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I can be really simple about the issue. EA does not care about anyone but the executive level. It is a textbook example of how organisations can derail themselves in to servitude of the few (who incidentally tend to score very high on the pyschopathy test scales, honestly, well worth doing a little research on) who really only make a living by means of juggling other people's money in a race of paying off one investment with the next and walking away with most of any differences themselves beyond the meager percentages on investor returns. I am not going in to my own contacts and communications with these people. They are incredibly bright, very savvy, but most fail to meet the most basic standards of healthy human behaviour. Camouflage of behaviour is part of survival instrumentation, it is a result of having grown up and grown in to a mindset they cannot escape, and will always avoid to move away from. I've worked in this industry for roughly 30 odd years, as well as in other industries, and while there are always excesses everywhere, EA is a topic in its own right. It is a dependancy chain. Our society is stuck in it, and the mindset that feeds the best by putting anything that can possible be used into use as a resource without regard for what or who it is that is the mindset that reigns supreme. It is consumerism that enables it. Regardless of whether we look at the control these mindsets have over economic elements of society, politics or anything really. We as people enable it because we allow the feeding chain to be enabled without buffers against excessive behaviour. Sometimes we do so in this wierd fairy land of free market ideology (which is a myth, there is no such thing as a magic self fixing market, we're talking about human beings here). Sometimes we call it the american dream (which has become nothing more than propaganda for resisting necessary adaptations to changing times in order to maintain the status quo of dependancy chains). Sometimes we just want to believe, we want to be and feel connected, we want to puzzle and challenge and make or be part of something greater than ourselves. EA in these regards has mastered very well the necessary instrumentations to abuse these aspects of human behaviour. Willingly, consciously, deliberately. It's not a system that enables dependable growth. Far from. It is why banks require bailouts, why investment firms require zero cost credit, it is why entertainment industries move away from risk management into laws of minimalities. Etcetera. And that while it is actually increasingly possible to create growth and create wealth by not falling prey to the short cycle syndromes of the mindset. It is only because it is easiest, and because it is even easier to get away with it that it continues to dominate. As I said, our current forms of consumerism are what enables it. And if history is right (and sofar in our human history it has always been right) it only leads to new and exciting forms of slavery. With a touch of bread & circusses. Apologies, it sometimes irks me to see an amazing industry where an enormous potential of talent and vision comes together, a potential extremely well poised to create growth and wealth, is just wasted because really just a handful of people maintain and enforce a guided development of the industry for only very specific purposes. Worse of all, it is increasingly bleeding out the prospects of that industry for the long term. Something which particularly we Americans with our comparatively expensive labour costs should be really concerned about as the forces of globalisation require us to adapt and expand according to challenges. By the way, globalisation is a bit of a popular word today, but it has been with us ever since we crawled out of the caves or clubbed a female on the head in order to drag her back to the cave. It is demographics and resource utilisation on a natural level. As the species grew, globalisation became a force. Pygmees in Indonesia went extinct because of it. Neanderthals as well. Today we only look at specific economic aspects of it, but we still refuse to recognise that we actively refuse to adapt to changing circumstances and challenges. The short version is simple. Those parts of our industry which are managed as an investment format for venture and investor capital are structurally contaminated by a mindset which is counterproductive to the continuity of the industry. Their only recourse for continuity is achieving full and complete control over the industry as a whole and over all required resources as a whole. The customer has no meaning, and to quote a senior EA executive from an interesting post briefing discussion last year "the customer can go f*ck himself, stupid f*cks will buy anything anyway cause we decide for 'em". I sometimes wish I had recorded that discussion, but at the end of the day it is probably best that I didn't. Call me crazy, but I know too many good men and women who would find themselves without even the prospects of a career if EA blew up in the predictable ways following such a scandal.

Alright, RPS seems to have found the use of journalism, as opposed to reporting. Interesting. And ofcourse EA follows the Big Lie doctrine. If there ever was any doubt on EA's desdain on customers, it should be clear now. It is almost Orwellian at this point. Back to the practical realities though, there is a very interesting issue coming up soon, the issue of who decides what modding is and what sort of modding is allowed versus what is capable by strict design and allowed by means of developer studio messaging. EA has a new sticky, obfuscing hacking and modding in an attempt towards maintaining control over what customers are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do, with clear disregard for a) design principles of the product and b) existing statements by Maxis staff on the topic, and above all that they are taking - once again - an undefined completely arbitrary angle. Maxis: we have designed SC2013 to make full use of the power of moddability. we encourage modding without limits. nobody is going to get banned for modding the product. we are fully aware of the initiatives popping up in regards to modding, and have no issues with it. EA: hacking is disallowed, modding is allowed, but we decide on a case by case basis whether we like it or not so if we do not like what you do and you live in the US you are going to face severe issues. furthermore any talking about it is going to get you banned arbitrarily. you have no rights, so stfu and buy everything you make and be enthusiastic about us letting you buy in the first place. Ofcourse I am describing it with a bit of a pun, but in essence this is what it boils down to. It is indeed stupendously easy to mod the game to enable local saving and caching, to introduce offline play with full regional support, to seperate the game from Origin authentication for offline play, to enable already existing support for larger maps and regions, to enable custom content exchanges and custom content as well as user created feature sets. Even more interestingly, it seems even possible already to replace algorithems for a wide variety of connected feature elements, to completely rewrite coding dependancies and so forth. And Maxis states explicitly that it is allowed. But EA now states that only they decide, without rules or even regulations, entirely arbitrarily and conditionally (so much for the freedom then of modders to talk about the game according to their own opinions or even engage in such conversations). Considering EA's history in terms of pursuing arbitrary methods well beyond the scope of EA's forums and platforms, personally I would advise modders to be extremely careful. It is dancing on the edge of a knife really. Either way, EA persists in the Big Lie methodologies. I find it utterly remarkable that people still buy from them. More importantly, I find it rather intruiging to still see investor relations get suckered in to a business format which really does not generate wealth, but only redistributes and concentrates (anyone familiar with EA's quarterlies and a bit of related skills will be able to deduce the trends quite quickly, suffice to say that increasingly EA's financial functioning is becoming that of a pyramid scheme). It is a business and investment format which has severe historic issues with maintaining even short cycle management, and which is well proven to be incompatible with sustainable growth and gain. In simple terms, it is a format which is incredibly vulnerable to what elsewhere is known as the hit & run bonus & pyramid culture. I can't say I blame educational institutes increasingly taking EA has a research point for various sciences, none sofar though with any positive connotation. At this rate the company is going to have to invest in partner relations for commissioned research as well, as an extension of influencing strategies.

It gets really funny if you follow the ownership and investor trails for the group Giving the concept of cross-pollenation an entirely new meaning.

Just came across this article, well worth the read. HOT COFFEE IN A SIM CITY: A Comprehensive Overview of The Intellectual Dishonesty of Maxis, and the Continued Ineptitude of Games Journalism.

I can assure you that such constructs have already been extensively studied and experimented with by EA. Unfortunately they are still struggling a bit with fitting it in with their strategic management goals. See, the idea of other people making money of you is something very averse to the investment format EA utilises. I know, there is a lot of irony in that situation when you think about it for a bit, but well, such is EA.

Well, to be blunt, it does not matter whether a game is released in a crippled state - regardless of whether that is because of deadlines imposed on developers or strategic directives determining the constraints in which developers can work or because of the title specs being divided over release sets and microtransaction sets after release, or anything else really. The mentality is such that these things do not matter, because the mentality expects the customer to buy anyway. All resources are tailored to ensure that the customer buys regardless of whatever the state of a project may be. Sometimes studios or publishers are not that good in utilising the available instrumentation, and titles flop. Most of the time though, especially the more a publisher works as an investment firm, the available instrumentation works fine and even protests of those used for generating messaging (but who are not the target user types) serve the end goals of reaching easier and cheaper volume markets. I get the idea often that many customers do not realise the constraints game developers work in. Most of the time these people have no idea of the strategic picture, they work within a process of discovery and design embedded in strategic directives. Of which they most of they time see little of, because the management levels are very careful to maintain the balance of the relation "as is" between publishers / investors and the venture itself. Every human being is vulnerable to prioritising their own individual desires or vision over that of others. Game developers are just as vulnerable to that as customers in their own expectations. That is why it is always important for developers to maintain a relation with marketing so that marketing serves the development in order to ensure that the vision matches potential and serves sales. Companies like EA just make the choice to treat and use both the development and the customer levels as resources, because only their vision matters to them. They choose to use expectation matters independantly of the differences between those patterns and their own strategic goals. This is the cornerstone of why this mentality so often results in either the appearance or the reality of desdain for the customer and the developer alike. It is why companies like EA provide career paths with financial and other incentives in a rat race for the management level, why they prioritise marketing segments, over those who do the actual work and over those why actually buy the results of labour. Managers and marketing are expected to buy in to a system of dependancies in order to serve individual careers, it is a system taken from financial and retail sectors of industry. Developers, designers, artists, those who do the actual production labour are expected and required to do so quietly, corporate culture management is tailored to create circumstances for exactly that and it is strengthened by the strong emphasis on providing targeting within constraints of strategic directives. Customers are equally expected and required to buy quietly. Any messaging surrounding it all, regardless of positive or negative, is expected to serve the strategic orientation even if that means one has to put in to practice concepts like management of Big Lie principles (which some may be surprised of, but which is actual part of management and organisational sciences). It does not matter if a release is poor, as long as the instrumentation remains in place to guide messaging and control the long term outcome of the exposure. Something which especially today in the era of services management and microtransaction models is even more true, because it pays even more to deliver less.

I have neither in there. I don't have the caption, but if you feel that is the case vote and state what you think is more important. To be honest, as much as it pains me to see the predictable server issues, or the predictable state of release, personally I have much more issue with the enforcement of online play DRM and the insistance of EA to only have their desired vision count and not that of the customer. In that regard the latest marketing blurb from Bradshaw as an extreme eye opener.

I was raised a Catholic. After a lot of travel throughout the world though, and after having to jump between priests and children repeatedly in various circumstances in various places I must admit that for myself I have seperated belief from religion. I have and live by a belief system. It is personal, it is private, and for it to exist I have to accept that due to humans being individuals everyone has a right to the same. I draw the line at causing harm, not being tolerant, seeking power. I do not believe that god gave us brains in order to only follow some other people's brains. The secret of life is to choose, and to choose again. To find a way by means of choices that reflect as much on ourselves as they do on others. If god has wanted us to just follow a select few he would not have provided the instigation for choice, nor for everyone having brains in the first place. I believe that in our quests for exploring belief and science we will one day surprise ourselves in approaching the very same from just different angles. Increasingly our modern science is already heading in that direction, in spite of its traumas of having had to deal with the excesses of religion as organisation of power. I abhor any form of instrumentation that imposes organisation, directly or implied, of belief systems. That is where religions surface. Any form of human organisation is inherently and structurally vulnerable to the excesses of human behaviour without instruments that buffer against this. And as all too often religion actively resists such buffer mechanisms it betrayes a desire or inclination to use organisation for the purposes of power.

Wrong. Great visions on ventures always start with a general approach of "guys this is an awesome idea, what do we know of what people out there might find awesome about it and how do we match that". The greatest games have always began as projects on the questions of "what do people want and what do people need". It is after that where other parts of the challenge start, for example how to package that, how to sell that, how to seperate groups from the generic volume markets so that they become a customer and a fanbase. Or rather, that is how it started out in our industry. Today it is different. For example, it is no longer "done" to approach matters to seperate groups from generic volumes, it is now required to use existing seperate groups in order to reach and utilise generic volumes. The difference may seem subtle at first, but is extremely significant and has deep consequences for customers and customer groups. EA is a prime example, because in many ways they create the trends that are shaping this industry. And yes, EA specifically collects resources to match their vision, their targets, their money. Developers, just like the computers they use, just like the customers expected to buy quietly and all resources. EA tunes all resources to maximise its strategies and gains. This is an industry. Nothing more, nothing less. It really is no surprise that EA managed to beat one of the most corrupt banks with the most desdain for its customers with its customer support ratings. It is a non factor for how such enterprises function. It is not about the customer, not about the developer, it is not about the resources. It is about maximising gain (which includes gaining control over trends in how the industry itself develops).

Heh. Nicely done. I would not have used that movie though, it does after all have some strong connotations (though I must admit, our economics have grown to be increasingly very similar to the economics in those days in terms of mindset of resource management). It would perhaps have been better to dig up a presentation capture by Mrs Bradshaw and used that with a little mixing and editing. More importantly perhaps though, while the server issues are and remain an important topic of concern and lessons, it is less important than the principalities surrounding EA's conscious decisions on how only their desires matter as opposed to those of actual customers.

Ever heard of the Big Lie theory? A concept that builds upon the innate desire of people to want to believe. It is part of business development as a science as much as it is an integral part of any other science from psychology to game theory. Continuing the lie and enhancing it is required in order to control the eventual messaging left after upheavals, resulting in a general awareness equal to the content of the lie, and not the actual truth. A concept very related to this is that of "the victor writes history", another more simple example is found in our legal system today (the biggest budget buys the longest breath and thus "justice").

It probably is, considering the lorem ipsum text present in the item description. I wouldn't put it below EA to price something that small at $15. It does not really matter whether it is a template element or an actual price. These things are indicative of modelling prior to that stage. The simple mentioning of a specific price is more often than not a case of following the modelling. It is always realised that pricing modelling will be complex, but the Joe the Dev level tends to have zero idea of that (and zero input) so whatever price leaks through tends to be quite accurate for desired pricing structures. In the past years we've seen that across a wealth of title releases.

They're in the same boat. Though that is something developers very often do not realise. Both are resources. Devs tend to work in the trenches, so to speak, immersed in a well crafted corporate culture that is largely designed to keep noses pointing the same way with a guided creative flow so that energy is focused on that work in those trenches without any awareness of what is happening on or planned for the field between trenches. Both are used very similarly in the interactions used for creating exposure. Look at insertions in forums and communities, consider the various interviews but also visits of community sites to a studio (even though the studio is no longer the Studio but just an office of the publisher). All basic examples of generating messaging. But it is there where we have to make an important observation, there are different types and categories of end users. There are limits to the practical use of end users and developers as resources for generating messaging, largely determined by the strategic objectives for projects or ventures. Look at for example how a marketing officer tends to take the upper hand in guiding messaging (or attempting to) after a release. But also consider how particularly in niche franchises (which says nothing about the volumes of markets attached in potential to a niche franchise) the "core" user types (those - for example - linked to nurturing a previous title or those who enhance an existing title, but also those who are entrenched in communities for long enough so they represent communication platforms) tend to be utilised (similar to developers) as enablers for creating exposure and instigating messaging. And as always, up to a point. Pretty much up to a point because there are risks attached to the execution according to that mindset of using people as resources. One risk which we talked about several weeks ago here is that of developers creating leaks, but also that of developers making statements which are right on the edge of creating risks for (or shifting risks from themselves to) the publisher interests. In this and last week we saw a developer leak to RPS and one of the lead devs stating that nobody is going to get banned from Origin or the game for modifying the game packages. Another risk is that of end users taking a release or the circumstances of a release on as a challenge and a puzzle alike. Something which is particularly likely to happen anyway depending on what franchise or genre the title is a part of. An FPS is going to get a lot less "puzzle" scrutiny as a simulation game, for obvious reasons (we've had a few decades of research on these matters in our industry by now, don't ask me why EA continues to ignore such simple things, it could just as much be stupidity as it could be stubborness or fear of communicating internally or even desdain for customers and developers). And what have we seen, impressive amounts of people all over the globe, especially those from existing hubs and the end user types related to "core" gaming of the franchise, picking everything apart from the studio level and the publisher level messaging to the functional capabilities and workings of the release. It is very much a shame that most people who work in the trenches of our industry tend to not realise how much their positions have changed and how much the perspectives on their work has changed within the larger view of "it ain't games folks, it's investment management". It is something which for example the movie industry should have alerted them to, even if the signs within the games industry had not been so clear the past two decades. Movie making used to be a grand art, something which was impressive and awesome no matter whether you were the director or the guy coordinating logistics. It was awesome, you were needed, you were wanted. Then over time, you became expendable, and only those closests to the investment level interaction continued as names and functions part of a feeding system. The games industry has been going through the same evolution of being managed and utilised as an industry, like every other industry. Developers and customers are in the same boat. They need each other, and they need to learn how to use the art of presentations and communications to safeguard the shared interests against those interests becoming secondary to those of the publisher. In truth, that will be a struggle to turn back time, so to speak, but it is quite worthwhile to do so. It is a clash between the struggle of perspectives. Look at EA's latest marketing plug from Lucy. It could not be more clear than that. It is not about what gamers want, it is not about what developers want, it is strictly about what the publisher wants. Developers only have a role in that if they stick to the derived targets and customers only have a role in that of buying and preferably buying quietly. The central question is always "who benefits". As always when divided it is easily conquered and put to hard labour and slavery alike. Add to that the distinct and deliberate instrumentation for both the development and management of corporate cultures (applied to devs) and the creation and continuation of the basic human needs of wanting to believe, wanting to be valued and wanting to be engaged for purpose (applied to users) in manners that use very specific concepts of psychology (among others, stockholm syndrome has been a very strong point of interest in industry studies, but also moral positioning stimuli and even cultism) and what you see is that neither customers nor developers are in a favorable position to figure out the differences between their perceived position and functioning and the reality. I realise it is quite blunt to put it this way, it is however as it is. Those reading this who work in the industry can dig up the presentation talks in the GDC Vault on these topics, or call up the relevant issues GD Research or the Edge Industry Briefs, and so forth). It's business, nothing personal. That is how these things work after all. But as I said, both end users and developers are in the same boat, on purpose, and purposely sideblinded. It is a result of a school of thinking in economics and business development which today virtually dominates our societies, but which we as humans have a hard time recognising or even accepting because its primary functional requirement is to treat human beings as resources calculable as, for example, lumps of coal or pieces of meat. We think we are different because of our brains and hearts, our souls even, unfortunately the systems we have in place of concentrating wealth require that we remain ignorant and that we remain engaged in the systems as a resource. It does not have to be that way though. In our industry two examples spring to mind of how to recover as customers and developers from such a conflict (if you will) with the publisher / investment level by means of finding each other in those trenches and realising that it is there where the primary vision should be developed. After all, to make something great it has to be about uniting the visions of the customers with those of the developers - the visions of the investment level are after all by default never about the actual product or service, only about what is desired to be achieved with them (which is financially but also for example in terms of guiding the development of markets according to targets - not the other way around). One example is that of Firaxis after recovering from the issues surrounding the release of Civilization V, a franchise title where the publisher 2K Games went to work by the inspired examples of EA in those days in order to maximise returns on investments but ended up severely destabilising both the core and the volume market potentials by deciding that everything had to be about what the publisher wanted and not about what the developers or the customers wanted. In many ways a case of interest for the people at Maxis, because they did apply some strong lessons from that debacle to the conceptualisation of design & specification of the SC2013 title (which pretty much began with SimVillage at the time) but which - thanks to the corporate culture concepts in place and the role of managers) still became subject to all their efforts being dependant on and derivative of strategic targets and concepts decided upon by EA itself. Today Firaxis has done a lot of damage control, and is still busy rebuilding the relationship between them and customer potential. They have expended a lot of effort, but they have done so in an increasingly clever approach where it is shared vision & desire of developers and customers that sets the tone. And thanks to some managers seeing a small light that has also been used in the presentation of information and data to the publisher. In essence the publisher role has decreased, because of the strengthening of the relation between devs and users. Another example in our industry is that of the MMO EVE Online studio CCP Games. Another case where sight was lost on who and what really matters. The desire of the people at the top, or the desire of the people who have to buy and keep buying the service. It is a bit more complex as this is an MMO (for example, the risk of people picking everything apart is even greater than with a general franchise title, something Lucy Bradshaw appears to not have done her homework on when she stated "in many ways we have created an MMO" in the latest marketing blurb). Because of it being a service model dependant on repetitive income streams the resulting clash between customers and executive level (with developers caught in the middle) was brutal. It cost the company several of the stubborn executive oldies, 20% of its workforce, a setback of about 18 months on previously established targets for the EVE Online title, a shelving of the development of a second title (can't remember the exact name, something about a vampire MMO) and a heavy delay in the plans to take the company public. Not to mention the undermining of the brand value of the company so very needed for building reputation and attracting investors. Today CCP Games has found out that while guided development is important, there has to be a strong realisation that while anyone can have a vision it is ultimately about what the customer wants and not about what someone high up in a food chain wants. A lot of decision points have shifted incredibly to the developer level, a level which collaborates in both messaging and conceptualisation impressively with the customer level. Ofcourse still working within targets set for the business and service development, but those are no longer arbitrary constraints imposed on the dev and customer level. Increasingly the MMO service is stabilising, and once again regaining its potential and again working in service of brand development. From time to time there are such clashes, it is however rare to see them succeed positively for developers and customers. When it does, it is generally because they find each other, and influence the dependancies imposed upon them by the investment level. Most of the time the developers are oblivious to the realities of dependancies, the constraints and their positions. The results of that tends to be scenarios where a few smart manager types cash in, studios are sold, and so forth. It is what publishers like to encourage in our industry, because it makes the resource management easier and cheaper. So yeah, end users and developers really have very little actual idea of their position, and their strengths, and the benefits of finding each other and working together. The ventures where they do find each other are just as commercially attractive and profitable as those where they are kept seperate by the investment level. There is no financial or organisational validity in maintaining the separation. In truth, if anything finding each other increases control over direction of industry as much as it increases stability of their respective positions, and value.

I can guarantee that as long as your feedback is not in line with the desired affirmation of EA's strategic directives your feedback will never make it up any sort of internal foodchain whatsoever. As I understand this is still part of EA's communications policies.

Missing the option "neither: there are other core issues of higher interest".

As I posted elsewhere: To be brutally honest, it's time to look at it from the angle of EA's strategic business development. What this is, really is nothing more than a clear affirmation of the desire to cut off and not serve those market segments which do not serve EA's strategic goals, and an affirmation of venture development focus through the investment format on those projects that target strictly what is know as the accessible volume markets of leisure and casual gameplay of interest for profiling and data mining. In simple terms, it makes clear beyond a doubt that EA is not willing to care about so called core user types of franchise markets existing. Fully willing to cut those off even from serving as enablement points. Incidentally, the statement "in many ways we built an MMO" is extremely interesting. Particularly for those people who still think that EA is going to lift any finger and expend resources to cater to those who prefer a single play format.

To be brutally honest, it's time to look at it from the angle of EA's strategic business development. What this is, really is nothing more than a clear affirmation of the desire to cut off and not serve those market segments which do not serve EA's strategic goals, and an affirmation of venture development focus through the investment format on those projects that target strictly what is know as the accessible volume markets of leisure and casual gameplay of interest for profiling and data mining. In simple terms, it makes clear beyond a doubt that EA is not willing to care about so called core user types of franchise markets existing. Fully willing to cut those off even from serving as enablement points. Incidentally, the statement "in many ways we built an MMO" is extremely interesting. Particularly for those people who still think that EA is going to lift any finger and expend resources to cater to those who prefer a single play format.

It should never have been released in this state. Simple as that. The deadline syndrome is understandable, it is however not excusable. Particularly because the reigning mindset on that level is that of "we do not need a good release, customers will buy anyway and because they want to believe so much we can get away with anything - including selling off required fixing as a showcase of how we love to treat customers".

Not really, considering these are issues that for a AAA title should never have resulted in to a release. Don't get me wrong, nice to see they are continuing the work, but this is not fixing. This is a continuation of work.

That lesson is only relevant in terms of determining the ratio of those who care versus those who buy blindly. Don't expect any emotion to be attached to that, this is an industry. Besides, the more of those people who care to not participate any more in the market streams the easier it gets to sell more to the volume markets. At lower development costs, at higher MT gains, and so forth. I realise this is a bit cold, but it pays to upset people who care in niche franchises that are subjected to the reboot doctrines of today.

The real irony is that this is just a small hand of issues which should not have arrived at a release point. It is a prime example of the deadline syndrome. Which is irrelevant, because the consumer is expected to buy anyway. Issues like these are then used after release to make a showcase of how much we care about the customer "look we are working hard, believe people, believe (yes we should never have dumped this on you in the first place, but who cares - we don't and you buy anyway".

Its not really listening. It's picking low hanging fruit, ignoring the tree and hoping it gives some breathing space. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad step - far from. But it is addressing symptoms, not disease.

Pretty common method. I'm more surprised to see it at a place like that, it is much more useful for this franchise in community hubs. And I am very surprised by the amateurism displayed, if accurate. If accurate indeed, I do have my doubts. It would be a case of severe amateurism, because there are pretty standard methods and best practices for these efforts. Most publishers use them to maintain influence points on messaging generally for review and more mainstream media sites.

It's not illegal to lie to investors, at least not back home stateside. Welcome to the art of statistics There's an entire sector of industry that specialises in these things Back serious though, the best material is not the quarterly reports, but the annual venture briefing. That is where everything comes together, quarterly reporting is far too easy to use creatively.

Actually, you can. It's not only the correct tradition, but part of curia protocol and clerical law. I can't remember exactly why the rules were introduced though, I vaguely remember something about advocating perpetual continuity - something along those lines, and something about seperating the naming from any person taken as reference or inspiration. I'll see if I can dig it up at some point.