[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[ceo]

Derek Licciardi wrote:
> Adam Martin wrote:
>> Samantha LeCraft wrote:
>>> "Sean Howard" <squidi at squidi.net> wrote:

>>>> What we need is indie MMOG development. Most game companies
>>>> can't support a side scrolling shooter, but indie developers
>>>> with less to lose and more heart to give keep the genre alive.

>>> We *have* indie MMO development.  Have you ever looked at the
>>> list of MMOs in development, and noted the number of titles and
>>> the number of companies you've never heard of?  There are
>>> hundreds, if not thousands, of indie MMOs in development right
>>> now.  Most will never see the light of day, because of lack of
>>> funds.  Those that do

>> Having spoken to quite a few of them, I would say that lack of
>> funds is far from their biggest cause of failure. Ignorance,
>> naivety, and complete lack of knowledge about how to develop any
>> major game - let alone an MMOG - are much larger barries on the
>> way to their release (let alone success).

> I'm sorry I have to totally disagree with this.  Our single
> biggest weakness is funding.  Toolsets, development kits, team
> members and

You could, of course, be the odd one out...

> assets all take money to use or make.  We started using Renderware
> as our 3D foundation and are having good success with it until we
> ran out of cash to continue paying the fees to use it.  Now we
> scramble for basic funding to keep the project moving along.

I don't mean to be rude, but that makes it sound like you found
project management and planning to be a bigger problem (did you move
ahead with spending when you had insufficient guarantees to cover
development? How come you ran out of cash?).

> I've got a stack of resumes from producers, designers, artists and
> the like that all have extensive games development experience but
> it takes money to hire them.  Properly funded I could complete a
> team

It's all too easy to say that. I say this from the position of
frequently having to resist the urge! From the perspective of
middleware developer, you get increasingly sure you could do
just-as-good-or-so-much-better and all you need is the time and the
money (no luck or anything ;)). In reality, I have to resist because
I need the time to spend on other things, and I've got better things
to do with the money ... and because I understand the gulf between
how easy it seems it would be and how hard it actually is. But, as I
said, if I get some more free time soon then I'm finally going to
have a go...without spending money...and test that gulf.

(NB I'm not implying you're the same, but here's an extreme
example:) Even as recently as last year I was meeting people who
worked on games that would have had contemporary launch dates with
UO and EQ - and who still firmly believed that their game would have
been the EQ-beater they feel everyone else is still struggling to
come up with. "Lack of money was the only problem" they claim,
despite the fact that none of their design was ever tested live, as
if money and a few simple concepts (like RvR) are all it takes to
make a roaringly successful MMOG.

> that would erase any doubt about the team's ability.  I, myself
> have

So? Anyone with a sufficiently large chequebook can do that. That is
not, in itself, an advantage.

> Still, the two of us cannot do it all and to get others involved
> it

So why can't you get a publisher contract? Not being able to do that
suggests some major problem somewhere (although I'm happy to accept
the major problem is due to publisher ignorance or plain silliness
which are both still depressingly common...).

What about the other funding options (like the funky
financial-services stuff)?

> takes money.  You seem to place a value on know-how that is a bit
> high.  In today's market there are plenty of people that you can
> hire to fill in any gaps of know-how that might exist in your
> plan,

Recruiting for e.g. a client graphics team is easy, (although
getting top quality is not so easy), but anything MMOG-specific is
still extremely difficult. How many individuals can even respond to
an ad for "must have at least 3 published MMOG titles"? (which is
reasonable given standard games industry ads).

> Look, I'm not interested in creating a lifestyle MMO.  I'm not

To me this doesn't back up your claim that money is the only
problem. If it were, you would just have swallowed your pride, made
a realistic project plan based on your actual resources, and made an
MMOG this way. The fact that you apparently turned this down out of
hand again has me thinking "the project manager is not so great".

> content with getting 20K players and calling it a day.  I believe
> the medium has much more potential than that, from both the
> business side and the design side, and with the experience we have
> on our team we should be able to realize that.  I'm also not
> convinced that

On the business side, having "much more potential" should be no
reason not to start small. To think that businesses have to (or even
normally do) start big suggests to me either you know business
extremely well, and are following a very precise (and ultra risky)
business model, or you hardly know business at all. I've done both,
and I admit I've had bad luck with the precise-and-risky version,
but the growth version has consistently delivered, in different
industries and different specialisms.

> starting small and growing into an EQ size is possible because it
> has never been shown to be true.  To me the start small and grow
> big idea is a romantic fantasy based on the realities of releasing
> an under-funded project that can't properly compete in the market.

I'm afraid I can't see a logical connection there. This may be
because I have particular ideas of what you mean by "based on the
realities of releasing an under-funded project" (I think of things
like AO) that are radically different from yours. Perhaps if you
could be more specific then I would get it?

As it is, you appear to me to have intermingled evidence of poor,
inadvisable (some may say "blindingly incompetent") marketing
strategies with poor, definitely incompetent, project management and
unrealistic strategic planning ... and then concluded that any
business model that relies on starting small won't work.

> Point to one MMO that started on your 100K budget and has since
> grown to 300K users, 100K users???  A properly funded MMO has a
> significantly higher chance of success.

Runescape had a budget of about 1k-2k. Last time I checked, they had
something in the region of 30k subscribers, and at least as many non
subscribers on top of that. They are one of those that would have
shown up on the Sir Bruce chart for years had they ever made a
sufficiently public announcement of their numbers (they have
announced, just never to the right places that would cause SB to
have seen it).

If you want a 300k company, give me your precise definition of "MMO"
and I'll endeavour to match it closely (I think I have enough
potentials to find at least one). Otherwise I'll just start throwing
out names that may look stupid and irrelevant to you. OK, so the
bigger problem is that I'll have to look up the correct names and
URL's for each, and want to minimize my effort ;)...

Adam M
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