[MUD-Dev] Evolutionary Design

[Matt Mihaly]

On Sat, 15 Jun 2002, Ron Gabbard wrote:

> It seems like people like to talk about design concepts and
> technology issues -- these are fun and understood.  However, when
> it comes down to the money side, there is this evil black box
> called 'business' that no one wants to open because it's full of
> harsh realities like deadlines and financial constraints that
> limit design.  It's OK to start a company because that's where a
> person's passion lies and they have a primary goal of realizing a
> dream of designing their own game.  That person just better be
> able to make that passion profitable and be able to communicate
> and demonstrate that ability to the VCs because profitability is
> where the VCs passion lies.  The VC isn't there to fund someone
> else's fun and passion unless there is an ROI attached to it.
 
> There are still a lot of NASDAQ millionaires running around with
> few investment options.  The stock market is sluggish and interest
> rates are down.  Getting money should be relatively easy.

There may be rich angels looking to invest, but it's my
understanding that the traditional VC (Sandhill Road, etc) isn't
much interested in games period, because it's a business-to-consumer
proposition. Games also labour under the disadvantage of being
extremely subjective. If I just built myself a computer chip that
runs 10x faster than anything previously seen, and can be produced
with no extra hassle, then there's a pretty clear-cut investment
case there. The product is obviously better than existing ones.

This isn't the case at all with games, where barring a few almost
guaranteed hits (Doom 3, for instance), it's nearly impossible to
know what is going to be a hit at the funding stage of things.

Anyway, as far as I'm aware, traditional VCs rarely invest in any
type of game developer.

--matt

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