Mark Kern – MMO Fallout

MMO Fallout On Ethical Gaming Press

We need to have another one of those serious chats, for which I apologize and promise we’ll be getting back to the gaming talk ASAP.

As I type this, at 7:40pm on February 25th, the hashtag #letmarkspeak is number two trending on Twitter. If you haven’t been paying attention to the going-ons in the gaming press, you’re probably not aware on what this means or why it is so important.

Mark Kern, ex-CEO of Red 5 Entertainment and industry veteran, posted a petition on Change.org asking for websites like VG247 and Kotaku to decrease the amount of yellow journalism that goes on. The gaming press, as he believes, is at least partially responsible for the Law & Order SVU Gamergate episode, and Kern wants the press to become active in healing the relationship between themselves and gamers.

Find the common ground, drive productive dialogue, and find solutions instead of simply pointing fingers. Stop celebrating the hate and start serious coverage of the issues of ethics, women in gaming and video games as a positive medium for change.

The response from VG247 has been described as a hit-piece by Kern and others. It drags other developers into the fray and, most notably, ends with a subtle threat towards other developers. Don’t get involved, otherwise you’re going to regret it later on:

As was made blatantly obvious by Gamergate, the last thing the gaming community needs at the moment is more ill-informed bigots getting angry on the internet. Think before you sign. It may be very difficult to erase the ink.

Kern’s attempts to get VG247 to engage in conversation following the piece have been met with a flat out “no,” leading to today’s trending hashtag.

And herein lies the problem. When accused of yellow journalism, VG247 runs a hit piece. When gamers ask for better ethics in gaming press, the yellow journalists attacked gamers. Now that developers are joining in asking for more ethical behavior, those same people are attacking developers. Furthermore, they’re attacking journalists, the many outlets that have either solidified their ethics policies or transformed to allow for more disclosure.

This is how it’s going to happen, folks. This is how it always happens.

Because if you believe your motives to be pure, you will defend your actions against accusations. The guilty, upon being outed, will resort to attacking their accuser. They will defame, they will slander, they will attempt to invalidate the entire argument. Whatever happens, their true self is inevitably revealed.

This isn’t a fight between gamers and press, or devs and press, it’s a fight of everyone against yellow journalism, an industry that recently found its back up against the wall and like a cornered animal is lashing out. But to heal the rift, as Kern puts it, we need to start by figuring out who is here to work together and who is here to divide the community and make money off inciting hatred and shutting down conversation.

Gaming should be a place where everyone, no matter who you are, should be able to get together and enjoy our mutual hobby, and where creators don’t have to worry about being blacklisted because they asked for more ethical practice.

Can we go back to talking about video games now? I’d like to do that.

(Source: Change.org)

Mark Kern Responds To Departure From Red 5

Recently we learned via a leaked email from Red 5 Studios that Mark Kern had been voted out by fellow board members. In a blog post on MMORPG.com, Kern gave his well wishes to those remaining at Red 5. As for his alleged termination, don’t believe everything you hear. Kern refers to his leadership at Red 5 as his Kobayashi Maru test, going on to use multiple film references to convey a rather vague point.

For the past twelve months, I was presented with a Kobayashi Maru test. When that occurs, the Captain must always find his own solution. While there have been rumors about whether I was demoted, terminated or maybe even corporately executed, I will only say this: remember that Han always shot first. It does not matter if the person revising history is George Lucas himself, because Greedo never shot first (sorry George).

As internal office politics often go, we may never know what really happened at Red 5 Studios apart from some anonymous employee comments.

(Source: MMORPG.com)

Mark Kern Removed From Red 5 Studios

Hello, timing. Earlier today, Gamefront.com broke the news that CEO Mark Kern has been voted out by board members at Red 5 Studios. An internal email leaked detailing that Kern no longer had any authority within the company, and that further information would be given at a subsequent company meeting. Red 5 reached out to Gamefront, confirming that Kern was indeed no longer with the company.

As of Thursday, December 19th, Mark Kern is no longer the Chief Executive Officer of Red 5 Studios. Mark founded Red 5 Studios in 2006 to provide exceptional game entertainment along with a world-class team of developers working on the MMO Shooter, Firefall. Red 5 Vice President of Development, James Macauley, will be moving into the role of acting CEO. The team at Red 5 continues work on Firefall and looks forward to all that we have to offer in 2014.

The Escapist has reported contact from Red 5 employees detailing Kern as absent, visiting only to make arbitrary decisions, and disruptive to the company.

(Source: Gamefront)
(Source: Escapist)

Firefall Is Sick of Trolls, Will Be Kicking Them Out

I’ve talked about the fine line between trolling and constructive criticism, one that generally doesn’t seem to be understood by trolls. And while MMO developers aren’t fans of trolling, they are also generally reluctant to expel their (often paying) customers for throwing up a fuss either in the game or on the forums. Firefall developer Red 5 is not one of those developers. In a post on the forums, CEO Mark Kern posted a stern warning: Continue trolling, and you’re out.

So, I have to say for the first time that I’m disappointed in some of the community. The amount of threads here saying that e-sports is all we care about, despite all the information we’ve posted about PvE being our focus is disheartening to those of us working hard to make PvE awesome.

More so, the amount of shortsightedness and selfish trolling and self-important pontification I see from armchair game analysts is stunning. We’re not done with the game yet. We are showing you our early builds, warts and all, so you can share in shaping the game. We welcome your feedback, but not your Chicken Little “sky is falling” ranting from those whose imaginations are not capable of looking further than the nose in front of their face and who ignore everything we say and do and have done in the game for you.

We do listen to you guys, more than any other game company on the planet, and we have proof because we show you builds so early, that they are incomplete… so you can help us fill in the blanks. But instead of embracing the concept, a vocal minority of you have taken up arms in the forums, with pitchforks and a sense of selfish self-entitlement I have never even imagined possible.

If you intended to frustrate me, you have. From now on, we’re going to start moderating the negativity on these forums for the sake of healthier discussions.

Personally I remember a time where alphas and betas were a privilege to join. Granted, this was a long time ago. But when I play MMOs in their alpha/beta stage, I see and abundance of whining over features not being complete, the presence of bugs, or features not being completely worked out. And that in itself isn’t the problem, as negative feedback is how a game develops into a higher quality product. But the people who Kern is talking about are more along the lines of:

“This feature isn’t complete, wow this game sucks why do I even bother playing, this company is going to go bankrupt and the game will fail because the devs are all incompetent idiots.”

But it would behoove Mark Kern to take this new proclamation seriously. Quite often demands to remove trolls turn into a hard culling of any negative feedback from the community, and that often leads to far more than just the undesirable folk leaving, either of their own frustration or through overreaching policies. And a game like Firefall can’t afford to turn its community away before it even launches.

Red 5: Goodbye For Now, West! Hello China!

HolyGrail004 (1) — I don't want to go on the cart

A man once said, “Those who can’t do, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach Gym.” I have a similar phrase for companies that make MMOs:

“Those who can’t develop, develop for China.”
-Omali, MMO Fallout, on the Asian MMO Market

Now, if you’re going to accuse me of implying that the Asian MMO market is saturated with hundreds of titles that are nothing more than cookie cutter item mall clones with enough grind to turn a pepper plant into microscopic sized specks, developed by small companies that rake in huge profits of the item mall selling faster leveling and insanely rare items for cash, and then use that money to not support the product by not getting rid of the endless amount of gold farmers that will populate the server and sell to a market in the millions whose standards barely break the point of “I don’t care about lore, immersion, or anything else as long as I can kill this one NPC several thousand times over,” well I would have no idea what you are talking about. I contest your assumption that I am comparing the quality aspect of developing for the Asian market, to the literature aspect of writing a book for toddlers.

Red 5 Studios was founded by World of Warcraft veterans, including Mark Kern, Team Lead over at Blizzard, which could lead one to believe that the company would be marginally as successful as Blizzard. Thanks to some trouble hiring, despite Red 5 going as far as bribing the hopefuls with Ipod Shuffles, development at the new studio never took off the ground. A company that fits the profile of “Never was, is not, and never will be,” Red 5’s initial staff of 100 was butchered down to 65 in 2008, after the company closed its Shanghai office.

Red 5 has confirmed that they have had another round of layoffs, leaving the company with a skeleton crew of just over 30 employees. Webzen, who you will remember took control of Archlord in the Western markets, invested in Red 5 back in 2008, over an MMOFPS that the developer was working on. It now appears that the title may never be released, and Red 5 has plans for another game.

This time, rather than a worldwide release, Red 5 will be “restructuring” and focusing on releasing an MMO in the Chinese market, although they are still claiming that the MMOFPS is not down and out yet, simply shelved until a further date. Haven’t heard that before.