[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[Amanda Walker]

On Jul 24, 2004, at 4:32 PM, Zach Collins (Siege) wrote:

>> Most musicians, even popular ones, end up owing the record
>> company when all is said and done.

> I protest that last sentence.  The music industry is not directly
> comparable in method of operations nor in manner of pay to their
> creative producers.  If you enter the music industry as a
> musician, you can expect to be lied to repeatedly about your
> (usurous) financial obligations until you start recieving the
> bills (and often even after that), you can expect to pay for the
> use of production equipment (something which, in a normal company,
> is paid for by the company and not its staff), you as the *artist*
> have to pay for people to use the equipment for you, American
> touring is barely profitable, the "guild" is operated by the
> publishers as a for-profit entity....

OK, so the analogy is not exact.  But I think that the analogy of
"garage game company" to "garage band" is not that far off: how many
game developers do you know who actually make money, vs. people
working on their own time with their own equipment?  Consider how
often people pop up onto MUD-Dev with "Hi, I've gotten a couple
friends together to build an MMORPG.  It's way cool, but we're
having trouble finding an investor/publisher/etc."

> It comes down to this: the music industry is focused on extracting
> both music and money from the source of its products, while the
> games industry is focused on purchasing the works of skilled
> artists for use in its products.

The financial structure isn't as egregious as in the recording
industry, to be sure, but there are a lot more shoestring game
developers than stars.

> You can blame Carmack for being a spendthrift, but what else is he
> going to do with his money?  Save social security?

I don't blame Carmack for anything: he's smacked three games (so
far) right into the marketplace sweet spot, and I'm psyched that
he's spending some of the profits on running for the X-Prize.  He's
clearly one hoopy frood who knows where his towel is.

However, I do think that his success has created unreasonable
expectations--just like rock stars and sports stars do.  I think
it's a shame that kids entering the field, and not a few people who
should be experienced enough to know better, have adopted the "work
like hell to create a hit single, and then we'll have it made" model
for the gaming industry.  I also think it's a shame that the
prevailing attitude still seems to be that the gaming industry is
inherently different than other industry segments, so lessons
learned from them don't apply--even though every game post mortem
I've ever read describes classic patterns that anyone with some
basic engineering or business training should have recognized.

Now, this isn't to say there aren't hard, unique problems in the
gaming industry: successful MMOs present some fascinating
engineering and business challenges.  But they do this by virtue of
being successful, not by virtue of being games.

Amanda Walker
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