Profile: shava
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• • General: Turbine CEO Jim Crowley on New Investors

  • Originally posted by brostyn
    

    The company that made AC2 and DDO is somehow swindling investors into taking huge risks.

     

    Geez, why can't I find idiots to give me money so I can waste it?

    Lack of a business plan and/or existing revenue, too much snark, and too many comments like this on the public record? :)

    Yrs,

    Shava

    /* currently writing a business plan for a game-related business */

  • Posted: 6/06/08 2:34 PM
    General Discussion
• • General: Turbine CEO Jim Crowley on New Investors

  • The overlap of IPs is really fascinating to me.  There are many many things that Turbine has said they can not do because they would infringe on New Line Cinema (the Time Warner unit that did the Peter Jackson LOTR movies).  On the other hand, New Line *screwed* the Tolkien estate on royalties, and has been in court with them involving a lot of rancor, and then Turbine just signed a lengthy extension with the Tolkien estate for MMO rights.

    So the licensing politics of this may be interesting.  Tolkien estate politics and court cases aside, we could see the movie soundtrack and cutscenes in the game, which I personally think would be sweet. 

    And then, New Line is struggling to get out the prequel movie (that little book called The Hobbit), and the game implications of them trying to tie in LOTRO might be very complicated, considering that's well in the past by the MMO timeline.  Will Time Warner place pressure?

    On the other hand, now Time Warner, with their vast empire (start checking out the top level of the heirarchy here) could start pushing the marketing for LOTRO.  And that could make for some great growth -- and growing pains!

    The curious questions go on and on.  We'll see in time.  Just another sign of how the game industry is starting to properly (or at least inevitably) converge with the "mainstream" entertainment markets.

     

    Shava

    former entertainment licensing professional...:)

  • Posted: 6/06/08 12:45 PM
    General Discussion
• • Lord of the Rings Online: Interview with Jeffrey Steefel

  • Originally posted by daeandor
    

    That's all fine and dandy, but PR spin is not what I was hoping for.  What is the real state of the game from Turbine's view?  I mean, talking about a free weekend, fishing, and an upcoming Korean launch (which won't do much for US servers AFAIK) is pretty weak.

    Um.  The real state of the game is:

    They just launched a popular expansion.

    They have a paid expansion upcoming.  (most of the details on these two items were reported two weeks ago)

    They are expanding to the biggest markets in the world in east Asia.

    They are hiring here too, briskly.

    They have a promo that says, "OK, so you missed your bet twelve months ago that we'd run at least 20 months for pre-pay lifetime accounts.  Wanna bet now we'll run at least 32 months?"

    They have another promo that says, "Pay $9.99 a month -- but if you ever skip a month, you're back to $14.99.  So we'll reward your consistant loyalty in advance...uh...kinda."

    Fishing is popular.

    Patches are regular and competently deployed.

    What more do you want?

    Meh, some people look for ambulance chasing...whatever...:)

     

    Shava

  • Posted: 5/14/08 4:34 PM
    General Discussion
• • Age of Conan: Director Speaks on Fileplanet Open Beta

  • Originally posted by cmcmaha
    

    As one of the one hundred AoC Fileplanet Beta key winners, I have but one question.  Did I read the article correctly . . . 13 GB client?  Good Lord, it will take me a week to download that sucker!

    Took me overnight with the Fileplanet downloader on a good cable modem connection.  And if you really got a key -- go read the email they sent you and you'll see instructions to load it up.  You can even patch it (but not log in) as of today.

    I'm a fileplanet member *anyway* before all this, so I went and got myself a beta key, but may I say the process SUCKED.  They want to you load up their Comrade application (like xfire, but lamer) to get updates as to when keys would come available.  And then you had to reload the beta page every few minutes or the keys would come available -- and be exhausted -- within a few minutes. 

    I'm a consultant, and work from my home office, and could sit listening to a work related podcast while mashing reload every 30 seconds -- and it took me 2.5 days to get a key.  If I had paid for a FP subscription just for a chance to torture myself for the chance at a key -- I'd be pissed.

    Shava

  • Posted: 4/29/08 11:05 AM
    General Discussion
• • Beta, anyone else having a hard time?

  • Thanks so much!  Now, maybe if I send my issue with registering to that email address, they'll be able to fix that and I can take my test drive!

     

    You ROCK HARD!   

    Thanks!

    Shava

  • Posted: 4/22/08 3:59 PM
    Florensia