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Business issues By now I've shown you that MMO projects are pretty complex beasts to plan; combine the work required to create a stable server application with the cost of the hardware for a strong operating platform, and it adds up to a simple truth: MMO games are expensive. Even with that in mind, you may still have the resources and/or backing to go ahead with the project; in which case, I salute you, and present the following issues for your consideration. Business structure. Once you've developed the MMO game, are you going to run it yourself, or are you going to set up a separate company to do that? It's like a franchise; the new 'firm' is purely dedicated to running the game that you have developed. It's not hard to find ways to flow money from the new firm back into the old - royalty payments would be the obvious choice - and control can be kept by simply owning the new firm. The advantage is that the finances of the game and of the developer are kept separate; if the game is making losses, it doesn't eat into the developer's own finances, only the game runner's. Maintenance costs. It won't surprise you to know that if you're going to run a load of servers, you need to supply them with electricity, keep them in a building somewhere, and probably keep that building secure. You'll probably also need to employ a few people to keep them running and deal with crashes and crisis; of course, that means you'll need to heat the building, too (though the heat from 30 servers may be enough, if you can persuade your staff to huddle together a bit). So purely to keep the game running in the same state as it was at launch, you're already running a small office. If you're lucky, your publisher will handle things like subscription payments for you, but you should consider the scenario in which you have to handle that sort of thing yourself. You'd try and automate the actual payment process as much as possible, hopefully to the extent that a problem-free signup requires no human interaction at all; but you'll still need a staff of people on support, to deal with the more severe payment and connection problems. Content development. As noted before, games which aren't continually revised and updated tend to lose player interest. So how will you go about developing new content for the game? You could keep the team who wrote it in the first place as the people behind the project, but that does keep them from moving on to other projects. You could subcontract. You could hire a permanent development team to keep adding to the game; if you've opted for the 'franchise' approach I suggested earlier, this may be the most attractive option - hire a game designer and crew of artists and programmers to "grow" the game from its initial launch state. One option which doesn't seem to be commonly used is that of using the player base for content. It's quite possible that there are talented artists or designers in the community; perhaps it would be worth setting up a mechanism whereby they can contribute content they'd like to see in the game? Revenue stream. It's something of a foregone conclusion that you will want to generate a constant stream of revenue from the game somehow - at the very least to pay for maintenance costs, assuming no new content is being developed. How exactly will you do it? Purely through subscription fees? Will you charge for the initial client portion of the game (the retailed, boxed copy)? How will the subscriptions work - will it be one-fee-fits-all, or different subscription levels for people playing the game to different levels? Will there be 'unlockable content' for players paying more? There are a few other options to consider. One of the biggest is advertising - is it plausable to try and sell product placements in the game? Unreal Tournament 2004 did this with a fair amount of success. The fantasy setting of many MMO games often makes product placement difficult, but it's still something to be considered. Middleware. There's already middleware out there aimed specifically at MMO games - Butterfly.net's Butterfly Grid is one example. Such middleware aims to provide both an operating platform and server application framework, upon which you can build your own game without needing to deal with many of the issues raised in this article. There is a certain loss of control, and of course it isn't free, but it's another option that should definitely be considered. Conclusion This article has just been a taster of some of the issues facing a developer who wants to enter a project into the MMO market. I've more-or-less sidestepped the game design issues inherent in such games - and yes, there are many further decisions to be made in that area. It is quite telling to note that of all the MMO games out there, only eight or so have more than 50,000 subscribers. (http://pw1.netcom.com/~sirbruce/Subscriptions.html) Still. While it may be tough work, the MMO genre does provide some very unique opportunities for game designs, most of which have not yet been explored. As the proliferation of broadband technologies continues across the world, the size of the target market increases, and MMO gaming looks like it's going to stick around for quite a while.

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