[MUD-Dev] Re: MMO Communities

[Brad McQuaid]

Brendan O'Brien wrote:

> From a business standpoint, this could be considered a success.
> However, from a design standpoint, I believe it is a failure.

Steve Clover's and my objective in writing up the design doc for EQ
was to create a 3D MUD and to translate our most enjoyable
experiences playing MUDs (mostly DIKU) to a 3D environment in the
hopes that, when combined with marketing, that many more people
would be reached.  We had no idea of the level of success the game
would achieve, yet we (and future team members) poured our hearts
and souls into making the best game we could.  We did this at
low-mid level salaries, and making 'big' money for ourselves was NOT
on our minds or even conceivable for the first 2.5 years of
development.  It wasn't until early demos and then beta that we saw
how popular the game might become, and then until release that we
saw it rise far above and beyond even our most optimistic
expectations.  Certainly, at this point, we recognized the profit
potential of the game, but the game was pretty much done by then.

Our hope was that by building on proven MUD principles, combining
them with a 3D virtual world, and then marketing and distributing
the product ala a commercial video/computer game, that we would
reach more people and expose them to how fun and compelling MUDs can
be.  The great risk or bet was, are MUDs just niche games for a
small subset of society normally found in college dorm rooms running
zmud or connecting via a vt100 terminal?  Or, conversely, are the
core mechanics that make MUDs so compelling and immersive NOT niche.
I'm glad from a variety of standpoints it turned out to be the
latter :)

Brendan O'Brien wrote:

> But the -entire- purpose of the design of EQ is to make money. I
> don't see how it can be a business success and not a design
> success.

I gauge it's success on sales and retention numbers -- when I left
there were over 400,000 subscribers and we had about 60% of the
people who'd ever tried the game still playing.  That's what I'm
very proud of.  The money was great, but as mentioned above, came as
a surprise (and, certainly, a pleasant one).  But it wasn't what
drove us to make EQ, at least at my personal level, or at the
development team's level.  With Vanguard, our next project, I think
we do have different expectations -- we know that if we can make
another hit, that there will be the potential of some serious
profit.  I'd still argue that's not why most of us are working on
the game, or at least not the primary reason -- there are probably
easier ways to make a buck, but we love making massively multiplayer
games.  I guess, bottom line, a love for making these games and a
desire to also make money are not mutually exclusive.

Matt Mihaly wrote:

> I seriously doubt the truth of this statement.  I can't speak for
> Brad McQuaid or anyone else on the design team that developed EQ,
> but I have to believe they were trying to do more than just make a
> quick buck with the game.  I know it has received a lot of
> criticism for the way it fosters "addictive" behavior
> (Evercrack?), but do you really think that they sat down at each
> meeting to figure out the best way to turn a profit with every
> design decision?  At some point, they must have considered things
> like the "fun factor" and ways to advance the genre.  Besides, I
> seriously doubt the idea of "multi-boxing" was expected to become
> much of a factor at the time.

Very true.  We tried to capture what made the MUDs we played so
compelling.  And I think we succeeded, and Sigil intends to use the
same core principles to build upon with Vanguard.  And no,
multi-boxing wasn't really anticipated -- probably because it wasn't
allowed in the MUDs we played and we weren't thinking about the
scale of EQ and how policing something like that wouldn't be
realistic.

--

-------------------------------------------------------
Brad McQuaid
President & CEO, Sigil Games Online, Inc.
Co-Producer, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
www.vanguardsoh.com
-------------------------------------------------------->
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