Oh boy I think I could try my best as a current developer of a game right now, "Outburst:Takedown." I believe the drive for an mmorpg developer or company is that we strive to make difference towards the bigger name games like WoW or Final Fantasy XI. The other thing is to show that Independent companies/Developers are there for the people and there are to many mmorpgs that are very plain and cloned. I think this is enough to drive many people to try to create their own game but of course it is not as easy as it looks mostly when you do not have the team to do so. As many could tell you Fireshackgames was orginally suppose to make Outburst into an MMORPG we currently failed at that because of staff issues but we reworked that idea and made a MMO game. We have no strayed away from the idea out of fear but because we believe that this will better our MMORPG games. A developer/Company makes their games based off of the people and I as well as the company I work for believes that most big companies and small ones too forget that the game is not about themselves but the people as well. Most developers are gamers themselves the only problem is they've grown so much older that its hard for them to keep producing games that the people want or see from playing these games extensively as they have made so many games so there is not enough time. Most games that are franchises such as MGS(Metal Gear Solid) GOW(God of War) DW(Dynasty Warriors) WoW(World of Warcraft) and many more have continued by listening to their fans and changing bit by bit. As you can see most of these people still sell very well at the same time they make it for the fans. This is a goal that many strive for as up and coming companies/developers this is their drive and motive. To be able to work with those big name companies sometime in the future and make a game with them or better then them.
I myself would love to work with them and at the same time make amazing games with the company I am part of. I believe this is hard for most developers to say as they all have their own reasons for getting into it but at the end of the day this is the true reality we do it cause we love it and believe that the gamers are the success to the gaming world from the start and create the games we see today.
I hope i was some help to you on this I am cursedkibason from Fireshackgames and I hope you enjoyed this tid bit from me.
Also thank you for reading
Its all about the Fans and Gamers