Eden enters the crowded supers market, but with the considerable force of this license behind them, might they actually prevail? Find out next issue! (Okay, Eden, after a joke that lame on my part, nobody else will be reading the rest of this post, so here: start putting your press releases out as HTML, not PDF. Seriously. PDF is for products, not news that you want people to read and make use of. HTML’s been around a long time and it won’t bite you. Just use it next time and I promise not to tell anyone that you’re calling your CoH core book the Registration Manual, okay? Oh, my bad.)
Press release text, and we mean text, is below.
The following is press release copy from Eden
EDEN STUDIOS, NCSOFT AND CRYPTIC STUDIOS
POWER UP THE CITY OF HEROES ROLEPLAYING GAME
ALBANY, New York, March 14, 2005 – Eden Studios announces today an agreement with Cryptic Studios™ and NCsoft® Corporation for the design and production of the City of Heroes® table-top roleplaying game (RPG), based on the wildly popular comic book inspired massively multiplayer online roleplaying computer game by the same name. City of Heroes (http://www.cityofheroes.com) computer game released last year to critical acclaim and continues to garner awards for its groundbreaking innovation. The highly anticipated player-versus-player sequel, City of Villains™ is due for release later this year.
“We are very excited about getting the opportunity to produce this super-powered game,” George Vasilakos, President of Eden Studios, announced. “We worked with Jack Emmert, City of Heroes lead designer, on our first
roleplaying game, Conspiracy X. His imagination and storytelling have always been tremendous. He and his City of Heroes team have created a rocking good game that has been chewing up most of our free time for over a year now. We plan to translate that experience to the table-top while adding the richness of face-to-face roleplaying.”
“I started my game production career in paper-and-pencil roleplaying,” added Emmert. “It’s a great medium for storytelling and a boat load of fun. I’ve worked with the guys at Eden Studios in the past, and they’ve only gotten
better since then with quality licensed games like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Army of Darkness. Their games are great and their production values are second to none. This is a wonderful addition to the City of
Heroes franchise.”
The City of Heroes roleplaying table-top game will use a special version of CJ Carella’s Unisystem, Eden’s inhouse roleplaying game rules, that captures the highlights of the online experience yet remains compatible with other Unisystem games. Players take the role of super-powered heroes with a full array of power choices. They take the fight to numerous villains, including Circle of Thorns mages, Council thugs, Clockwork robots, Vahzilok zombies, and others popularized in the online game.
The Registration Manual core book will be authored by Eden insider M. Alexander Jurkat, editor of the majority of Eden’s Unisystem game books, designer of the Army of Darkness card game, and author of GURPS Conspiracy
X. The core book will be followed by the Paragon City source book, the Monitor’s Support Pack, the Super-powered Operative’s Dossier and other supplements. More information is coming soon to www.cohrpg.com.
Eden Studios makes cool games. Their latest offering, the Army of Darkness non-collectible card game sold through the first print run in four months. Their licensed roleplaying games, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, received delighted gamers when released in 2002 and 2003, and continue to be strong sellers. All Flesh Must Be Eaten, the zombie survivor horror roleplaying
game shambles across roleplayers’ tables world-wide. Eden also produces CJ Carella’s WitchCraft, the roleplaying game of dark secrets and magic, Conspiracy X, the roleplaying game of aliens and government cover-ups, Terra Primate, the roleplaying game of intelligent apes, and Armageddon, the roleplaying game of war and the end of days. On the lighter side, Eden Studios offers HACK!, a humorous card game based on the Knights of the Dinner TableTM comic book by Kenzer and Company, and Abduction, the fast and furious card game of alien abduction. Check out all the Eden Studios products at
www.edenstudios.net.
About Cryptic Studios
Cryptic Studios, Inc., located in Los Gatos, California, was established in July of 2000 and is an independent developer of massively multiplayer online games for the PC and next generation consoles. Its first game, City of Heroes, launched in April 2004. The game takes place in a virtual world where thousands of people play simultaneously, take on the role of super-powered heroes, fight villains and help create a dynamic story in a visually-stunning, 3-D graphical world.
About NCsoft North America
NCsoft – North America (NC-NA) is headquartered in Austin, Texas and is part of Korea-based NCsoft Corporation. NC-NA, with development and administrative offices in Texas and California, launched two ground-breaking titles in the first half of 2004, Lineage® II and City of Heroes. The company also works with NCsoft subsidiaries and third party developers throughout North America to develop and publish innovative online entertainment software products. More information about NCsoft – North America can be found at http://www.PlayNC.com.
whoa! Speak of the devilishly-addictive MMORPG and it shall arrive in a new form. Not sure about taking the convenience of the computer out of another computer game, though. Everquest’s paper version hasn’t fared well, from what I’ve seen.
Only a few EverCrack addicts are role-players to begin with. Others prefer the convenience of the computer to do all the calculation, despite the lack of social interaction dynamics. After all, in order to play a tabletop game, you have to actually get dressed. Hehehe. 😉
I don’t see what their press release format has to do with coverage here. Seems kinda petty and off-target.
That’s me in a nutshell.
I just see it as doing my little bit to try and make the web easier for people to use. No, it’s not a disaster if some stuff is only out there as PDF, it’s just another speed bump that makes things harder. Hell, Allan couldn’t even get the thing to launch so he had to IM me to paste it into a post.
Just ask yourself this: if you did publicity for Eden, and somebody pointed out a way that you could make it even _slightly_ easier for people to give you press (and save yourself some effort and software investment at the same time), would you do it?
Perhaps, but it seems fairly whiney and amateur for a “news” site to complain about having the transcribe “the news” because it’s not in a format you like.
Please don’t pretend you did it for the little people… some of us have no trouble downloading a press release/sell sheet in pdf.
… and if you really wanted to help, wouldn’t a polite email to the Eden publicist be more professional (and likely better received than a smarmy comment here)?
We are now at the point where, if you want me to take you seriously, you are going to have to sign your name to your comments. Whenever I have been anything from professional all the way down to irascible on this site, I have put my name on it. Since day one. Meet that standard and this conversation can continue.
No, that’s ok. My apologies – clearly Ogrecave isn’t the right news source for me. Good luck with it.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. For the rest of you, I do have some thoughts brewing about real professionalism versus fake professionalism, and how the misapprehension of these has done and continues to do a lot of harm to the industry, but I think I’m gonna let them brew a while longer and then make them a separate post.
But just to wrap up the issue at hand: PDF press releases are a mild example of fake professionalism. I think I reacted to it so strongly because it seems out of character for Eden, which normally has an excellent handle on the real thing. But I’ll elaborate more in the future.
(Sneak preview: investigate a book called _The Cluetrain Manifesto_ to know where I’m going with this.)