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Old 08-07-2009, 06:45 PM   #21
Mabus
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Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs

Many of their users are "multi-accounters". When I played it was not unusual to see a group of 5 characters all controlled by the same player. This is often looked down upon by the players more active in role-play aspects of the games, and was a constant friction point on official forums, but was not uncommon at all. You can only log in 1 character per account.

Each of these accounts was paying at least $14.99 (for one character) at the time (may be $!9.99 now, unsure). and premium subscription was $25 more. Platinum subscription (a different server, with more interaction and perks) was even more expensive. Then you had "up sells", which are staff-ran events where special quests could be had, or special items could be bought, and/or hundreds of people would sit in each "shop" room waiting to be chosen to have lines of text changed on their items. The tickets for these were never less then $25 per character and often would run much higher for "really special" events.

This is one game (Gemstone) out of 5 they run, and at least one other (Dragonrealms) had a separate server (Dragonrealms, the Fallen) where people payed to play on a completely moderation-free server. There is also the "Hero Engine" (graphical MMORPG) which they have been leasing to a few companies.

Most of the coders and other staff are volunteers or low-pay sub-contractors. The company owns their own servers and software. Their main costs are likely the internet T-1 bandwidth, their customer rep and on-site tech staff, the building and utilities. I haven't seen them advertise in years.

The chance that they are breaking a million is high in my estimation.
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Old 08-07-2009, 06:58 PM   #22
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Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs

Erm, Delerak, that premium is -per month.- But it isn't 10x 400. Remember many players have -several- accounts, and buy and sell characters for cash, which is also a good sideline (these characters can sell upward to several hundred dollars, and game-items can sell for several hundred..and game coins I think are something like $20 per million and people buy several million at a time).

So it's profitable for the -customer- to have several accounts. I know (because I've been to their headquarters) that they have had over 10,000 individual paid accounts at one point. I'm guessing those numbers have gone down somewhat since the heyday, but then went back up again, once it became obvious that buying/selling characters for cash was a lucrative business. One guy did this for a living. Just buying and selling Gemstone items. There were articles written about him in gaming magazines and on the internet. I don't remember his name. He made this kind of thing famous even to non-mudders.

I -also- know that Gemstone isn't their only game.

I -also- know that they have that Hero's Journey graphics engine that they sell licenses for to big gaming companies.

So Simutronics isn't making all their money on Gemstone, although it is their flagship and their most popular (and therefore profitable) game.

Figure maybe, 7000 individual accounts total, on average (people cancel, people add new accounts..it balances out eventually). Remember a -lot- of people who don't play anymore, have -not- cancelled their accounts. They have simply sold them to other players who continue paying for them.

So: 7000 x 30 (the middle between the standard rate of $20 and the premium rate of $40) = 210,000 PER MONTH just on Gemstone.

Multiply that by 12 months and you've got $2,520,000 (2 million, five hundred twenty thousand dollars) annual revenue just from Gemstone alone.

Then add the other 2 games they have (maybe three?) - which has maybe only a few hundred accounts total that aren't already hooked up to the Gemstone premium (which gives them access to those other games).

Then add the licensing fee for Hero's Journey, whatever that is (independant game companies have been complaining that they can't afford the fee so it's gotta be pretty up there).

Their overhead is minimal, comparatively, because while they own that building outside the downtown St. Louis area, most of the people who work for them are volunteers working out of their homes, and get only a very small stipend based on profits (unless that's changed, but really they never got much more than $20 a month plus free subscription to the games).

In short Delerak, don't assume that just because it's a game no one ever votes for on TMS, doesn't mean that they're not raking in the millions. They always were, and they still are. And their customers are profiting from it as well. They just never -had- to put themselves on TMS, because they've always had more players than anyone other than all the combined IRE games. They really don't have any competition, so they have no need to urge their players to vote.

I think it's a sucky game and wouldn't even play it for free again, let alone pay for the privilege. But I acknowledge that Simutronics had a business model that's kept them going pretty damned well for the past 20 years.
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Old 08-08-2009, 05:45 PM   #23
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Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs

I did a bit of research now, and Simutronics has licensed their "hero engine" mmoprg world creation system (that's what they call it anyway) to Lucasarts for a knights of the old republic game. That's not really a small time mud kind of thing
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Old 08-09-2009, 12:45 AM   #24
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Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs

I'm aware of Simutronics Hero Engine. I thought we were discussing the possibility of one mud of theirs making millions a year? So the Hero Engine really is a moot point.
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Old 08-09-2009, 06:09 AM   #25
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Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs

That 160k is per month. That's nearly 2 million a year by your own estimate. It would seem you've answered your own question.

Last edited by Orrin : 08-09-2009 at 06:14 AM.
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Old 08-09-2009, 12:00 PM   #26
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Re: Barriers to commercial MUDs

Dragonrealms has peaks of up to 700 online players, and Gemstone IV around 500, and as far as I know that's without allowing 24-7 idling as appears to be the case on Aardwolf.

Even if most players pay 20$ a month they easily make 2 million a year.
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