Costs of MMORPG Development and Maintenance?

garbonzo

I was originally typing this as a response to a post about whether DF will make it, but decided to take it to general.

I'm still thinking a non-profit game development entity might work...only goal is to break even to meet expenses.  I imagine a player base of 100,000 could keep something floating quite well (100,000 x $15/mo x 12 mo = 18 million per year.)  I don't know the industry well enough to estimate the overhead or development costs, but if you had a team of 100 making $100k/year each you've got 10 million in salaries.  Seems 8 million extra  would be enough for maintaining a building, buying hardware, etc.  A few of those 100 employees should be on marketing, but so much is done through forums and maintaining the game's own site that it doesn't seem like paid ads are that important.  Unless a company is out for major profit (like they all are) I can't imagine you need anywhere near WoW sub numbers, or even LOTRO numbers. 

Anyone with developing experience care to weigh in?  I'm curious to know general estimates of the level of investment MMO development really requires.  Clearly it's huge at the front end.

candygirl6

You would probably have to account for the bank loan too if you're a small company.

Have you seen the credit crisis banks have lately? A lot of companies seem to be gambling too much and banks alloud it, especially in the US.

You can be sure that after the lay-offs a lot will be stricter with handing out money if the economy goes into a recession, which it will I think.

Anyway, a lot of the big companies probably use a rough estimate like you did, but have a bank help them with it.

I think also, you will have people working for you before you get every designer you want. So you'll need to overlap a bit, which brings extra costs I bet.

dA_fReAK

Cost of development.... well... can vary from 0 to a few million dollars.

Now before anyone says its impossible to make it for free, check Blender. Thats just one of MANY free softwares that are really worth it.

As for maintenance, I would say according to your guess of 18M per year, ATLEAST 8 or 10M goes for maintenance (if its a successful game anyway)

• paying your employees
• paying for the website
• paying for the server

etc etc.

 

Krileon

The cost comes from the servers. Employees isn't to expensive.

Employees you're looking at 2-3m a year depending on the size of the team. Small team can easily get away with 1mil a year.

Servers though depending on the project expect 5m+ a year at the least. You really need to have the hardware and stability or the game will tank.

You get 1 shot at making a good first impression. You don't want that first impression being players not capable of logging in or having horrible lag.

Your best bet is teaming up with another company and letting them handle all that crap while you focus time and money on development.

kizzim

there is also the possibility of just purchasing a engine and even server code. Pirates of the Burning Seas if i remember right purchased not only their engine code, but also some network code. Vanguard purchased their engine. Now-a-days there are several companies that will sell you network code to run a MMORPG, a engine, etc. Litterally you could spend all your dev time just on content if your willing to shell out what they are asking for.

If you run a free or non-profit game alot of these companies charge on royalties, if you have no profit, you can get the software for pretty cheap considering you have no royalties to pay.

garbonzo

All very interesting.  Now if we can just design the game so that it's legitimately in the public interest, we can do it tax free.  The people need quality entertainment, right?  Maybe you could call it a non-profit nondenomenational religious organization and make it themed on world religions.  Endless lore and no IP royalties there.

ianubisi

Businesses don't enter these ventures to break even or lose money. They enter these ventures to make profits.

garbonzo

Certainly, but I'm proposing to try a different model.  Non-profits exist for all sorts of reasons.  The workers still get reasonable salaries, it just cuts out the need to be a slave to shareholders who demand a high return.  If people believe in creating real art instead of a cookie cutter generic product for the biggest financial gain, the creative freedom and ability to advance an area of culture can be more rewarding than more consumer goods and a bigger house.  These people do exist, they just usually don't command large pools of resources...  But, band them together and you can get somewhere.

Jimmy_Scythe

I think the OP is aiming a little bit high. If you want to do a "just break even" game then you should scale it back to about 3,000 players or less. This confines everything to one server cluster of about 15 machines. If you pay $400 per month per server, then you shell out about $6,000 per month for server and bandwidth. At $10 a month per subscriber, assuming that you get 3,000, you'll be pulling in $30,000 month which is more than enough to pay for the servers, web page, yourself, and a small staff.

The downside is that if the game is any damn good, more people are going to want to play and this can snowball into your game expanding faster than you can keep up. With more subscribers comes higher overhead. Make sure to plan for both good and bad scenarios.

In the end, you have relatively little to lose, so go for it. Although I'd make a total conversion mod of an existing game first. If you can't bring a mod to beta, you probably won't be able to bring a fully developed indie game to market either.

andyjd

I think BMQ said that Vanguard had dev costs of around $30m...so thats probably your ballpark figure...now, as to how much cash to make a good game?

Nadia

you be successful using less cash but other companies have used more for development

 

Blizzard was around 40 mill or more for WoW

 

Green Monster Games (Curt Schilling, etc)

is spending 60 million on development for their future mmo

Kvothe

I don't think the majority of large MMOs even break even the first year after their release.  I think that is why you see alot of games being released earlier than they should.  The companies need to start brininging in revenue to cover the costs of prior years of development and to continue operation.

A team of 100 developersis very high.  You also have to pay artists, management, and the costs of marketing.  If I were starting one, I would keep my team of developers to around 25 or 30 along with 3 or 4 artists.  You also have to have creative minds such as writers to develop the lore and quests.  So there are alot of other costs other than just developers and servers.

 

Inf666

The core team of a project can be rather small. 5-8 developers for creating the requirements, application infrastructure and data model. This includes game mechanics and settings. Another 5-10 programmers and you can at least build the core application (client/server/tiered system). But you will also definately need:

Content team (Artists, novelists, voice actors, level designers, maybe even a secondary develpment group to create tools for content creation and management)

Quality Assurance (Testers, Creating test plans, inserting specific quality-inducing processes into the development etc)

Maintenance (to take care of your hardware, code, patches, installapps, workplace quality)

Marketing department/Management (adds, market watching, cost calculations, planning, contracting)

So next to the devlopment core team you will have a lot more people doing this and that. Do not think that you can work without them!

 

I would suggest that you look at other smaller development teams and try to emulate them. What has worked once should work again if you pass the prerequisite tests. Following in the footsteps of a big developing company (blizzard) will be impossible. You will neither get the money to do so nor do you have the experience for a big multimillion $ MMO project of their caliber (I guess). Start small with a few people who share your idea, put up a homepage, create some information about your game and try to "sell" your idea to investors and things will roll off from there.

 

 

Krileon

Small dev team still costs a lot.

If you plan to have a small team then you really need to buy a premade engine or buy an engine maker to help you out.

There is a program called RealmCrafter in the works. It's a pretty nifty tool that can really help your production for small teams, but you need to buy a copy of it for each developer that is going to be using it. I've tried it out and it's pretty cool, but I still prefer doing it all my self.. that's just me though. Anyway, the new version they are working on supports dx9/10, full C++ structure, completed network code, ui editor, terrain editor, etc.. has every tool you'll need except for a 3d art program. Cost you a couple bucks, but it's pretty damn cheap for what you get.

Anyway, if you don't buy a engine and plan to fully code it your self like me then expect LONG development times. I've been coding for 2 years and haven't even finished the engine yet. Actually considering getting RC2.0 Pro and integrating my code into it literally shaving off 75% of development time.

saluk

Do it all yourself in the off-hours, use all free tools, don't pay yourself or your friends who work on it with you any salary until you can, don't pay for server until you have to...

Dev cost = 0$

Be prepared for 5-6 years at least to develop though. And when you do start having to pay for servers, costs can go up. I have currently shelled out about 500$ for servers, which isn't too bad, but my server is starting to crumble under the awesome power of my mmo! Going to have to upgrade to open it up to more peeps.

I'm 2 years in and I think my engine is 50% complete. With a larger team (3-4 programmers, 3-4 artists) and good choices of technology to build on, you could probably build a decent base in 2 years (cohesive engine + assets). Which could then start picking up it's player base, and funding development from there. This development model I'd say puts you in the 0.5-1.0 mil range.

candygirl6

Originally posted by andyjd


I think BMQ said that Vanguard had dev costs of around $30m...so thats probably your ballpark figure...now, as to how much cash to make a good game?

Yes, using Vanguard as a financial model for games....

paulscott

what's with the go big or not at all.   runescape wasn't funded it was a toy some programming students made for a college assignment(it likely even ran on a campus server till they over stayed the welcome).   WurmOnline despite all it's issues is drawing a profit as well enough for a dev to work a bit more full time on it.

don't bother going big you just need to go different as an indy.  it really only takes one thing that enough players want to make your game gold(game going gold status, starting to draw a profit).

Czzarre

I have no experience in this area. I also expect that  very few on these boards does either. That is a great question but I think you ought to pose it to a place where people working in the industry discuss issues, not people playing the games. Attending a conference, like E3 would be a good place to get a feel for costs as well

Good Luck

Torrential

elvenangel

Originally posted by Czzarre


I have no experience in this area. I also expect that  very few on these boards does either. That is a great question but I think you ought to pose it to a place where people working in the industry discuss issues, not people playing the games. Attending a conference, like E3 would be a good place to get a feel for costs as well
Good Luck
Torrential

Actually E3 is more for showing off games.   GDC is probably the best conference for learning about the industry.   

 

There's also tons of business books for Game Developers if your really interested OP you should give them a peek.   

Sornin

I do not think making a game that will attract 100,000 concurrent subscribers as a non-profit company is a viable proposal.

In North America, I would hazard a guess and say no more than five MMOGs have those subscriber counts. So, aiming for "just 100,000" is actually a really aiming high. Hell, a lot of major games would love to have 100,000 subscribers!

Like another poster mentioned, I think such a game should aim for something a lot smaller. A non-profit company is just not going to compete with a company who dumps $25M+ into their game. There is only room for so many big dogs, as players tend to congregate, not spread out. That is why there is one giant now, a couple mini-giants, and everything else is in obscurity.

It is all well and good to say that you would have good intentions, great ideas, and would make a fantastic game, but that is not how good games are made. They are made with experienced, costly development teams and a lot of resources, especially MMORPGs, which are super complex and prone to so many problems.

Anyway, during the birth of modern MMORPGs, the late twentieth century, it probably was possible to make a competitive game with little money. I think Asheron's Call mostly was made that way, for example. These days, the market has been invaded by massive companies who want to cash in like Blizzard/Vivendi, and the small teams are being pushed out of the way.

eosyne

to give an idea at development i have had some insight into some game development companys.

a chinese company licensed a game out for $5 million dollars. and a more recent game was $500.000 dollars plus royalty. and that's just licensing after development. you can expect development to take years and millions of dollars.

it ain't cheap.

Reborn17

The big p2p boys range from 18-80 million according to estimates. Considering the manpower involved over lets say 4 years of development, that's actually pretty good. Especially if you can get 2 or 300,000 subscribers at $15/mo when you're done.

     INTERPLAY:

                               FALLOUT MMO PROJECT

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

          Preproduction Budget                     $5,000,000.00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

           Production Budget                       $40,000,000.00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

             Launch Budget                         $30,000,000.00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

            Production Start                         January 2007

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

               Launch Date                            July 2010

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Czzarre

Thanks Elvenangel,

As I said, I dontknow the industry. E3 is the main gaming conference I know of and at least devs would be there to ask :P. GDC (Game Development Conference, I assume) sounds like a much better venue.

Torrential

Teiraa

Originally posted by Sornin


I do not think making a game that will attract 100,000 concurrent subscribers as a non-profit company is a viable proposal.
In North America, I would hazard a guess and say no more than five MMOGs have those subscriber counts. So, aiming for "just 100,000" is actually a really aiming high. Hell, a lot of major games would love to have 100,000 subscribers!
Exactly. Furthermore, with all the MMOs currently in development, competition is going to increase still further during the next few years. Tough times ahead. So it's probably better to make smaller plans.

Riotgirl

Hi all,

I've made my periodic return - longer and longer these days - to dip my toe into MMMORPG waters to gauge the temperature of MMORPGs i.e. which MMORPGs are due to go 'Gold' any time soon, the state of the industry, catch up on the gossip and more importantly, determine if any title catches my interest when I develop some free time in the next couple of years.

This thread amongst others (including this
thread) caught my attention, precisely because my interest in the MMORPG concept expands beyond actually playing the games - I'm interested in the actual development concept itself (a layman / amateur - rather than a professional interest i.e. you don't see too many hookers ******* for $hits and giggles).

Upon perusing the forums, and submerging myself into a depressing funk at the state of the industry, I've realised how self-defeating it is to focus on the big-hitting AAA titles - AOC & WAR - because my interest has never really been on these titles. It's natural that most debate concerns itself on the next WOW (in terms of subscriber numbers because WOW raised the bar), I personally am more concerned about products in development that actually hold more than a flicker of interest to me - and I'm reached an epiphany: it's all about the indie titles.

If the mainstream cannot offer me anything to suit my interest, then what about the indie scene? Yes, I know one has to grit one's teeth and delve deep and grimace at all the F2P Asian grinders, but it's not a question of subscriber models for me as I have no objection to subbing, it's more trying to find a product that isn't using WoW / EQ model for it's DNA.

Which brings me neatly to the subject of the thread. Why base MMORPG development costs solely on hitting 100k subs?
Why baseline a subscription model? Why not baseline different subscription / player level models? Baseline different types of subscriber models - at different subscriber levels - to get a ball-park for what different gaming models may cost to get up and running - not just in terms of development, hardware but also human enterprise - and also time-scales involved.

If we can look at a small-scale indie title's development and maintenance cost from initial proof of concept to release, it could be possible to then start to extrapolate to bigger titles, eventually AAA ones. WOW does not represent the competition - the really small-scale indie products represent the genuine competition, if one is thinking about making a MMORPG (at an amateur level).

Regards,
Riotgirl

hamcheese2

I believe the cost depends on the quality and what country the game is made in! If you make it in China..it won't be nearly as much as say, the uk