op: " i want to understand whats the really expensive part of it? "
MMORPG cost is mainly in the server farm & IT end of it. Maintaining the game, etc.
LOL to the fella above me that thinks a server cost $2k... (<--derp!), as a typical blade server starts @ about $12k per until and you need hundreds of them to make up one shard/server for one game...!
For every game server (or shard), there then has to be another 100 blade server to support that shard. A typical server farm for an AAA title will cost $10 million alone. And if the game in question uses an open worl design, then double that cost as they require more hardware and more technological "feature".
(btw... a game with a zone, is a cheap game compared to one with an open world. (zones = cheap game))
Ultimately depends on the game and the implementation, a Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines.
But then again that server was created in 2004-5 and is optimized for that era, in programming there is a infinite number of solutions to a given problem, for example you can handle mobs in a instance as mobs in any other part of the world, just as records in a database, or you can create a huge data structure for every instance that potencially hogs up several cores and hundreds of megabytes of memory.
For convenience and time investment, these days developers use solutions similar to the second option, increasing the resource requirement for a single server.
Well creating an MMO isn't that expensive, it just takes alot of time coding
But of course it'll become expensive much later with server costs and when you start employing developers
??
Bro.. u ned the servers to test ur code once you get to a certain level of development (pre-alpha?). In which, a truncated running server needs to be in place to bring things into their fold. That step takes TONS of cash (almost always millions).
Again.. that is for just a very limited test server. (Just enough hardware to get a few zones working to stat testing & coding.)
I think Jake Song is doing it right. Using the technology most available in the right spots, & server tech which allows for an open world. meta game, upon meta in that one. (ArcheAge)
Same with GW2 with the recently announced World vs World gameplay..
Then you have to give PlanetSide2 the big credit right now. All the bashing John Smedley took... He finally listen and invested SOE's money into an phenominal Open World engine they call Forge Light.
EverQuest 3 will also be based off the same engine and that boggles my mind as to how awsome EQ Nxt is going to be. (Open world EQ to roam in, will be a wild experience in this game.)
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
op: " i want to understand whats the really expensive part of it? "
MMORPG cost is mainly in the server farm & IT end of it. Maintaining the game, etc.
LOL to the fella above me that thinks a server cost $2k... (<--derp!), as a typical blade server starts @ about $12k per until and you need hundreds of them to make up one shard/server for one game...!
For every game server (or shard), there then has to be another 100 blade server to support that shard. A typical server farm for an AAA title will cost $10 million alone. And if the game in question uses an open worl design, then double that cost as they require more hardware and more technological "feature".
(btw... a game with a zone, is a cheap game compared to one with an open world. (zones = cheap game))
Ultimately depends on the game and the implementation, a Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines.
But then again that server was created in 2004-5 and is optimized for that era, in programming there is a infinite number of solutions to a given problem, for example you can handle mobs in a instance as mobs in any other part of the world, just as records in a database, or you can create a huge data structure for every instance that potencially hogs up several cores and hundreds of megabytes of memory.
For convenience and time investment, these days developers use solutions similar to the second option, increasing the resource requirement for a single server.
But it is optional.
Just saying!
Do you really believe: " Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines. " ...??
lulz!.. Lineage 2 can bearly run on some people's computers, let alone have just a few serve all those thousands.
Big fail on ur tr0ll.
I think you are a bit unclear on the concept.....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
op: " i want to understand whats the really expensive part of it? "
MMORPG cost is mainly in the server farm & IT end of it. Maintaining the game, etc.
LOL to the fella above me that thinks a server cost $2k... (<--derp!), as a typical blade server starts @ about $12k per until and you need hundreds of them to make up one shard/server for one game...!
For every game server (or shard), there then has to be another 100 blade server to support that shard. A typical server farm for an AAA title will cost $10 million alone. And if the game in question uses an open worl design, then double that cost as they require more hardware and more technological "feature".
(btw... a game with a zone, is a cheap game compared to one with an open world. (zones = cheap game))
Ultimately depends on the game and the implementation, a Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines.
But then again that server was created in 2004-5 and is optimized for that era, in programming there is a infinite number of solutions to a given problem, for example you can handle mobs in a instance as mobs in any other part of the world, just as records in a database, or you can create a huge data structure for every instance that potencially hogs up several cores and hundreds of megabytes of memory.
For convenience and time investment, these days developers use solutions similar to the second option, increasing the resource requirement for a single server.
But it is optional.
Just saying!
Do you really believe: " Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines. " ...??
lulz!.. Lineage 2 can bearly run on some people's computers, let alone have just a few serve all those thousands.
Big fail on ur tr0ll.
I think you are a bit unclear on the concept.....
And that is the bright young generation that will code teh gamez in the future...
I was reading a interview, with what i believe is the lead developer of Guild Wars 2, he made it in 2007 and one of the things he said was "to enter in the MMO market you better have at least a 50 developer team and 40 million dollars".
40 million dollars is alot of money, and since im really clueless about any computer developed stuff, i want to understand whats the really expensive part of it?
The expensive part.. is the team..
50 Devs is a reasonable team for a AAA title, inorder to have it developed in any reasonable amount of time.
As each dev will require highily specialized degrees, and experiences they will not come cheap, salaries, hardware used to create, and temp reasources such as voice actors, and body models for texturing, and what have you its quite simple to see such a high budget.
Still... 40 million is a little high, i think only the top of the AAA titles have this sorta budget - the larger the budget the more play the team has into what features they can develop as to the funding available to purchase those reasources...
Time is a big issue.. remember if it takes you too long to get the game into the market, your competitors might make your game outdated before it even hits the shelves.. i've seen allot of that latily.. games that are regressing the genre becuase they spent TOO long in dev -- The only exception to this rule is Blizzard titles - they are the only ones who can spend 10+ years on a title, and still push out a successful hit that rewrite the genre.
His question was "Do MMOs cost a lot to develop" the answer is, no. The so called "AAA" MMOs, are almost always the most disappointing MMOs. Why? Because that budget doesn't go to developing interesting game systems, thats too risky. That money goes to focus groups and research into copying WoW and releasing a game as close looking to WoW as possible.
Meanwhile, the most legendary MMOs, like DAoC, UO, EQ, were created on small budgets by SKILLED DEVELOPERS. The only difference money makes is the more money pumped into an MMO project by publishers, the more likely it is to be a boring WoW clone that is super "refined" and "polished" to the point where its void of a soul.
Can you post some data to support those statements, please?
DAoC was created with a team of 30 developers and 3.2 million dollars. Trying to create a mega blockbuster to compete with WoW costs a lot of money, and has failed each and every time. Meanwhile, creating an INTERESTING MMO and growing it over time, like Eve, or Darkfall, has been profitable, with steady upward population increase.
AoC almost bankrupted Funcom. LotRO and DDO almost destroyed Turbine. If it wasn't for the money from their original MMOs, they would have imploded.
You do realize that was 12 years ago, right? Do you also realize that EVE and Darkfall are the extreme exception? The majority of MMOs made on a low budget either failed or never made it to release.
Yeah, it was 12 years ago, and that team of 30 people, with 3 million dollars, managed to make an MMO that has features that STILL blow any modern MMO out of the water. They created something brand new, and invented many of the staples of the MMO genre while they were at it. With just a tiny bit of money and a small team. The difference? That team wasn't being choked to death by major publishers like EA who ruins everything they touch, and the team had actual talent. Why do you think so many of the early MMOs, on the most primitive tech, have features that would be considered revoutionary if put in a new game?
How many MMOs today are managing 800 man sieges? Actually...pretty much just Darkfall and Eve and DAoC... hmmm correlation there perhaps.
The majority of MMOs made on big budgets failed as well, sooo... DDO was a massive failure, Vanguard died almost out of the gate, AoC drove several of Funcom's partners to bankruptcy, LotRO limped along on fumes, WAR crashed, Rift crashed, SWTOR is currently crashing.
Pretty much the only MMOs that have steadily grown over time are the low budget ones that do something new and impressive. Hell, given the data we have today, one might say, the bigger the budget, the worst the MMO.
Self bumping this because I hold that it is true. People say you need a huge budget to succeed in the MMO space, yet there hasn't been a single big budget MMO that didn't start bleeding subs like crazy after the first month of launch.
Do you really believe: " Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines. " ...??
lulz!.. Lineage 2 can bearly run on some people's computers, let alone have just a few serve all those thousands.
Big fail on ur tr0ll.
I think you're not very clear on the client-server concept. You seem to think that to serve 2K players you need a machine 2000 times as powerful as what is needed to run one client. Bandwidth and server costs are a footnote in the grand scheme of running an MMO.
You need to start of with something, but you don't need a proposterous amount of processing power to serve a few thousand clients.
His question was "Do MMOs cost a lot to develop" the answer is, no. The so called "AAA" MMOs, are almost always the most disappointing MMOs. Why? Because that budget doesn't go to developing interesting game systems, thats too risky. That money goes to focus groups and research into copying WoW and releasing a game as close looking to WoW as possible.
Meanwhile, the most legendary MMOs, like DAoC, UO, EQ, were created on small budgets by SKILLED DEVELOPERS. The only difference money makes is the more money pumped into an MMO project by publishers, the more likely it is to be a boring WoW clone that is super "refined" and "polished" to the point where its void of a soul.
Can you post some data to support those statements, please?
DAoC was created with a team of 30 developers and 3.2 million dollars. Trying to create a mega blockbuster to compete with WoW costs a lot of money, and has failed each and every time. Meanwhile, creating an INTERESTING MMO and growing it over time, like Eve, or Darkfall, has been profitable, with steady upward population increase.
AoC almost bankrupted Funcom. LotRO and DDO almost destroyed Turbine. If it wasn't for the money from their original MMOs, they would have imploded.
You do realize that was 12 years ago, right? Do you also realize that EVE and Darkfall are the extreme exception? The majority of MMOs made on a low budget either failed or never made it to release.
Yeah, it was 12 years ago, and that team of 30 people, with 3 million dollars, managed to make an MMO that has features that STILL blow any modern MMO out of the water. They created something brand new, and invented many of the staples of the MMO genre while they were at it. With just a tiny bit of money and a small team. The difference? That team wasn't being choked to death by major publishers like EA who ruins everything they touch, and the team had actual talent. Why do you think so many of the early MMOs, on the most primitive tech, have features that would be considered revoutionary if put in a new game?
How many MMOs today are managing 800 man sieges? Actually...pretty much just Darkfall and Eve and DAoC... hmmm correlation there perhaps.
The majority of MMOs made on big budgets failed as well, sooo... DDO was a massive failure, Vanguard died almost out of the gate, AoC drove several of Funcom's partners to bankruptcy, LotRO limped along on fumes, WAR crashed, Rift crashed, SWTOR is currently crashing.
Pretty much the only MMOs that have steadily grown over time are the low budget ones that do something new and impressive. Hell, given the data we have today, one might say, the bigger the budget, the worst the MMO.
Self bumping this because I hold that it is true. People say you need a huge budget to succeed in the MMO space, yet there hasn't been a single big budget MMO that didn't start bleeding subs like crazy after the first month of launch.
I just want to drop this in:
"Big games cost big money. Even something as "simple" as an Xbox LIVE Arcade title can cost upwards of two or three million dollars. For disc-based games, it can be over ten times that amount."
lol @ people who think they need thousand of server farm to run a mmorpg ... You know a mmorpg is basically a excel spreadsheet with a roll dice with shiny graphic so you don't see the numbers....and the server never see the graphic in their lifetime.
The upkeep for server is a joke if you just take for example megaupload giving you free 1gig download per day would cost 100 time more than a mmorpg ( mmo usually require 10-30k/sec of bandwidth and someone playing a game for a full day will have downloaded/uploaded maybe 250-400mb total for 24 hour... )
Digital distribution cost more upkeep than mmorpg server farm especially for free mmorpg.
His question was "Do MMOs cost a lot to develop" the answer is, no. The so called "AAA" MMOs, are almost always the most disappointing MMOs. Why? Because that budget doesn't go to developing interesting game systems, thats too risky. That money goes to focus groups and research into copying WoW and releasing a game as close looking to WoW as possible.
Meanwhile, the most legendary MMOs, like DAoC, UO, EQ, were created on small budgets by SKILLED DEVELOPERS. The only difference money makes is the more money pumped into an MMO project by publishers, the more likely it is to be a boring WoW clone that is super "refined" and "polished" to the point where its void of a soul.
Can you post some data to support those statements, please?
DAoC was created with a team of 30 developers and 3.2 million dollars. Trying to create a mega blockbuster to compete with WoW costs a lot of money, and has failed each and every time. Meanwhile, creating an INTERESTING MMO and growing it over time, like Eve, or Darkfall, has been profitable, with steady upward population increase.
AoC almost bankrupted Funcom. LotRO and DDO almost destroyed Turbine. If it wasn't for the money from their original MMOs, they would have imploded.
You do realize that was 12 years ago, right? Do you also realize that EVE and Darkfall are the extreme exception? The majority of MMOs made on a low budget either failed or never made it to release.
Yeah, it was 12 years ago, and that team of 30 people, with 3 million dollars, managed to make an MMO that has features that STILL blow any modern MMO out of the water. They created something brand new, and invented many of the staples of the MMO genre while they were at it. With just a tiny bit of money and a small team. The difference? That team wasn't being choked to death by major publishers like EA who ruins everything they touch, and the team had actual talent. Why do you think so many of the early MMOs, on the most primitive tech, have features that would be considered revoutionary if put in a new game?
How many MMOs today are managing 800 man sieges? Actually...pretty much just Darkfall and Eve and DAoC... hmmm correlation there perhaps.
The majority of MMOs made on big budgets failed as well, sooo... DDO was a massive failure, Vanguard died almost out of the gate, AoC drove several of Funcom's partners to bankruptcy, LotRO limped along on fumes, WAR crashed, Rift crashed, SWTOR is currently crashing.
Pretty much the only MMOs that have steadily grown over time are the low budget ones that do something new and impressive. Hell, given the data we have today, one might say, the bigger the budget, the worst the MMO.
Self bumping this because I hold that it is true. People say you need a huge budget to succeed in the MMO space, yet there hasn't been a single big budget MMO that didn't start bleeding subs like crazy after the first month of launch.
A bizarre gauge at that, as almost all MMOs after 2004, regardless of budget, suffer that fate. However, the low budget MMOs are less likely to get completed, less likely to get to launch, and less likely to be of a quality to succeed for any length of time.
For every link you can provide to a successful low-budget MMO, there are a dozen that failed and countless more that never made it to market. It seems like you are ignoring that part of it completely.
Yes, it is possible to make an MMO cheaply. Will it get released? Will it be of any reasonable level of quality? Will anyone want to play it? Those are the areas where one has to realize there is a distinct difference between possible and probable.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
His question was "Do MMOs cost a lot to develop" the answer is, no. The so called "AAA" MMOs, are almost always the most disappointing MMOs. Why? Because that budget doesn't go to developing interesting game systems, thats too risky. That money goes to focus groups and research into copying WoW and releasing a game as close looking to WoW as possible.
Meanwhile, the most legendary MMOs, like DAoC, UO, EQ, were created on small budgets by SKILLED DEVELOPERS. The only difference money makes is the more money pumped into an MMO project by publishers, the more likely it is to be a boring WoW clone that is super "refined" and "polished" to the point where its void of a soul.
Can you post some data to support those statements, please?
DAoC was created with a team of 30 developers and 3.2 million dollars. Trying to create a mega blockbuster to compete with WoW costs a lot of money, and has failed each and every time. Meanwhile, creating an INTERESTING MMO and growing it over time, like Eve, or Darkfall, has been profitable, with steady upward population increase.
AoC almost bankrupted Funcom. LotRO and DDO almost destroyed Turbine. If it wasn't for the money from their original MMOs, they would have imploded.
You do realize that was 12 years ago, right? Do you also realize that EVE and Darkfall are the extreme exception? The majority of MMOs made on a low budget either failed or never made it to release.
Yeah, it was 12 years ago, and that team of 30 people, with 3 million dollars, managed to make an MMO that ...
Stop right there. You're talking about making a commercial MMO, right? Not some basement project with five friends and the mismatched amatuer crap their buddies write off an on for them, correct? This is a true attempt to offer a game that goes to market, yes?
Do your own math.
You have 30 people on your team.
How much are you paying them?
How long will it take to make the game?
Barring any other expenses at this point, do you already see how this starts to add up?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
lol @ people who think they need thousand of server farm to run a mmorpg ... You know a mmorpg is basically a excel spreadsheet with a roll dice with shiny graphic so you don't see the numbers....and the server never see the graphic in their lifetime.
The upkeep for server is a joke if you just take for example megaupload giving you free 1gig download per day would cost 100 time more than a mmorpg ( mmo usually require 10-30k/sec of bandwidth and someone playing a game for a full day will have downloaded/uploaded maybe 250-400mb total for 24 hour... )
Digital distribution cost more upkeep than mmorpg server farm especially for free mmorpg.
Holy cow! I have to tell my teammates this. We're doing it all wrong. Thanks for the tip, myrmx!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Trust me, 1 man can create the best MMO ever without any money. Obviously he'd need to be pretty good at everything in terms of game development, but if he is then damn he could make a good one. Granted it would take a while depending on how big the world would be, but it would definitely be possible. Just about determination, how much do you want it?
Self bumping this because I hold that it is true. People say you need a huge budget to succeed in the MMO space, yet there hasn't been a single big budget MMO that didn't start bleeding subs like crazy after the first month of launch.
There haven't been any MMOs (or games, period) which didn't bleed players immediately upon release, so that's pretty irrelevant.
You were on the right track when you claimed you didn't need a huge budget to create an MMO. Haven & Hearth was created by 2 or 3 people. But even though it's possible to create something with a small team, you're not going to achieve the magnitude of success that a AAA MMO can. You can potentially achieve a profitable game though so if that's how we're defining "success in the MMO space" then I agree that's possible.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
op: " i want to understand whats the really expensive part of it? "
MMORPG cost is mainly in the server farm & IT end of it. Maintaining the game, etc.
LOL to the fella above me that thinks a server cost $2k... (<--derp!), as a typical blade server starts @ about $12k per until and you need hundreds of them to make up one shard/server for one game...!
For every game server (or shard), there then has to be another 100 blade server to support that shard. A typical server farm for an AAA title will cost $10 million alone. And if the game in question uses an open worl design, then double that cost as they require more hardware and more technological "feature".
(btw... a game with a zone, is a cheap game compared to one with an open world. (zones = cheap game))
Ultimately depends on the game and the implementation, a Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines.
But then again that server was created in 2004-5 and is optimized for that era, in programming there is a infinite number of solutions to a given problem, for example you can handle mobs in a instance as mobs in any other part of the world, just as records in a database, or you can create a huge data structure for every instance that potencially hogs up several cores and hundreds of megabytes of memory.
For convenience and time investment, these days developers use solutions similar to the second option, increasing the resource requirement for a single server.
But it is optional.
Just saying!
Do you really believe: " Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines. " ...??
lulz!.. Lineage 2 can bearly run on some people's computers, let alone have just a few serve all those thousands.
Big fail on ur tr0ll.
I think you are a bit unclear on the concept.....
And that is the bright young generation that will code teh gamez in the future...
Flame on!
The one^ that you still have not rebuttaled? The same adult that has been gaming since D&D and knows how "hilarious" your comments are/where..? So much so that you are now trying to chide me, than try and answer a direct threat to ur claim.
I think you mean "Workstation" where an artist, or coder would be working. That is not the same as a "server" in which the whole gaming is living and breathing on..
Like Lineage2 is runing on $5k of equipment... thats hilarious.!!
But, go ahead and make phun of me, just as long as other who pass by gleam sum info.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
Originally posted by Garvon3They created something brand new, and invented many of the staples of the MMO genre while they were at it. With just a tiny bit of money and a small team. The difference?
The only difference is that they were the first.
You can hardly fail in creating "new" when you happen to be the first and only one on the market...
Also, setting up your own specific measures to suit your conclusions won't make them more valid, on the contrary.
i know for a fact... dell australia (me being australian) top of the range blade servers start from about 7.5k, you guys in the US get things considerably cheaper in terms of hardware.. not to mention thats top of the range... mmorpg's do not need top of the range..... i believe WoW is still an mmorpg and emulators for that exsist.. i have a friend that runs private WoW servers i think he has about 6 or so servers running off 3 machines... with peak players of about 2500 on some servers sometimes.. and they're just fairly average PC's i believe one of them is still a core 2 duo and his players dont experience any kind of issues playing on them...
i think you find blade clusters are generally required for more sandboxy type games like EvE which doesnt have seperate servers for each "realm" but moreso a massive cluster of servers linked together to make 1 massive world... that being said retail WoW has about 13,500 server blades for a game that holds 10.1million players still but not many games have that kind or need that kind of server power and blizzard makes more then enough money to justify it
also on a sidenote, buying 13,500 server blades for instance... even top of the line stuff, i can gaurantee you they aint paying full retail :P
It is funny seeing people not realise what making a modern game takes.
Sure you CAN make one in your bedroom with blender and Unity but it's not going to sell any copies and if you think you can make a game with your friends while you all work 10 hours a day and do it in your spare time, give it a try for a few months and see how burned out you are working 20 hours a day and having almost nothing to show for it.
I have worked for a large game developer that at the time only created single player games and they had HUGE budgets, a breakdown of the staff needed to create a single player open world game follows(this is rough guesswork from what I personally saw):
Artists x 12
Programmers x 12
Level Designers x 12
UI & Tools x 6
QA testers x 20
QA Lead Testers x 4
Department Managers x 6
Audio/Sound x 4
IT Dept x 4
General Higher ups including writers and producers x 6
Admin Staff x 4
Cleaners x 2
Each of these people requires a computer that is suitable to the job they are doing, each dev requires a console dev kit if they are making a console game. Each person must have a phone on there desk. Everyone playing the game testing or developing will need at least a small TV / second monitor.
General wage costs Per Anum:
Artists £40k +
Programmers £40k +
Level Designers £30k +
UI & Tools £35k +
QA Testers £12k +
QA Lead £25k +
Managers £35k +
Audio/Sound £35k +
IT Dept £25k +
Higher ups £50k + profit share
Admin Staff £18k +
Cleaners £12k +
This was at a company that created there own game engine, but there is still the added cost of voice actors, licensing music and sounds as well as other copyrighted material.
If you are making an MMO you will also require Network Engineers, Servers and Customer Service reps, community managers and moderators.
I have missed out any marketting cost as I have no idea what that kind of thing even involves.
From the statistics of a non profit open source MMO emulator project that cannot be named here. For a server with a peak population of about 1000 but more usually 2-500 players at any one time, the costs of running that along with an open test server and a private dev server is less than $1000 a month in rental charges.
From the statistics of a non profit open source MMO emulator project that cannot be named here. For a server with a peak population of about 1000 but more usually 2-500 players at any one time, the costs of running that along with an open test server and a private dev server is less than $1000 a month in rental charges.
As no MMO was made in that scenario, I'm not seeing how that's remotely relevant.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Originally posted by SlickShoes It is funny seeing people not realise what making a modern game takes.
Sure you CAN make one in your bedroom with blender and Unity but it's not going to sell any copies and if you think you can make a game with your friends while you all work 10 hours a day and do it in your spare time, give it a try for a few months and see how burned out you are working 20 hours a day and having almost nothing to show for it.
I have worked for a large game developer that at the time only created single player games and they had HUGE budgets, a breakdown of the staff needed to create a single player open world game follows(this is rough guesswork from what I personally saw):
Artists x 12
Programmers x 12
Level Designers x 12
UI & Tools x 6
QA testers x 20
QA Lead Testers x 4 Department Managers x 6 Audio/Sound x 4 IT Dept x 4 General Higher ups including writers and producers x 6 Admin Staff x 4 Cleaners x 2 Each of these people requires a computer that is suitable to the job they are doing, each dev requires a console dev kit if they are making a console game. Each person must have a phone on there desk. Everyone playing the game testing or developing will need at least a small TV / second monitor. General wage costs Per Anum: Artists £40k + Programmers £40k + Level Designers £30k + UI & Tools £35k + QA Testers £12k + QA Lead £25k + Managers £35k + Audio/Sound £35k + IT Dept £25k + Higher ups £50k + profit share Admin Staff £18k + Cleaners £12k +
This was at a company that created there own game engine, but there is still the added cost of voice actors, licensing music and sounds as well as other copyrighted material.
If you are making an MMO you will also require Network Engineers, Servers and Customer Service reps, community managers and moderators.
I have missed out any marketting cost as I have no idea what that kind of thing even involves.
Yeh, overheads are gigantic. I help run a small engineering dept. and you have to factor in teabags lol. Our overheads for 3 of us (when you include directors wages, partial admin people costs,etc) is an A4 page long list. Wages, with tax, NI, Directors contributions, comes to around £17k per month. That's to run a cost centre of 3 people on average wage. We get charged £200 a month IT support...i do it! Building depreciation, Vehicle cost, vehicle depreciation, phones, mobiles, room rental, electricity, even get charged for the use of time of the accountant to give us our wages pmsl. The list is like 30 lines long.
Although more on topic, if the programmers and artists got £40k+, they must have all been senior level, else i would've said around £30k personally.
I think the only viable way to make a game as an indy now is to just get it out there for free, then hope for a fanbase to establish, then use that as a springboard to create a commercial project. i.e. not worth it if you hope to profit. I wouldn't dream of making a startup business based on investment/loans though, you would need your head testing lol.
From the statistics of a non profit open source MMO emulator project that cannot be named here. For a server with a peak population of about 1000 but more usually 2-500 players at any one time, the costs of running that along with an open test server and a private dev server is less than $1000 a month in rental charges.
As no MMO was made in that scenario, I'm not seeing how that's remotely relevant.
It is relevant in that there are costs relating to hosting the servers which have been referred to as a cost of creating an MMO in a number of posts in this thread, all I did was throw in some easily verifiable numbers. You will if you reflect notice I did not refer in the slightest to the number of volunteer man hours donated in order to create from scratch the serverside software required to interact with the retail client in that particular project nor the countless hours of bug testing and community relations work because I have no idea what that is or would cost so I thought it best to stick to facts.
From the statistics of a non profit open source MMO emulator project that cannot be named here. For a server with a peak population of about 1000 but more usually 2-500 players at any one time, the costs of running that along with an open test server and a private dev server is less than $1000 a month in rental charges.
As no MMO was made in that scenario, I'm not seeing how that's remotely relevant.
It is relevant in that there are costs relating to hosting the servers which have been referred to as a cost of creating an MMO in a number of posts in this thread, all I did was throw in some easily verifiable numbers. You will if you reflect notice I did not refer in the slightest to the number of volunteer man hours donated in order to create from scratch the serverside software required to interact with the retail client in that particular project nor the countless hours of bug testing and community relations work because I have no idea what that is or would cost so I thought it best to stick to facts.
Ah, ok. I misunderstood what you were presenting there. My mistake. Thanks for clarifying that.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Comments
Ultimately depends on the game and the implementation, a Lineage 2 server with 2k people online can run on two ~1ghz machines.
But then again that server was created in 2004-5 and is optimized for that era, in programming there is a infinite number of solutions to a given problem, for example you can handle mobs in a instance as mobs in any other part of the world, just as records in a database, or you can create a huge data structure for every instance that potencially hogs up several cores and hundreds of megabytes of memory.
For convenience and time investment, these days developers use solutions similar to the second option, increasing the resource requirement for a single server.
But it is optional.
Just saying!
??
Bro.. u ned the servers to test ur code once you get to a certain level of development (pre-alpha?). In which, a truncated running server needs to be in place to bring things into their fold. That step takes TONS of cash (almost always millions).
Again.. that is for just a very limited test server. (Just enough hardware to get a few zones working to stat testing & coding.)
I think Jake Song is doing it right. Using the technology most available in the right spots, & server tech which allows for an open world. meta game, upon meta in that one. (ArcheAge)
Same with GW2 with the recently announced World vs World gameplay..
Then you have to give PlanetSide2 the big credit right now. All the bashing John Smedley took... He finally listen and invested SOE's money into an phenominal Open World engine they call Forge Light.
EverQuest 3 will also be based off the same engine and that boggles my mind as to how awsome EQ Nxt is going to be. (Open world EQ to roam in, will be a wild experience in this game.)
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
I think you are a bit unclear on the concept.....
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
And that is the bright young generation that will code teh gamez in the future...
Flame on!
The expensive part.. is the team..
50 Devs is a reasonable team for a AAA title, inorder to have it developed in any reasonable amount of time.
As each dev will require highily specialized degrees, and experiences they will not come cheap, salaries, hardware used to create, and temp reasources such as voice actors, and body models for texturing, and what have you its quite simple to see such a high budget.
Still... 40 million is a little high, i think only the top of the AAA titles have this sorta budget - the larger the budget the more play the team has into what features they can develop as to the funding available to purchase those reasources...
Time is a big issue.. remember if it takes you too long to get the game into the market, your competitors might make your game outdated before it even hits the shelves.. i've seen allot of that latily.. games that are regressing the genre becuase they spent TOO long in dev -- The only exception to this rule is Blizzard titles - they are the only ones who can spend 10+ years on a title, and still push out a successful hit that rewrite the genre.
Self bumping this because I hold that it is true. People say you need a huge budget to succeed in the MMO space, yet there hasn't been a single big budget MMO that didn't start bleeding subs like crazy after the first month of launch.
I think you're not very clear on the client-server concept. You seem to think that to serve 2K players you need a machine 2000 times as powerful as what is needed to run one client. Bandwidth and server costs are a footnote in the grand scheme of running an MMO.
You need to start of with something, but you don't need a proposterous amount of processing power to serve a few thousand clients.
I just want to drop this in:
"Big games cost big money. Even something as "simple" as an Xbox LIVE Arcade title can cost upwards of two or three million dollars. For disc-based games, it can be over ten times that amount."
From here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
Servers, advertising..
Looking for good ARPGs!
lol @ people who think they need thousand of server farm to run a mmorpg ... You know a mmorpg is basically a excel spreadsheet with a roll dice with shiny graphic so you don't see the numbers....and the server never see the graphic in their lifetime.
The upkeep for server is a joke if you just take for example megaupload giving you free 1gig download per day would cost 100 time more than a mmorpg ( mmo usually require 10-30k/sec of bandwidth and someone playing a game for a full day will have downloaded/uploaded maybe 250-400mb total for 24 hour... )
Digital distribution cost more upkeep than mmorpg server farm especially for free mmorpg.
A bizarre gauge at that, as almost all MMOs after 2004, regardless of budget, suffer that fate. However, the low budget MMOs are less likely to get completed, less likely to get to launch, and less likely to be of a quality to succeed for any length of time.
For every link you can provide to a successful low-budget MMO, there are a dozen that failed and countless more that never made it to market. It seems like you are ignoring that part of it completely.
Yes, it is possible to make an MMO cheaply. Will it get released? Will it be of any reasonable level of quality? Will anyone want to play it? Those are the areas where one has to realize there is a distinct difference between possible and probable.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Stop right there. You're talking about making a commercial MMO, right? Not some basement project with five friends and the mismatched amatuer crap their buddies write off an on for them, correct? This is a true attempt to offer a game that goes to market, yes?
Do your own math.
You have 30 people on your team.
How much are you paying them?
How long will it take to make the game?
Barring any other expenses at this point, do you already see how this starts to add up?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Holy cow! I have to tell my teammates this. We're doing it all wrong. Thanks for the tip, myrmx!
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Trust me, 1 man can create the best MMO ever without any money. Obviously he'd need to be pretty good at everything in terms of game development, but if he is then damn he could make a good one. Granted it would take a while depending on how big the world would be, but it would definitely be possible. Just about determination, how much do you want it?
There haven't been any MMOs (or games, period) which didn't bleed players immediately upon release, so that's pretty irrelevant.
You were on the right track when you claimed you didn't need a huge budget to create an MMO. Haven & Hearth was created by 2 or 3 people. But even though it's possible to create something with a small team, you're not going to achieve the magnitude of success that a AAA MMO can. You can potentially achieve a profitable game though so if that's how we're defining "success in the MMO space" then I agree that's possible.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The one^ that you still have not rebuttaled? The same adult that has been gaming since D&D and knows how "hilarious" your comments are/where..? So much so that you are now trying to chide me, than try and answer a direct threat to ur claim.
I think you mean "Workstation" where an artist, or coder would be working. That is not the same as a "server" in which the whole gaming is living and breathing on..
Like Lineage2 is runing on $5k of equipment... thats hilarious.!!
But, go ahead and make phun of me, just as long as other who pass by gleam sum info.
"No they are not charity. That is where the whales come in. (I play for free. Whales pays.) Devs get a business. That is how it works."
-Nariusseldon
100 blades per shard, 12k USD per blade??....source?
The only difference is that they were the first.
You can hardly fail in creating "new" when you happen to be the first and only one on the market...
Also, setting up your own specific measures to suit your conclusions won't make them more valid, on the contrary.
i know for a fact... dell australia (me being australian) top of the range blade servers start from about 7.5k, you guys in the US get things considerably cheaper in terms of hardware.. not to mention thats top of the range... mmorpg's do not need top of the range..... i believe WoW is still an mmorpg and emulators for that exsist.. i have a friend that runs private WoW servers i think he has about 6 or so servers running off 3 machines... with peak players of about 2500 on some servers sometimes.. and they're just fairly average PC's i believe one of them is still a core 2 duo and his players dont experience any kind of issues playing on them...
i think you find blade clusters are generally required for more sandboxy type games like EvE which doesnt have seperate servers for each "realm" but moreso a massive cluster of servers linked together to make 1 massive world... that being said retail WoW has about 13,500 server blades for a game that holds 10.1million players still but not many games have that kind or need that kind of server power and blizzard makes more then enough money to justify it
also on a sidenote, buying 13,500 server blades for instance... even top of the line stuff, i can gaurantee you they aint paying full retail :P
It is funny seeing people not realise what making a modern game takes.
Sure you CAN make one in your bedroom with blender and Unity but it's not going to sell any copies and if you think you can make a game with your friends while you all work 10 hours a day and do it in your spare time, give it a try for a few months and see how burned out you are working 20 hours a day and having almost nothing to show for it.
I have worked for a large game developer that at the time only created single player games and they had HUGE budgets, a breakdown of the staff needed to create a single player open world game follows(this is rough guesswork from what I personally saw):
Artists x 12
Programmers x 12
Level Designers x 12
UI & Tools x 6
QA testers x 20
QA Lead Testers x 4
Department Managers x 6
Audio/Sound x 4
IT Dept x 4
General Higher ups including writers and producers x 6
Admin Staff x 4
Cleaners x 2
Each of these people requires a computer that is suitable to the job they are doing, each dev requires a console dev kit if they are making a console game. Each person must have a phone on there desk. Everyone playing the game testing or developing will need at least a small TV / second monitor.
General wage costs Per Anum:
Artists £40k +
Programmers £40k +
Level Designers £30k +
UI & Tools £35k +
QA Testers £12k +
QA Lead £25k +
Managers £35k +
Audio/Sound £35k +
IT Dept £25k +
Higher ups £50k + profit share
Admin Staff £18k +
Cleaners £12k +
This was at a company that created there own game engine, but there is still the added cost of voice actors, licensing music and sounds as well as other copyrighted material.
If you are making an MMO you will also require Network Engineers, Servers and Customer Service reps, community managers and moderators.
I have missed out any marketting cost as I have no idea what that kind of thing even involves.
As no MMO was made in that scenario, I'm not seeing how that's remotely relevant.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Yeh, overheads are gigantic. I help run a small engineering dept. and you have to factor in teabags lol. Our overheads for 3 of us (when you include directors wages, partial admin people costs,etc) is an A4 page long list. Wages, with tax, NI, Directors contributions, comes to around £17k per month. That's to run a cost centre of 3 people on average wage. We get charged £200 a month IT support...i do it! Building depreciation, Vehicle cost, vehicle depreciation, phones, mobiles, room rental, electricity, even get charged for the use of time of the accountant to give us our wages pmsl. The list is like 30 lines long.
Although more on topic, if the programmers and artists got £40k+, they must have all been senior level, else i would've said around £30k personally.
I think the only viable way to make a game as an indy now is to just get it out there for free, then hope for a fanbase to establish, then use that as a springboard to create a commercial project. i.e. not worth it if you hope to profit. I wouldn't dream of making a startup business based on investment/loans though, you would need your head testing lol.
As no MMO was made in that scenario, I'm not seeing how that's remotely relevant.
It is relevant in that there are costs relating to hosting the servers which have been referred to as a cost of creating an MMO in a number of posts in this thread, all I did was throw in some easily verifiable numbers. You will if you reflect notice I did not refer in the slightest to the number of volunteer man hours donated in order to create from scratch the serverside software required to interact with the retail client in that particular project nor the countless hours of bug testing and community relations work because I have no idea what that is or would cost so I thought it best to stick to facts.Ah, ok. I misunderstood what you were presenting there. My mistake. Thanks for clarifying that.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre