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Do gamers really understand the cost of making a MMO??
Darkcrystal
Member UncommonPosts: 963
First I like to say, lets keep this civil, anyone who trolls, I will ignore you.
I have been gamer who turned dev, I was like some, and thought some games may not be worth the price, but I paid it anyways, because I wanted to play it. Now a days even more so, I see people saying a game is to much when its 20 bucks or 40 bucks. I also see people say they a game for free. They see a game free it better be free. There is no real good game that is free... They need to make money to stay in business . I have been on this forum for to long. I have seen a comment trend of comments here about this very subject about the cost of a game.
Let me begin. I have a game company now.. Just last week, for one employee I needed to buy a program that cost over $3500 bucks. I also have to buy all of this for myself. That is one piece of software. I'm making games that are free for real, I make money off advertisement. Which is not much, but I have to do this to make a name. I will never get my money for years. This holds true to a lot of company's. This will only last a short time until your maxed out and done for unless you have a lot of capitol or ways to find publishers to help you. The issue with a publisher, you have to listen to them and release when they say so, bugs or not. This is why some indies have it made at times because they can make the game they want. The issue with indies a lot have to depend on there own money or Kickstarter or both. What ruins Kickstarter are they wannabe companys we all have seen to much of those right, which upset me greatly. Because it ruins it for legit people.
Now I have worked for many companys and been in the business a long time. I for one have made a company and starting small by making Android games, the reason I'm going this is to build a strong company to be able to make bigger games and make the money with out needing a publisher and KickStarter. I have the experience and so does my team. So I just wish people would understand the cost to really making a game from indie to AAA. The price of software is not cheap and to pay people, they need to pay a nice salary or we would walk. I was making 100k a year. If I did not I would of never worked on any of the games I have as a programmer ever... The old saying goes you get what you paid for.
Anyways, I just want to hear from other games or developers about understanding the cost of games, and why so many think that games should be free or really cheap.. When the fact is a company needs to be paid for there work.
I have right now over 50k in software. for just myself. Have I made it all back not even close I lost money.. so far..
Comments
Good post. I know I never really thought about this much until Kickstarter came along and I backed several that raised millions of dollars each which I assumed would be plenty to make a great game but when you look at a transparent breakdown of their expenses a million dollars or two doesn't really go that far in game development.
I think a lot of people do not realize at all how expensive games are to make and run especially with the level of polish and graphical fidelity many people demand. Of course developers/publishers have contributed to this lack of understanding a lot by pushing psychologically manipulative (at the best of times) F2P models rather than simply charging people a straight-forward fair price.
All this is fine, we all know it cost money BIG money,
- F2P is a bad trick played on the players. This is not the way to do it. Why do they call it FREE to Play if it's not a trick.
- Release a game that is done, not half done, this is a trick too.
Make a game or don't !.....If it's above your head, get the hell out of the business !
For someone that supposedly used to make $100k a year your grammar really is terrible.
To your point, companies can't set the value of their own product, the market does that. If people aren't willing to pay $20 for your product, whatever it may be, you obviously set the value too high. Whenever anybody does something they need to feel like they are the ones that are profiting... if you put out a product that is mediocre you can't charge a premium price and this is exactly what seems to have become the status quo for the game industry. If you are putting out a quality product for a reasonable price, people will take notice and you will come out ahead. This is the whole basis of the free market economy; competition breeds competition and improvement. The good companies will thrive and the bad companies will go out of business, better luck next time, etc.
Starting a company isn't a guarantee of success. You will be probably be in the red for a number of years before you start seeing any profits and this of course assumes that your company is successful.
It doesn't seem all that likely to me that players would modify their wants based on how much it takes to make a game. Players will still want what they want. It does seem likely that players would quickly abandon developers that promise more than it's possible to deliver for the amount of money a developer has though.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
That money is certainly not going to the typical programmer. There are a few people up the top making money, but your typical programmer (one of the cogs in the machine) is making far less than you probably think and working worse hours than you would imagine as well.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
IMHO, this a problem the industry has made by itself. All microtransaction games are labeled as " Free 2 Play " and players are finally asking developers to stand by what they say. It would have so much better to highlight the option of being able to pay what they want, when they want, instead of saying the game is free. Free can easily be a misleading word and it has finally come back to bite the industry.
I know this is a bit of a personal question, but do you check out gamasutra very often? I check it out almost every day and every week I read horror stories of startups trying to go the mobile --> pc route.
OP you're doing it wrong and that is just a syndrom why there are thousands upon thousands like you, small indie companies, with mediocre products at best that fail to deliver a quality product that is required to see those great results from.
When you said: "I was making 100k a year. If I did not I would of never worked on any of the games I have as a programmer ever..." You made it clear why you are in this "business", this "job". You are in it for the money. With that type of attitude, you'll most likely never do something amazing or break some records in the gaming market.
Call me when you are in it for making a game that you yourself one day you'll gladly enjoy over how much $ you can earn from it and then you might understand why us gamers, especially today are ruthless to developers as you. The handouts, the $ you seek have to be deserved and earned.
You can blow out millions or just few thousands of $ and deliver amazing game. If you are not a gamer at heart, you do not understand the market you are aiming to create and appeal to. So, rather than asking if us gamers really understand the cost of making a MMO, you ask yourself do you truly understand how to deliver a game worthy us the gamers to spend $ on?
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
This is a good point to bring up.
The birth of F2P is what is causing problems in the first place. It devalues the end product in the eyes of the consumer; I mean, if they can put it out for free it must not have been that hard to make, right? That's the style of thinking you dredge up when you start tossing the word "free" around like they've been doing for the last 4 or so years in the MMO market.
I will tell you this right now, the future isn't bright in the MMO world and it won't be for at least another 5 years. The genre is going to crash and burn due to oversaturation and burnout before it recovers.
It's not hard to make a game cheaply. What is hard is to make a game cheaply that isn't terrible. It's really easy to bloat the cost of production really fast when you start saying, oh but the game would be so much better if we added this.
The real challenge that game developers face is not just trying to make the best game that they can. It's trying to make the best game that they can, while having a business model that can bring in as much revenue as possible, and while spending as little to create and maintain the game as possible. That last point is a big deal, even if consumers don't directly see the total cost of creating a game.
or Maybe the company needs a new CEO that wont push devs to release crap until they are finished and polished? I might be wrong but i dare say most developers want to do a good job with the game they spend years making, but the bosses want money fast so they dont care about quality. They are the bosses so their word is law, until the game flops. Specially when bosses dont know how to code a game, all they do is give orders. Again, i might be wrong, but it reminds me of Riccitielo lol
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
There's a big difference between saying "this game is terrible" and "this game isn't nearly as good as that other game". Someone who insists that all games and all game developers are awful is not being reasonable. But someone who likes quite a few games--meaning, likes games as they are today, not just nostalgia--and criticizes other games for not measuring up to the ones he likes is being much more reasonable.
We do this in other arenas all the time. For example, I could never be nearly as good of an NFL quarterback as JaMarcus Russell. Surely that doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to say that he's not as good as Aaron Rodgers.
When I buy a game or research before buying a game I don't take into account the employees who put the game together (other then how well they put games together in the past). I just want to play a good game, period. As a consumer I balance my budget against the cost and/or continued cost of playing a game. It's one thing to be nearly the only game in town and another when there are tons of developers selling their wares as the next best thing. It's an open market so we pick and choose.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
JaMarcus Russell was so terrible, I think anyone on this forum could be a better QB than him lol.
A lot of great points have been made from too many of you too quote.
I will add this: I do not blame the programmers, I blame management, for the quality of the industry as it stands right now. Management is generally disconnected from what the cost of making a GOOD game is, not just a game, but a good one.
Furthermore, I blame the consumer for continuing to buy rushed garbage in order for these companies to make a quarterly report and then defend these companies in a heroic blaze of fanboism. I am guilty of the former & not the latter, I bought the new Sim City. What can I say, I was a fan of the IP. I learned my lesson, voiced my disgust with how the game was handled and avoided The Sims 4, other consumers did not. If we allow these companies to continuously deceive us, then they will continue to abuse the "F2P" category. EA will continue to rush garbage out the door and hope for miracle patches to save the day later. And unfinished games like Destiny will break records and cause other large companies to take note.
A little background on myself. I worked in a private equity firm where we funded all types of ventures, including game studios. I specifically worked as a risk profile analyst and stock analyst. Every month there would be a meeting where we would sit down with these small studios and "hear them out", and every month it ended the same. How much money could this game achieve? My company did not care what the game was about at all, at various meetings my direct supervisor would even cut off the developers and just ask them straight out "what is the shelf life, what is your exit strategy, and what is your preferred business model"
As a gamer and hobbyist programmer I felt truly bad for these game studios. You see, the suits do not care at all about entertainment, experience, game worlds. All they care about is how much money they will make on their investment. When cash shops became popular, every developer that walked in our door HAD to have a cash shop in their prototype coded up with a working backend before they were even allowed to enter our building, no one cared if the game prototype even worked. And in early 2000 when the costs of game development were rising, yet the cost of retail games had to remain the same, these same suits had big binders detailing how to break a game's content into downloadable modules that they could charge separately for. The goal was to have someone pay $100 on average for a game while thinking they were only paying "$59.99", and it worked to our dismay.
Luckily I retired at 30 due to a lucky streak in the stock market and now I enjoy programming for fun instead of worrying about a paycheck. I work and help others on projects I find fun and encourage anyone else who is doing it as a labor of love. Yet this industry is brutal. Just watch the documentary Indie Game, and remember for every success story there are hundreds of failures.
Programmers are overworked, treated badly, & psychologically abused. There is one Valve, the rest of these big companies treat their coders as cattle. It's not all fun & games behind the scenes. It's a lot of hard work for an under-appreciated job field. My hats off to you guys coding day & night barely making a living.
Gamers have no understanding or respect for real game developers, and neither do Management, as well as the other suits who continue to pillage our hobby of gaming in the name of capitalism.
Some good points - Here's a few more good points, Why are you even in business? You sound like the US Government, working daily without a viable product to stay in the black! If you are not going to make your money for several years then why are you wasting everyone's time with stupid games that promote advertising instead of using your talents in some gaming company to better these very games everyone complains about!!
Here's the problem - everyone thinks they can do it better and just out to make a quick buck.....instead of producing a quality product that eventually will last for years instead of just a month or so....so many times I've played the Alpha and Beta tests and never subbed because the game was either going in the total wrong direction, or was plain crap.
I kind of knew the creator of Minecraft way back when he was working on another MMO, Now his company Mojang is reported as being bought by Microsoft for 2.5 billion (or some such)
So in short, stop with the stupid advertising that ruins the internet..Internet advertising, make $0.01 cent per click, if that much, meaning 100 clicks to make a dollar....OMFG! Has the world become so desperate? Make a decent product (Not a copy or rendition of the same ole same ole, something original) > then hire and develop that product - too many times people are trying to do it back assward.
And Kickstarters (What a joke) oh i'm going to make this game - gather a bunch of money, and never produce anything or produce junk......there went all trust in getting anyone to contribute ever again.
Customers don't care what it costs to make a product. Nor should they.
They compare prices and quality of the products in the marketspace and then decide on which is the best deal for their preferences.
I feel your pain OP, starting out in this business is rough, but it's not the players' fault.
Starting out in any potentially lucrative product category, you will have to deal with competition that is undervalueing/undercutting, producing cheap lower quality products, using fishy marketing methods, being money grabbers who don't care about a healthy long term marketspace, being people who have no real skills or real interest in the market/products and are just in it for the quick money, etc, etc. Games are no exception in this regard.
Currently the game market is flooded with mediocre (or worse) cheap stuff. Makes it harder to get a solid standing in the marketplace unless you can produce high quality standout products or have funding for marketing. (preferably both)