interview with game developer

[Jonathan]

http://gamebanshee.com/interviews/interplaymmorpg1.php

This is interesting for two reasons.

First, the guy is heading up an Interplay MMO. Might be Fallout?

Second, the guy is coming back to computers after a two year break of not working in the industry (it's not clear in the interview but I think he lived off the proceeds of the sale of his house plus whatever he had accumulated while doing software). This sounds appealing to me, though since I don't have kids or interest in home improvement and probably wouldn't need forty eight months to recharge.

[Vyrosama]

I had originally thought that Interplay sold creative rights to Bethesda Studios since they are making the upcoming Fallout 3 (my next MUST BUY game after Team Fortress 2 came out). But further investigations show some interesting results on the situation....

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Online


also interesting to note:

On November 30, 2006, Interplay, headed by Herve Caen, has filed a Form 8-K filing to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding a potential Fallout massively multiplayer online game.[2] The Form 8-K contained a prospectus stating that Interplay will be issuing common stock on Euronext to raise capital for developing a Fallout MMOG. The report stated that the production and launch processes will require an estimated US$75 million in capital.

I never knew you could raise stock for an MMOG development....but $75million seems harsh. But then again as Jason D. Anderson would say, that's a defeatist talking!!! So if you want to support FOOL (Fallout Online), buy Interplay stock

But this does lead to some interesting questions...how would one bootstrap an MMOG development? Those figures seem ridiculous. And when do you draw a line between thinking like a defeatist or a realist? Maybe you have to have a sort of balance and checks system where one does budget and the other one tries to "reach for the sky" in design.

Hmm...guess this was a long rant that should have been linked to the other gaming threads....which I still need to reply too...

[Jonathan]

I think for a company like Blizzard, which had great cashflow pre-WoW, spending >$50M on a MMOG prior to launch makes good business sense if you can get sufficient subscriptions. For Interplay, which has no money, trying to make a big launch is the height of foolish. They need to do a Puzzle Pirates- (or Eve-) style launch and start out small. Add hardware and devs as required.

[Jonathan]

Let's not speculate! Let's ask a MMOG dev!

tl;dr summary: $30M is your bare minimum to get off the ground.