Scott "Lum the Mad" Jennings responds to David Reid's NCsoft West comments

Reader Comments (3)

NCsoft's experience with the "smaller, more agile" sort of games was uniformly negative. Its really no wonder they decided to ditch the concept. Sounds like NCsoft gave this guy a chance to prove his style of game development could actually make money and it didnt work out. These games arent cheap to make, even the small ones, and losing money is not a valid business model. I liked COH and I still play Guild Wars so I hope NCsoft's new strategy pays off in the end.

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True enough, but the only "smaller, more agile" games we've seen were Dungeon Runners and Exteel. If they had something to the caliber of Mythos (RIP), it would have beem a much different story, I assure you.

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Don't you find it just a wee bit ironic that your example of a high quality casual game is one that was never launched because the Developer folded? ;)

Certainly, I think there is a market for casual games (look at the success of Maple Story and/or Puzzle Pirates) but if you are talking about dividing up development budgets between a AAA and 3 or 4 casual titles, the decision gets a bit more treacherous. I'm guessing that banking on big games just made more sense to the powers that be at NCsoft than hoping to strike it rich with one of a wide stable of smaller scale ones.

Sort of Run-and-Gun development vs a "4 yards and a cloud of dust" strategy. As I said before, I like some of NCsoft's games so I hope it works out.

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