This is probably ethnocentric, but being Asian and living in Asia, I probably have some basis to comment. Okay, I'm not Korean, but whatever. I get Korean news digests in my work mail, and there's kimchi someone brought back from Korea in the shared break fridge. Close enough, right? Okay, don't answer that. Right, where was I?
Corporate accountability and transparency isn't exactly a huge thing in the Asian business tradition. That's changing, and obviously companies are waking up to the fact that customers and users have a voice - but being open about decisions? No. It doesn't surprise me that NCsoft is being all opaque about their reasoning. They don't want anyone looking too hard, pointing fingers, questioning them, or causing them to lose face.
Of course, this is ultimately counterproductive. The more you clam up, the more people are going to ask awkward questions. Westerners are used to this. Asian audiences are as well; the Korea Times piece gives some indicator as to sentiment there. Obviously most Korean folks wouldn't care about City of Heroes per-se, but they would care about a Korean company making decisions that's pissing off people, a Korean company getting vilified online, and a Korean company losing money/employees like it's going out of style.
Still, the fact remains, it's a very Asian thing to clam up, stick your fingers in your ears, and go LALALALALALA in times of crisis. This is hardly unique to Asians, of course. It's a very human thing. A very big business thing. But I suspect the Asian pride and face-saving mindset doesn't help in this regard.
So where does that leave us? I don't know. But what I'm saying is, it's not about the money. Economically speaking, it probably does make sense for NCsoft to sell the IP to someone - it'd earn them money, and it's not like, reasonably, they're gonna be doing jack with it. But it's not just about money, is it?
-- Acyl
Corporate accountability and transparency isn't exactly a huge thing in the Asian business tradition. That's changing, and obviously companies are waking up to the fact that customers and users have a voice - but being open about decisions? No. It doesn't surprise me that NCsoft is being all opaque about their reasoning. They don't want anyone looking too hard, pointing fingers, questioning them, or causing them to lose face.
Of course, this is ultimately counterproductive. The more you clam up, the more people are going to ask awkward questions. Westerners are used to this. Asian audiences are as well; the Korea Times piece gives some indicator as to sentiment there. Obviously most Korean folks wouldn't care about City of Heroes per-se, but they would care about a Korean company making decisions that's pissing off people, a Korean company getting vilified online, and a Korean company losing money/employees like it's going out of style.
Still, the fact remains, it's a very Asian thing to clam up, stick your fingers in your ears, and go LALALALALALA in times of crisis. This is hardly unique to Asians, of course. It's a very human thing. A very big business thing. But I suspect the Asian pride and face-saving mindset doesn't help in this regard.
So where does that leave us? I don't know. But what I'm saying is, it's not about the money. Economically speaking, it probably does make sense for NCsoft to sell the IP to someone - it'd earn them money, and it's not like, reasonably, they're gonna be doing jack with it. But it's not just about money, is it?
-- Acyl