[MUD-Dev] NEWS: Why Virtual Worlds are Designed By Newbies - No, Really (By R. Bartle)

[Ted L. Chen]

Mike Rozak wrote:

> The time limit would be on invidivual players, and it wouldn't
> really be a limit. Basically, when the player finished the
> 100-hours of content, they'd be told they can stick around and be
> bored, or leave and go try virtual world X by the same
> author/company. (It could be more drastic; the game could start
> scrolling the games credits, but this is a bit harsh and will
> cause some players to put off killing the evil overlord forever.)

> The problem with this deisgn is that if you manage to attract 1000
> players with advertising, they'll finish the content in a month or
> two and leave; and then you have to advertise more. (Of course,
> you really need a stream of advertisting.) However, a shorter
> player commitment results in a larger pool of potential players
> (more mass-market), not to mention each player partaking in more
> virtual worlds per year, so attracting 1000 players to a 100-hour
> VW might be signficnatly easier/cheaper than attracting the same
> number to a 1000-hour VW.

Actually, to some extent, you don't need a steady stream of
advertising.  Take book sales as an example.  The first hardcover
push is priced higher and is accompanied by your standard marketing
blitz.  Those who can afford it, will purchase the book at this
time.  With minor pushing, these initial buyers then become the
marketing force for the second wave of paperbacks in the form of
reviews... Imagine Oprah's Virtual World List ;)

Mind you, this is a very loose analogy and I surely don't expect any
vitual world to be released under this strategy verbatim.

It does however suggest that with an more extended strategy, you can
market the same thing twice, if not more times with minimal
overhead.  Additionally, this opens up the avenue of reduced
operational costs/risk per world since you're targeting 1000 players
at a time instead of 100k.

For a successful series, the amount of hardware might be the same as
one large vitual world, but like a book, it is so much easier to
design and maintain 10 self-consistency stories that span 1000-pages
than a single 10k-page epic.

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