Sunday, 6 March 2016

CCP HQ to move to London? Gunjack bundled free on S7?

I'm surprised no one has picked this up yet so I thought I might as well run with it According to an interview done by the Icelandic VISIR magazine with CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson (CCP Hilmar) on the 26th of February, CCP are about to open an office in London 'next' summer. I am not sure if that means this summer (as in the next one coming) 2016, or next year's summer in 2017. My instinct is it is this year because of the current Senior Producer job CCP are advertising and the fact that CCP Denebola, CCP's Chief Customer Officer is already based there.

Hillmar says (via google translate), "This is primarily designed as a marketing offices. So we have a small development team there. We are a development company and wish that all our offices are with DNA, too, " So marketing offices in London with a sprinkling of developers. But he then goes on to say that he will move to London and run CCP from there and a new director will be hired to cover Iceland to run projects that nominally he had covered. So maybe that explains the General Manager role being advertised in Iceland. He continues by saying this is a consolidation of CCP's world activities closer to Iceland, which is a nice spin considering the audience of this piece and that the Iceland operation will be strengthened by having its own director.

On top of this we can add the new directors that came with the $30 million dollar VR investment who probably don't wish to leg it to Iceland. So it is all gravitating towards CCP setting up a global corporate HQ in London alongside CCP Denebola's new marketing department. What this means for some of the other locations in CCP's world empire I am not sure. You would think there might be some consolidation of jobs but as I have highlighted in my Serenity posts, CCP's marketing has been virtually non existent in comparison to its Chinese partner Tiancity. So there may not be many marketing posts to consolidate in reality. Certainly there was a bit of a purge with the closure of the San Francisco office back in 2014 and the departure of the then chief marketing officer David Reid.

I'm not sure how much many of San Francisco's former responsibilities were taken on by Atlanta if any. Now CCP are back to making a profit and with Eve Valkyrie and potentially NotLegion to consider, perhaps they can turn their back on those dark days. And it has to be a good thing if CCP have decided to take marketing seriously, not just for Eve but for the other games it has.

Finally, another piece of news that also seems to have been missed - Gunjack is to be bundled free with pre orders of the Samsung S7 and S7 edge. This is pretty big. The S7 will have a far greater public reach than Valkyrie on the Rift. I don't know what deals have been cut but it must surely be regarded as another success story for CCP. More longer term, Samsung, like Apple and HTC and Nokia before that are becoming yesterday's men in Asia. CCP needs to talk to Huawei and Xiaomi about their VR plans. Xiaomi (disclosure: my last 3 phones have been Xiaomi) have already announced they have VR plans.

So you see this is why the CSM should be torched. Idiots like me end up covering the news because everyone else is besotted with the nonsense. 





7 comments:

  1. But such inglorious nonsense. Dotoo Foo for csm xi

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    1. No conflict of interest there obviously. Shameless :)

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  2. Considering the amount of big business news that came out of CCP in 2015, this really didn't seem like that big of a deal. But since I may be one of those "besotted" with the CSM, let me respond ;-)

    Maria Sayans (aka CCP Denebola) leading the effort to open an office in London was released on 8 December and I covered it the next day. In fact, I at least mentioned her in five articles I wrote in December.

    https://www.nosygamer.blogspot.com/search?q=maria+sayans

    The reason that Hilmar moving to London is not major news, at least for EVE players, is the deal that CCP worked out with the University of Iceland to move its development studio to the science park being built on the campus back in June.

    https://www.nosygamer.blogspot.com/2015/06/ccps-office-shuffle-part-2.html

    CCP is probably getting tax breaks to remain in Iceland, so expect that at least EVE development will take place there. Development of VR will continue in Shanghai, Newcastle, and Atlanta. CCP's known development locations for VR conflicts with the story you linked about Gunjack being bundled with the Samsung 7. I would have used this story, which not only talks about Gunjack being bundled with the Samsung 7, but about CCP's record profits in 2015 as well.

    https://www.visir.is/ccp-skilar-methagnadi/article/2016160229227

    Posting about CCP's $20.7 USD profit at that link or this one I tweeted is the one story I probably would have blogged about. But quite frankly, I didn't want to put up with the argument that would have erupted in the comments section.

    https://www.vb.is/frettir/hagnadur-ccp-aldrei-meiri/125413/

    Another reason to not believe that CCP is moving from Iceland anytime soon is that they are hiring to develop a second game in Iceland.

    https://www.nosygamer.blogspot.com/2016/01/whats-new-in-reykjavik.html

    That probably also explains the General Manager position you linked. If the Reykjavik studio is going to have 2 games being developed, then it makes sense to not have duplicate positions wherever possible.

    The big thing about Hilmar moving to London is that it indicates his thinking that the big sexy in CCP involves VR and that EVE is now relegated as the company cash cow. But didn't we already know that? If we didn't know when CCP started showing Valkyrie around, or the VR Labs demo at Fanfest last year (which introduced an early version of Gunjack), then we knew in November with New Enterprise Associates investing in CCP.

    https://www.nosygamer.blogspot.com/2015/11/ccp-gets-new-investor.html

    I know I've written a mini-post, but I have to mention one last thing. Personally, I don't want to turn my blog into a business blog. Writing about business, sure. But given how much had been going on, I needed to give the subject a break.

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    1. Hi and welcome. And yes you are certainly play your part in the CSM distraction :) In your defence that doesn't make you unique or the worst criminal. So I am a little surprised at your defensive response. You cover a broad range of topics well – notably RMT and this post wasn't a dig at you specifically. I wouldn't consider your site to be a “news” site particularly, as you tend look behind the news, analyse and form an opinion. I attempt to do the same if there is an interesting angle I can see or more likely I just want to scratch an Eve related itch. So I really don't think you have any reason to justify yourself or what you have or haven't written.

      That said, no one picked up on the General Manager position, Hillmar's move, (or the Gunjack announcement). Yes it show's how the VR is horse is driving the CCP cart obviously. Yes Eve is the cash cow obviously. And now we have confirmation of a sort that CCP is striving for a discreet corporate centre away from its development and individual product roots. There are some really obvious reasons why a company would prefer to locate to London and not to Dublin like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, eBay, Intel (Kildaire), Apple (Cork) and so on. Especially with Brexit a possibility. Perhaps that is worth a post?

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    2. Just wanted to drop this link in here for you guys to consider: https://www.bfi.org.uk/film-industry/british-certification-tax-relief/cultural-test-video-games

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    3. Good spot. That would be one reason.

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  3. Good post Luobote. Stopped following nozys reply after the 3rd link. WTF dude thats some reply. Space credentials aside, you may well be onto something here Luobote.

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