[MUD-Dev] When will new MMORPGs that are coming out get originalwiththe gameplay?

[Ron Gabbard]

From: "Matt Mihaly" <the_logos at achaea.com>
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Daniel James wrote:
>> On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Sasha Hart wrote:

>>> To someone who is deciding whether or not to risk their
>>> financial livelihood, do you think it is 'practical' to put all
>>> of your eggs into a basket which is only not decisively
>>> demonstrated inferior?

>> Well, yes, I do. I have (bet the farm, Moo) -- I believe that I
>> mentioned this in a recent de-lurking. For a small company it is
>> much more practical to avoid competing in the same expensive race
>> as everyone else. I don't know if we can be labelled as
>> 'financially conservative', although we sure are cheap.

>> A risk-averse company would indeed be unlikely to consider it
>> practical.

> I think Dan has a point here. We've always tried to take a
> different tact towards game design specifically to be
> different. Difference can create a niche. It's not going to power
> a mass market game barring the rare huge hit, but it can work for
> smaller games. There's a huge audience out there and its got some
> pretty diverse tastes even if huge portions of it gravitate to the
> same type of game.

Different for the sake of being different is not necessarily good.
Tried starting a company that produced gloves with only 4 fingers as
everyone else's gloves had 5.  It didn't go too well.

Facetiousness aside...

If you know who you're designing the game for before you start, it
will help make things easier and lower risk.  Those designers that
work for larger companies that have full-time marketing departments
need to hammer them for information... gathering information is
their job.  Those independent designers need to grab a book on
Marketing 101 and learn the basics of market segmentation, SWOT
(strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats) analysis, product
differentiation strategies, etc.  Marketing is supposed to be an
information gathering function as much as it is an "I get to travel
around to trade shows and schmooze with retailers" function.  And,
if done properly, marketing can identify and quantify a target
market, determine what product features are most important to that
market, place a weight on those product features, and come up with a
pessimistic, realistic, and optimistic revenue stream for a game
based on a particular set of features.  This lowers the risk for the
project tremendously and are the type of numbers for which the
people with the money are looking.

The entertainment industry is extremely conservative.  Thus, you see
many, many sequels.  Books are written in series format... movies
carry on characters and themes long after they should have been shot
and put out of their misery... games migrate from Madden 2000, to
Madden 2001, etc. with very few changes in actual gameplay... TV
series are carried on for years after the writers have run out of
decent storylines for the characters.  Every once in a while
something like "The Crying Game" or "Waking Ned Devine" makes a
splash but it's the exception and not the rule and it's typically
not the big money that creates them.  This is a great opportunity
for the small indy game designer/developer who knows what they're
doing.

The great thing about MMOGs is that it's not easy to create a "me
too" product... the ramp-up time for introducing a competing product
is tremendously long compared with most other industries.  This
gives the smaller development company the time to reap the rewards
from their innovation before the market becomes saturated with
clones.

In short, be different but be different because X number of players
want Y features and are willing to pay $Z to access those features
while it will only cost $XX to produce and operate.

Cheers,

Ron
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