Hakaru Ishiwara
Minmatar Republic Military School
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Posted - 2010.07.30 13:39:00 -
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Originally by: Jardos The answer is there was a change in EVE's Senior Producer, from CCP t0rfifrans to CCP Zulupark, which to be honest I cannot understand how that happened.
Were Dominion [terrible customer expectation management with the super carriers] and Tyrannis [the "great POS module reprocessing fiasco '10" and POSes shooting friendlies] examples of "excellence?" Speculatively, the answer to that question may also help with understanding the personnel change.
Originally by: Jardos CCP t0rfifrans announced Excellence. I was there, I heard the sigh in the audience, but after the initial few seconds everybody understood the impact of that statement. And there was cheers.
CCP Zulupark changed the meaning of Excellence. And there was crying.
This leads to the question: For whom is the focus on "Excellence" intended?
Existing customers? Prospective customers? CCP employees? CCP investors?
The answer is looking more and more like the latter two possibilities with CCP having grown into a beast that needs to justify its monthly employee salary expenditures as well as a drive to tap into large social / console gaming markets with WiS and Dust 514.
CCP is currently walking on a razor thin ridge at this point, balancing quite a few things:
1) Very fast organizational growth. That is an exceptional challenge for most small businesses -- one that can cause all sorts of pains while the growth is taking place. Personnel changes are only one aspect of this tumultuous time.
2) Maintaining an existing product (EVE Online) whose consumers are hyper-interested in its success and highly attentive to the product's performance metrics. If EVE Online should become unavailable or perform poorly, CCP's response time to remedy the situation is measured in minutes and hours by its customers. Upkeep of this revenue stream is unrelenting. Project management related to expansions, repairs and client expectation management is also part of the challenge.
3) Producing not only two completely new aspects to EVE Online (WiS + Dust 514), the flagship product, but also producing / nurturing additional intellectual properties with their own communities, investors(?) and hurdles.
4) Unknown investor pressures and expectations. Keep in mind that CCP also answers, in-part, to the Chinese government as, last I heard, all foreign businesses with an interest in China are required to make the government a partner in their in-country ventures. The burden of being a profitable entity in Iceland where the banks recently went Tango Uniform is probably felt at the top of the food chain. The good folks at CCP may have no choice but to pursue other ventures outside of the core EVE internet spaceships to hit subscriber target numbers, regardless of cost to their current clients.
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