Cubicle 7 "Closed for Spring Cleaning"?
This is strange. This morning I went over to the Heart of the TARDIS blog that's been tracking the designer's progress on Cubicle 7's upcoming Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, and it's gone. So I go over to Cubicle 7's website, and it says it's "closed for a spring clean". So I go to the Forums, and they too are closed. Angus' C7 LiveJournal is closed (his personal one is still open, but cryptic).
Did I miss something this week? I'm willing to take "spring cleaning" at face value, but it's really strange for a business that (I would think) depends so much on online to simply go off the grid. If they're designing a new replacement site, that doesn't require pulling the old one offline. The store is still open, but a bit out of date. Hadn't I read that everyone's been getting their Starblazer Adventures pre-orders?
Over on therpgsite, Simon W suggested that they are just doing a re-org and they'll be back online soon with some future projects, but the entire lack of communication is not promising. At least an announcement, like "hey gang we're going to be redoing our website on this date, etc." would make it clear that this is a planned move. Coming with the extended delays on the print version of Starblazer Adventures and the economy this could be bad news.
I'm a little worried myself. I pre-ordered the Starblazer Adventures book a few weeks ago. When you pre-order the book, you are supposed to receive the .pdf for free. What I got was an email from someone named Angus informing me that he was moving and couldn't arrange the .pdf immediately, but would take care of it by Monday. It's been several Mondays, and I sent a reminder email several days ago, and nothing.
I'm willing to cut gaming businesses some slack, but I'm really starting to get a "You've been stiffed" feeling in my gut.
This is strange. This morning I went over to the Heart of the TARDIS blog that's been tracking the designer's progress on Cubicle 7's upcoming Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, and it's gone.
Here's where my Spider Sense is going into overdrive. You don't 'spring clean' a blogspot blog, and the posts are deleted when one is closed. Its removal implies that the designer is no longer working on the project, and that there are things happening inside Cubicle 7 they don't want (or can't have) talked about.
On the other hand, they could be centralizing all of it on one site, but they didn't need to take down everything in the meantime in order to it. If this is the case though, why wasn't there an announcement?
hey guys, there's a ton of massive positive stuff happening in the background - major press release coming out in the next week or two about a huge deal for Cubicle 7 - just can't be discussed yet but i can tell you it's very exciting.
Don't worry everyone's still working on their projects, and our work schedule just got much busier...so on that note I'll leave it with you for the moment until Angus or Dom can provide some more info.
The Cubicle 7 guys are pretty stand up folk, and I've always had great experiences interacting with them. That Chris, in particular, is just as nice as he can be.
I recommend putting aside the worry and speculation for the time being. The honest wisdom here is that we don't know what's going on with Cubicle 7, but there's no reason to think anything is going on other than what they say. I'm guessing a full scale reorganization, myself.
I'm sorry to hear that they didn't manage to make that Starblazer PDF happen for you yet, David. I bet if you drop Angus another email he'll take care of the problem.
one thoiught is they are changing webhosts. If thats the fact yes they would need to take it all down to move it to the new servers. Could simply be a cost saving measure.
Based on recent history within the industry in the UK, I'm going to guess that there's a small furry mammal involved (total guess with nothing to support that whatsoever). I hope I'm wrong because I wish nothing but the best for them and especially for the Doctor Who game. It seems like a long time since Dave Chapman first mentioned it on Outpost Gallifrey.
As Chris mentioned above there's loads going on with Cubicle 7 at the moment, all positive and soon to be officially announced. Unfortunately, we can't talk about it yet.
We have also had to urgently review our online content - hence the disappearance of the website and other bits and pieces. We'll get things back up and running soon.
We're sorry to have caused any concern. The developments have caused some delays to answering e-mails and fulfilling orders for the web-store (and might continue to for the next couple of weeks). Sorry about this (and for the need for us to be all mysterious), thanks for your patience.
I do hope that some of the positive news will concern the Starblazers pre-order I purchased at Gencon '08. At this point I think I might be more interested in a refund then the "eventual" hardcopy. Unfortunately, I think it would take longer to get the refund then to receive the book considering the speed of correspondence I have had with C7 in the past.