talented designers (a good manager can compensate for weak designers; the reverse is not true.)

Your use of the term 'monetize' frightens and confuses me.  I'm just a cave man, but it looks like the word 'soak' drops right into the same place and all the sentences make sense.

Quote from: jrientsYour use of the term 'monetize' frightens and confuses me.  I'm just a cave man, but it looks like the word 'soak' drops right into the same place and all the sentences make sense.

Ha! I was just trying to make it sound more clinical than it really is.

The funny thing is that fans are really, really selective. There are a few exceptions, but in the staggering majority of cases it's a two way street, almost like a relationship. A gamer might be willing to spend $200 per year on D&D stuff, but if you try selling him crappy D&D stuff he stops spending.

A better way to put it is, "Fans of X are willing to spend $Y if you deliver something interesting."

The people who mindlessly buy anything with a logo stamped on it are too small in number to sustain a company.

One other thing: don't underestimate how fertile the tabletop gaming market could be for MMO producers. I think we're still in the Disco Stu economics* phase of MMOs. Sooner or later (and I think it's a lot sooner, like right earlier this year), MMOs are going to saturate the market. They'll stop producing new users and start fighting over a limited market.

At that point, the MMO people need to find other ways to make money.

My gut level prediction is that when the Starcraft MMO comes out and simply eats into WoW's audience, the MMO bubble will officially burst.

*Disco Stu Economics: The mistaken belief that current growth trends will extend indefinitely. The Internet is the best example of Disco Stu economics. People saw numbers for Internet usage as people adopted the new technology, and assumed that such sharp growth meant that every person on Earth would be constantly online within a few years. The name is taken from the Simpsons character Disco Stu, who uses charts showing disco's growth from 1977 to 1979 in an attempt to get people to invest in his disco dancing studio.

This is going to make things interesting for White-Wolf. Although not as interesting as people are assuming.
 
It sounds like WW is staying the same, except The current President of White-Wolf now answers to the current CEO of CCP, probably through telecommunication.
 
What WW gains: A direct hand in a COMPETENT video games division. The WoD MMO will probably be a pretty good game. It'll probably be closer to second life than to WoW. EVE is an MMO that plays nothing like any other. As a baseline for a WOD MMO it's probably the best out there. It's all about REAL politics and resources. It's the "MMO where you can get ganked on the Messageboard". The also gain an easier in to the European Market.
 
What CCP Gains: The ability to turn IP's into multiple mediums. White-Wolf has experience with not just Table-Top games. They've turned their IP's into TV shows, CCG's, NCGS, Computer and Console Games, hell they've even turned into Pro-Wrestlers.
 
They also get WW's very competent World-Builders. Remember, White-Wolf built the "World" of Warcraft, they built the "World" of Ravenloft, and they built 2 very popular and fanatically followed World(s) of Darkness and Exalted.
 
They also get an in to the North american Market.
 
I don't think either of these companies is unprofitable. I figure they were probably working on the WoD MMO together and got to talking. This just seems like a good decision for both of the companies involved. This merge grows both of these comanies up quite a bit.