[MUD-Dev] business models

[Dave Rickey]

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com>

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Vincent Archer [mailto:archer at nevrax.com]
>> Sent: 22 May 2001 10:21
>> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
>> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] business models

>> If you want to avoid the 100% at launch, arrange to have your game
>> released simultaneously (and I *do* mean simultaneously) in Europe,
>> US and Asia.

> I loathe it when they stagger releases across the world. Everquest's
> 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 away enjoying the new content. Similarly with new game
> releases, I had to get a colleague to pick up AC for me.

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

> Its funny, but I think this is one of those little things that
> really piss off a lot of customers that publishers just don't really
> 'get'.

Well, I can't discuss details, but if you want an explanation for why
this always happens, there's three things at work:

  1) Software in bulk like that gets shipped by actual ship, takes
  time for a freighter to phycially cross the ocean.

  2) Typically french and german versions have to be localized, at
  least minimally (reprint of the manual, most in-game dialogs, etc.
  And the distributors that get those deals tend to get awfully stuffy
  about a british version (which can be shipped as-is) showing up on
  the shelves before the ones they've contracted for, with the loose
  borders in Europe they lose sales.

  3) There can be trade barriers involved, for example even though the
  encryption used by the packet streams may be almost laughably
  simple, the US government has to sign off before it can be legally
  exported.

It's not like anyone *wants* to make things difficult for the British,
just that they aren't a big enough market to overwhelm the other
factors involved.  Has nothing to do with server load, in fact from
that perspective, the more international customers evening out the
bandwidth use, the better.

--Dave Rickey

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