Why do we need big budget to remake old mmorpg?

AAAMEOW

Aren't all the old mmorpg indie games?

I thought the budget for old games look something like this:  EQ(3 million), DAOC(3 million), UO(6 million).  

So why exactly do we need large budget to make spirit successor of those games?  (besides bashing all the large budget MMO are Wow clones)

Melecon

This seems suspect but I will bite....

You need to redo all the art work into new standards and incorporate them into the engine.... If you want to take the time to upgrade the engine the client needs to be rebuilt from scratch. There are somethings you can re use on the back end systems but you will probably need to re look at the API's that feed into the client also.

In the end it takes time, time takes money.

Think about it this way 3 Million bucks if you assume an average salary of 75,000 is only enough for 40 people to work for a year if you just spend that on Salaries. There are other things to look into also, but I will save that for another day when I feel like responding to these types of posts.

Sovrath

AAAMEOW said:

Aren't all the old mmorpg indie games?

I thought the budget for old games look something like this:  EQ(3 million), DAOC(3 million), UO(6 million).  

So why exactly do we need large budget to make spirit successor of those games?  (besides bashing all the large budget MMO are Wow clones)

I suppose games like Pantheon and Chronicle of Elyria would agree as they are trying to make full games for "not multi/multi millions.

While 3 million then is about 4.5 million now, can a game that looks like Everquest or Ultima Online do well now?

People look at Pantheon and then start making posts "I really hope it's going to look better than this".

I think game companies that are trying to make games that resemble more old school games are not going for 20 million dollar productions.

Still, none of the games that are trying for this type of game play are released after several years in development. Oh sure they have stuff to show but they are not near done.

In the end we don't know how much these games are going to cost in the end. It will be interesting to see what they come up with on release (if they release).

Also, I might add, how many people want to work for peanuts making an old school video game when they can be making more in other software development, including having better job security. ...

VengeSunsoar

Salaries are more than they were 18 years ago. Rent is more, all office supplies and equipment are more, benefits are more...

Then the new engines better graphics...

krgwynne

main reasons are to pay for a high end engine and good coders. which is why 90 percent of low budget games suck.

Phry

VengeSunsoar said:

Salaries are more than they were 18 years ago. Rent is more, all office dollies are more, benefits are more...

Then the new engines better graphics...

'Old School' games so to speak, might have their charm, but does anyone really want old fashioned graphics too, just having decent graphics is expensive but for a game to have 'good' graphics thats the work of a team and a fair amount of time, and that gets really expensive.

Scot

krgwynne said:

main reasons are to pay for a high end engine and good coders. which is why 90 percent of low budget games suck.

Which leads to something I have said many times before, if the game has a bigger budget it is likely going to be a better game. This is why we need AAA in the MMO genre and why just using a cash shop and hoping that will fund future content and development usually does not work.

You can of course fleece players with your cash shop, but somehow the games that do this are not singled out for reinvesting in the game are they?

texhnolyze

Scot said:

krgwynne said:

main reasons are to pay for a high end engine and good coders. which is why 90 percent of low budget games suck.

Which leads to something I have said many times before, if the game has a bigger budget it is likely going to be a better game. This is why we need AAA in the MMO genre and why just using a cash shop and hoping that will fund future content and development usually does not work.

You can of course fleece players with your cash shop, but somehow the games that do this are not singled out for reinvesting in the game are they?

That strategy actually works wonderfully for X-Legend. They're one of the most consistent MMO devs out there. However, of course their games are all pretty much budget and they keep using the same engine since Grand Fantasia.

Wizardry

Well my old school is not going that far back,i don't want EQ or Ultima.

I want old school as in FFXi circa 2002/3.Even still  i am not looking for old school anyhow,i am looking for a good game design,old school was good back then because it was a solid effort for what developers were capable of.

Now a days devs are not coming remotely close to what they are capable of.I can go outside the mmorpg genre as well, what i am seeing are a lot and i mean a LOT of really cheap crap games.

Point being,as long as a developer is putting in the work and shows me a solid game design for 2018,i am ok with it,i don't want to see 1995 games with slack modern effort as devs back then were working hard to make those lesser games.

Elsabolts

Snowflakes are always looking to invest there parents money. 

kitarad

This is because even if you have a good game that has good systems and ideas and great skills and combat if it is isometric people will complain and not want to play it.

nate1980

I loved the original MMO's with their original ideas. Back then, I imagined MMO's would evolve to expand on the complexity and features of the games of that time; giving us games that are larger, more beautiful, and with just as many if not more complexities to keep us entertained.

We've seen the direction AAA MMORPG's have taken under the leadership of current big game companies, but the alternative has become worse IMHO. Kickstarter and crowdfunded games, along with Indie games have abused classic MMO gamers want for a new MMO that scratches the same itch the old games scratched.

What we've received is either failed attempts or extremely long development times. I'm sorry, but I'm not getting any younger. I started playing MMO's at the age of 22 and I'm now 37. I'd like to play at least a few more great MMORPG's before I'm dead. Given the length of time great MMORPG's last, that doesn't leave a whole lot of time left for me to enjoy them to their fullest extent. 

So I'd rather a big game company create AAA MMORPG's than wait around until I get old for crowdfunded and idie games to release their games that look great on paper.

Kyleran

Did a quick search and came across an article of the cost of game production (including some MMOSs) over the years.

What is interesting is how the cost of all games appears to go up exponentially starting around 2004.

https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

Sovrath

Phry said:

VengeSunsoar said:

Salaries are more than they were 18 years ago. Rent is more, all office dollies are more, benefits are more...

Then the new engines better graphics...

'Old School' games so to speak, might have their charm, but does anyone really want old fashioned graphics too, just having decent graphics is expensive but for a game to have 'good' graphics thats the work of a team and a fair amount of time, and that gets really expensive.

Want? no. Could "stand"? Sure. At this point.

I thought Everquest looked horrible which was why I didn't play it and instead played Lineage 2 as my first game (which did come out a bit later). However now, I could probably do an Everquest as long as the game elements were there (and it handled better than Everquest - that's important).

Scot

Kyleran said:

Did a quick search and came across an article of the cost of game production (including some MMOSs) over the years.

What is interesting is how the cost of all games appears to go up exponentially starting around 2004.

https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

I think this is to do with player expectations, but those have been fed by game companies. One of those expectations is that the graphics will get ever better. That means a larger team to make the game. But profits are ever larger, it is not about 'can profits cover the spiralling costs" it is about "is this an assured success?" With the cost of making a game getting ever higher, the demand that a game ticks every box to ensure success gets ever higher.

Some boxes they no doubt look for:

Is it a franchise? If not has it got a big IP?
How much revenue can it generate after the box sale?
Does it have gambling revenue?
Is it conforming to a tried and trusted template?

Most of this checklist has been there since the early days, it is just the insistence with games ticking the boxes goes up as the cost of making a game spirals up.

Loke666

Kyleran said:

Did a quick search and came across an article of the cost of game production (including some MMOSs) over the years.

What is interesting is how the cost of all games appears to go up exponentially starting around 2004.

https://kotaku.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-make-a-big-video-game-1501413649

I am not surprised but in MMOs case it is at least partly because Blizz sank in $60M into Wow. When Wow went up against EQ2 ($12M) it made EQ2 look incredible cheap and shoddy. Since both games cost the same to play you don't have to be a genius to see that Wow get a rather large advantage for it's high production value.

Now if the cheaper games would be cheaper to play it would be one thing but the publishers seems to have decided to up their ante and go up against Wow.

Then you have the world economy that was going up 2004-2008 (mid 2008 until the crisis), a time where many expensive MMOs were being started and more then a few finnished. You also had a large influx of players and a rather large improvement of graphics in games.

Mostly though I think it is simply that when everyone else is making relatively low budget game there is no need to invest more yourself if you are happy with the numbers those other games have. Once someone throw in a huge sum the pandoras box is open and it is way harder to pull off a low budget game.

Also, i don't think people today would live with all the bugs and issues we had back then. We didn't have any choice.

AAAMEOW

nate1980 said:

So I'd rather a big game company create AAA MMORPG's than wait around until I get old for crowdfunded and idie games to release their games that look great on paper.

The first thing is I don't know if the number I posted on old mmorpg budget is even accurate.

But it seemed to me is the industry should be able to make decent games without going too high into budget.  

I obviously expect new games with higher budget than old mmorpg.

Kabulozo

Lineage 1 is old but was made as an AAA for its time.

Dauzqul

Stupid spending. I made a big long post about this subject and don't really feel like getting into all the details, but Unity's Marketplace...    everything any developer would ever need. You can make a full-blown MMO for VERY little.

cameltosis

Dauzqul said:

Stupid spending. I made a big long post about this subject and don't really feel like getting into all the details, but Unity's Marketplace...    everything any developer would ever need. You can make a full-blown MMO for VERY little.

You can, using off-the-shelf engines and pre-made assets, indeed make an MMO. 

It would be a pile of shit though. 

AAAMEOW said:

nate1980 said:

So I'd rather a big game company create AAA MMORPG's than wait around until I get old for crowdfunded and idie games to release their games that look great on paper.

The first thing is I don't know if the number I posted on old mmorpg budget is even accurate.

But it seemed to me is the industry should be able to make decent games without going too high into budget.  

I obviously expect new games with higher budget than old mmorpg.

The unfortunate truth is that good graphics sell well. It is very easy to sell flashy graphics to the masses than it is to sell good game mechanics. As Raph Koster put it, this has resulted in a situation where the general public do not buy "b games" any more. 

That is why costs have spiralled so much. Its not because the mechanics have gotten more complicated or anything like that, it is mainly because the general public demands good graphics. To put it in perspective, I worked for a good games company in the UK. I hesitate to call them AAA, but they're close. It would take a typical 3D artist 2 months to build a single car. A car would have 5 levels of detail, plus the cars could be damaged so you needed multiple damage variations of each panel of the car for each level of detail in the game. 


So, on the game I was working on (I was only QA), I think we had 2 developers working on the engine, about 10 developers on other systems, about 30 digital artists, about 50 in QA, then a whole bunch of managers/producers/admin. 

In terms of production, the most expensive were the digital artists. They get paid a load more than QA, plus they're on the project start to finish, rather than just at the end which is when QA get involved. 



So, when you ask why we need a big budget to remake old-school MMOs, its because of the requirement for updated graphics. Even if you retain shit graphics, you still have to spend a lot of money on it and you are unlikely to make that money back if you have shit graphics. The only way you can get away with shit graphics is by riding a nostalgia wave (which isn't big enough for old school MMOs) or by having some truly unique gameplay (which means it wouldn't be old school..). 

Dauzqul

cameltosis said:

Dauzqul said:

Stupid spending. I made a big long post about this subject and don't really feel like getting into all the details, but Unity's Marketplace...    everything any developer would ever need. You can make a full-blown MMO for VERY little.

You can, using off-the-shelf engines and pre-made assets, indeed make an MMO. 

It would be a pile of shit though. 

If would be if the game developers simply created an asset flip. However, some dev teams take it to the next level and end up making something pretty decent.

Take Pantheon for example. That game has a lot of models from Unity's asset store. I see them in a lot of games. No big deal.

jonp200

I've always been a bit surprised companies don't re-skin a mmo engine.  I know that was the intention of Funcom with the Secret World. Most of their funding went into a malleable engine (Its in their disclosure, as they are publicly traded) In Funcom's case, they narrowly escaped the axe after Secret World didn't sell (Poor Markeing and clunky combat in my opinion.  It story arc remains one of the best in a MMO in my opinion)  So many games are based on the Unity engine now, you have to wonder why not?

Like ESO and how it plays?  Why not a space-themed MMO that plays a similar way? Enjoy Xcom (As I do) Why not a WWII combat game using the same engine.  I would buy it.

cameltosis

Dauzqul said:

cameltosis said:

Dauzqul said:

Stupid spending. I made a big long post about this subject and don't really feel like getting into all the details, but Unity's Marketplace...    everything any developer would ever need. You can make a full-blown MMO for VERY little.

You can, using off-the-shelf engines and pre-made assets, indeed make an MMO. 

It would be a pile of shit though. 

If would be if the game developers simply created an asset flip. However, some dev teams take it to the next level and end up making something pretty decent.

Take Pantheon for example. That game has a lot of models from Unity's asset store. I see them in a lot of games. No big deal.

I'll wait and see what Pantheon is actually like when it releases. 

So far, MMOs that use off the shelf engines have been pretty crap. The AAA companies end up having to hack those engines to bits in order to make it support their mechanics, resulting in bloated engines that grind to a halt once you start hitting decent multiplayer numbers. 

With the off the shelf assets, again it comes back to what I was saying about the ability to sell those games. The games end up looking very similar, so you end up relying on the mechanics to sell the game, and that doesn't work with the masses. 



Don't get me wrong, I wish the indie MMOs all the success in the world. The genre needs the new ideas they are bringing with them and I plan on playing CU. However, I have serious doubts about using off-the-shelf engines and 3rd party assets. 

nolic1

A while back I remember reading somewhere that some one did a financial report on a game that would be on just selling expansions character slots and maybe some extra things like character transfers and so on and could in fact stay afloat financially. But money is there target and to make money many do things like release there game to a sub in the beginning and then later take on the F2P or B2P with optional sub cause it brings in more money.

What I think many companies try is to get as many money spenders they can so they use the later option for it then just to get what they need to develop the game itself. Truth is not many companies are in it for just making a good game.

As for the many thinking games like Pantheon and the Camelot Unchained and many other titles coming out with the old school feel understand that there is a reason many do not go that route is those games ideas are dated for the times and will not really be what many are looking for.

I think a good mmorpg would be one that took all the elements D&D had but put them into a persistent world with no instancing and no focus on the end game drivel many of us have been forced to play with gear grinds and end game raiding and other gimmiks to keep you playing and instead focused on the character progression itself would be one of the better games on the market. But to many have fallen into the idea all MMO's have to have the end game gear grind and focus on that or its not going to work.

Loke666

Kabulozo said:

Lineage 1 is old but was made as an AAA for its time.

You know, I am not really sure how much money they put into it at launch... I do know that there were plenty of bugs in the western version in 2001 when I started playing but then I started in the western beta and they did clean up them as it went.

They clearly did put a lot of effort into making it but I am not sure if it started as low budget in 1999 and grew or if it started already with a high budget at launch... Whatever it was it certainly was AAA after a couple of years.

But most people on this forum doesn't seem to count Korean and Chinese games anyways (Japanese is fine for some reason).

kjempff

AAAMEOW said:

Aren't all the old mmorpg indie games?

I thought the budget for old games look something like this:  EQ(3 million), DAOC(3 million), UO(6 million).  

So why exactly do we need large budget to make spirit successor of those games?  (besides bashing all the large budget MMO are Wow clones)

As an example, if you were to make eq today, here are a few things to consider.
- First 3 million in todays money is probably twice as much.
- Eq as it were at launch 1999 would be gobbled up in a matter of a a few months. You must realize the eq you may remember is probably the result of years of continuous development and improvements from that 1999 version; the content and mechanics quality at say Planes of Power is vastly bigger&better by a huge factor (x50 maybe). So it would not be enough to just create a 1999 eq, you would need to be bigger and/or have the next content already in the cast. Vanguard was probably something like that, and even ignoring that it was never more than half finished and bugged till the very end, for it to have survived it would have needed expansions&progress to keep players coming back.
- Graphics, animations and aesthetics demands today is much higher, and it is my guess that to reach a minimal acceptable quality (even for players with low demands), a huge percentage of the budget would go to this alone. So for example if building good mechanics and systems like eq (and improving/fixing the problems) plus core game would cost 10 mil, then the graphical work to go with it would be another 25 mil. The graphics work for the expansion (which is needed or the game will die out) is another 10 mil .. and so on.
- The development tools may have become better and more accessible, but the demands and salaries has risen faster than the effectiveness of said tools.

Afaik the upcomming indie titles with realistic budgets and potential for survival are not much below 30 million at launch ?