Activision may try to buy GGG

I have a worry:
Activision may try to buy GGG.

Why?:
D3 will most likely release an expansion pack soon. Estimates are that 5M people will play D3 at first. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/16/diablo-3-predicted-to-sell-5m-in-first-year/)
PoE in open beta will start sucking up playerbase. It may quickly steal 10%, 20% or even more players.

That could be roughly $30M loss for D3. (1M players who will not buy $30 expansion pack). This is loss for the first expansion only and also RMAH is not taken into account.

How much GGG is worth?
25 developers -times- $40k/PA -times- 5 years = $5M + servers, offices = total $7.5M
How much Activision would offer? $15M?
How much GGG would accept?
That is what is worrying me. Numbers.

you should realy try to write sci-fi scripts!

What?

"

missmisiowa wrote:

I have a worry:
Activision may try to buy GGG.

Why?:
D3 will most likely release an expansion pack soon. Estimates are that 5M people will play D3 at first. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2012/03/16/diablo-3-predicted-to-sell-5m-in-first-year/)
PoE in open beta will start sucking up playerbase. It may quickly steal 10%, 20% or even more players.

Stopped reading after this point.

"

Stopped reading after this point.

oh, c'mon, I already converted 5 die hard D2 players (including myself) to PoE, need only 999995 more!

"

missmisiowa wrote:

"

Stopped reading after this point.

oh, c'mon, I already converted 5 die hard D2 players (including myself) to PoE, need only 999995 more!

Good luck on that mission.

"

missmisiowa wrote:

"

Stopped reading after this point.

oh, c'mon, I already converted 5 die hard D2 players (including myself) to PoE, need only 999995 more!

They are not converted if they will also buy D3 :) just saying..

Not sure if trolling... ?

Seriously though your estimations are _way_ off and I am pretty damn sure that activision won't buy GGG ;)

I'm trying to read this from the perspective of GGG. Trying to put myself in their mindset, going by what I know. Three friends started the idea in a garage in New Zealand, around 2006 or so. Five years after Diablo 2 and two years before Diablo 3 was announced. There were other Diablo-like games out there, but why should that stop you? Plenty of fantasy novels out there, people write new ones every day...

Things get bigger. Funding required. Inevitably, that funding comes from you, the creator.

(Chris Wilson has stated multiple times that he's put his life's savings into Path of Exile, funded primarily from his earlier work in internet security [from the GG website]. Perhaps less graceful was the early statement in an interview that GGG are lucky to have 'rich friends' -- I see nothing wrong with that personally, given that to some I may play that role and I'm always, always happy to help someone achieve their goal if I think it's a worthwhile one. And clearly Path of Exile was shaping up to be precisely that.)

So before too long you have a handful of staff and you're out of the garage. I can't imagine much money was actually made for a while. All those costs, virtually no real income or revenue. It's all set-up. All investing in what many would see as a crazy venture. After all, didn't Blizzard just announce D3? Yeah, it's 2008 and oh shit, now things are serious indeed.

BUT you have faith in your own product and keep going. You get an alpha up, and then a beta. You don't open either to the public, not yet, but instead allow a new player every five minutes based on a random ticker. And, of course, you carefully dole out access via giveaways. You know that too much, too fast and things can fold. Too little, the same.

...And when you finally allow players to support you, at their request much more than your own, you really see just how rabid (and that is the word for it) some of your fans are. They spent a thousand bucks on your idea! At first a few, then a few more. Last you checked, fifteen of them. And so many who contributed the equally not-small amounts of $250, and $100. Sure, compared to what you've put in, not much at all, but still, what an amazing show of faith. Three guys brainstorming in a garage has led to this.

Which brings us to now. Your baby is still your own. You control every aspect of it. You sculpt it based on player feedback, based on test after test after test. It evolves, and you're involved every step of the way. This is exactly as you want it.

...You clearly didn't do this just to make a lot of money. Because you haven't made a lot of money, and there's still no guarantee you will. And you're still going.

And now let me switch back to addressing you, OP, you who fear that this small company might be bought out by a giant, soulless money machine, this small company that has for five years plus thrown its everything into a project that has, in the overall scheme, shown very little actual return but a whole lot of promise.

I can't speak to the greed of people; you never know when someone can be bought for the right amount. But speaking as someone who isn't starving and has creative projects of his own, you couldn't offer me any amount of money if the cost, the real cost, was me losing that crucial amount of input and control to make things as I want them to be made. Everything about GGG to this point indicates that they'd rather shut PoE down than let it become someone else's cash-cow, gutted of its indie roots and relegated to nothing more than a controlled alternative owned and regulated by its former competition in its respective market.

...Whether you think D3 or PoE is better is not even vaguely relevant to this argument. What you've done, OP, is bring into question the integrity of Grinding Gear Games themselves, not to mention outright state that Activision is the big fish, the shark, and GGG some small, helpless little minnow that might somehow force the big fish to eat it because it's...stealing prey?

...The whole thing is ridiculous. Sharks and minnows have different diets, ultimately, just as D3 and PoE have different target markets -- both comprising of 'action rpg gamers', which is almost as vague as 'fish'.

The sad thing is I've seen you post here before and respond, so I can't even say you're a troll and leave it at that. I really think you were serious.

...It's not.

"

missmisiowa wrote:

That is what is worrying me. Numbers.

I hear ya. Those numbers give me headaches. Like 46, for example. When has 46 ever been a force for good? Not in MY recollection, thank you very much.

And let's not talk about the nightmares. I can't tell you how many times I've been chased by some pi-i'd prime with a Fibonacci complex, only to find that the hallway I'm running down is climbing asymptotically. <shudder> Those are the dreams you can't just reduce, let me tell ya.