Hope You Like Our New Direction: Daybreak Games

Yesterday I spent a considerable amount of time drafting and re-drafting a post about the ongoing situation at Daybreak. I never finished it because as I wrote more news kept coming in, almost all of it either reported or generated by Feldon of the invaluable EQ2Wire.

David Carey, a former producer and systems designer for Planetside2, himself now out of a job at Daybreak following the layoffs, posted a revealing and intriguing open letter on Reddit in which he explained, in most convincing fashion, why Columbus Nova does not deserve to be treated as the bad guy in all this:

"They are more like white knights than negative forces here. SOE needed a shake up/new direction, and CN provided that. They have done nothing but been gracious in their new ownership, and they went out of their way to make sure that Devs and support teams that got laid off were taken care of."

Before I'd had time to formulate my thoughts on that Feldon put up a no-holds-barred editorial dismantling SOE/Daybreak president John "Smed" Smedley's role in and version of events:

"You would think that Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley would have sought bids from companies that had the best interests in mind for the long-term growth and survival of the company in mind. However you would be wrong. According to an anonymous source at SOE and verified by a source in the gaming industry, SOE turned down three serious offers to buy the company, with one deal falling through literally days before the papers were to be signed".

The editorial makes a number of incendiary claims and it drew an immediate response from Smed. After an exchange of emails Feldon posted a follow-up in which he quoted Smed directly :

"We absolutely made sure that taking care of our employees was the highest priority and this deal was by far and away the one that took care of people the best."

Feldon confirmed that "It is absolutely true that Columbus Nova honored severance packages for those who were laid off and so salaried employees have time to find a new job, most with several months not including unemployment."

That exchange between Feldon and Smed corroborates and confirms the latter part of what  David Carey had to say in the quote above but it doesn't address his opening gambit. A look at the (complete?) list of the individuals who were laid off as posted this morning by Azuriel at In An Age is more illuminating in that regard.

Leaving aside for the moment the degree to which the President of the company is, or should be, responsible for its failings and avoiding metaphors relating to ship's captains and samurai warriors, that list does indeed suggest something more like a new broom sweeping clean than the clearing of deadwood. The lay-offs appear to fall into three broad categories: Communication, Content and Direction.

Communication has long been something SOE found diffcult to manage effectively. There was a long history of aggressive and antagonistic communication going all the way back to  the confrontational styles of community reps Absor and Abashi. At one point things got so bad SOE had to close down their own forums because of the damage the negativity there was doing to recruitment of new customers.

That did get sorted out and the individuals who fronted those communication channels over the last few years were largely popular and well-liked. There is, rightly, a sense of loss within the community they cared for and a concern for their future. The tributes coming in for Ashlanne, Afista, Hats and especially Brasse (about whom even SynCaine felt compelled to say something nice) show that it wasn't any fault in their ability to do the job required of them - to speak to and on behalf of the playing customers - that lost them their positions.

Overall, however, and despite the efforts of willing and able people, communication between the company and its customers remained confused and confusing. SOE employed a lot of people to talk to us on a lot of channels and yet somehow clear messages never seemed to get through. Let's hope there are changes to the structural approach, how communication is handled at Daybreak in the future as a result of this re-organization, and that past problems are avoided.

Then there are the creators; the designers and developers who fill the games with things for players to do and for characters to use. The removal of so many of those people from EQ2 and PS2 suggests a bleak future for the creation of new content for those games. That, of course, does depend on whether their roles have ended or are simply vacant, to be refilled with new talent with fresh ideas. Unlikely, I know.

It also raises an uncomfortable question, which is this: just how much new content does a game like EQ2 actually need? EQ2 is already one of the most content-rich MMOs in existence. If anything it has too much content. Might it not benefit from some streamlining, with the money saved going towards better marketing aimed at bringing in new players who could enjoy what's already there, rather than endlessly building more attractions to amuse the increasingly jaded palates of the existing audience?

As for PS2, I don't claim to know much about it or its audience but isn't it a jump-in, jump-out, massive persistent shooter? Does that game model require regular additions of designer-created content or just a better reason for people to blow each other to atoms?

Finally we get to the real crux of the issue: Direction. The Future.

Supposedly Columbus Nova bought SOE at least in part because of their belief that new properties like EQNext and H1Z1 could become large, popular, commercially successful products. Let's focus on EQN and Landmark.

For eighteen months, in this corner of the blogosphere and elsewhere, people have been asking two questions: "What the heck is Landmark supposed to be?" and "When are we going to see some actual progress on EQN?". Feldon emphasizes just how long and unproductive the road to New Norrath has been:

"EverQuest Next has been a going concern at SOE since at least 2008, more likely 2007...If we are very conservative on our timing, that’s January 2008-December 2011 or four solid years of development thrown in the trash before the team started over with what we see now in Landmark and what we will eventually see in EQNext."

Dave Georgeson was the face of Landmark/EQN. He's a fine communicator and an enthusiastic and lively presence in any Livestream. He writes a good producer's letter and he brought some solid ideas to EQ2 in his tenure there. I'd be very interested to look at any MMO project he goes on to head up after this. Jeff Butler co-created Everquest and understands, if anyone does, what made that game work. He has a great, dry wit and is always good value in a panel discussion. Steve "Moorguard" Danuser was in charge of EQN's story. On his blog, Mobhunter, he's as optimistic as David Carey: "I poured my heart into the story for EQN, just as I did for Amalur before it. Norrath is in good hands, and I can’t wait to see what Daybreak achieves."

They represented the core of the team responsible for what EQN would become. They are all gone. And yet, for all their estimable qualities, after two years of selling the concept of EQN and Landmark to an initially willing and eager audience, what is their legacy? The footprint of a building game that might be playable for the ordinary, casual player sometime this decade but certainly not now and a lot of rather silly Round Table discussions along the lines of "What pelt markings would you prefer to see on the Kerran?".

As David Carey said "SOE needed a shake up/new direction". We all knew it. We've all been saying it. Now it might just be happening.

Everyone with a functioning heart feels for the individuals who've lost not only their jobs but almost certainly in most cases jobs they really loved and did well. Everyone playing the games is apprehensive, even fearful, about what this means for their virtual homes and families, their characters and their guilds. We all remember what happened to Vanguard and Free Realms.

Not everything has changed, of course. Smed still stands on the bridge, hands on the wheel, gazing to the horizon. Is he Richard Phillips or Captain Ahab? (I know. I said no captain metaphors. I lied). Terry Michaels, Steve Klug and Emily "Domino" Taylor are still driving EQN. Will they go on following the same road-map or tear it up to head off on a road trip all their own? Holly "Windstalker" Longdale and a number of familiar names remain at EQ2.  Does that mean business as usual or battened hatches and a bunker mentality?  

Feldon's right: it didn't have to be this way. This, though, is the way it is. Smed says he did what he did for his people but who are his people? His employees or his players? Could he have done better by both or did he have to make his own hard choice? And anyway, would we really have thanked him if he'd sold us to PWE? We sure didn't like it when he sold us to PSS1. Maybe he actually learned something from that.

Still, in the end, something had to give. The drift had to stop. And we are, as they say, where we are. Will this shake things up enough? Will we like the new direction? Will there even be a new direction? What happens next?

Ah, now that's the adventure!