I’ve received today the third issue of E-ON (the fourth is already out, but I’m always one behind) and there’s an interview with CCP’s CEO, Hilmar Petursson:

E-ON: Do you think it’s risky that CCP has all its eggs in one basket? Shouldn’t you be working on EVE 2, or some generic fantasy MMO by now? Isn’t it slightly insane, the resources you pour back into Eve?

Hilmar: I would say it makes perfect sense. I would actually use the word ‘insane’ to describe someone that didn’t stick with their product through tough times, who failed to do everything humanly possible to make it reach the success it deserves (I am using the phrase ‘humanly possible’ loosely here, btw).

I feel that question so fucking irritating (and maybe made with that purpose). Even more so because that kind of mindset is so widespread between both industry people and players.

It’s not ‘insane’. It’s completely RETARDED. How could you consider those questions legitimate?

The reason why Eve can count on more than 100k (currently surclassing DAoC by a fair amount, confirmed even by the total number of concurrent players online) instead of 20k is BECAUSE they poured back into it so many resources. If they didn’t, Eve would have joined the already quite big pool of failed projects, or at least never moved from those 20k it had. Zero-growth.

Why it would be reasonable to demolish all that Eve has built along the years to make a prettier sequel? Why it would make sense to always go back to zero?

You could say that Eve is successful just because it was lucky that noone else tried to revindicate that niche of the market. But let’s even assume that SOE or someone else with big money decided to go after Eve and “own” it. You would really think that it would be easy to develop a similar game with that huge scope from zero, spend three or more years into it and then expect to outclass what Eve is right now, plus all that CCP would be able to achieve in the case they really sustain this kind of aggressive development for those three years?

Not doing that would be like applying the mudflation to the real market. You build value (Eve 2) by devaluing what you have (Eve 1). It wouldn’t make sense, instead, to consolidate the value you have already and that you know is solid?

Or maybe people think that gambling is serious business?

I cannot believe how marketers and industry people can say that it’s more risky to try to increase the value you have instead of selling it off. The best way to secure the market would be about developing a core game that is valid and profitable. Then you work from there, reinvesting all you earn from it so that you can move out of reach of your competitors. That’s how you can distantiate them, that’s how you gain a definite advantage and are able to feel a little more safe.

And when you are able to reach a reasonable safety, you don’t stop there. Instead you use that advantage and your experience to continue to anticipate what others will be able to do. And you lead, and you increase your capital and value ON TOP of what you have. Not by devaluing what you have.

Instead if you keep abandoning projects to try new ones, then you are just going to be blown away by the first wind, because instead of consolidating what you had, you just dispersed it. All the little value you had, and all the value you could have produced. And you’ll finish with NOTHING in your hands because you threw everything away like that.

Take the example of Mythic. With DAoC they achieved a relevant position in the market. For a while they kept consolidating that value and the company grew and bacame more solid. Then they moved their resources on that bad idea that was Imperator, and then Warhammer. The result is that now the only valuable product that Mythic has is still just a betrayed DAoC that is quickly sinking into oblivion and all that relative safeness that Mythic had secured as a company, completely gone. To the point that their only possibility left was to sell out:

I saw that our games had to change. We were already changing Camelot, but not enough. Not fast enough.

At the time, Mythic was independent. And so if we failed with Imperator, there wouldn’t be anyone to bail us out.

With all the money and resources wasted on Imperator, with DAoC sinking like a plumb, of course going with Warhammer from scratch was risky. It wasn’t just another attempt between many to grow the company from there and secure more value. It was “or it goes, or it’s over”. Because they drove themselves into a corner. Because they burnt all that relative safety, as a company, that they achieved.

It’s too easy to fill your mouth with money then. It’s too easy and it won’t be for long.

The truth is that Mythic, despite the great start, despite the surprising and impressive growth, is now smaller than CCP. Losing to that sci-fi game without avatars that obviously couldn’t be as successful.

With one game only that when, rarely, people talk about, talk about in past tense.

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And Matt Firor isn’t different:

Really, to be successful, a MMO title must be perceived as successful when it launches. If it is not seen as a major contender, and have buzz and excitement among its community the day before it opens, it will almost certainly fail. It’s a situation unique to MMOs in the gaming industry.

Yeah, tell that to CCP and Eve. Tell that even to Scott Hartsman and EQ2, which started as an announced spectacular failure and instead was surprisingly able to become at least a decent game and secure a moderate success, even if still deluding for its initial expectations.

In fact it’s true. It’s a situation unique to MMOs. Only one of these games is able to have a disastrous launch and still manage to fix its problem, improve with the time and become one great game one day. Only MMOs can evolve, only MMOs have second chances.

On single-player games it doesn’t happen. If they launch and they suck you can patch them later all you want. But they’ll never sell.

The launch for a MMO is important only for one simple reason: because after years of pointless hype, lies and false hopes, the players can finally see the game for what it is, and not for how it was presented.

The king is naked.