[MUD-Dev] business models

[Vincent Archer]

According to Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com:

> expanions always come out at least a month late in Europe, so you
> spend a month stuck in the old zones whilst all your friends are
> miles

Not all my friends. Due to timezones, the people I play with tend to
be 90% Germans, Swedes, English, and they suffered equally. I think I
had Velious enabled right in the middle of the rush; about half my
friends had it a few days before, and half got it over the two weeks
that followed (ok, UK got a worse deal that time).

> Good to see that DAoC is following the same tradition and stuffing
> Europe too.

DAoC is facing the same problem that every publisher who wants to get
in some european markets faces: Localisation. Notice they didn't talk
about release but localisation for german, french (and I don't
remember the last)?

That's because, to distribute in these markets, you do need to have
your box and manuals in the local language. If you don't, you fall
under cultural protection laws, which basically says "we can seize all
your boxes distributed and destroy them, and fine you $...E... damn
euro symbol keyboard :) XXX per box". Most of the time you don't, but
a few complaints...  and who wants to take that risk?

Now, imagine: people are already complaining that documentation is bad
and already out of date/wrong on the day of release. Imagine now if
said documentation had to be written TWO months earlier, to allow time
for the translation?

Of course, nothing has been said about DAoC being late in UK, since it
doesn't need translation there. But that now depends on the
distributor.  If the same distributor is used for all europe
(typically), then that distributor knows that if DAoC is released in
UK two months before, at least half his production will be bought from
there before he releases the localised product, thus making the
investment/return on the localised product bad.

--
Vincent Archer                                         Email: archer at nevrax.com

Nevrax France.                              Off on the yellow brick road we go!
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