Refreshing, I think.

"VHR is a unique massive multi-player browser based game in which you can breed, buy, sell, auction train, and compete your horses with other players from all around the world! This game is very special in which all horses are unique, and created by artifical-genetics and a unique AI system. The game itself is dedicated to being the best on the web, and is created by player ideas as well as the avid horse lover game developers. "

And hey, maybe after that he can help retool VirtualPups!

Oh yeah. Great things on the horizon. Indubitably.

Btw, Dave, running the text on your main sites through a spelling and grammar checker before posting might not be a bad idea. You might also consider paying someone with a middling knowledge of how to write to come up with some better text for you. "This game is very special in which all horses are unique..." ?! "VP offers protection leases for players to safetly do this!" Safetly?

Seriously man, find some random English major to proof/edit your text for $50, or some pot, or a month's worth of ramen.

edit: Great gnu, man! Was looking around a little more and hit this page: http://www.virtualhorseranch.com/letter_to_parents.php

A short list for you: persistant, intelegence, nationalaties, atleast, privelage. Then there are the mulltiple uses of "is" where "are" would be correct, the continual misusage of compete throughout the site, some frightening passages I'm trying to block out right now, and the horrific punctuation that puts even my love for the comma to shame.

I'm afraid to go read any more because the proofreader in me is having some sort of an OCD episode now. Really, get someone to go through all of your web text. At the very least run it through Word's spelling & grammar checker and make the recommended changes. For the children.

Good read.

I'm hoping Dave's predictions about niche games pan out, simply because I tend to find them more interesting than the bloated mainstream MMOGs the market keeps releasing.

Anyone in the business agree or disagree about this piece of analysis?

As a non-DAoC player, interesting and understandable analysis of what happened that led up to the current planning by Mythic. Good read. Dave's still a hot-tempered asshole (as are many of us), but being smart and direct to questions like these has given him some points in my book.

Oh, and btw, pretty much ask anyone who's been in the community for a while and who shows a penchant for grammar, and they'll doubtlessly help you with your site, as ucjames points out. Maybe the mistakes and misspellings were designed to help make the lesser-educated customers feel more at home, but I'm willing to guess you're more a fan of showing a professional front, and should probably be willing to take the extra 10 minutes to clean up the verbage.

I enjoyed reading it and think it's really cool he took the time to answer those questions with detail. The Q&A's I see at fan sites too often are full of junk straight off the offical site.

IIRC, it's a logical extrapolation of the numbers Jessica Mulligan offered in her book, which borrowed from Themis Group's figures.

Good read! Like most i share the opinion on ToA - cost Mythic my accounts anyway.

My sister is a huge horse lover. She'd be all over this and she doesn't play on computers and only occassionally sends emails. (She's 11 years older.)

I don't doubt that it has an audience. And in truth I hope they actually do well - unique, niche MMOs are a Good Thing. I just don't expect more than a miniscule percentage of any of the usual corp denizens to be seriously looking at anything Dave is working on anytime soon, now.

The first interview I read with someone who has something to say.

I still believe that when he left something broke at Mythic that is still still aching today. They lost a lot at that point.

Good analysis of why you DON'T need to go AAA. It applies to any game, not just MMO's of course. A company can find the scale - and risk - which suits them.

And of course, a niche MMO may well be able to charge higher subscription fees. You're delivering something to a small, dedicated market...

As for the rest of it, well, better I not comment.

Thanks Dave. Got me thinking a bit.

I'd certainly pay more for it if it scratched the right itch, but you are going to have work hard to make me believe that. With the larger more prominent titles out there showing $12.99/month, that will be the bar that all others fight with.

I'd suggest these smaller dev houses go with a different payment scheme right out of the blocks too. If you offer me 14 days of free download and trial, I'll try your game and that is enough to let me know if I'm willing to pay $19.99/month for it.

How about setting an expected revenue from the game based on your costs and give discounts if that expectation is met. Meaning you based your sub fees on a X number of subs and it is $19.99/mo. If your volumes go beyond X you start giving prizes or cash back to the customers. That might do two things.

1. Retain current customers.
2. Increase subs from word of mouth for "Cash Back" if more people sub.

I'm sure that sounds scary and risky to some, but it is going to take some "breaking of the rules" for these smaller games to make it. Don't just be creative with just your games, but with your business models as well.

Another thought:

Just do the 14 day trial, but force 6 month subs at $12.99/month. That gives the customer some piece of mind that this game is for them, plus they get to pay the going rate. Finally, it offers you obvious advantages from a business/cash flow perspective.

This game could taste like pumpkin pie, but I'd never know because I wouldn't subscribe to the filthy motherfucker. I wouldn't even play the free trial. I've seen way too many small games lose too much population too fast (and thereby become basically unplayable) for me to even remotely consider a 6 month sub to anything. You could make massively multiplayer Master of Orion 2 with all land combat carried out using the X-Com combat system, and pr0n as a PvP reward, and I still wouldn't go for it if it required a 6 month sub.

Oh, I absolutely agree with giving people free game time for signing new people up. Heck, take $1/month off their subscription while each of the people they brought in remain subscribed.


"You could make massively multiplayer Master of Orion 2 "

Heh. Someone is. Well, not MOO2, but from the INSPIRATION for the MOO series.

Yeah, the overlap between Corp readers and the VHR target market would be somewhere between "tiny" and "are you kidding?" These are mostly young women, teens to early twenties, who generally don't play video games other than the free web puzzle games. That's kind of the interesting part, Shannon figured out how to make a game that market would pay for, even if it was only text. Right now I'm just trying to get it into a more accessible format without making the magic go away.

I pretty much know how to make a game that hardcore male players will like, or at least I think I could do it about as well as most. But a game that will convert "casual" female gamers into paying MMO customers? If I can figure *that* particular trick out....

--Dave (I'll take my money-hat in size 11, thanks)

Tweens = moneyhats. This we know. Look at Mary-Kate and Ashley.

Corpnews = pwned. You guys are B list.