Asking the right questions will get you the right answer. And that is the basis of Hatchling Games’ design and business decision making process.
Two of my most recent business ventures (Electronic Sports World and Hatchling Games’ Project Card-Chess) rely heavily on the internet, in particular online distribution and marketing. The emphasis is on low marketing, storage and distribution costs. The internet has fundamentally changed the way business works, the way consumers looked at “companies” and the way people looked at value. Companies that fully embraced the Internet and based business models around it thrived massively. Often it was entrepreneurs that created Internet-based companies that went on to become household names globally. These companies include Google.com, Amazon.com, eBay, Audible, Netflix, Neopets, etc. This business model is also known as The Long Tail , first coined by Chris Anderson in a 2004 Wired article. P2P, RSS, Blogging, Bittorent and other similar internet technologies are exhibits features of The Long Tail. Do read the linked article for a brief understanding of this model.
In the digital entertainment industry, Neopets.com is an example of a company with a Long Tail effect. Neopets.com is reported to be one of the most visited web sites in the world. The simple games on their website attracted so many players, mostly non-gamers that they were brought by Cartoon Network and MTV. Neopets avoided heavy competitions such as Electronic Arts, Sony, Nintendo, Square-Enix and Blizzard Entertainment, who have created market dominating games. To defeat the then leader in search engines, Google thought about their business in Internet terms running on Internet time. Neopets.com, arguably the most financially successful game development company in the world did the same.
Let Blizzard dominate the MMORPG market, you simply cannot compete on their ground. If the MMORPG players want to play World of Warcraft, they will – and there is nothing your new game can stop them unless it is really BETTER. Not because you think its better, because you KNOW your customers will think it’s better. How many RPG developers can say that? That is why I look forward to Bioware’s new MMORPG in
I believe to succeed on the Internet is to ask the right questions, rethinking fundamental conscious and subconscious assumptions. Asking these questions will be the basis of Hatchlings Games’ game design, platform choices, financing and other business-critical decisions.
Questions such as, what is an MMOG?
Does MMOG just stand for “Massively Multiplayer Online Game” which mean a world that is massive and online multiplayer and that there is a game in it? Does this online world REALLY exist? If it does, how do you make you know and feel that it exist? Is realism the key? Are there other fundamental human emotions that make you feel that something is real?
Project Card-Chess will be designed with such question in mind.
There are many more questions, such as will people pay to play the game? What is it in it for the player? Why would the player care? Why are Japanese cultures so emphasized in Japanese animations and games? Can the same be done for a Malaysian-made game? What are Malaysian cultures that can be explored in a fictional world?
Questions like these ultimately make a game unique.
I will post about other questions on my next blog entry. Two questions interest me the most, one that is design-related and the other business:
How can Hatchlings Games put
How are we going to make money and are our assumptions flawed?
It really is a lot of balancing work: between time, budget, passion, gameplay, look and feel, platform, marketing, etc. For me, it all has to balance till it’s FUN and MEANINGFUL.
