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Champions Online: Daeke Out, Stormshade In
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Cryptic Studios' Stormshade has replaced David "Daeke" Bass as Champions Online Community Manager, confirming fan speculation that Daeke was no longer with Cryptic Studios.
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Fans have been speculating about Daeke's departure, noticing that his posts were no longer tagged as developer. Stormshade's announcement post did confirm that there was a switch-up, but fans were left wondering if Daeke still remained at the company. To that, Stormshade would only confirm that Daeke is indeed no longer at Cryptic Studios:
"Daeke has moved on to other things. We wish him the best of luck wherever that path takes him."
Does this have anything to do with Daeke's admission that the recently announced Vibora Bay expansion/adventure pack would be paid content and not free? Unfortunately, it appears we will never know.
We wish Daeke the best of luck in all his future endeavors.
[Thanks Christopher8 for the tip!]
Comments
RIP Daeke, Cryptic ex-pawn.
I believe that is the reason.
Cryptic wanted to deceive its customers once again, after the "1 million registered account" trick, unfortunately Daeke slip of the tongue ruined their plans.
Nasty people.
Pitchforks and torches are still waving high over at CO, the loss of Daeke hasnt fueled or calmed any of those fires. Cryptic may be getting new legions of easily trusting pawns through Trekkie fans but eventually anyone that has some gamer pride will see how evil Cryptic has become. Their name atleast to many of us is complete utter 'mud' (would like to use another word).
Cryptic's only chance of survive is not to over shaft / nickle & dime STO gamers. I mean we were promised all sorts of content and excitement for champions too and all we got was some lame additions and lots of missing content .. now you can pay extra for that missing content?
They wont be winning back many CO subs by charging for missing content.
Daeke always struck me as one of us ( gamer ) and cant think the was happy with the way cryptic ran its operations and made him be the mouthpiece for their constant half truths.
Good riddance. He spent more time on his cryptic twitter account telling everyone what other games besides Cryptic's he was playing. Why would any company want their employees tweeting about how cool some WoW expansion was or how some First person shooter game was? When I followed him on twitter this was what he did 96% of the time. Bad Public relations personal. I feel for him for losing his job, and Cryptic has their issues, but common PR schooling tells you you don't prop up the competition or talk about Non Company things on an official twitter account. Also, the communication with him and any of the other Cryptic folks on the forums was just plain terrible. Hopefully, this new guy gets ahold of things somehow.
I for one am happy that Daeke got the boot. He never promoted Cryptic and any of their games. On his twitter account all he ever talked about was other games and shows that he was watching. Nothing positive about the games (Champions) and the fact that he tweeted BS about other companies and their games just goes to show that Cryptic made a bad move in having him a front man.
So my opinion is he got the boot because he wasn't a loyal Cryptic employee, I for one would have booted him sooner than this with the way he promo'd other companies and their games. He was bad PR and I'm glad he's gone.
So...what, just because the guy worked for Cryptic, he was only allowed to play Cryptic games? That's absolutely retarded, guys. Gamers like to play a lot of games. Game Developers should play even MORE games so they have their fingers on the pulse of their competitors.
It's obvious that his personal Twitter and business Twitter merged more than some of you would like...but you didn't have to follow him, now did you? He deserved to be fired because you didn't like his Twitter?
Wow, I feel bad for you guys....you are some cold-hearted people.
No it's not the case here. I do believe you need to play other games to see the competitors. But when all you do on a BUSINESS twitter account is talk about how other games are so awesome or how this TV show is cool. Then you should have a private account for that, not use a business account you are supposed to be using to promote the games your company is making or offering. It got to a point where he didn't even talk about Champions or STO, he'd rather talk about other things (games, TV shows, music, ect.) that had no business being talked about on a "business" account. It was like him saying "go play this game because it is so much cooler than the games I'm supposed to be promoting." There is a difference between a business and a personal twitter account and I followed his business to find out good things about the games they put out, instead I found out good things about other games that were out there, by other companies. Not anything on Cryptic except for once in a blue moon.
You have a job to promote a product, you do just that promote the product and not the competitors. Promoting others makes for bad business PR.
While I know that Cryptic isn't a perfect company and they make shit for games, I have my opinion because I have actually played the games. But then again I also don't work for the company and Daeke did and gave the company bad press because of the way he promoted!
I had a few choice words with Daeke on twitter before I stopped following him altogether. He and I went rounds. So I say what I say because I saw first hand what he did on a business account for a company he was supposed to supporting and promoting... he did neither.
Therefore like I said before GOOD RIDDANCE, Daeke. May you find happiness and positives in the next company you work for otherwise don't work for them.
Daeke? Is that you?
Talking about other games on a company twitter account is a no, no. How is that unreasonable?
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Daeke? Is that you?
Talking about other games on a company twitter account is a no, no. How is that unreasonable?
Exactly my point, company twitter for company promotion. common sense!
No, but I do work in video games....and I feel for him.
It's a no no to talk about announcements about your own games if you are a community rep and you aren't authorized to talk about something (i.e., what he was likely let go for), but I see nothing wrong with a community rep acknowledging that they are human and play other games.
No corporation is so robotic where they would fire you for saying you played, and enjoyed, Mass Effect 2 in public...and that's all Twitter is. It's stream of conscience random babblings. Of course what they let him go for and what you THINK they should have let him go for are entirely different.
I just think it's sad that you guys are actually happy someone got fired for something so silly as your precious Twitter stream being interrupted by something other than Champions News from his account. I just think it's cold-hearted to relish in something like that because you didn't like it. It'd be one thing if he constantly insulted the player base or swore a lot or made sexists jokes or what have you....but just commenting on other products in the industry? Give me a break. You can dislodge that coal from your ass any time you want...you're rich.
(On a side note, before he got fired...apparently he did acknowledge that people didn't like his personal opinions mixed in with his "official" Cryptic Twitter and he made a separate account for himself, so had he not been fired for what he did, your issue with him would have been resolved)
Daeke? Is that you?
Talking about other games on a company twitter account is a no, no. How is that unreasonable?
Exactly my point, company twitter for company promotion. common sense!
Common sense is 280 Cryptic-Points in the C-Store.
Hahahaha.....sad, but true.
He is, in every sense of the word. He's always been an asset to each game community he was a part whether as a player or as part of the dev team. Any MMO dev looking for additional community people would be crazy not to bring him on their team.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Sad to see Daeke go. When I was still on CO, he always seemed to be one of those who actually did any work and tried his level best to lean on the side of the community/player base.
Well, on a positive side, I'm certain that he wouldn't have left unless he had something better to move on to.
Nope, he was let go. According to his blog he said this:
"Yes, it’s true, I’m no longer with Cryptic. I wish them nothing but the best, as I love everyone in the company. In the meantime, if anyone knows of some awesome Community position anywhere, please don’t hesitate to let me know."
While we don't know all of the reasons, I don't think it's too far-fetched to assume he shouldn't have mentioned the fact that they were charging for their next zone.
....which is sadly unacceptable to me. Part of the allure of MMOs is getting that persistent world and semi-regular content updates free of charge. That's sort of what that 15.00 a month is supposed to pay for. With a game that is already bare bones as it is, there is no way in hell I am going to pay money for a zone to level in. I don't care if they are struggling, that's just not going to cut it. I'm understanding of different business models (Xbox has DLC, etc), but this is one of those things where all of your competitors have free content rolled out and then charge for larger expansions and Cryptic is sitting there charging the monthly fee AND nickle and diming people right out of the gate.
Nope, not going to happen. I mean, think about it like this. Say this zone costs 10 bucks to get off the C-store when it comes out (and that's figuring low...I bet its more like 15). If my wife and I want to play Champions again, we each have to buy the zone, so that's 20.00 bucks. Add on to that the cost of starting back up the subscriptions (30.00) and you get 50 bucks! So In order to play that new content, that's 50 bucks for me and my wife, whereas in other games it's just the subscription and I log into to free stuff.
It just doesn't make sense to play Champions to me.
Character creator is nice, but I'm not paying for stuff that should be included in the monthly fee anyway.
Dear lord. I've seen this before so many times it hurts. I feel for Daeke and it suck that he's gone but sometimes that's the way it works out. I suspect he was let go for telling us it was a paid expansion but, specifically, mentioning it before any pricing was worked out. That's a big no-no. For a week we were pretty much left to the mercy of our most wild imaginings about how much it would cost and our imaginations did indeed run wild. Dropping that bomb that sucked the wind from the sails of the 'State of the Game' post as well as doing it way to close to the launch of their new MMO. Right or wrong, from Cryptic's point of view it was pretty much the opposite of PR.
While Stormshade has stepped in the gap, communication about Vibora Pay is nil. Generally, when I don't hear a lot from a company, it's usually because they are too busy yelling at each other (see Tabula Rasa). I don't know how they plan to dig themselves out of this hole but they had better come up with something fast. The forums have gone from angry to nasty. Any DEV post on any topic is ridiculed as much as anything else and the community has taken a pretty big hit. Previous supporters of the game feel foolish and and the rest are just downright glum.
What most of us cannot understand, greed aside, how Cryptic so badly judged player expectations when it comes to CO. To rub salt in that wound, everyone who knows someone who plays STO has been informed that CO is the runt of the litter. STO then emphasising that all their featured updates would be free didn't go down to well either.They have their work cut out for them.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
I've quit the game because Daeke is no longer with Cryptic. I was an alpha tester, closed beta tester, open beta tester, and I've played since the game went live. In that time, I very rapidly came to the conclusion that Daeke was the only person at Cryptic who actually cared about the players at all. Daeke was literally my last faith in Cryptic as a company. Now that he's no longer with the company, I hold Cryptic in the same esteem I hold SOE in, and much like SOE I will never purchase another Cryptic game. Daeke was amazing, he was the only good thing Cryptic had going.
Agreed. If anything his Twitter probably showed him to be a fellow gamer like the people playing Cryptic's games.
I sense a lot of hate over something as trivial as his Twitter account.
What I don't understand is that Cryptic was pretty much founded based on the fact that a bunch of guys loved to play the Champions pen and paper RPG. City of Heroes was indirectly based on Champions, and even the main City of Heroes characters, like Statesman, Positron, etc, were based on the developers' Champions pen and paper characters!
So why are they suddenly treating that game like the red-headed step-child? Is it because of Bill Roper? Has the company forgot why they started making games in the first place? Has it stopped being about making good, fun games or has it all become about mindless profit?
Daeke? Is that you?
Talking about other games on a company twitter account is a no, no. How is that unreasonable?
Steam once devoted a news item (in a window that pops up for everyone who launches steam) to Torchlight and how the entire Valve team was playing - and enjoying - it. The news item even contained several screenshots of the characters of the Valve staff. Do the makers of Torchlight owe anything to Valve? No. Did Valve make the news item to help boost the Torchlight sales. Probably. But it doesnt take away the fact that they enjoyed the game and wanted to share that feeling.
Here's what I posted about this in the CO forums:
I understand your point of view but have to say communication was Deake's #1 priority, right? Our first concern was with poor communication then what was actually being said.
Therefore, if I were Jackolope, I would probably be focusing my attention on the person in charge of community relations when I found out that there was such a long time with NO information being communicated.
Compile this with the fact that we had some major omissions of information and you have reasons for something like this. Think back - how many times did we get no or little information. Why didn't we get a chance to see the Lifetime Subs costume unlocks before the purchase? What about the sudden we're running out of lifetime subs news? Or the last min updates of when the holiday events were ending? Or the complete lack of news of when the Holiday event even started? Or the fact that Deake would post information in disjointed spots (Twitter, Website, Forums, Newsletter). Don't these all fall within his span of control?
To me these are all things that Deake should have prevented. I'm sure there were/are external factors but these are just the few items I can think of right now that I felt he directly dropped the ball on.
I'm sure there are those that will say he was let go because of telling us that Vibra Bay will have a cost but isn't that his job to tell us that? Isn't it his fault to not tell us earlier? Sure the State-of-the-Game from Chronomancer omitted this fact but wasn’t Deake involved in reviewing that message before it was posted to the site? Couldn’t he have added the cost comment then if he read it before posting it? Maybe - Maybe not. I guess I just see at least some of the blame directed to him too.
Now, if they aren't things he was in charge of then my question would be - Why not? If not then what was he actually doing here? Either I have no idea about what a community relations person does, or Cryptic doesn’t know, or Deake wasn’t really doing an effective job at it.
Cryptic are crippled by their deisgn and marketing philosophy and it falls to poor guys like Deake to field the inevitable consequences. Under the circumstances he did a sterling job and was a highlight of the beta experience, I wish him all the very best and am sorry he has been made a scapegoat. Many times during Beta did we got individual devs requests for feedback, saw no changes and several weeks later get request for exactly the same type of feedback. How many state of game's were published ignoring the torrent of comment the previous state of game drew! This is a company that wants to speak but doesn't want to listen, which is vitally short of realising the term communication.
Ultimately actions speak louder than words; for relase Cryptic proved they are more than happy to inflict the absolute bare minimum in terms of gameplay experience, that illustrates how genuinely interested they are in the player, now all they really want to have to do is to churn out more of the same and hear that its good enough to pay for...actually even free its no where near good enough
You are a little confused with what a Community Manager is and how much power they have. They basically have no power at all and can only divulge information that has been passed down to them from the higher ups. As customers, it seems as their power and influence is quite large due to the fact that they are the only liason with the company that you really know, but speaking from experience that just isn't the case.
They are in charge of damage control, answering questions that are approved by the company, helping people understand the game and sometimes the "hows and whys" things aren't happening the way the customer wants, and organizing community events among other things.
If information was stalled, Daeke's hands were tied and it was likely from people such as Jackalope that were the problem (but more likely people such as Atari). Daeke was probably about as effective as he was allowed to be. He was nice, he posted in a lot of threads, and he helped out where he could. I guarantee you the next guy won't be anymore "helpful" as far as critical news and information goes, because it's clear that Cryptic likes to be just that.
I was also bothered by Daeke's focus on other games, especially because he twittered that crap all day instead of managing the community. Stormshade >> Daeke. I feel sorry for Daeke on a personal level, he liked his twitter so much and now it's dead, but his performance level as a CM honestly looked like he was cruising to get fired.
Cryptic is trying a Customer Development approach to MMO creation.