MMORPG: Money, Money, Money

JTacomis writes "There's an interesting article up at Business 2.0 magazine about Sony Online and EverQuest. It says that EverQuest makes Sony over $5 million a month. Star Wars Galaxies is expected to make even more than that. It's a long and in-depth articles that takes us through the whole back-story to EverQuest. One interesting fact: EverQuest almost didn't get made. According to the article, the idea was originally turned down inside of Sony."

Comments

Money, money, money indeed

[jukal]

In Ultima Online, you can now change your character name, which was previously fixed. But, quess what, it costs $29.99. Can you believe it!! A simple DB query, I believe. Sheesh.

Turned down!

[standards]

Yeah, a lot of projects are initially turned down for business investment ONLY because they suck.

You see, a business project needs to be shown to be profitable (in the short or long term), and if the original business plan didn't drive that point home, well, it'd be rejected by management. Plus the original business plan would have had to fit into Sony's core business model. If not (and this plan did not!), the plan would have to be much more detailed and robust.

It isn't that management is always stupid - most executives get dozens of business plans thrown in front of them every week. They have to pick and choose the most likely to succeed.

After all, it doesn't make anyone look good if $10 million was "lost" in a business plan that most senior executives would laugh at.

It's kind of like FedEx. We all know that business plan only got a "C" at Harvard Business School. But the fact is, it should have gotten an "F". As a business plan, it sucked. Sure, in the end it turned out to be a wildly successful and profitable business... but the initial business plan could be summed up as "likely to be a failure".

Sony and ideas...

[MosesJones]

Ideas that have "almost" been turned down by Sony are legend, the point about Sony has always been that they tend to take a punt on this "possible" cases rather than doing the standard corporate drone concept of "doesn't look like something we've done before".

As the recently departed (as in dead) chairman said of the Walkman "if we'd asked focus groups we'd never have made it". They've also almost not invented CDs almost didn't get into the console market etc etc etc.

Sony are the company that doesn't kick itself years later saying "damn we though of that why didn't we try it".

Re:More MMORPGs == less bucks for EQ

[mshiltonj]

I've played all three of the big 3, and it is truly difficult to balance between even two of them, playing 8-10 hours daily.

What?! You play a game for 10 hours a day? As a habit?! Good god, man.

I can't believe you ponder the difficulty of "balancing between two games" like pondering the difficulty between balancing work and family.

I remember years ago when the very first Sim City came out. I thought it was great game. I wasted too much time on it. I realized once that had spent 7 hours in one sitting playing that game. I deleted the game from my system and haven't been a game player since.

But, holy shit, to repeatedly play any game, or any number of games for 8-10 hours a day, strikes me as dysfunctional. Is this typical for gamers? How do you get anything else done?

This post sounds like a flame or a troll, but it's not. That post just threw me for a loop.

Annoying

[Luminous]

I find MMPORPG's really annoying. I find the people annoying, I find the experience annoying, and I find paying for the annoyance annoying.

I loved EQ for the first 3 months of play, but realized I just don't have the time to focus on 'levelling' and after accomplishing my first big quest and getting a nift item, I realized everyone will do that quest, kill that monster, get that item. My actions don't change the world one iota.

So I gave up and waited for DAoC. It at least allowed the world to be affected through the PvP/realm vs realm option, which was a cool concept. I played, found a group of people to play with who played in character and didn't metagame -- but of course they all played 4-6 hours a day while I could only play 4-6 hours a week. Thus they quickly increased in level and I didn't, which means I couldn't join them on group adventures because I wouldn't get any xp.

Now we come to Neverwinter Nights which so far is exactly what I've always wanted. I can create the world, I can play in the world with other people, and our actions can change the world. And I don't have to be annoyed by yet another meaningless online wedding/funeral/whatever.

Re:Losing money?

[Maul]

While yo did make money, you only made $70 off of six months of work. Even working at Starbucks for minimum wage, you'd at least make a few thousand with the same time investment.