Proof of Concept

Life’s journey is fraught with perils, but it is the lessons we learned and the experience itself that makes it worth it.

Annonshe has been quite a learning experience for me filled with ups and downs, challenges and lessons that needed to be learned along the way. A labor of love, it was a dream that ended up bigger than originally imagined and perhaps a bit before its time as well. It showed me my various strengths, weaknesses and permitted me to grow as a person. Currently, the company is inactive, dormant until I decide what to do with it, either revive it with the same or a different vocation or simply putting it to rest. This article is a look back on its evolution and some of the lessons learned.

Inception

Annonshe was created in April of 2004 following the advice of a friend from Ubisoft with whom I had worked with on a volunteer initiative for Shadowbane. I was responsible for defining the scope and guidelines in addition to recruitment and management of the bardic portion of the Herald and Bard Program, a support initiative for Wolfpack’s Feature Character & Event System. Unfortunately, this portion of the initiative was canceled after a few months as to focus on the main event system.

Annonshe was originally designed to offer a professional outsourcing solution for events in MMORPG. Our goal was to create ongoing dynamic storylines with reoccurring characters which would be directly influenced by the playerbase. This would essentially add a new layer based on politics, conflicts, interests and influence for players to explore and thus encourage player retention within MMOs.

1st Year: Online Event Services

The first year is always a challenge for new entrepreneurs who never ran a business. When the company was created, we had the technical knowledge, the motivation, the creative power along with talented actors and writers, but in this day and age, skill is usually not enough.

Our first mistake was trying to a sell an idea in its rough form. We had concepts and experience, mostly custom-made samples and past player event, but from one writer to another, the style and presentation would vary. This showed a lack proper structure and methodology relying exclusively on creativity which makes consistency in quality very hard to predict. Any salesperson will tell you, consistent level of quality is fundamental when selling any product or service especially if you expect to have recurrent customers.

Our second was misinterpreting interest in the service. As players and passionate actors, we were very enthusiastic with all the possibilities it would offer and our presentation often showed the almost limitless options available to players. While an overabundance of imagination can be a good thing, developers’ could not help but fear the possible implications of having to try to predict and approve all possible scenarios in dynamic events.

But one of the hardest lessons was that of past history. Without a renown person from the professional community on our team or actual past experience to refer to, getting potential customers interested was a very steep uphill battle. It was even worst to try and get funding since that required you to have actual contracts to prove that it was a viable service, so we ran into the chicken and the egg dilemma.

We eventually learned these lessons through our experiences and through self education. To remedy some of the problems we were faced with we began working on a collaboration and approval program we call the Saga System which permitted us to create visually represented multi-layered dynamic storyline which made it simpler to understand the consequences of players’ actions. This permitted us to integrate some of our methodology directly into the software and have a consistent presentation format.

The feedback we received when we presented the prototype along side our services at E3 of 2005 was a lot more positive, but people still weren’t sold on the idea that events would be all that useful and even offering our services at lower than cost to try and build company history did not provide any results. The end of year one had not produced the desired results, but had permitted us to at least strengthen our network of contacts within the industry.

2nd Year: Prometheus

After E3, we had to take a step back and take in all the information that we had gathered from the first year. One of the things that we noticed is that people were much more interested in the software we were developing rather than in our services. Talking with different producers had showed us that there were problems with communication within large development teams. We analyzed our feedback and evaluated our options before deciding to put the events services on hold. We then turned to the software we were developing and looked at how it could be used to improve team coherence. But prior to jumping in directly this time, we decided that we would be much better prepared, especially considering the costs associated with developing new software.

We thus hired CEIM, a local consultant group that helps in development strategies and obtaining financing for projects. With their help, we did a much more vigorous market survey, meeting with various personnel (executives, produces, designers, developers) of Montreal’s local industry (A2M, EA, Ubisoft, IGDA). With each meeting we would further confirm their desire for a better collaborative tool and refine certain key features for the product. Prometheus, as our new project was called, was presented as a complete solution for the creation, distribution and approval of game design documents and story content.

While developers and designers were very enthusiastic with the project, upper management were less convinced and took a wait and see approach. Unfortunately, without any letters of interests from their part, we could not obtain the financial backing needed to secure venture capital needed to develop the software. It is also around that time that I finally ran out of personal funds for the company and could not continue market research in order to find the missing elements that would have made the software much more compelling. Contrary to the Event Services, Prometheus was a lot less expensive as a learning experience and still appears to be much more viable in the short term.

The Verdict

While Annonshe never succeeded, the experience was well worth it. Personally, I’ve invested a few tens of thousands of dollars in the company, worked on it full time without a salary and placed a good portion of my personal life on hold during that time, but after each new lesson, the learning curve and sacrifices were a lot less demanding.

I’ve learned to better manage budgets (my own, a project’s and a company’s), to properly run a business (make it viable, consistent and resalable), to create better systems and guidelines, to better design and plan projects, to better manage teams and time, I improved my presentation skills and finally, I learned to cancel a project when I have to. These were lessons I had to go through sooner or later, they just all ended up happening at the same time.

Now, I’m working on my Masters in Project Management and still learning new things, but that’s what life is. In the end, I would redo what I did since it has shaped the person I am today. It’s given me the confidence to pursue my dreams even if they end in failure. There’s always tomorrow after all. Most entrepreneur fail in their first attempts and 95% of businesses closes in the first 5 years, so if we’re not willing to take a chance or to try again, we’d never succeed so long as we learn from our failures.