Ted Howard

In a previous post I posited, while providing little proof, that games are a moonshot in a sense that you aim and invest massive resources, Then you fire and pretty much just hope for the best. Here, again with little proof, I posit that funware is not a moonshot. Funware is a marathon more akin to a Web 2.0 website than any game.

I’ll also throw in an analogy of funware is to Microsoft as games are to Apple.

Funware, like any web service, has a cycle of plan, build, release, measure, and iterate. Once a release has occurred, revenue begins and does not typically end until the website is taken down. With funware, you build a sustainable project with ongoing revenue and therefore both an ongoing utility for further investments in the service and the money to pay for further investments.

Games have been about boxed retail software. The cycle there is plan, pitch to publisher, build, release, and move on to the next project. Revenue for the game studio occurs during the production phase as delivery-based payments from a game publisher. Post-release revenue is typically limited to the first 3-6 months, and the studio may see no post-release revenue depending on their sales and publishing contract. Games do not create significant ongoing revenue, so there is no way to fund a team for ongoing investments in the game. This means that the team, which can be 200+, dissolves after a release. Sometimes a studio will remain intact but they might as well have disappeared and reformed to work on their new project pitch.

Here’s the analogy comparing funware to Microsoft and games to Apple.

Most Apple products are kept secret from everyone, even from Apple employees. This allows for very little user feedback before they launch. MobileMe was a moonshot. It was developed in secret. In one day it went from no users to millions of users.

Microsoft tells its partners about its products early in the development cycle for at least two reasons: partners prepare software for new Microsoft platforms and Microsoft gets useful customer feedback on software. Windows Vista and Office 2007, despite what some may believe, were shown to partners and customers before release and often before any code was written. This allowed partners to test against the new versions. It also allowed Microsoft to alter its plans to better fit the needs and plans of its customers. Microsoft does its best to iterate fast and cheap, often without the public aware of these iterations.

Funware is about iterating and optimizing. Games are about bringing a vision to life and hoping customers will like it.