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Old 12-12-2007, 02:50 PM   #10
the_logos
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
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Re: Games as service

Had the servers been bought? We lease our servers, for instance, as do many MMO operators. Further, servers are only part of the NOC costs. You've got bandwidth, server support (servers fail after all), etc.


Those are all true, and it's also about brand. It's not to Turbine's advantage to just release an unsupported game, because the experience there tarnishes whatever value the Turbine brand has (I'm unsure how much it really has given their rather troubled track record, but the point remains)

That's one reason we spun off Sparkplay Media as a separate company to develop graphical games. One of the worries is that if we're successful with Sparkplay it will dwarf the size of Iron Realms, and if they were mushed together into one company the natural logic of the situation would end up dictating that the text MUDs get de-prioritized. By putting them into separate companies, we ensure that the success of Sparkplay doesn't end up minimizing the IRE text MUDs, which have a long life ahead of them.
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