[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[Matt Mihaly]

Rob C wrote:

> I have to agree with the comment that proper funding is the first
> and foremost problem facing most small development shops. Speaking
> from the experience of one of these smaller studios, if you can't
> keep the lights on then your in the same boat as a screenwriter
> shopping their movie around, someone may pick up your idea but you
> wont be the one to make it.

Sure, proper funding is. But most small development houses never do
anything that would give a publisher any reason to invest in
them. We've brought our business plan and financial projections into
publishers who have gone, literally, "Oh my god...look at this...I
wish all developers would come in this prepared." I'm not bringing
that up to brag (still don't have a deal after all!), but to point
out that most developers simply are unprepared to receive the
funding they're looking for. The plan we've brought publishers is
good but it's nothing so brilliant that every developer shouldn't
have one with the same level of fiscal detail.  The reaction of
publishers to it tells me that most developers don't even come
close.

I strongly suspect most small developers go in talking about "This
kewl game we want to make" rather than, "Here's how we're going to
give you a return on investment. Here's how we've done it before on
a smaller scale. Here are the methods we propose to use to reduce
the risk of the project as much as is feasible."

I mean, with all due respect to Derek, why should a publisher fund a
full-scale graphical mud when neither the company or the people
leading the company have proven their ability to produce profit in
online worlds previously? Do you think Peter Jackson just walked in
one day with no experience and landed the LotR job? Of course
not. What happens when you give a totally unexperienced person or
company a huge project? More often than not, you end up with
Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie. (The guy directing that had never
directed a movie before if I recall.)

If you want to impress investors, do yourself a favor and go do
something smaller first. Prove you can generate decent ROIs and
create a loyal playerbase on a smaller level. THEN you're in a
position to talk to publishers or investors and say, "Look, we've
done it before, now we're going to do it on a larger scale. You want
in?" It's hardly a guaranteed pitch (no such thing I'd imagine), but
it's a lot more powerful than, "Yeah, we've never done this in any
way shape or form before, but could you give us 10 million to make
this neat game?"

Again, the caveat here is that I may be talking completely out of my
ass. I'm not a publisher so can only guess at what they want to see
based on experience with them. ;)

--matt
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