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How much does it cost to make an MMORPG?
AmishFighter
Member Posts: 9
Curious how much big time games such as Vanguard, Everquest 2, World of WarCraft, SWG, ect. cost to build. As far as amount of $ on a development team, amount of money for a gaming engine, computers to work on, years it takes to build, ect.
I know this will vary per game but figured I'd list a few if any of you guys knew the prices.
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Comments
Well, if you're thinking about brewing one up outta your room for $500 find a better hobby. Vanguard was around $32 million and more since that figure to put out on the market.
It varies depending on the over all complexity and time put into I think. Probably around 10 million for the average mmo at least I'd think. VG cost around 30 million and I think WoW was a little more then that. Blizzard also said it would take hundreds of millions of dollars for someone to design a game and trounce wow. I don't know how accurate that is, but personally I don't believe it.
related article
forge.ironrealms.com/2007/04/17/mmo-production-costs/
some range from under $1 million (Puzzle Pirates) to $60 million (Curt Schillings mmo)
EQ2 fan sites
Or another way to put it: Its like producing a movie.
I got no idea how the budget is distributed but Aion got a 200mill $ budget and thats just insane when comparing to wow that was made for roughly 90mil$ and vanguard was around 35mil$
Brad McQuaid on a Vangurd podcast said Blizzard spent $75 million developing WoW. EQ2 $25 million. Sigil said they spent more than EQ2 but less than WoW. People posted that DDO was $65 million (for a game that released with one town and 130 quests) but that includes the cost of the engine which was also used for LOTR.
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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A software project which costs $10,000,000.00 to get a certain quality as a basis. To get double the quality, you would like have to spend 4 times as much. And what you might call "quality" is certainly up for debate and the cost could be much higher than that.
Now, Blizzard has the advantage of a number of years of post release developement and one major expansion added to that initial cost. I don't know the numbers on that, but you would have to be able to overcome some of that and the content.
Take it with a grain of salt.
What I want to know is why a gold seller is interested in making/funding an MMO.
Well lets just say its more than probably any of us can afford, unless there are some millionairs here. If you have to ask its to much. If it wasn't expensive you'd probably see thousands of mmos out by now...I know I'd love to make one.
Finding 20 people willing (and capable financially) to work for 3-5 years for little pay is tough. Add to that the cost of overhead, servers and test equipment, you start racking up the costs. I saw someone try to figure the minimum cost for a AAA MMO in the US. Their result was about $10M. You might get 2 or 3 people to invest their time instead of money, but you can't make a decent MMO with just 3 people.
Modding is just that..Modding. Your taking existing items and 'modding' them sure some modders actually know how to model and to animate but they're the above average kind. They also aren't working on a production schedule hoping not to get fired or praying you can get the weekend off which gives them more freedom and time to add some bits of flourish. They also don't have to worry about their models fitting certain constraints.
Its just really unreasonable to even compare a game modder to someone who actually has to skills to make something from scratch. There are always exceptions to that rule and those often end up in the game industry if they're really serious about knowing all the ins and outs. Most how ever just know how to use the tools given to them and modify bits of code but thats usually it.
Thats not what Game Companies do unless its their own work already. People always assume without any real idea of what its like to make a game or any software at all from scratch that people are 'over paid' because they know how to mod and its 'not that hard'. Coding the engine, producing art from scratch, coding the game mechanics, creating the network code, the packets, the clients, keeping staff together and working as a team thats alot of work especially when your working 60 to 80 hours a week.
It doesn't honestly matter what industry your in there's always someone who's 'the big shot' and is 'overpaid' even in my industry we've seen it happen some big talker rakes in some million dollar deal but then can't produce anything that works. But they still got paid...it just tarnishes them a little bit over time. If you get a bad reputation in the game industry .. you won't get many jobs for long in the industry people find out and eventually you get black balled by the Dev Teams (because yes you actually have to interview with them if you get past the HR department).
When it comes right down to it in most cases game quality actually does balance to what it costs to make it. The quality you'll get from a 32 million dollar game is obviously higher than a free game and the dev's actually have to answer to someone if they fuck up. Does that mean its always that way or that they're actually fun? No but we can say the same thing about alot of products.
Please Refer to Doom Cat with all conspiracies & evil corporation complaints. He'll give you the simple explination of..WE"RE ALL DOOMED!
"Freedom is just another name for nothing left to lose" - Janis Joplin
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I found this presentation (powerpoint) from GDC by Netdevil. http://static.netdevil.com/cms-images/gdc2008_brown_scott_small_teams_big_dreams.ppt
Its very relevant to this topic and shows costs, percentage of succes, typical number of mmos in development and so on.
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great info - thanks for posting that link
EQ2 fan sites
nice link!
Probaly in the 15-40 million range
remember nearly half the money goes to advertising. if you actually want to recoup the investment.
http://www.soesucks.net/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=10
From a money perspective, yes. But from a developer perspective, it's quite a different process.
Paul Barnett
You need at least like 500 grand to make a half assed MMORPG
Video Games are more profitable than the Movie industry. As such you should expect that kind of production cost. To make a decent game, I believe a production cost of 20 million and 4 years would be a good start.
If you have that kind of money....I'm available for hire
Torrential
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
I don't think that is even in the ballpark. $500k won't even get you to a good SP game on the PC or a current gen console. It may get you a decent PSP or DS game and that is it.
Well, if you have the programming, artistic, music, writing skills, designs skills, software... or people with some of them to donate their time... that's all it would cost... time. Although time is money. I'd say you don't necessarily need cash... maybe just what it takes for the software and computers to develop the game. Just because all these big companies have spent millions doesn't necessarily mean you need that much... many developers get paid hefty sums for their time. If you could find people to donate their time with their own developing software/computers, I'd say you could get away with making a MMO and only spending less than $5,000 that you actually have, considering you have a talented team, but you know the saying that time is money and you could actually be making money with the time you're spending developing a game... but that's another topic.
All games have to build, or buy, an engine, have a team of coders, beta-testers, and graphic designers, plus they tend to include sound and music.
I believe that most production budget is payed off for those that require you to buy it upfront. The reason many charge you monthly, or have ads, or have in-game store items is to pay for the server upkeep and the updates.
<blockquote><i>Originally posted by AmishFighter</i>
<br><b><p>Curious how much big time games such as Vanguard, Everquest 2, World of WarCraft, SWG, ect. cost to build. As far as amount of $ on a development team, amount of money for a gaming engine, computers to work on, years it takes to build, ect.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>I know this will vary per game but figured I'd list a few if any of you guys knew the prices.</p></b></blockquote>
<br>
EQ- Exactly 5 million
SWG, VG, EQ2 - all same generation (4th generation mmorpgs). SWG, and EQ2 35 million. Safe to say VG roughly the same. WoW is also 4th generation. But it's obviouse they spent less money on their graphics engine... safe to say WoW is roughly 25 - 30 million.
SOURCE:
A nice little article that once appeared in "Wired" magazine called:
The Sorcerer of Sony.
They interviewed all the major game DEVs, and stated the costs of all those mmorpgs.
On the cheaper end, the original Runescape cost roughly 100 ,000.oo
(All USA dollars)The original Astonia cost roughly 50,000.oo
Strive For Power cost roughly 1,000.oo originally.