[...] He also commented on a blog post by Raph Koster as follows: To respond generally to one common concern: we’ll have something that consumers can play in 2008. It’ll be at least a beta. And yep–we want to have an experienced team make this. [...]

LotRO, Star Trek and Firefly will all likely become just another Diku based in a static world that does not quench the thirsts of player’s desire for a more living/breathing world.

One good thing about Firefly is that the backstory could be written on the back of a 3×5 index card. (I’m exaggerating a bit.) Firefly has much less backstory that Star Trek, LotR, or Star Wars, so (hopefully) it’ll have less to hinder the game design.

LotRO, Star Trek and Firefly will all likely become just another Diku based in a static world that does not quench the thirsts of player’s desire for a more living/breathing world. Maybe once all the IPs are exhausted we can get back to creative gameplay and world design…

Possible developmental agreement and structure:
Multiverse is likely to be neutral and get an outside team. However, they can help fund the outside team by organizing VC investments and hold a passive equity stake. They’ll then engage in a technology transfer agreement where Multiverse will have the option to acquire proprietary technology. A simple agreement would be to release proprietary technology after 3 years.

Possible differentiating factor:
Multiverse ultimately will lower the barrier of entry, so developers will have to compete on other areas like content or business model. Don’t know how big a group the Browncoats are, but I would design for this core audience, for the long tail, and for making consistent and reasonable profit from the fandom by providing an useful service (rather than mere entertainment). The USP is that it provides an entertainment platform for the fans, a 24/7/365 virtual fan conference with all the accoutremonts.

Possible design and execution to meet the Dec 08 deadline:
To meet the 2008 deadline, instead of adhereing to the XP-and-loot-grind themepark metaphor, it will use the methaphor of fan conferences. (It’ll sink if it even try to be a WoW mutant clone. Anyhow, there’s already Serenity the RPG) By focusing on this type of design, they can launch by the 2008 deadline.

Frank

According to the press release, Mutliverse will not develop the game themselves, but “select and lead an independant developer.”

I have some complications to add to your complications…

Extra complication #1:

The primary reason Multiverse wants a Firefly MMORPG is to show off its engine and attract more and larger authoring teams to create Multiverse MMORPGs. The secondardy reason is to provide a commercial test-case (and/or proof of concept) so that flaws in the engine design can be discovered.

Multiverse has three approaches to firefly:

1) Get a totally independent company to write it. This minimizes risk (finacial, managerial effort, company cultue) for Multiverse.

2) Create a division within Multiverse to write Firefly, and let the division modify the public parts of the Multiverse engine as appropriate.

3) Create a division within Multiverse to write the Firefly content (and some quest scripts), but put the bulk of the coders in the main Multiverse team.

Why the differences? A LOT of code written for Firefly will be very valuable to all of Multiverse’s authoring teams, such as spaceship physics, drawing pretty procedural supernovas, etc. The other authoring teams will want this code since it saves them work and makes their games better. In part, Multiverse wants them to have this work because when Multiverse’s authors are succesful, Multiverse is successful.

Conversely, the authors don’t really want Multiverse to ever produce Firefly because it’s a competitor, especially to any of the teams working on a sci-fi space-travel theme. Furthermore, the team working on Firefly doesn’t really want to include their code into the core Multiverse code because (a) they lose market advantage to the other authoring teams (hurting their internal revenues and political capital), and (b) code that’s written for general-purpose use is about 2x as much work as code that’s special-purpose. (For example: Procedural supernova skydomes might only be a week of coding if targeted at Firefly, but when an API, documentation, and extra features are added so any space-based Multiverse game can use it, it becomes 2 weeks of work. After all, some random fantasy MMORPG will not just want blue skies, but they’ll want blue skies with procedurally-generated supernovas that rotate throughout the day and occasionally turn bright purple on special holidays…)

Microsoft had/has this problem between Office and Windows. The Windows team always wanted to suck in all the features/ideas from Office because it would make Windows better. The Office team didn’t, nor did Lotus or Novell, because that would minimize their USPs. For example: At one point in the 1980′s, the ability to print on any printer was a USP. Then Windows put it in the operating system. Then WYSIWYG was a USP for word processors, but Windows sucked that in too. The embedded objects… Suck. Rich-text edit control… Suck. Etc.

Extra complication #2:

Multiverse and others are making it “easy” to create umpteen million Diku-MMORPGs. MMORPG.com already lists 100+ MMORPGs. In a few years, all the MMORPG-development kits will raise this number higher.

How does Firefly stand out from the 10+ other professional space-based MMORPGs that will be around in 2008? (For example: Eve Online has a space-MMORPG monopoly with (I assume) nice profits, and 2-3 years of features to go before Firefly sees the light of day.)

How does Firefly stand out from the 10-100 Multiverse MMORPGs (mostly amateur) that will be around by that point, particularly if they’re taking advantage of the same Multiverse technology that is used to create Firefly?

To respond generally to one common concern: we’ll have something that consumers can play in 2008. It’ll be at least a beta. And yep–we want to have an experienced team make this.

–Corey

According to the press release, Mutliverse will not develop the game themselves, but “select and lead an independant developer.” So here we have several issues that argue against any game, much less a decently thought-out MMO, being launched in 2008:

1. No game design yet. Time to develop a decent game design: 3 to 6 months, with 3 months being the “Gee, this is probably going to suck, isn’t it?” mark and 6 months being the “OK, now we have an even shot” mark. Even retreading game systems from some other product, there is a lot here to think through and do paper testing on.

2. Pre-production: 6 to 12 months. Probably more like 12, because any developer chosen is going to need to come up to speed on the Multiverse tools, which are still in development, the last time I looked. So they are going to be finishing up the building of pipeline tools during pre-production, most likely, especially since no one the Multiverse team has produced a commercial MMO before; the tools will need some work. But who knows, maybe they get it done in 6.

3. Development: Minimum 12 months, including coding the game systems, creating the interface, building out the art and animation assets, sound assets, balancing game play internally before Alpha, et al. They MAY save some time using sound and music from the show, but most of the art and animation assets will likely have to be built from scratch.

4. Testing: Alpha, closed beta and open beta: Minimum 6 months if everything goes perfectly (you know, just like it always does when MMO game systems meet the players), more likely 9 months. Twelve would be better and they may have no choice, depending on what happens in the tests.

So we’re already up to a minimum of 27 months. If they already have a game design completed, you can maybe shave that down to 24 months. Meaning, if they started today, they might be able to launch in December 2008.

And that is if they have a full, experienced MMO team onboard and the budget to pay them. If the dev team has never developed an MMO before, add 6-12 months to the development time. If the team is US-based and the budget is $4 million or less, add 10 points to the Potential Suckage Factor. If the dev team is in Korea or China, add 6 months for communication issues.

On top of that, no discussion yet of who will host, who will perform customer service, who does the 24/7 network administration, where the billing and account management tools will come from or how they get integrated, the experience of the people involved with all of that…

Sorry; I just don’t see a decent game happening in 2008. Would LOVE to see it happen, but I just don’t see how it can.

-Jess

We’ll see if they have the bandwidth to pull that off though.