by Karen Hertzberg on Nov 27, 2007
Adventurer, Socializer,
Explorer, Killer...Interviewer?
We caught up with industry luminaries Richard Bartle and Jessica
Mulligan at EVE Online Fan Fest 2007 in Reykjavik, Iceland earlier this
month to ask them about EVE Online, independent MMORPG development in
general, and the state of the games development industry as a whole.
What followed was exactly the kind of interesting exchange you'd expect
from a discussion of hot topics by Bartle, the co-founder of the MUD
(multi-user dungeon, the text-based predecessor to the graphical
MMORPG) and Mulligan, a true industry veteran and leading MMORPG
consultant.
Jessica: In the market right now, they're throwing
money around. A lot
of foolish money; that's what I'm seeing. The last three years I've
done a lot of due diligence on projects for venture capitalists (VCs)
and lawyers. And usually what they do, they come to me with a lot of
enthusiasm, these VCs: 'Oh, a great project was presented to me.
They're going to build a WoW killer in 18 months with 3 million
dollars. Oh, and a guy that used to work at Blizzard is on the team, so
it'll be a success, right?' And you go through it, you read the plan,
and it's all the usual bulls***. You tell them, aw, don't put your
money in there. A lot of foolish money right now. That'll go away,
okay? (laughter) It's happened before; this is like the third time I've
seen this cycle. But yea, anyone with an idea right now can get in
front of someone with money.