Feldon 
It’s now been three months since the very public acquisition of Sony Online Entertainment by investment firm Columbus Nova. In the aftermath, John Smedley, President of the renamed Daybreak Games, has spoken to gaming press about the benefits of the changeover and the freedom now afforded to developing on platforms other than PC and Sony’s Playstation consoles.
Earlier this month, Daybreak President John Smedley and Laura Naviaux, senior VP of global sales and marketing, decided it was time to get their message out about the future of the new company. They spoke to a number of sites including PC Gamer, Venture Beat, Gama Sutra, Zam, and the San Diego Union-Tribune which featured its article in the Business section. We include some relevant quotes:
Smedley: “We are able to be the company we always knew we were capable of being. Now we can make games for all different platforms. We can do mobile games. We can do iPad games. We can do Xbox games.”
Two months after the buyout announcement, Daybreak unveiled its new logo, branding, and revised websites.
“The rebranding was a complete fresh start, knowing that gaming was in our blood and the DNA is in our player base. We wanted to do something that is a nod to video game culture” said Laura Naviaux. “Employees wanted a name that was indicative of a fresh start”
The company is also undergoing a change of address as it moves to a modern space elsewhere in its home city of San Diego…
Naviaux: “The nice thing about the new building is that we get to do the full buildout, so it’s going to look like our own company. It will look, and will be, much more of an entertainment company, instead of what we have here, which we’ve sort of just made work.”
The buyout coincided with the laying off of 140 employees, including two of its most visible — Dave “SmokeJumper” Georgeson and Linda “Brasse” Carlson. In all, the company has been trimmed to just 250 employees, a 50% headcount reduction over six years. Daybreak President John Smedley responded:
Smedley: “Our costs were higher than our revenues. We had to right-size that. It was extremely hard. But in terms of the transition — if I’m being blunt — that was the only negative thing. That part sucked, and still continues to, because we still know these people. They’re our friends, and we know the ones who are still out of work.
So that part was bad, but every other aspect of [the transition] has been really terrific. It’s hard to explain this, but…it’s like the difference between renting a house and owning it. You treat your house a lot different than you treat someone else’s, if you know what I’m saying — there’s a pride you take in it. Making the logo was a really big deal with us. Naming the company was a really big deal to us. It’s very personal — it’s not just a corporate thing — because this is where we spend so much of our lives.”
As for why Sony wanted to sell SOE, and why Columbus Nova was chosen:
Smedley: “We were always sort of a round peg in a square hole at Sony — we were the PC game-making division inside the PlayStation company. So a few years ago when they were going to start trying to sell off stuff that wasn’t their core business, one of the businesses was us.
So we went around for about two years, and Sony was very patient — they waited until we had the right parnter to talk to, and the right fit, and we talked to a lot of people who weren’t the right fit. Some of those places would have been horrible to work at, but instead we got the best of all worlds: to have investors that believe in us, and to build the company we very much know we can and want to.”
I’ve never made a secret of my impression that Sony Online Entertainment is too corporate and takes itself too seriously as far as secrecy and player communication. Almost as if in response to this, Smedley and Laura responded to Gama Sutra with:
Smedley: “Well, we got to carve out our own identity under the Sony brand, but…we were still under the Sony brand. That meant there was a level of care we had to exercise in many of the things that we did, because the name “Sony” was on the front of the building.
So I think you’re going to see us become a bit more adventurous. We’ll probably expose more of our developemnt that we otherwise would have at Sony, because as a smaller underdog company we have to make the connection with our users even tighter than a company like Sony. They’ve had so many years to build up the brand. We’re going to go well over and above what you’ve seen us do to interact with our players.”
Naviaux: “This company now feels more like a startup. People do things with more enthusiasm, with pride and a greater sense of ownership. But I think we don’t have all the challenges of a startup: we have existing revenue, existing IP, an existing product pipeline.”
When asked about whether Daybreak Games is truly independent or just has a master by a different name…
Smedley: “It’s a different type of oversight, and here’s an example: headcounts. Under Sony we always had a specific number that we could not go above. Under Columbus Nova it’s about what we need to do the job. So if we need to add additional people—and we are going to be doing that, adding additional people to some of our games—we can just do that.”
About H1Z1, which technically hasn’t been released yet except as a $20 Early Access product on Steam…
“The game is in its infancy, but the metrics are explosive,” said Laura Naviaux, senior vice president of Daybreak. “We’re sold over a million units. It has all happened in under a quarter.”
Regarding SOE Live and why there is no convention this year…
Naviaux: “Keep in mind that skipping the fan convention.. there was nothing more to it than one simple thing: it is too much [stuff] to do in too short of a timeframe, it was that simple. There was no way we could pull that off while we were transitioning to Daybreak; it just couldn’t be done.”
“SOE Live was always a labor of love for the employees; I think that the employees were as bummed as players were that we weren’t going to be hosting it. I also think there’s a lot of misconceptions about what it really does take to pull off that event—both resources and economically. It would cost us $400-$500 more per head than the actual ticket sales. We love it, and think it’s a perfect opportunity to own the moment, and we’d love to see it come back.”
Smedley: “We put it off for this year, but it will be back.”
ZAM suggested going back to the name Fan Faire…
Smedley: “The problem with Fan Faire is that it’s not as cool to the PlanetSide 2 people… they feel like they’re going to a RenFaire… DCUO it’s kind of the same thing. You have to realize that at Daybreak now we have players who are hardcore FPS, then we have people who have been with us for 16 years playing EverQuest. So we tried to come up with something that kind of captured the spirit; I loved that name, SOE Live, always did.”
About EverQuest Next…
Smedley: “EverQuest Next is in great shape, continues to be developed, and when we are ready to show it you guys are going to get blown away by a combination of what we’ve done and what our users have done. The Landmark workshops that we’ve done—getting all the building stuff ready—it’s really working well. We’re working on Qeynos right now as a matter of fact… and it’s going to be the most awesome thing for you guys to see when you first see it. The city looks amazing purely because we used so much stuff from our players.
If there are people that say it’s vaporware, my answer to that is ‘whatever’. That’s kind of silly. Look at our company’s history, we’re not about vaporware, we deliver.”
As for the future of EverQuest II with Columbus Nova in charge…
“They weren’t sitting here talking about shutting down some of our key titles, which we’ve been behind forever. Columbus Nova feels the opposite; they feel like EverQuest is the thing that built this company—they want to see it run forever.”
You need to find out what is up with Omeed leaving the company, looks like a bad omen.
Omeed spelled out some of it in a blog post. Basically he wanted to take the Marketing for EQNext/Landmark in one direction and SOE wanted to take it in another direction. After too many differences of opinion, he hit the road. He may also have been privy to SOE’s finances enough to see that his position as Brand Manager was an extravagance that would be cut in any company downsizing.
I’ve been, at best, ambiguous towards SOE’s Marketing department over the last 8 years. Their mistakes have been breathtaking. They awkwardly try to punch above their weight as if they were a company ten times the size they are. Daybreak needs to start acting like an indie if it’s going to survive. I have serious doubts that entrenched Marketing staff can adapt to that mindset quickly enough. We need fresh blood and fresh thinking at the top.
Omeed left before Daybreak came into existence. Omeed was primarily on the Landmark/Everquest Next team. His blog post from 8 months ago is pretty straight forward. SOE did not like his marketing approach for Landmark/Next which is a shame as that approach could have worked with the smaller company known as Daybreak Games.
Alas, Executive(s) appear to buy into the SOE marketing construct and put THAT Community Manager in charge to alienate the community with expected results.
I sincerely hope the new VP puts on her big girl pants, does some actual marketing research and heads for a community-based marketing approach instead of the existing old school ‘you pat mine, I’ll pat yours’ method.
Her bio on the GMS Board of Governors states she has already implemented ‘community-based markeitng’. The recent fiasco with RadarX shows that to be a complete crock.
I’ll give the new article a few pounds of salt to dissolve before I fully believe anything from DBG Marketing or Smed.
So many companies today have it all wrong. They think that the end of month or quarter numbers are what is most important regardless of what they had to do to get them for the sake of profit.
The way companies should be doing it and by doing so would change the entire business world would be to focus 100% on the quality of the product and the best service possible for the customer. Satisfied customers are what make a business truly successful. Looking closely at the customer and not a 10,000 foot view where everyone and everything is just a number is not how to do it.
There is a discussion about if Omeed was the brain behind the extreme focus on Marketing by having people streaming Landmark and the item giveaways and rare item giveaways, that might be a reason. Most people playing Landmark hated it. It was not very well received at all. If that was the reason he left it is understandable. It would be very interesting to actually get some information on what the goals of that marketing was, apart from forcing people who had paid $ to play LM having to sit and watch people streaming LM and participate in lotterys to get valuable and rare in game items (compared to playing the game and get things in game).
From my first very badly written post I would like to clarify that the “stream marketing” did only manage to create a hype that was not sustainable due to several reasons as slow development uncertainty on what target group are we looking for and so on. When the hype surge ran out of steam there was not much left of gains in people actually playing LM (that we in game could see).
Meanwhile we are stuck with a skeleton team, and virtual no gm’s, and nobody answers tickets any more, 3 tickets about missing sc cash and nothing but canned answers, turned out due to added free time. Smed says they are making it into the company they want to be, and we at eq2 seem to be the red headed step child that been shot in the skill, and is virtually on life support.
smed betrayed us the veterans that made us love soe in the first place!
Nice work Feldon and thank you for the information, the whole reading of all the articles was too much for me 😉
Traduction de l’article en français et publication sur http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/450-daybreak-games-2.html
French translated at http://www.guerrier-celeste.fr/48-frontnews/450-daybreak-games-2.html
I was checking out the new account management area and I seen where I could renew a membership but not an option to cancel one. How does one cancel their recurring membership if they choose to? Thanks.
Remove all credit cards from your account
There is actually no option to delete my card. I can edit it but not remove it. Very strange.
I went in circles one night for 20 minutes until I found out the button to delete a card. Or maybe I just edited all the cards to 0000 0000 0000 0000.
After the recent commerce functions maintenance the Cancel Membership button has returned.
Successful companies don’t focus 100% on their product being the best it can be OR making everyone happy. I think the strategy that finally worked for Apple process that point. They never related their best possible product at first. They don’t make everyone happy… Just the ones that feed then cash and like what they chose to be. They did a few things well enough to charge a premium, and the test was marketing magic. You’d better believe companies need to watch their balance sheet closely. They just need to keep focus on the next quarter, year and beyond.
It reintroduces itself to a world with one of the worse name to use for the company that has had extremely questionable business ethics since its creation. Was this name just made up over night when SoE was sold?
Did not a single person say “Hey…we have a reputation for breaking our previous games according to the mmo community, wouldn’t the first mock title be “They Break Games”, it would be rather embarrassing right?”.
I don’t know, to me SoE has just made themselves more obscure and unknown then ever before. Unless you’re a loyal EQ or PS2 fan, chances the first question that will pop up to the average PC Gamer is “What the fuck is Daybreak Games?”
Whoops did not mean to directly reply to Striinger, but rather the thread itself.
Commented way back that day break is another term for sun rise. And The Land of the Rising Sun refers to Japan, where Sony originates. Not to mention the logo is very World War Z logo.
Not original at all. And a lack of originality, lowered my expectations of the new company.
Although if they wanted to emphasize the ever questing aspects of their stable of games, well “Galaxy Quest” was already taken ……
Archangel said:
Actually, as has been said in the past, the logo is almost a complete rip off of the Eye Cog Games logo.
Too close to be an “accident” . . . imho.