[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[Mike Rozak]

Scott Jennings wrote:

>> Actually, even if you had a small and very talented team that
>> could produce a better product, as soon as your product looked
>> like a threat, the large MMORPG companies would leverage their
>> marketing and finances to squash your accomplishment.

> There are several successful indy MMO development houses that
> disprove your theory. No one "squashed" Mythic when we released
> DAOC (which, by the way, was developed for far, far less than $200
> million). The market is competitive, but not to the level of, say,
> operating systems. And there's plenty of room in the market for
> successful entries (just ask NCSoft).

True, Mythic has done very well. I'll explain my thinking a bit
more...

When Mythic came out with DAOC (3 to 4 years ago), the virtual world
companies were relatively small, the territory was new, and each
company was concerned with grabbing as much unuccupied land as
possible. There was plenty to be had for all.

People start bickering over property lines only when the land-supply
tightens. Even today, the large VW companies are relatively small
and the unoccupied land is plentiful. Three years from now (when any
MMORPG started today would come out) the large companies may be at
the stage where they're starting to become anti-competitive. (NCSoft
and SOE both have a very good chance of becoming the large
companies, although whether or not they become anti-competitive is
up to them.)

Anti-competitive tendencies are common in mature industries where 2
or 3 large companies control most of the market. The large companies
end up with an unspoken agreement not to undercut each others prices
and be happy with their own piece of the pie. However, they are
paranoid of upstart companies coming in with a competitive product
and undercutting their price (thus forcing a price war), or of a
paradigm shift, since either of these will topple the cozy market
place. They will do whatever it takes to prevent either of these
scenarios from happening.

As an example of this, look at auto companies in the 1980's US (GM,
Ford, Chrysler) or computer software today (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle,
Sun).  Consolidation and anti-competitive practices have happened to
virtually every major software application category: databases,
office productivity, and operating systems. Microsoft is not the
only anticompetitive one, although Microsoft is the current bad
guy. Oracle, Sun, and IBM are also very fierce competitors. (Just
try an make a database to compete against Oracle and see what they
do.)

As far as the money required: When DAOC was produced, the cost of
contemporary leading MMORPGs was $5M-$10M. (DAOC was done
inexpensively, < $5M, I recall. I have the numbers around here
somewhere.) Leading MMORPGs coming out now are significantly more
expensive, 2x as much I think, around $10M-$20M. (EQII has had many
people working on it for many years. I haven't heard numbers, but I
mulitply (people * years * salaries) in my head and produce a very
large figure.) I expect a similar growth for those MMORPGs coming
out 3 years from now, resulting in $20M-$40M budgets. MMORPGs don't
cost $200M yet; I just mentioned that figure because a woman in the
US just won a mega-lottery for that much money.

Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
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