David

I hereby grant Massively permission to make fun of my mother.

I want a pony and I will brush it and I will feed it and I will love it.

While it is indeed naive to assume that a company's only motive in creating a game is "for fun," you should also realize that a company will only make money off their product if the game is fun in the first place. Making money and making a game fun are not mutually exclusive goals, and I'm always surprised when people assume that the presence of one automatically precludes the other.

If your game sucks, no one will buy it. If the game is fun, tons of people will buy it. That's as simple as I can imagine it being.

The Sims Online was the very first game I ever beta tested. I remember having to convince my parents to send $5 to EA for a disc, and then spending weeks playing the game and submitting feedback. I was helping! I was making a difference! It felt so good! You just don't get that feeling anymore in modern betas. Or maybe I just grew up and stopped being so naive.

Ohhh, so that's why my inbox filled up with PM's this morning. Of course.

Take a close look at the Gazillion website. There's more than one Marvel game being made.

http://www.gazillion.com

BlizzCon 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Why thank you!

This question got asked at the panel, actually. Of the companies represented at the panel, they all said their teams were mostly 50/50 (which is a high ratio for the game industry in general).

SERA!