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Huh. Here's a thought: More than half a decade after its release, Jumpgate manages to persist and pay Istvan's salary even though its peak concurrency on a GOOD day is 40 people (which is a shame it's a good game, play it if you haven't)... That means that the project can continue indefinitely, provided Istvan's salary needs never change, right?

Isn't JG proof that there's a market for iMMOGs? (Indy MMOGs?) I mean, assuming that you're making a game people actually want to play, what it takes to be successful depends entirely on what you pour into it - on your projected scope. If you're game isn't trying to be EQ2 or Wow - technologically - you can still be EQ2 or WoW creatively, by trading technology and scope for depth of play and all on a very small budget... The Bang Howdy guys are successful because of this principle, right?

All the talk of micropayments, etc... Those all mask the fact that what's really going on is that small teams are making money making smaller scale multiplayer community games. There is a market for games that cater to smaller communities than the 6 million member Nation of Wow.

These games are neither full-scale MMOs nor are they multiplayer in the old school sense. Instead, they are somewhere in the middle... like the Test Drive Unlimited on Xbox 360 - which is another great example of a successful exploitation of a smaller scale MMO project.

What I'm getting at here, in case it's not clear from my rambling, is that this niche - these "mid-scale" MMOs could be a great way for independent development teams to enter the MMO market. If you properly scope your game to a smaller community and manage the content accordingly, you don't need hundreds of people on your team and dozens of millions of dollars. You can do it more cheaply. Of course, convincing a publisher that's the case is an entirely different beast.

It would be easier if you could prove yourself to them first, which brings up the question that's irritating me, this morning:

So where is the open source community to provide these guys with free tools?

I mean, that's the point of Linux and all that shit, right - to stick it to the man and let the little guys make something just as useful, if not as slick?

Why is there no OSS MMO server engine? Or an OSS Renderware equivalent?

Why is it cool and awesome for an OSS crew to build a word processor they can use instead of MSWord, but not appealing to the same people to build an OSS game engine to rival Unreal 3? Or is it? Am I just ignorant of the scene?

That's possible, I suppose, but wouldn't you hear about more indy teams using an OSS game engine if one as good as UR3 actually existed?

Anyway, done rambling. Enjoy the rest of your day.

- Snipehunter