Rumor: NCsoft Austin, Dungeon Runners to be shut down

http://www.warcry.com/news/view/8566...NCsoft-Layoffs

Looks like warcry got it right too, not all blogging sinks to the level of Zenke's rumor mongering tabloid "journalism" or is based on fabricated and/or unvetted "sources" with manufactured "authority" of "thrust worthy" third parties or citing already disproved, unsubstantiated, korean hack pieces every bit as unverified and laughable as this article has become throughout the blogasphere.

Maybe this low standard of tabloid journalism will even coin a new catch phrase for lazy, sloppy, substandard "blog journalism" hmm? We could call it "pulling a Zenke", or maybe "milking the purple carrot juice".

Quick! Change the article title, and bury the story 4 pages in, they're on to us!

UNsub: ... ignored just because NCsoft didn't turf everyone out at Austin immediately after this article appeared. ...

Throughout the whole sorry seven year history, the Garriotts have been blessed with media fanbois who eagerly memorize and repeat anything they want them to say and write. Over at planettr, you can say nothing critical about Lord British without being banned. Then the censors want to come over here and stifle criticsm in the name of "journalism." What hypocrites!

The Austin media has been managed beautifully simply by being included when Richard Garriott makes out his lavish party invitation list. They write regular puff-pieces and Richard buys them wine at hundreds of dollars a bottle. The strategy for getting good press is to turn Richard loose to charm them by letting them play with his expensive toys. It always worked before. Now we're supposed to be charmed by watching him fly in space with NcSoft investors standing around looking like fools, and employees in Austin dreading the pink slips.

Let them eat cake and fly their cheek swabs to the ISS.

There has been no critical press on the Garriott brothers in the US. But the Korean press hasn't been bought off with parties.


When Cho jin seo at the Korea Times reported on TR last February, the PR department of Austin's office went ballistic, publicly calling the reporter and his newspaper tabloid liars. Every fact Cho wrote can be verified by digging through the financial reports which are available to at NcSoft.net. PDF files open to the public. The company really has remarkably open disclosure. For instance, it's not commonly known that Robert Garriott was not only CEO until the end of 2007, but remains today on the Board of Directors. I don't remember ever seeing that mentioned in the US press.

NcSoft has indeed spent well over $100 million dollars on the Garriotts since 2001. Depending on how you price the stock options and development costs of the various incarnations of Tabula Rasa (and yes, there were THREE versions; the first was abandoned in 2001 when NcSoft bought them out), the real price tag could amount to $150 million. How many other games have flopped this big?


And I found something new at the site recently. Lehman brothers (investors) wrote a glowing forecast back about a year ago. They had confidence that TR would would have sales of $30 million dollars the first quarter of release! Wonder if they got to tour Britannia Manor and look at real mummies and swill expensive booze, because doing so always makes people turn STUPID.