[MUD-Dev] BIZ: Who holds your cahonas in their hand? (runs yourinfrastructure...; )

[ceo]

Crosbie Fitch wrote:

> I'd far rather let the player provide the infrastructure (p2p,
> distributed systems, yada yada...), but that's another story.

Indeed. And so IME those companies who have an existing grasp on the
vanilla TCP infrastructures have been active in trying to get a
piece of the MMOG action...the last thing a Telewest (UK telco and
ISP) wants is for millions of people to ditch BlueYonder (their
gaming service, primarily rooted in CS/Quake/etc servers) and start
playing p2p games with no payback - that would turn them into a
utility company again. Unfortunately, their market is already
deregulated, so they'd be left in a market with no differentiators
and rapidly dropping margins. Not good.

They'd much rather diversify into p2p gaming, so that if that does
happen, they're getting extra cash for every player of those
games. Covering their backs if their market goes in a direction that
would otherwise be fatal for them.

...but - again merely IME - the recent problems of that industry
have caused many of their feelers to get withdrawn, whilst they
worry about avoiding bankruptcy etc. OTOH I would be very surpised
if several major ISP's weren't still quietly building up as many
relationships as they could in this area.

>> the rest is too hard, too risky, too low margin.

> Yes. For THEM!

...so a very large, well-funded, highly experienced, skill-rich
organization has looked at those activities and concluded that it's
poorly profitable without controlling the servers. When an 800lb
gorilla decides which part of the market is most profitable, it's
unlikely that the same doesn't hold true for you. Yes, that leaves a
niche. No, you do not want to be in the niche if you could have a
slice of the highly-profitable segment instead.

If you never have any chance at all of being in the rich segment,
then yes, you start small and try to be profitable in the niche. But
we're talking about a situation where developers already have this,
and would be surrendering what could be the most valuable part of
their market...

Adam M
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev