[MUD-Dev] Open Source Online Gaming

["Aaron Mitchell" <aaron#fate,net>]

Hello everyone on Mud-Dev,
 
Something I am interested in working on is a MUD style game similar to AC, EQ, UO, etc.  Technically speaking, there are a set of tasks that have to be tackled to start a project like this.  However the questions I had for Mud-Dev, hopefully which some of you can comment on or answer, are more business directed.  I know alot of you work in the industry of gaming and particularily online gaming, so any feedback you have on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

First of all, has anyone heard of or built a successful business model in the online gaming industry centered around an open source project?  I like the idea of open source products, especially the community development aspects, but still would like to develop a commercially viable product. 

 

I know companies like RedHat maintain a completely open source project that they do pretty well charging for, and it seems that in the online gaming industry, it would be easy to extend this strategy to include a membership fee structure.  The membership fee could be associated with use of the product on a specific set of servers, and the product could be sold on CD or downloaded for free.  There would most likely be a host of free servers out there, since the server software (or maybe a portion of it?) would be open source as well.  Would the availability of free servers destroy the commercial potential of pay servers? 

 

The things that I imagine would help pay servers remain desirable over free servers is most importantly bandwidth and low latency.  I doubt, unless some sort of online connection limitations were implemented, that many popular free servers could be indefinitely maintained without an income to pay for bandwidth and server costs.  Another edge pay servers would have over free servers is an abundance of high quality digital artwork and graphics.  A company maintaining a profitable server could keep 2d/3d artists on staff to continually develop the visual aspects of the game, which I would think are very important to alot of mainstream gamers.

 

Does anyone know of any companies with plans similar to this? I'd also be very interested in hearing if any companies have thought about this but already ruled it out for whatever reasons.  Most importatnly, any feedback on the potential problems or obstacles a project like this might face would be very much appreciated.  Thanks,

 

Aaron M.
aaron#fate,net