Business Plan - abstract

Mission statement
We create and operate online free to play multi-player games, for an adult target, in an open source environment.

Why free to play online games ?
More details here

During the course of the last years, internet has strongly impacted the value chain of the game industry, Traditional video game was a product, online gaming is a service.


 * Where studios had to go through publisher and distributor, they now can reach consumers directly.
 * It also reduces the financial risk for the studio by giving the possibility to deliver step after step to the player and work iteratively instead of making an intial large investment

Free to play is a model that is well suited to these online games, where people pay according to their involvement in the game, and that provides a larger base of players than subscription based games.

These free to play games share specificities : they should be accessible, they must at a quick pace, they must not be time consuming, and they definitely should include social features.

Why do we aim at an adult target ?
More details here

First, we want to offer content that is strongly connected to the world around us (political, social, technologies), that tend to blur the frontiers for the player who should ask himself if he's in our game or on the real web.

Why do we think the market would follow ?


 * A significant part of the traditional consumers for online multiplayer games has matured and now expects games that are fun, but also that are connected to the real world and raise questions about it - they want more adult games


 * Simultaneously, a huge new crowd has started playing through the explosion of social games (most of them not taking place in an imaginary world but are related to very real activities, such as farms (FarmVille), pets (FishVille), cooking (CafeWorld)), and a part of this crowd will follow some of the traditional players mentioned above, who act as trend-setters.


 * The traditional publishers are not occupying this niche yet. And most of the new players (facebook actors like Zynga, but also studios such as Gameforge, Bigpoint) are also not specifically aiming at niches such as the one that interests us.

Why in an open source environment ?
More details here

There has been in the course of the last years a paradigm shifting in regards to the relation between users and the services they use on the internet. Users expect openness and transparency, flexibility, and ability to provide feedback that will be taken into account. A part of the users want to be even further involved and directly impact the service that is provided. This is even truer in online games, where the affective bond with the game can be huge.

The open source organization is the model that answers these needs and leverages the commitment and energy of the players. It gives the core players a real sense of ownership of the games, and provides this ownership by involving anyone in any aspects of the games and of the studio. And the mechanisms of open source turn this core group of contributors into trend setters that gather a strong community of players around the games and of the studio.

Worldwide, the open source market was estimated over 35 billion $ in 2008, The estimated growth of this market in 2010 is 30%.

In term of business model, we are close to the WordPress model where the users can have their blog hosted fro free by WordPress.com but pay for additional service. This permanent connexion between the user and the company is the main element that makes us close, in the open source world, to WordPress model.

Role
Director, Operations

Bio
Before working on HackIt!, David was head of Ubisoft India, a gaming studio comprised of 160 people, where he oversaw the develoment of games for XBL/PSN, DS and PC. He had joined Ubisoft in 2007 as Producer on Prince of Persia – The Fallen King  for DS, before moving to India.

Prior to that, David had worked three years in the management consulting industry and then joined the video game industry by collaborating on the French MMORPG Ryzom. He holds a degree from the engineering school Telecom ParisTech and a postgraduate certificate in economics from Université Paris-Dauphine.

Role
Director, Open Source &amp; Community (Open source production and community management)

Bio
Xavier is a 10 years veteran of the online gaming sector, specialized in community management and open source web development. He is one of the five pioneers who installed massively multiplayer online games in Europe, back in 2000.

He most recently worked as Director of Community &amp; Site Operations, and held industry positions for a variety of online titles, including Disney's Club Penguin, the leading social game of its genre, and Ryzom, a massively multiplayer open source game.

He also works as a consultant for large organizations in need of developing their communities, including the internet provider SFR, the city of Paris, the open source advocacy group April.

Financials
See the document here, folder Financials.