[MUD-Dev] Where are we now?

[Matt Mihaly]

On Sun, 6 May 2001, Greg Munt wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matt Mihaly <the_logos at achaea.com>
  
>> Sorry to point out the obvious, but gee man, that's what most
>> popular entertainment has been about throughout history in
>> basically every culture. Sex and violence permeate not only most
>> popular entertainment, but also most great literature. Granted, not
>> explicit sex for the most part, but sexual tension is an extremely
>> common theme, and for good reason. Everybody can relate to it.

> Sex and violence. Popular entertainment? Of course. What people
> really want?  Not sure. As an easy example, let's look at
> movies. Action movies are popular. Big explosions. Special
> effects. WOW. KABOOM. Lots of corpses.  Naked romps across the
> screen. Oh yeah. Popular, alright. There can be no disputing
> that. Oh, you want plot too?

I'd say it's definitely what people in generally really want.

>> Hey, but you don't have to worry if the majority of users are after
>> a game you're not interested in authoring. Do an interesting,
>> smaller project that will attract a few thousand people. There are
>> a lot of on-line gamers out there, and number of them that are into
>> MUDs of whatever kind is only going to grow. My strategy with
>> Achaea has always been to try and work on providing experiences
>> that the bigger, more mass-market games, either cannot provide or
>> are not willing/experienced enough to provide them. They don't have
>> to be "better" or "worse" experiences. They just have to be
>> different, and hopefully intersect with the interests of a niche
>> population.
 
> Simply for comparison purposes, how many ppl are on Achaea at the
> same time, on average? You may not choose to answer, but I'll ask
> anyway: what's the minimum number of customer's you'd need to
> break-even?

Oh, Achaea peaks at about 200 people online. I don't know how to
answer your question about minimum number of customers because how
much a customer pays varies from $20 to about $8000 (so far). Some
players are never customers. We could easily support Achaea on half
our number of players though.

>>  Yep. Thus the need for people willing to do smaller projects that
>>  don't require the backing of people whose vision is constrained by
>>  their corporate masters.

> Is your vision not constrained by your customers? See my post on
> "Innovation restrictions".

Yes, but my point about filling a niche is that there's a very wide
range of content that can attract customers. There's a considerably
less wide range of content that you'll have success convincing your
boss at Behemoth Corp. to let you make.

--matt

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