[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[Matt Mihaly]

Derek Licciardi wrote:

> I'm sorry I have to totally disagree with this.  Our single
> biggest weakness is funding.

> Properly funded I could complete a team that would erase any doubt
> about the team's ability.  I, myself have over ten years of MUD
> experience to draw from and my partner used to be very active at
> the highest levels of volunteer support for EQ.

No offence, but how much money have your text muds produced? How
many profitable businesses have you run? I don't know what your text
MUD experience is, but if it's as a player, well, who cares. If it's
as a hobbyist, that's worth a little more, but it still doesn't show
you know how to run a business.

It sounds to me like your biggest hurdle to getting off the ground
is money. But your biggest hurdle to getting money is convincing
publishers you're not a wanna-be. We've found it difficult to raise
the money we need to do a graphical MUD and we're second only to
Simutronics in the text space. We've proven we know how to run an
online games business over the last 7 years, proven we can generate
significant profits from it, have obtained a somewhat high-profile
license for the project, have a high-profile team of leads, and so
on.

10 years ago it was fine to "just" be a text mud hobbyist and move
into graphics. Worked for Raph (albeit it not as an entrepreneur),
worked for McQuaid, and so on. Today I think a publisher would be
insane to hire a hobbyist to lead a large-scale commercial project,
much less fund a company whose principals have no actual experience
on the commercial side. (Again, no offence is meant to anyone here.)

It seems to me that you're complaining you can't get funding when
you've actually done nothing to show that you can produce an ROI on
that funding.

--matt
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