MMO Developer Equity

Those of you who don’t really know much about owning a home or its benefits probably don’t know much about equity. Put simply, building equity means you are building trust on the part of lenders in terms of evaluating how much value you have in the home you own. The more equity, the more value, and therefore, the more trust you get.

Developers operate much the same way. They own a product, put time, money, and elbow grease into it, but in this case, the lenders are the people who spend money to patronize it. The more equity a developer has among its community, the more its players trust them to delivery a product they own that has high value.

There is no more part of the gaming industry that depends on this more than MMOs do. MMOs aren’t just a one time purchase – they are an investment players like us put into an MMO so that the funding and trust exists to make the product better than it already is. While actual actions and things done carry a lot of weight with MMOs, the faith and trust that players put in a developer is a huge part of whether or not they will continue to subscribe.

The problem is that equity is sometimes tied to an MMO Love Affair, and when a breakup is on the horizon, so too is the lowering of developer equity. My point with that nice little bit, of course, was to encourage people to be more realistic with their expectations, but also be wary of where they invest their cash. Minimizing the inevitable disappointment people have with the recent MMOs that have come out, such as Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, and others, is a lesson learned that people need to get hold of.

At the same time, developers, like a proper homeowner, need to stop trying to build huge equity by taking out loans they can’t pay back. The most common quote would be “writing a check with your mouth that your ass can’t cash”. Marketing hype, huge sweeping promises of immense, ground-breaking changes – all the MMOs currently out are guilty of them,a nd all the MMOs currently slated to come out – Champions Online, Aion, and even Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic – are also guilty of it as well. Just like the current economy, we all need to be a bit more cautious about spending our cash and building up what we have.

That being said, I wouldn’t be this blog’s namesake without saying that it is quite an exciting time int eh MMO world. With so many titles coming out and a lot of competition on the horizon, as well as the acceptance that World of Warcraft, clearly the McDonald’s of MMOs, will have the numbers it will have, it’s a good time to be an MMO player. Players will have the choice of whatever home for an MMO they choose to invest it. Let’s just hope that they’re wise doing it.