However if you going to pitch to a publisher its going to take a lot of work, and patience and experience and talking and explaining and preparation. Presenting the actual game is probably the easiest part. However, even here its difficult since you can’t just slap on the standard vertical slice demo. Half of the MMOG are the actual people in it and their interaction with them self and the environment. Well, ok, there are ways to fake this or get your development stuff in. Doing this live is close to impossible though, at least in the early stage. You won’t have to show something for a long time.

OK, code is one thing. Gameplay shouldn’t be to complicated if you don’t come along with a new concept.

Next explain me the business model. I’ve the impression that with MMOGs the business model gets more complex by the month. Subscription would be easy but hard to sell if you don’t have a AAA title. Now go with F2P. Add tiered subscription, item & service selling, ingame ads, sponsoring, auctions and so on. Now explain me were do you get your estimations for registered users from. How do you define active users. And whats your ARPU? Do you have a virtual currency? Whats the exchange rate. Can you trade it back?

Next. How is your security setup? How much is done on the client side. What happens when…

Next. What is your longterm development plan? Like 2 years after launch? What updates?

Next. How is the progression rate. How fast do you get through the content as hardcore and casual?

Next. What is your community and website concept?

Next. Which payment methods do you offer?

Next. How is your server structure setup? How much bandwidth are you going to need?

Well, as I said, its somewhat more difficult and complex.

It can be easy though. I’ve just pitched an MMOG within 2 hours and got a green light. This is like one in a 1000. In the end it comes down to wether you manage to create a perfect fit with content, strategy, setup, gameplay, business model and market. Than it can get you through in 2 hours.

However, in reality this becomes a real pain in the ass. Because we’re assessed mainly by evidence that we have to provide to prove that we really developed our speaking skills instead of just having the usual crap talk with your friends and beers. So, how do you prove that you’re actually become better at talking?

You can ask your colleagues: Hey boss, do you think that I speak better than before? Don’t know! But I have trained for a long time. Hmm, still don’t know. OK, you can’t ask you colleagues. Even if you do, he has to write and sign an evidence letter that you speak better. That’s kind of stupid.

I talked to some of the other MBA guys. What actually happens is that everybody starts to make up evidence. Like most of it. So in the end there is no time left to actually train speaking skills. Ok, thats a bit of a rant but still.

Also I’m producing video games. more specifically online games. even more specifically MMOGs. Thats an quite interesting business. most people think it is stupid though or at least not really something that you can earn money with. A colleague today told me that when he tells people that he works with video games they always look at him as this was the first time that it occurred to them that someone actually has to produce them.

Anyway, that’s a different story. My original story was that last week we had a guest lecturer at our mba program. He was a funny Japanese guy and and alumni from my school. He had some weird ideas about how the world was going to change and so on. Anyway, the most inspiring thing he said was that everyone should produce something creative the one way or another – because all the young guys and girls are doing it already. We old classical people should also start moving instead of sitting through the mba just collecting knowledge. Produce something!

As I said, I found it inspiring. So here I’m producing. Maybe there are some who are interested in the production of games, how an mba feels and what online games are all about from the inside.

Ah, and the picture is a shot of a field I pass every morning. Maybe I’ll put a new one next time. Exciting.