[MUD-Dev] R&D

[Dave Rickey]

From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>

> This is directed towards those of you working on commercial
> projects: Does your company spend a significant amount of money
> (compared to your total budget) on research? What areas would you
> tend to direct your research dollars to?

In general, the games business doesn't spend money on R&D, in fact
they often go out of their way to avoid anything of the sort.  If
they spend $5 million developing technology for a concept that never
quite comes together in a form that can be put on the shelves,
usually they not only tank the technology, but they fire everyone on
the team to make sure they don't gain anything from it as a company.

It's nuts, but it's the way the business works.  Everyone's salary
has to be attached to a project, and every project has to be aimed
at a release.  There are some minor exceptions, in the form of
"Middleware" and engine vendors who concentrate purely on making
technology, but in their pure form these are a fairly recent
phenomena.

In terms of MMOG-specific R&D, if I was making hiring decisions I'd
have a statistical sociologist and a social psychiatrist on staff,
and data-gathering tools built into the system for them.  But it's
hard to explain what those disciplines have to do with making games.

--Dave

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