[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[ceo]

Derek Licciardi wrote:
> Adam Martin 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

> 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.

Maybe that's unfair or stupid of them. But, as far as you're
concerned, it implies to me that you either:

  - made the wrong decisions on what product you are developing and
  where your uniqueness and strengths would lie

or:

  - made the wrong decisions on who to ask for money

or:

  - had a business plan that could only be funded by the kind of
  publisher (size) that would fall into the category of publishers
  that wanted something you weren't offering.

Obviously, I don't have a copy of your business plan, nor have I
seen your contacts/leads DB, so I'm only making vague generalized
guesses. But if that's a vaguely accurate or fair summary, then your
problems are not so much in finding funding as in needing a better
business plan.

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

> As I've said before, publishers understand $3-5M console projects.
> ...  Angel funding can handle the risk and has the cash to fund a
> project

When I said "funky FS stuff" I meant what lies outside the trivially
obvious routes of publisher, bank-debt, angel, and VC funding. Look
for the imaginative funding vehicles set up by accountants, bankers,
and lawyers (IIRC some have been presented at recent GDC's). Look at
things like fund4games.com. They may be entirely useless to you, but
that's what I was asking - did you try them? If so, why weren't they
any good?

> but they don't have what the publishers have which is an
> understanding of the games industry.  Investors haven't

:). Significantly many publishers don't have that much understanding
either, and the few games-focussed angels know a lot more than the
majority of publishers (hey, it's much easier when you're a single,
experienced, smart expert than when you're a large company with many
non-skilled non-specialists).

> 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.

I was shocked the first time I heard of games trying to get funding
from mainstream angels; it's always struck me as a madness to even
try it, given the widely differing aims of the two parties. Angels
are looking for a particular IRR, which normally translates to a
sellout in 2-3 years time earning them a large multiple of original
investment. If you have a game that will clearly do that, then
surely it's going to be easier for you to get publisher money - and
the publisher will (as a partner) normally be much better at
maximising sales than the angel.

> 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

Those words would guarantee to make the vast majority of European
angels slam the door in your face. Most of them, of course, would do
it very subtly, inflicting the infamous "death by coffee and
biscuits" (i.e. have lots of meetings with you, drink coffee
together, eat some snacks, but never actually do anything).

I'm not contesting the wisdom of your words, just saying that if
angels in the US are similar to european ones then a good adviser
should have told you not to have bothered in the first place. (and
I'd be interested to know how (dis)similar the two sets of angels
are).

> 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.

Again, no offence intended, but those words remind me of publishers
who know they're too ignorant to reliably choose great games and so
have to go with basic financial concepts to safeguard profit
(e.g. "if we stick to only publishing big fast hits then we should
stay in profit even if 80% fail because we're so poor at telling
what's a good game from a reliable studio").

>> On the business side, having "much more potential" should be no
>> reason not to start small. To think that businesses have to (or

> I compare the act of creating an MMO to that of producing a movie.

Shrug. Personally, I find that comparison and it's ilk to be
irritating gross generalizations. I don't believe the two are
similar in any non superficial way. I've never worked in the movie
industry, so I have to rely on 2nd-hand knowledge from people who
have worked on movies all their lives, and I could be very wrong
here, but we never find common ground between our situations.

> 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

Please correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems you're taking a
basic superficial observation and trying to draw conclusions that
shape your business plan?

> To me, under-funding is much more risky than defining a solid plan
> to execute given some level of funding.  There

Then why did you put yourself in the position of being under-funded?
Did a funding cheque bounce? If not, surely you must have gambled on
the possibility of under-funding, in which case you seem to have
acted the opposite way to what you're implying would be your normal
choice?

> 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.

Again, smaller investors don't like to hear that kind of
talk. Especially since 2000, when those words were uttered almost
exclusively by the poor businesses that crashed most
heavily. Personally I think it's a foolish over-simplification, but
many investors seem to have made an unbreakable "logical" connection
between these concepts...

> 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

Assuming you have had any funding that did come through, it would
seem sensible to accept that my proposed scheme of starting small
was also - with hindsight - worth trying, since it wouldn't have
ended up under-funded. Neither you nor I can know whether it would
have worked, nor (yet) whether your current scheme has worked, but
presumably it wouldn't have floundered so much?

>> If you want a 300k company, give me your precise definition of

> 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.

I'm a bit confused as to how much you know about angels. One moment
you seem to be saying you didn't know much about them (c.f. your
remark about not knowing any high networth individuals), and the
next you're making generalizations about what will or won't get
angel funding, which imply you know many of them rather well, and
know which investments they make and which they reject and why?

Adam M
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