[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[Derek Licciardi]

<EdNote: Significant quote trimming done>

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

> 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?).

That assumes that we had enough cash to begin with.  Bootstrapping
forces you to take risks with development cash.  We fully understand
what that meant and unfortunately we simply did not have enough
money to build a demo that is as pretty as Star Wars on a miniscule
fraction of their development budget.  Publishers we worked with
didn't see enough graphical quality despite a fully realized server
and such and sent us off to create a demo that looked as good as any
current game out there.  Even in MMOs publishers are fixated on
graphical quality.  All this takes money and when you didn't have
enough to begin with, every decision is moving ahead without
sufficient guarantees of development funding.  Bootstrapped MMO
projects don't have the luxury of adequate funding which was my
point all along in stating that money has been our biggest problem.

>> 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

Sure, I could be misleading myself but I've built startup software
companies and hiring was never a real problem and in today's market
all indicators point in favor of employers.

> 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)?

As I've said before, publishers understand $3-5M console projects.
Therefore no matter how good our idea is its highly unlikely that
they will shell out what represents three to four console projects
to a single team that is not headed by Brad McQuaid, Koster or
someone of that name-dropping notoriety.  Most publishers are not
organized to handle the costs of providing a service like an MMO so
that leaves angel funding.  Many have said we have a good idea and
have told us to come back when we're further along in development
because they don't fund startups.

Angel funding can handle the risk and has the cash to fund a project
but they don't have what the publishers have which is an
understanding of the games industry.  Investors haven't
traditionally played in the games industry but that is beginning to
change and we're closer to getting funding today than we have ever
been.  There is a reality to the stereotype that angels are 55+ year
old men with no understanding about technology and games are
something that their grandkids play on their fancy TVs.

>> 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".

You only get one chance to launch a product before you are
categorized into a contender or a has-been.  Launch small and you're
forever a small MMO.  I have yet to see a project grow from a stable
base of 20 - 30K players to something in the hundreds of thousands.
I'll eat my words if someone does it but consumers are already on to
the next big thing by the time your expansion is released and once
they've passed you over they don't tend to come back.

> 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.

I compare the act of creating an MMO to that of producing a movie.
Now not all big budget films make a pile of money but there are far
more properly funded movies that are successful than there are Blair
Witch Projects.  To me, under-funding is much more risky than
defining a solid plan to execute given some level of funding.  There
is a minimum barrier to entry in project budget size to compete with
the big players in the industry.  I just don't buy that a half
million dollar MMO is going to beat the pants off EQ, DAoC, SWG and
the others out there.

The only other approach I can see working would be to make multiple
online games working up to a larger project.  This way you get to
build your name in the industry and then get a deal like Brad
McQuaid secured from Microsoft.  The only problem with this is that
by the time we've added 3 - 5 years of MMO experience under our belt
the game we've designed will largely be delivered to the market
based on our market trending.  Being second to market is not a good
thing in this industry.

> 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 ;)...

Like many others I want to run the next EQ killer.  I think another
game can be that big though an EQ clone it won't be.  30K
subscribers is a small company.  Investors won't look at a plan that
means to top out at 30K subscribers.  If you can't get to the
hundreds of thousands you don't stand a chance at Angel funding
unless your family related to the angel.  30K subscribers do not
make for a company that can return the growth required by angel
capital. Finding funding remains our biggest concern.  Everyday we
get closer to an actual demo but without money the process is very
slow and more difficult to manage.  It didn't help matters that I
didn't have a network of high net-worth individuals when I first
started out.  It didn't help that it was 2001 when we founded the
company, deep in the heart of the dot.com crash.  Despite this the
future does look bright and the lessons learned in this process are
invaluable.

Derek
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