[MUD-Dev] selling Godhoods

[Ananda Dawnsinger]

----------
>From: Matthew Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com>

>On Thu, 27 Apr 2000, Ananda Dawnsinger wrote:
>
>> 
>> ----------
>> >From: Matthew Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com>
>> >
>> >The common misperception that quality and high-end customer service is not
>> >scalable is refuted, in my opinion, by the Four Seasons hotel chain. For
>> >those of you not familiar with them, they are a hotel chain with hotels
>> >and resorts in nearly every major city or resort area in the world, and
>> >they are usually either the top, or among the top, hotel/resort in their
>> >market. They are _fantastic_. Every one I've ever stayed at has been
>> >nothing less than a superlative experience, and yet they are not
>> >cookie-cutter at all. Each one is unique, and yet each one manages to fit
>> >within the larger corporate structure very well. 
>> 
>> 
>> And though I can't remember whether or not I've actually stayed at a Four
>> Seasons, I know the sort of hotel you're referring to.  One of their secrets
>> to high-end customer service is limiting the number of rooms.  Even their
>> Las Vegas hotel -- on the Strip! -- has under 500 rooms.
>
>Yep. That is also one of our not-so-secret secrets.

Well, then, that's not very bloody scalable then, is it?  ;)

(I'm teasing here.  I meant the original comment about filling your game
with "rich bastards" to be tongue-in-cheek -- partly a commentary on the
list's obsession with Scalable Solutions, as per comments on the Meta list
-- and I'm not sure it came across that way.)

>> And this is what I meant by Not a Scalable Solution.  The online gaming
>> community is probably less than a million users.  The ORPG community is a
>> fraction of that.  The text MUD community is a fraction of *that.*  The
>> number of wealthy text MUDders is finite, fought over by at least half a
>> dozen commercial MUDs, and unlikely to grow at a significant rate.  If you
>> are looking to these wealthy MUDders for a significant percentage of your
>> income, at some point your growth will reach a ceiling.
>
>It doesn't matter to me if it's scalable though. Achaea doesn't claim to
>be scalable. We're a niche player, and even when we get to the point of
>having 500+ people on line at once (as opposed to 140 or so now), I don't
>see that changing.

I know exactly where you're coming from.  I like to call them "boutique
games" -- small-scale commercial games like Achaea and the project I'm
working on (it's still very much pre-release, which is why I keep up this
pathetic facade of anonymity) are not unlike trendy boutiques, as compared
to the department stores and Wal-Marts of the online community.  If a
boutique doesn't find a niche and cater to it -- with high-quality product,
with top-notch customer service, or simply with an experience unavailable
anywhere else -- it won't be able to justify its necessarily higher cost. 
And boutiques simply can't support the same customer base as a department
store, simply because of economies of scale.

>> Just because the Four Seasons hotels keep occupancy high doesn't mean that
>> you can get 250 (or 2500, or 25,000) players to play your MUD for
>> $350/night...
>
>No, quite right, but neither did i suggest that one take the exact Four
>Seasons business model and apply it to muds. I was simply making the
>analogy that profibility can be achieved by focussing solely on the
>high-end, rather than the mass market.

Well, no, you rather strongly implied that the Four Seasons model suggests
that the luxury MUD market is scalable.  And you didn't point out that even
with the Four Seasons model, that scalability has limits.  ;)

The other thing, of course, is that Four Seasons is a *chain* of boutique
hotels, and therefore gets access to an economy of scale that a single
luxury hotel doesn't have.  Were Achaea, Inferno, Avalon, The Eternal City,
Realms of Exile, Aeternity, and the various other commercial "boutique" MUDS
released and in the pipeline to form a coalition -- pooling advertising,
hardware, and bandwidth resources -- I suspect there'd be a rise in income
among all the participating members.  Were all of these MUDs owned or
licensed by a supporting entity that effectively enforced high standards of
product quality and customer support, you'd theoretically see an even
greater benefit.

It's all pretty much theoretical, of course; we're talking about small-scale
games with unstable profit systems (well, except Achaea) who are going to be
pretty paranoid about joining forces with competition who might raid their
player base.  I have to admit, I like the idea in the abstract, but it's not
my game I'd be betting, right now.  Were I betting my current and future
livelihood on being able to gather enough players to make my game
self-supporting, I'd probably be afraid of my proposal myself.

   -- Sharon

(P.S.  I generally try to keep my messages emoticon-free, but I feel like I
might have gotten your dander up a bit with my last post... hence the winky
faces.)



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