[MUD-Dev] Indie MMOG's

[ceo]

Michael Sellers wrote:
> Adam wrote:

>> Hence funding is much less of an issue IMHO.

>> Failure to get funding is often symptomatic of having already
>> failed in other areas. It's not that getting funding is hard,
>> it's that it's just the first point at which the management
>> notice that they've failed elsewhere, because it's the first time
>> some external force puts a brake on their progress in response to
>> the underlying failures (which could be ignored up until that
>> point).

> I have to wonder how much funding you've raised recently for an
> MMO development project, and from what sources.

I've only consulted for other people who were actually raising the
money. If we were to assume that only people could only speak or
advise about the things they had directly personally done in exactly
those ways, then this would be a very quiet list :).

> they're right); I'd say it's that much harder again to raise a few
> million dollars to fund this -- and if you're trying to raise more
> than $10M, you better have a sterling track record and a fantastic

But I've already said quite clearly that I don't believe this is the
best approach, and personally I think it's foolish or shows a lack
of dedication to consider it the only option. To me it seems foolish
enough to be that blinkered that if I were contracted by a VC to
advise I'd tell them not to invest in any group that insisted they
had to do it this way, unless they had something very special going
for them - e.g. if you were looking at the DAoC team - or they were
looking for a "funky" financial instrument, e.g. offsetting their
borrowing against guaranteed future revenue streams, so that at
least the investor was buying into something with positive minimum
value.

NB: for this scenario, there are some leg-ups that I would still
consider not good enough to make up for the problem. E.g. if someone
turned up a few years ago having secured the LoTR MMOG license and
assembled a team of programmers and MUD admins I would still advise
against giving them 8-figure funding.

Adam M
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