Response to Commenter.
Sorry for the inconvenience. - Jim
Delta..
Thanks for your comments.. I think I saw a poster of you down in Kalamity Flats!
Same Delta? DDW? Regardless, come join us at the new blog location.
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First, thank you for your comments. It is gratifying to know that I am not speaking into the void. While I know that we have folks visiting this site, there is always a wonder as to who they are and is any of this soliloquy finding a home in someone’s thoughts. It is doubly rewarding to find out that not only do I know you in a past life, but that that you have the market savvy and business acumen to engage in a meaningful dialogue.
“ While I personally have a need for the “better game design / system” you describe, I wonder if the gaming masses have the same need. This is the business quandry that I believe current gaming developers are in (and a problem investors may see as well). Also, if the audience is large enough – what is the realistic path for this type of “product/service” to come to market? “
I believe that the gaming masses do not have the same need. They do have the need and desire to consume content, be entertained, and receive value for their entertainment dollar. I believe, and the literature world substantiates this, that there are hundreds if not thousands of niche markets and sub-cultures in our target market. There are those folks who are avid Flash Gordon fans, any number of Japanese anime series fans, vampire fans, Gothic fans, Arthurian Legend fans etc. The list is as long as our imaginations will take us. One of the powerful aspects of this type of offering is that it allows folks who are part of these niche markets to create offerings that are of interest to themselves and their niche market and bring forth creations that otherwise would never see the light of day.
Regarding the product and the service and charging a license fee for the toolkit. This is not the first time I have this proposal and would like to explore this concept a bit. One of the main goals here is to lower the barrier to entry for high-end gamers to participate. If we charge for the toolkit beyond the $15.00 per month game service charge, we lower the amount of high-end gamers who would participate. I ask then, what is the net gain? The company makes a little more up front, but will reduce the amount of “Game-crafters” who are providing offerings, thus reducing the innovation, and volume of offerings which in turn will reduce the total subscription base. Now an argument can be put forth that by charging for the toolkit we increase the quality of the game offerings as we likely will engage only those who more successful and able to make these games. My counter to this is J.K. Rowling: An unemployed mother who had a vision and a need to tell a story. If she had to purchase a license costing a hundred dollars or more to or more to have the chance to publisher her story, I wonder if it would have happened? For every success like hers, there are a dozen that never got past the various barriers to see the light of day. Besides all of these, if we engage more people who are trying the toolkit rather than are playing games (or both), we effectively are charging a monthly service fee for using the toolkit.
I think you are right on the Game-crafters that are out there that are manifesting themselves in the modding community. Even then we are not hitting the cream of the potential providers as to be a modder, you must know how to program and/or script and be pretty good at it to be successful.
I agree that if the company started out with some decent content, it would be a slam dunk. In regard to your comment of “ This audience appears to be there, but they do not appear to demand this more dynamic game and they are still willing to buy junk.“, I bet I could easily find over 250,000 (I did an analysis a few years ago and postulated that there are closer to a million) posts in the various game forums alluding to the need for dynamic content or asking for features that would be supported by this type of offering. One by-product that the game service brings, which I have not discussed yet is that once we have a low barrier to entry, a game-crafter creates his/her creation, then they will not just sit there. They will tell their friends, and their gaming-buddies about it and actively try to get them to join. This means, in effect, that we have created a channel sales force selling the service. This is a departure from the social “I am here and lets go hang out”, to “I have created something you will really like and come check it out!”
Pathway to success:
You have a solid grasp of how to bring ideas to market in the software and gaming world and I am appreciative that you bring this experience to this discussion.
We attempted the investor approach when we first tried to peddle this idea back in 2003. We had a great deal of interest, in that Angels wanted to invest 100K for a proof of concept. That was the major stumbling block for us, as how do you provide a proof of concept of this type of service? Some of the objections we encountered were listed above, as well as many folks did not believe that the on-line game industry was more than maybe 1 Million total subscribers. Remember that this was 2003-2004 and the top dog was still regarded as Everquest. Did we have some credibility issues? To a point we did, and I am sure that hurt us as neither of us were currently employed in the on-line gaming industry.
Check out the history of MMO http://www.mmogchart.com/analysis-and-conclusions/
This is a site that I consider one of the most important overviews out in cyberspace.
Today, you are spot on in that investment would be a hard sell. The only saving grace is that entertainment sales are growing, which has been my experience that in hard times, folks tend to consume more offerings that take them away from the problems of their real world.
The Hobbyist approach I believe you are correct, unless it were a socialized network of folks working on a concept of open source. Even then, the organization of something like this would be a long shot at best.
The indie approach is interesting and one that I had not fully considered. Maybe this is something we should discuss with the folks at Taleworlds? The trick is that they have to be large and/or connected enough to be able to fund it, and small enough to be willing to listen to a proposal.
The corporate developer is an avenue we considered, but once you hand someone the idea, prove that it works, you have lost all rights to it. One painful lesson I have learned over the years is that your legal rights only matter if you have the economic resources to fight for them.
Besides this, Bioware was the originator of this type of community, but amazingly, they refuse to either hear any idea that does not originate with them, and their goals are aimed at becoming the top tier gaming studio, not a publishing service. Their super secret Austin studio has recently revealed they have been working on the new Star Wars MMORPG for the last two years.
The two major competitors whom I mentioned who were thinking along these lines in 2003 were Kaneva and Multiverse. Both have transformed themselves in different directions, perhaps for the same reasons: To provide some proof of concept or meet some objective before they received funding. Last time I checked, Kaneva is now a social game world, and Multiverse is focusing on bringing “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to market while still otherwise plugging along aiming at the low end developer, with limited success.
Yes, this project would be long term as any MMORPG is these days. Years of development work, likely around 36 months and a cost of around 15 to 20 Million if you are careful and prudent.
I am glad you liked Mount&Blade, it has a strong appeal. Regarding popularity of this blog: yes, my hope is, and the blog stats bear this out, that I have a significant spike in interest since releasing the Prophesy of Pendor mod for Mount&Blade.
I have no idea who you could be. Time and experience change us all. I know that my experience and knowledge has expanded exponentially since I stepped out of gaming in 1994. I know a score of folks who could hold this conversation based upon their experience and education at that time. Since then I am sure that I can add a few hundred more to that list. I look forward to when you get in touch with me and solve this mystery.
Best,
Jim
I now agree with your point/plan on the “tool kit” fees structure. I just thought it unwise to “give it away” but as long as there is still the monthly fee to use it…
Proof of concept is very difficult in this situation….something to dwell on…
Happy New Year!
MMOGs/Development Costs:
At first I thought your proposed development costs seemed quite large, but since some gaming companies are public it is pretty simple to find some hard numbers. It looks like $30 million is a reasonable development cost for a large scale MMOG, needing another $20-40 million at the end of production to go live. That is a lot of CA$H and a failure would have little in the way of assets or collateral – so I can see the challenges on getting investors, especially in today’s market. The off set is the huge success of WOW, but several failures or mediocre performance has occurred in the MMOG market lately as well.
Interplay (a public company trading in the penny stock world (.07 share price) is working on a Fallout MMOG and public documents show a $30 million production cost figure ($70-80 million all in, but at that point some revenue would be off setting). Hard to believe a company that appears on its last legs can fund a project at this level, so someone must have determined that the market it there and in a big way.
It appears that branded worlds are where the industry is MMOG wise right now – ie WOW, Conan, LoTR, Warhammer…these are all established worlds in some way (again the success of WOW is likely driving this and keeping the money and resources from moving to a more original idea/plan).
Red Five Studios is a new company working on a “top secret” MMO and while they have kept it very hush hush they have hinted at player created content or at least that players will have a big impact on the game (I doubt very much that it will be the open tool set / service model that you have described, but we can hope for at least some innovation).
The Red Five situation seems common right now – There are a number of MMOGs in the development cycle, but with details kept under wraps for competitive advantage. Some of these are being created by small new studios (usually started by those leaving one of the larger game production companies). It is interesting to note that these smaller studios are much more secretive – goes along with your comment about how easy it is to “lose” an idea - protecting your legal rights/economic resources to fight for them.
These small studios were able to get funding and sell their ideas. Because I think your ideas are sound I only see two advantages these folks may have had to get them the investor dollars: Significant success / experience on a well known MMOG and/or intellectual rights to some brand/theme that investors believed would bring in players.
Tool Sets:
An interesting trend that supports your service based / hobbyist created content idea is the development of tools that sit somewhere between a professional gaming development tool (that require a high skill set) and your vision of a user friendly content tool set (that could be used by the stay at home mom or “old executive with little programming ability”).
In most cases these tools still have a pretty steep learning curve and require technical knowledge, but they are attempting to be more user friendly and their cost allows entry by the non-professional (cost is really the focus). Note there have always been open source freeware projects to develop software – this trend is from professional companies creating tools – a key difference. Growth of “middleware” aimed at the hobbyist….a few examples…but I know there is much more out there…..
Microsoft has XNA/XNA Creators Club
http://www.xna.com
I believe Blade3D was just released and can be found here:
http://www.blade3d.com
XSI Mod Tool (entry level free tool for mod work, but not an open source freeware project)
http://www.softimage.com
Garage Games
http://www.garagegames.com/
Mount and Blade
Couple of comments on this game:
Combat is actually pretty fun and somewhat intuitive. Mounted combat seems to have been done very well, something that has challenged game companies for years for some reason (I’m not sure why). How many fantasy games have we all played where you could get a mount but it either made no difference in combat or you had to dismount to fight? Mounted combat in M&B feels right. Sense of speed and power…combined with a fear of standing still.
Mods for M&B: It appears that M&B is very open to mod work, what do you think the limits are on what can be done?
Skill set needed (besides creative ideas) is python scripting and 3d modeling?
I saw a recent post that said that the developers were looking at adding multiplayer (even though the idea has been asked for and ridiculed a number of times on the forums) in a future version.
Somewhat off topic:
Another aspect of today’s computer gaming that seems missing is the larger multiplayer war game….wait I think I will save this “comment” for another day. Again this is your blog and I have written another long winded comment…… until next time..Delta out.
i agree with you!
You are really talented on writting article,i will come as soon as you update blog.
Read this article, immersive its habitat.