[MUD-Dev] MMORPG Cancellations: The sky is falling?

[ceo]

Michael Sellers wrote:
> Michael Hartman wrote:

>> The discussion on TerraNova about UOX's cancellation prompted
>> this, but I'm interested to hear the opinions of the folks here
>> on whether or not the recent series of MMORPG cancellations is
>> really anything to worry about.

> For many people working on MMOs today, I'd say "almost certainly."
> But this conclusion depends on what you're using to sell your MMO.

> IMO, the new successes we're going to see in the next 2-4 years
> are going to come from something with a new gameplay model.
> There.com may have not done sufficiently well in the consumer
> arena, but it has some very interesting successes that are worth
> considering.  Second Life is sitting at around 10K subscribers,
> but with its pay-for-land model it's difficult to say whether it's
> a commercial success or not (my guess: close or barely but not
> soundly successful).  I think the fantasy and science-fiction
> settings are going to be fertile for years, but not the way we
> think now.  My suspicion is that the next really successful
> fantasy MMOG will feel and play almost nothing like what's out
> there now.  How long until we see this is anyone's guess.  But
> personally I can't imagine taking a bet in the range of multiple
> millions of dollars that another MMOG substantially similar to
> many that have come before it is going to be an unexpected
> breakout hit.

Personally, I think the new successes will come from people
realising that 10k subscribers is easy enough to achieve with 1/10th
of Second Life's development cost. I know of several teams with
fewer than 3 people that have gone over that, but have *ahem*
interesting (read: almost silent, or tightly focussed) marketing and
have never even appeared on Bruce's graph. Apparently, this is "all
part of the plan" and they each appear to be doing extremely well
financially so *shrug* who am I to argue? :).

Matt Mihaly wrote:

> In terms of ROI I think it'd be difficult to hold a candle to our
> games. Our last two text MMOs paid for their development cost in
> the first month of operation.

Exactly. Sadly, lots of people feel that text games are much
"easier" and "cheaper" (no comment; pick the appropriate games to
compare and you could argue it either way - I recall at least one
ex-text-MUD developer who deliberately chose a graphical
representation that required less dev time than text, to allow them
to make a reasonable game in their limited free time), which
prevents Matt from being too much of a poster-child.

But I know the figures, and it's perfectly possible to make big
games (counted in players and/or subscriptions) cheaply. So much so
that I'm tempted to resign and start a studio just to do them
;). There are obvious subtleties related to things like cashflow -
e.g. "cheap to develop" is no good at all if you launch with 30k
players because your fixed costs at that point would be very very
far from cheap (although there are business models for doing
precisely this - you get your suppliers to pay you to use their
resources, c.f. Freeserve. Freeserve turned the home-ISP market on
it's head by getting *paid* by the incubment telco to provide
*cheaper* than normal internet access to customers across the
country - and without a monthly fee.)

And I expect that to also loosen up creativity a bit, and lead us
back to games with good gameplay, as opposed to games that worry
about USP's.

Adam M
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