The MMO Gamer released an interview with Scott Brown, president of NetDevil, about the founding of NetDevil and the subject of "Making MMOs on a Shoestring".
The details are as below:
The MMO Gamer: First of all, for those among our readers who may be unfamiliar, could you please introduce yourself to us, and tell us a little about what it is you do at NetDevil.
Scott Brown: I'm Scott Brown, the president of NetDevil, which means I don't do a lot of anything anymore. Really my role these days is executive producer for the most part over all the various games.
The MMO Gamer: Way back, before you didn't have to do anything, is going to be the focus of this particular interview.
You are one of the few people who has founded an MMO studio from the ground up, and maintained its success through the years while keeping your position as the head of the company-without being gobbled up and forced out by EA, or Sony, or Microsoft.
I guess my first question is: How have you managed it?
Scott Brown: Well, "shoestring" is the answer. We had a web company before this, and we went through the learning curve of all the mistakes to make then, so we've always been careful.
We treat every cent as gold, grow only when we have to, buy a new chair only when we have to. You just have to live that way, it allows you to survive the tough times.
But we grew fast, faster than I would've imagined. We grew almost 50% a year. The first year's not so impressive, when you go from three to five people, you know what I mean? But, it kept going. Last year about this time were about 80, 85 people. And now we're about 125 people, so it's continuing.
Every year we think it can't possibly grow like that next year, and we just continue to grow. We're lucky that even in as bad of times as it is, everybody wants an online game.
Whether it's IP, or some game we want to make ourselves, there are a lot of people who want online games right now, so we've just been in a good space.
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The MMO Gamer: The first hour of the first day, when you made the decision to found NetDevil, what was that like?
Scott Brown: Well, to be honest, it's all I've ever wanted to do. So there wasn't really one day to found NetDevil, I'd always wanted to make a game company.
Embarrassingly, I'd always just wanted to make games, and I couldn't get a job in the industry. It's a tough industry, as everybody knows, you face the chicken and the egg problem a little bit. The first question someone asks you when you apply at a game company is "What games have you made?" So it's very difficult to get over that initial hump.
I just got lucky. I was in the right place at the right time. There was no planning, I won't claim anything. We had built a company that was building educational software while I was in college, and happened to fall into business application training.
We had no vision for that, and in four years we were suddenly 100 people, it was 1997 in the tech boom, and we got bought.
I was only a small owner, I was basically the CTO, if you will, only because I was the engineer that had been there the longest. But I don't know that it was the right title.
It gave me enough money to be able to quit, and the first thing I did, it wasn't even a thought, was like, now I'm making our game company. That was it.
