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remember when making a mmo did not cost 100m
hercules
Member UncommonPosts: 4,925
Was a time mmo were made by ppl who loved the genre. they worked with skeleton crew low wages long hours and produced magic.there an article on how eve creators spent days sleeping in the office.nowadays companies spent 200m and produce buggy unoriginal games.
Comments
Well, all games used to require far less people and time to make. Remember the NES days? When an 8-man team could shove a game out in less than a year and still sell it for 50$ a pop?
There was a lot of scrilla to make back then... proving the next big-money invention will be a time machine that allows you to market now-products to people in a time where they actually had disposable income.
As for originality... yeah, but only because older MMOs were literally "the original". There is not much you can branch out into to make a truly original game anymore... besides what the geniuses behind Katamari Damacy come out with. Every now and then you get a Portal, but then you get a Portal 2, and we are back at square 1.
Writer / Musician / Game Designer
Now Playing: Skyrim, Wurm Online, Tropico 4
Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Please don't glamourize the horrid working conditions that the industry is just now getting away from.
Thanks for doing your part!
I couldn't disagree more.
You have more and more studios having trouble financing new titles because Investors have become far too powerful. You have Publishers holding the developers by the balls and "forcing" them to milk a popular IP until dry by releasing a new game on a yearly basis. Developers, especially MMO Developers, are having a terrible time innovating, let alone even trying to change the classic formula a little. More and more jobs being cut out on important projects that forces entire team to reconsider their plans. Etc.
If there's anything the industry should get away from, it's definitively the state it's currently in.
I remember when MMO's had a few thousand members and those members didn't demand high production value.
That is funny, cause games like MO, Darkfall, and Ryzom could use subs. If high producation shouldnt matter, there is a slew of folks around here bitching about sandboxes., that these games would like to have as customers.
Yet there are others like Quizzical, who found his game in Uncharted Waters(Plug for ya Quiz...hope I got name right).
I really dont understand all the bitching about gaming. It is in a lot better shape than when I started in the late 70s.
Asking Devs to make AAA sandbox titles is like trying to get fine dining on a McDonalds dollar menu budget.
I created a massive world for mulitplay using the NWN toolset (the first one) with over 760 areas, scripting, player building, etc. It took me over 3 years but I only put in about 10 hours a week. The only thing I didnt do was make my own models and music. It cost me nothing.
Yup, some of the best games ever made were dirt cheap.
Ultima Online
Everquest
SWG.
I remember when MMO gamers were gamers, not armchair stockbrokers and tellers of the future...
I remember when the people from my MMO gaming generation didn't have this feeling of entitlement and were not so bitter...
I also remember when MMO gamers didn't bitch and moan about every little thing or hate on people for not liking or playing the correct game...
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Those people are still around. Check Vanguard, lots of people like that, true gamers from old mantality.
I remember too.
the poster formerly known as melangel :P
Sell high, buy lowWhat gives you the idea the software industry is getting away from that? I can tell you first hand that long hours are still very much a part of the business. Only cool part now is you can work from home sometimes. Salaries can vary widely depending on where you work, how skilled you are and how much experience you have.
There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville
I started gaming in the early 80s. Played my first video game as cute little 2 year old toddler in '82. I'd say some things have improved while others have gotten much worse.
As far as MMOs go, though, I would love to see a good PvE sandpark. FFA PvP is not my thing. I'm not hugely into PvP as it is. Its more of a "something to do on the side" thing for me in MMOs.
I personally dont care about building castles and trying to defend them from other players. I dont have the heart (or lack thereof) to take everything another person has worked hard to obtain just because I can. I dont find amusement in making other people's lives miserable.
I do like to explore. I like to fight monsters and unearth rare treasures. I love traveling and training with a group of friends who's social prowess goes beyond teabagging and barking insults at their own comrades for the most insignificant mistakes. I like leveling up, and taking my time in doing so. I also love having something to look forward to. I dont want the carrots to stop after a single month of play. I like the thrill of fighting a tough monster that knowing death would be troublesome brings about, and I like to be rewarded adequately for taking that risk.
No game that matches the above has come along in a long while. The last big one I know about was Final Fantasy XI.
Today the dev are jist hired drones making recycled materials that some ceo with little mmo knowledge tells them
Yes the makers of uo, eq and eve made llittle and worked long but they had freedom to be creative and did get their deserved rewards in large bank accounts when this games proved successful.
With today's technology, it still doesn't take 100 million to make a MMORPG.
Honestly, what it takes is the right people and the right (financial) circumstances AND/OR time.
The right people meaning...
1) A talented enough programmer
2) A skilled artist (graphics)
2b) Enough money to hire someone for this task or buy models online.
3) A skilled artist (music / sound)
3b) Enough money to hire someone for this task or buy packages online.
4) All of the above to be hard working, devoted, and have either Time * Free Time or Time * Full Time + Money.
If someone is working full time, they need circumstance or money to fund their lives until the game profits. If someone is working part time, then they need time to finish.
If it's a team working on the game and not a small 2-3 or solo developer...
5) Organization. Leadership. Communication. Work Happiness.
Keeping a team together, especially if they aren't payed (and even if they are) is extremely difficult.
Even professional teams and businesses close shop due to organizational/leadership difficulty. Imagine how much worse it is for indie teams plagued with even more problems (like the inability to keep a team together for 1+ years development) or gathering talented people for free sharing a vision for the same game.
It's certainly not impossible, but the variables required (Hardwork & Committment OR Money) makes making any game a difficult task.
$100 million? No, not really.
Circumstances and perhaps SOME money or extra hard work/time/awesomeness to compensate for no money? Absolutely.
With all the $100 million developers, I wouldn't be surprised if most of that money was wasted on the needless things businesses waste money on. Not that they can help it (sometimes they cant, and it just takes a ton of money wasted to actually do something) but still.
Technically, you could put a game or MMORPG together with a much much smaller budget than $100 million, and still have it look nice, be plenty full of features, etc. You just have to compromise on some things in favor of others. For example, but toning down the graphics or not having an expensive IP, you can instead use that money to develop more robust features and depth in the game. It may just be A or AA graphics quality instead of AAA, but that AAAA feature list can more than make up for it.
It's not a coincidence that the greatest MMORPG's of our time were made with a fraction of the budget of some of the most expensive failures in the gaming industry.
I agree except that you need 2 talented enough programmer and one master programmer. Bad coding is really what kills most indie MMOs. And MMOs are really hard to code.