Virtual legality

A basic marketing plan provided to investors, "CD-ROM Publishing The Museworthy Way," lists how Shyster! will be made available via the Internet, mail-order catalogs, and the shelves of book and magazine retailers. Promotions will be carried out in such outlets as legal trade publications, court-TV shows, and satire magazines. There is no mention of retail markets where one would immediately expect to find computer software. This is similar to how the members of Museworthy felt Paparazzi! should have been marketed but wasn't.

Still, it may not be enough. There's a growing feeling throughout the computer-gaming industry that multimedia-laden games like Paparazzi! and Shyster! are financial sinkholes for developers, simply because not enough people seem to want to play with the stuff. A major part of this problem is that the overall multimedia genre is flooded with products. That's because most multimedia software, like Museworthy's games, is produced on an industry-recognized software engine, Macromedia's Director. For $900 for this rather easy-to-use program, you, too, can make games like Museworthy's. Regardless of the quality of individual titles, this democratization of digital media production unleashes a glut of inevitably similar products into a market with limited demand.

Freeman disagrees with this assessment: "If you're smart and don't spend way too much money making it, there's an opportunity to make some money," he insists. "If you sell 20,000 units, you can make money."

Activision seems to have concluded otherwise, at least when it comes to Museworthy and its creations. And the publisher appears reluctant to simply write off its relationship with Museworthy as a bad gamble.

"It's been painful," Freeman reflects. "We put so much into this thing, and I feel I let a lot of people down, the whole group, by going with Activision. We're not only disappointed, but, from my perspective, I also feel responsible. It kills me to see the dream not given the opportunity it should have.