This feedback loop is critical because the requirement that you demonstrate success before taking on additional debt helps keep you from getting in over your head. If, for whatever reason, someone gives you more loans than you can repay, one day your employees are all out of work, your company is gone, and the State of Rhode Island is suddenly the proud owner of $1.4 million in R.A. Salvatore Amalur fanfic and a game that could be a hit if only you had 300+ employees for at least a year to finish it.
I get that the analogy is not that simple. There is colossal investment required in back-end systems and technology that players will never see, much less pay money to finance, before your game's first rat can be coded and killed. Unfortunately, it appears that the economics are precisely that simple. Whomever puts up the $100+ million to finance the game is taking their chances with remarkably little evidence that you can succeed. It's only after the game is launched that development can proceed (or not) rationally with resources allocated based on revenue - a successful game like Rift gets the continued investment to slowly add features, while an unsuccessful game sees layoffs, merges, and possible shutdown.
MMO development needs to get away from the approach where games spend ages in development - with corresponding costs - and emerge to the consumer only fully fleshed out and AAA-quality (or, more likely, bust). There needs to be a way for games to succeed - or, yes, to fail - earlier in the process. The alternative is to continue to see success defined primarily by whose fundraisers are able to keep the doors open for long enough to finish the un-finishable - a prospect which is going to get harder as more games go $100+ million into the hole.
Random examples
A few random ideas that have been tried with varying degrees of success:
- The browser game Kingdom of Loathing launched in 2003 as basically a page where you would click to be told a joke and granted relatively arbitrary stat points. This was okay because the humor - not necessarily the gameplay - was the product, and things like classes and content got added to the game over time.
- Fan-favorite Diablo-alternative Torchlight was originally a prototype for a future MMO, though it's unclear whether/when said MMO will ever materialize.
- The folks behind the Pathfinder MMO made the somewhat controversial move (see: Epic Slant) of using Kickstarter to fund a technical demo. On the plus side, this is how things should work - demonstrating fan interest while simultaneously moving the project forward. On the downside, the ultimate goal is to secure the funding to go back to the old model, and fans may be left holding the bill (and some souvenirs) if the project never gets that big investor.
- The Storybricks Kickstarter campaign (which I've covered previously and looks unlikely to succeed unless someone wanders up with over $220K at the last minute) sought the approach of crowdsourcing a product that is as much of a back-end technology for a future game as a game in and of itself. Psychochild has made the point that projects which have been funded through previous Kickstarter campaigns have been effectively sequels or otherwise possessing built-in audiences. Fate of the project aside, I don't know that this one case will definitely answer whether this project - currently an alpha world-building tool - is too abstract/early for end users to be willing to buy in.
Storybricks is kind of a pisser. It promises the kind of backend we really need to make MMOs our own, and no-one seems to have any interest in it. What has gone wrong?
ReplyDeleteI think there is a deep lesson in KoL for low budget startups. There has to be something that is addictive and cheap to produce to get you going. Humor works, but few of us are funny. Tactical combat with randomized scenarios that you can gun through on a lunch break might also work. I'm drawing a blank on other possible low budget one or two man dev team starters in the RPG genre.
If you read the Pathfinder MMO site/blogs/forum more closely, they are not quite planning to go the "classic route" all the way.
ReplyDeleteTL;DR version:
- use/license existing middleware for the standard bits of the game (and the current options available look pretty interesting from both a tech as well as from an economic standpoint),
- Start small (4500 players in the first month, running up to 12000 players (retained) in month 6 or so).
I don't get the idea they'll be closeted away for 5-6 years to emerge fully developed. In my view, any software project that takes over 9-12 months before launching runs a severe risk of being outdated and uncontrollable.
Spot on, GA.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy into any of the doom and gloom over 38Studios/ToR/Dominus and the rest of the recent underperformers/no-shows. It reminds me of the "glory" days of Prog Rock, with tours that cost the GDP of a Central American country and triple albums that had enough good material for a one-sided single.
Two good things can come out of this and probably will:
New entrants into the MMO field will need a much better business plan and much better project management or they won't even get seed money.
Existing MMOs and new ones that do launch will not be pressured into trying to compete with bloated corporations shoveling dollars down an MMO hole by the tens of millions.
Our existing games will have a better chance to stabilize and grow and the quality of new MMOs will increase. The only thing I foresee that could spoil that increasingly brightening MMO future would be another huge success, kicking off another five-year cycle of inept attempts to copy it. Something called Titan, for example.