Planet Calypso News: New CEO for AR Universe and Calypso

Gothenburg, Sweden – January 31, 2012
Sven Sandberg is the new CEO of AR Universe. ”I am happy that we have managed to recruit Sven to head AR Universe and the Calypso team. Sven has a unique background with extensive experience in both technology, business and marketing”, says Jan Welter Timkrans, chairman of Mindark.
“AR Universe’s major assets are Calypso’s intelligent participants and investors, Calypso’s unique real-cash economy MMO, and the Calypso team of seasoned game developers,” says Sven Sandberg. “I will do my best to ensure we all work together to build the Calypso economy, expand the user base, and have fun.”
David Simmonds will hand over the reins to Sven Sandberg on February 1, to concentrate fully on his role as CEO of the MindArk Group.

Source

 

Agreed. Someone that understands *this* business would be much better than a marketeering grasshopper.

 

<devil advocate mode on>
Calypso is in much better shape than all the existing PP's put together. It has the basics in place i.e. fully functioning economy.

What it needs is marketing to bring in new players.

Let this guy bring in new players.

Let him hop to next company and get a proper games person in charge to develop planet.

<devil mode off>

 

George, without some RPG experience at the helm, all Calypso is is a bunch of critters, traps, and structures. Kim's dumping the Hussk with no story to explain how it's just there, how the new islands are there, random appearances of event mobs, & why beacons work suddenly all have no framework within the interactive story that ostensibly we are a part of.

No, the developer posting the cool stuff he's doing does NOT count. That's breaking the fourth wall. Sure it worked for Monty Python on occasion, but this most certainly AIN'T the Knights who say "Ni!" we're talking about. It's the kind of behavior I exhibited shortly after I bought a copy of The Dungeon Master's Guide and a Monster Manual back in 1979. It was simple to make a map on graph paper and populate it with critters, but it's another thing entirely to create and maintain an engaging environment that players want to visit and go adventuring in.

 

That is true.

How important is story? That's the question :)

To some people story is more important than others. I'm a bit of both I like story but even without story I'm perfectly happy going around doing my own thing.

Frankly even when these changes are presented in a story they can be annoying. The story itself can then become annoying because story can be used as a tool of subterfuge. In essence something a developer can hide behind.

For example take the case of Arkadia, when first released they got much of the balancing wrong e.g. minerals when mining. They recognised the problem and quickly rebalanced the economy. Which is all good. However they never acknowledged any problems were made instead a story was used to "cover up" the changes. To my mind that's not right. Truth should be non-negotiable. Once truth is traded for something else it's a bad deal for us.

Truth is more important than story so to my mind Calypso is better than Arkadia because the truth is not compromised.