ME Games Ltd
2nd February 2008, 12:18 PM
>With access to the code, will you be able to do things like change
>the map?
Yes as long as it stays Tolkienesque.
"Could you "zoom in" on the BoFA area, making that area the size of
the full map, if there were enough players who were interested.
(That's just an example, I don't think that would be a good idea.)"
Yes - or focus on specific areas. But that would take a lot of coding to
sort out so I doubt that we'd do that for a handful of players. Say it
took 500 hours to develop that money would have to come back to us. So
we'd work on bigger projects which the entire player base can use. BUT we
might be able to create an engine where you can do exactly what you've
proposed above.
>Along with that, would Harlequin then be in a position to buy rights
>to other properties to use for similar games?
Well ME Games Ltd would be and we've done that already for other game formats.
> Specifically, I've thought the MEPBM "engine" would be GREAT for
> making a pbem version
>of George R R Martin's "A Game of Thrones". I could see it working for
>Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time", too.
Yes but there's major legalistic and money questions here. We're a PBM
firm and buying GSI is basically putting up a lot of our money and long
term investment. There would be no spare money for anything else. Also
development - who's going to do that? Ditto coding? Ditto Marketing -
about once a month I get an email saying "I've got this great new idea for
a game all you need to do is design, market, code, negotiate
etc" Development time means no money time and PBM doesn't earn a lot as it
is. Say 9 months to get a rough first draft game (probably double that)
and then a year of testing and then you can start thinking about marketing
and other forms of publicity.
Well you get the idea. Let's crawl before we can walk before we can run
uh? I do LOVE enthusiastic players but on the other hand I am also very
aware of our limits.
As a personal favourite I'd love to do a SciFi game - eg Dune. But that's
hard to arrange. We've looked into it before and it costs a
bomb. Creating another Fantasy game when we have the biggest Fantasy game
on the market would not be as effective as other ventures for
example. Hope the helps - although I don't want to damp anyones enthusiasm
I do want to focus it in the best direction if at all possible.
Short answer: technically yes, logistically a lot harder.
Clint
>the map?
Yes as long as it stays Tolkienesque.
"Could you "zoom in" on the BoFA area, making that area the size of
the full map, if there were enough players who were interested.
(That's just an example, I don't think that would be a good idea.)"
Yes - or focus on specific areas. But that would take a lot of coding to
sort out so I doubt that we'd do that for a handful of players. Say it
took 500 hours to develop that money would have to come back to us. So
we'd work on bigger projects which the entire player base can use. BUT we
might be able to create an engine where you can do exactly what you've
proposed above.
>Along with that, would Harlequin then be in a position to buy rights
>to other properties to use for similar games?
Well ME Games Ltd would be and we've done that already for other game formats.
> Specifically, I've thought the MEPBM "engine" would be GREAT for
> making a pbem version
>of George R R Martin's "A Game of Thrones". I could see it working for
>Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time", too.
Yes but there's major legalistic and money questions here. We're a PBM
firm and buying GSI is basically putting up a lot of our money and long
term investment. There would be no spare money for anything else. Also
development - who's going to do that? Ditto coding? Ditto Marketing -
about once a month I get an email saying "I've got this great new idea for
a game all you need to do is design, market, code, negotiate
etc" Development time means no money time and PBM doesn't earn a lot as it
is. Say 9 months to get a rough first draft game (probably double that)
and then a year of testing and then you can start thinking about marketing
and other forms of publicity.
Well you get the idea. Let's crawl before we can walk before we can run
uh? I do LOVE enthusiastic players but on the other hand I am also very
aware of our limits.
As a personal favourite I'd love to do a SciFi game - eg Dune. But that's
hard to arrange. We've looked into it before and it costs a
bomb. Creating another Fantasy game when we have the biggest Fantasy game
on the market would not be as effective as other ventures for
example. Hope the helps - although I don't want to damp anyones enthusiasm
I do want to focus it in the best direction if at all possible.
Short answer: technically yes, logistically a lot harder.
Clint