[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[Amanda Walker]

On Jul 21, 2004, at 2:22 PM, Matt Mihaly wrote:

> 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."

Indeed.  Remember (and I'm responding more to Rob and Derek than
you, Matt) the people with the money do not care how well done your
game is, or even how many people you think will want to play it.
You are not asking them to fund a game, you are asking them to fund
a business.  This means you need to show them reasonable, defensible
plans for running the business.  Creating a working, fun game is
just the beginning, and is arguably not even the most important
piece.

The "game programmer as artist" image is popular, due in no small
part to highly visible stars like John Carmack with his Ferraris and
"it'll be done when it's done" attitude.  But think about artists
for a moment.  How many rich artists do you know?  Most musicians,
even popular ones, end up owing the record company when all is said
and done.  Running a game for love is commendable.  Running it as a
small sideline on your own is commendable as well.  But the moment
you ask someone else to invest, your task is no longer "make a great
game," it's "make a sustainable business," which is a whole
different kettle of fish.  Most small businesses, even ones with
great ideas that could take the world by storm, fail.  And largely,
they don't fail for external reasons.  Most of the time, a business
carries the seeds of its own failure.  Sometimes it's the tendency
of good entrepreneurs to be be poor managers; other times it's being
blind-sided by easily predictable risks that could have been
mitigated if they'd been taken seriously; sometimes it's just
thinking your product is better than it really is.

But these are the kinds of things that an investor has to look at,
quite aside from how much fun a game is to play.

Amanda Walker
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev