[MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks) (long)

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Green <brian at psychochild.org>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Tuesday, June 06, 2000 2:36 AM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Birthday Cake (or Why Large Scale Sometimes Sucks) (long)
>
>In the long run, I personally think it will be niche products that grow
>the market more than any of the numerous massively multiplayer
>(especially the dreaded "million subscriber") worlds I've heard about in
>the last few months.  The power of the internet allows us to bring
>specialized content to niche audiences at a reasonable price; the
>problem is that large companies have gotten into the "McDonald's" mode
>of content production that they don't realize that there are meaningful
>small scale games that could be made.  I think these smaller, focused
>worlds will interest the non-hardcore crowd and bring them to our fold.
>
    Hmmm....  I think it will actually be the hardcore that are attracted to
the niche products.  With the budgets these games require, you need a
subscriber level of at least 50,000 to be profitable.  That's a reasonable
target for a niche product...in about 3-5 years.  Right now you can make a
mainstream product and only get that many (AC).

    If you think EQ and AC are "dumbed down", I think you're in for
disappointment.  My expectation is that for the true mass-market they are
far too hardcore.  Everybody wants to reach out to that "Casual Gamer", the
millions of people who currently play Online Backgammon for free, and
somehow rope them into a pay-for-play.  If they succeed, it will be with a
game so simplified you'll long for the "Golden Age" of UO and EQ.

    That being said, the people that are trying for 50,000+ player worlds
are *way* over-reaching themselves, IMHO.  We're still figuring out how to
build solid communities in 2000 player worlds, without people feeling like
part of the faceless mass.  To the extent that people can influence their
world, it's by influencing their fellow players, a 50,000+ world has way too
much social inertia for everyone to participate fully in the game of
players.

    You *really* want to get a million subscriber game?  Build a 2000-3000
per server game, with a budget of $20,000,000 for development.  Only an
order of magnitude increase in production values will deliver those kinds of
numbers in the near future.

--Dave Rickey




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