commercial muds and cable TV (was RE: [MUD-Dev] code base inq uiry )

[Sellers]

Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> There may not be sufficient audience to support more than
> a few massive EQ/AC/UO style muds, but smaller muds do not need as big an
> audience (just like Lifetime doesn't need the same size audience as
> NBC). If I steal 500 users from EQ, it doesn't impact them that much, but
> that's a potentially profitiable user-base right there for a small mud,
> provided they steal the right users.

Maybe.  It's an interesting question: when you figure in hardware costs,
bandwidth, reasonable pay for say 2-4 employees, G&A, etc., how many
customers do you need to make it work?  Back of the envelope calculations...

$5000 year hardware, maintenance, and bandwidth
$40,000 gross per year per employee on average (some of which is payroll tax
etc)

that puts you at about $125K per year with 3 employees... so at say
$20/month you need 521 active accounts on average.  My experience is that
calculations like this are generally low by about half, so that puts you
needing somewhere near the 1000 active account mark to make this go.  That's
possible for a text mud, but not easy.  I think even 500 would be a stretch
for many (especially at $20/month).

How does this fit with your experience in running a text mud?  


Mike Sellers



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