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Making an MMORPG
ELMT-Evin
Member Posts: 10
Since I own a business that makes games, I always wondered, what will it take to make one. Well, after two years of constent work, searching for the anwser. I found one, I figured out what it takes. What it takes is (drumroll) a college education. Guys and gals who want to make one, I am sorry but there is no way to make one without a college education. There is no easy way, the only way is one of the most difficult. Also, I was recently and my 2nd cousins house, her husband has a masters in managing and organizes financies of everything (ie::. Business, Personnal, Corparate ect.) He is VERY well taught in finacies. He told me if I was serious, I should figure out the starting cost, through a Income Statment, and Balance Sheet. I have come to this conclusion:: If I pay 25 people 22 dollars and hour, on an eight hour shift for 240 days (48, 5 day weeks(Standard Work Days) that ALONE in contract labor will cost just over ONE MILLION DOLLARS! Guys you need to start small (iPhone Apps, Simple Computer Games (Brick Breaker, Monjong)). So MMO wannabe creators - There is not an easy method, I'm sorry, but there is not an easy method. I hate to tell you, BUT, if you need it, I will post a simple template that has the basic outline for the game. So when you create it, you will know what your doing. I've been planning my games out for well over two years now. Even with that time, I STILL have 25% of what I want mapped out. I think about this everyday and have documents of the such. It is not all fun and games. Making games is to be taken extremly seriously. If you want the templates, just reply, I'd love to help you start =]
---Warmest Regards---
[Game_Master] Evin (ElementGames)
[Game_Master] Phoenix (ElementGames)
[Game_Master] Killzerz (ElementGames)
If all my friends jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't. I'd be at the bottom of bridge, standing there to catch them.
"The battle is not always won by the strongest, but by the ones who keep fighting." GM_Dakkon
Comments
I couldnt agree more with ya, even if the game developers were extremely skilled in programming and such, there is still a huge finanical aspect in developing a brand new mmorpg. BUT...KUDOS to the game developers that have made it through!
http://hushwolf.mybrute.com
This post still won't stop people from wanting to be digital Mickey Rooneys and Judy Garlands though. No one wants to be a band member.
Well if it took you 2 years of consistent work to discover this partially wrong conclusion, maybe you shouldn't try ... mostly anything.
How is this conclusion partially wrong? I have finally started devolping a game 2 weeks ago, I did a internship with OutSpark. Also, I did one with Jagex LTD. OutSpark used 1.4mil there first time. Jagex 1mil (7 years ago). Im not trying to sound rude, but you seem to be in denial, and seem to just be screaming in the dark because you can't back up your comment. I recently used 1,056,341.78 dollars for contract labor alone. Im sorry to tell you, but it takes a lot. People will continue to look for a way. Ill post a guideline for a MMO later this week, im on a college visit to UC Davis, and UC Santa Cruz.
---Warmest Regards---
The Element Games Team
Founder:
Brennan
Kyle
Ryan
If all my friends jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't. I'd be at the bottom of bridge, standing there to catch them.
"The battle is not always won by the strongest, but by the ones who keep fighting." GM_Dakkon
Guess no one told Eskil Steenberg, Patric Langley, or Andrew and Paul Gower.
Seriously, Not every project needs a triple A production in order to turn a healthy profit. You have some pretty educated (elitist) friends who have a very strong, personal interest in promoting their own "professional" oppinions and discouraging others from acting without their (expensive) consultation. Believe it or not, there are many self taught programers who have made games and are continuing to make games even as I type this.
Is making an MMO easy? No it isn't. Is making any game easy? Not if you haven't actually made one. If you want to make games, then make games. College can help, but it's really only one ringer on your resume. And let's be honest here, do you really want to work the endless crunch times that the mainstream industry demands? Oh yeah, and you'll be exempt from being paid overtime.
The PC is going in the direction of ad supported browser and direct download games anyway. You'd be ahead to just make small games in Flash or Java and seek out some sponsers.
MMORPG Maker.
People are making games with Torque, and perhaps in the future RC if it continues to develop, and others are on the way.
The developers of the Hero Engine, the engine currently being used to make The Old Republic, have stated in the future they may offer some sort of Hero Engine lite for indie developers.
A tale in the Desert was made with a limited dev team.
Minions of Mirth was made using the Torque engine and a limited Dev team. YOu can try it right now for free.
Yes everyone, you can use Torque or Eclipise. I'm saying to make a BIG MMO. This is the requirments. Also, I made a huge error... I payed to 1+mil for the labor, and I just finished using all my savings. To start making it, I spent 2,497,711.09 all together. This is however for a big project. If you want to make money without having to spend much or any at all. MAKE IPHONE APPS!! It is easy and makes you a lot. Tap Tap itself made over 748,750 dollars according to Tapulous (E-Mail - I don't know them personally). I am working on a guide that I will soon post. It gives you the basic outline, and is very helpful, you guys have been wonderful. Thank you for all your replies
---Im getting lazy, sooooooo---
THE TEAM AT ELEMENT GAMES ©
If all my friends jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't. I'd be at the bottom of bridge, standing there to catch them.
"The battle is not always won by the strongest, but by the ones who keep fighting." GM_Dakkon
PS-Also, make browser based games.
If all my friends jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't. I'd be at the bottom of bridge, standing there to catch them.
"The battle is not always won by the strongest, but by the ones who keep fighting." GM_Dakkon
It depends on talent and knowledge. Knowledge can stem from a college education but it's not absolutely necessary. So your half right... it's easier to make a good product with 100 master degrees but it's most likely more fun to do it when 4 friends in your free time without the 100k college loans to pay back.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
This is a joke right? Throwing away millions on an idea to make a big mmo that is still far from being finished?
$22 an hour? ROTFL. What the hell do you get for that? A janitor who knows Visual Basic?
You realize $22 an hour is less than 50K per year, right? Don't expect to find good talent with such meager bait.
Let me give you a little reality check. I left my job in the software industry years ago, but I still do a bit of consulting on the side. I charge $79 to $105 per hour, depending on the job, and I get it.
I think I know what the OP is trying to say and that is:
Everyone but him (some nobody claiming to be a game dev for a game we haven't heard anything about) are amateurs and we suck balls so we shouldn't try to even attempt making an MMO, lest it beat his indie-developed game to a pulp.
not to mention you cant even google Element Games and find any information about them.
"Sometimes people say stuff they don''t mean, but more often then that they don''t say things they do mean"
The funny thing is that same is said about other industries.
Take movies for example. You have Hollywood pouring out a crappy film after another which often cost more than $200 million to make. Then you have films like The Hunt for Gollum and Dark Resurrection. The former cost only £3000 to make...
I do agree that a new starup that is fresh in to game business should not try to match titles like WoW or EVE, but they can produce MMOs - just for a different medium and on a smaller scale. There are pretty solid games that could be considered MMOs, like Travian or Popomundo, both browser-based and relatively cheap to produce.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
There are a lot of players who want to make their own MMO, but lack the ability to code.
I wonder if MMORPGs will eventually go the way of MUDs and someone will release a user friendly shell for MMO construction. Something that someone with moderate coding skills could alter, improve. I wager anything that achieves this and remains decent would be very welcome. The key to making money would be in selling models for use in the game.
Just my 2c
Torrential: DAOC (Pendragon)
Awned: World of Warcraft (Lothar)
Torren: Warhammer Online (Praag)
Making a MMO is easy after you get past making the IT infrastucture of a mid-sized business, scaling it for the activity of a business several times larger, and then also developing all the parts a game needs in the first place within that.
:for the over serious note the fact that I'm laughing while posting this:
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
$22 an hour? ROTFL. What the hell do you get for that? A janitor who knows Visual Basic?
You realize $22 an hour is less than 50K per year, right? Don't expect to find good talent with such meager bait.
Let me give you a little reality check. I left my job in the software industry years ago, but I still do a bit of consulting on the side. I charge $79 to $105 per hour, depending on the job, and I get it.
Look at TAbula Rasa, WAR, etc. made by big shot developers.
Maybe we SHOULD get a janitor that knows Visual Basic to design the next big MMORPG. Preferably a janitor that likes to play MMORPGs.
$22 an hour? ROTFL. What the hell do you get for that? A janitor who knows Visual Basic?
You realize $22 an hour is less than 50K per year, right? Don't expect to find good talent with such meager bait.
Let me give you a little reality check. I left my job in the software industry years ago, but I still do a bit of consulting on the side. I charge $79 to $105 per hour, depending on the job, and I get it.
Look at TAbula Rasa, WAR, etc. made by big shot developers.
Maybe we SHOULD get a janitor that knows Visual Basic to design the next big MMORPG. Preferably a janitor that likes to play MMORPGs.
You are mixing up design with coding. Designing a MMORPG is one thing and coding it is a whole another ballgame. Coding a monster like a MMORPG engine is not for amateurs. On the other hand the actual design of the game might only require a cursory knowledge of the technical details since it is primarily a creative and intuitive process.
This is why the advent of off-the-shelf MMO engines should allow the designers much more free reign since they no longer have to worry their heads about the technical side whihc they are not experts on.
$22 an hour? ROTFL. What the hell do you get for that? A janitor who knows Visual Basic?
You realize $22 an hour is less than 50K per year, right? Don't expect to find good talent with such meager bait.
Let me give you a little reality check. I left my job in the software industry years ago, but I still do a bit of consulting on the side. I charge $79 to $105 per hour, depending on the job, and I get it.
Look at TAbula Rasa, WAR, etc. made by big shot developers.
Maybe we SHOULD get a janitor that knows Visual Basic to design the next big MMORPG. Preferably a janitor that likes to play MMORPGs.
You are mixing up design with coding. Designing a MMORPG is one thing and coding it is a whole another ballgame. Coding a monster like a MMORPG engine is not for amateurs. On the other hand the actual design of the game might only require a cursory knowledge of the technical details since it is primarily a creative and intuitive process.
This is why the advent of off-the-shelf MMO engines should allow the designers much more free reign since they no longer have to worry their heads about the technical side whihc they are not experts on.
Actually, coding an MMO isn't that big of deal. You can have both the front and back ends of a basic MMO finished in about a month and be able to add / remove / modify features in just a couple of hours. In fact, if you look at a few open source server emulators (no I won't link you to any), you'll notice that most of them are just front end interfaces for SQL databases.
The biggest time vampires are the art and sound productions. Makiing all the models + textures, animating them, adding special effects and wot not can take forever even for a skilled art staff. Once you get all of that done, arranging it all is almost as fast as coding.
As for amateur tools... there really isn't anything stopping basement developers from modifying open source engines like ioquake3, Sauerbraten, or Ogre 3D to hook up to a custom server. I'm gonna recommend Sauerbraten here since it has the smallest, most readable, code base.
Oh, and don't forget that even a small server is gonna run you about $400 a month in operating costs.
Interesting numbers.
---
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
I think the problem is that you don't present like a businessman, much less a person with a million or two to invest and a year or two of Development behind you.*
*Unless your name is Whiting or Flamboras? ;-)
And seriously, you are hung up on a name?
That tells me you have done no real work yet. If you had done any art, or story, most likely a few names would have suggested themselves.
Call the 'game' "Crimson".
Write your story and plot and history and see what jumps out at you from there.
i.e. "...the Knights of the first Crimson Age were drawn to the valley known as Dragonmarch by the light of the Comet falling from the sky..."
Hmmm.... Dragonmarch? Cometfall?
Seriously, if you are what you claim you are and you have spent a million dollars then you should be firing people and getting your money back. Your team clearly has no imagination at all. Hire a 3 year old - they have active imaginations.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Why have I not thought of a name, because we want to know what your opinion is. I've seen a lot of lame names. One I hated was Red Stone, I just suddered after hearing it. OutSpark said Where Gods Dare was good. That was our main one, just sounds a bit cheesy don't you think? I apoligize for my outbursts before. I have MAJOR ADD. (bit of Ausburgers). I am serverly sorry, and my dev team actually were just as pissed at me as you guys were. I will present in a more buisness-man type way. It would be great if we just forgot about this thread, because it turned into me being overly excited about my recent gains, then into a giant flame war, then into me getting very ADD and my huge ego kicked in. I am sorry for this. I think we all agree this Thread proves as nothing now. Lets just abadon it, as I stated, there is no point fighting. If anymore guides are posted I will let GM_Phoenix do it, for he is more controlled and mature then I am in most situations. I apoligize for wasting your time...
Severly and Sincerely Sorry,
[Game_Master] Evin
PS. Sorry yet again...
Note from the Dev Team::
We are sorry for Evins actions, as he tends to over-react to internet flamers. A lot of us do, but we all pay for it, he and Phoenix are the founders and should act more professional. I assure you Evin is sorry and will never do this again.
If all my friends jumped off a bridge, I wouldn't. I'd be at the bottom of bridge, standing there to catch them.
"The battle is not always won by the strongest, but by the ones who keep fighting." GM_Dakkon
I have a great idea:
How about you post again with a link - to a Professional Website with a forum where we can take the discussion.
YOUR website.
And because it is your website there will be proof of concept (naturally).
You really should have a working alpha before posting as a Developer here. It's not that we are mean - it's just that a lot of us have 'concepts'. So another person with a concept is hardly a Developer to us.
As for our opinions? I think we can all agree that we agree on nothing. XD
But, if you have an ego that sets you off then you wouldn't care about others opinions anyway?
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
I PMed you some info
PIRATE LORDS
Please get back on topic! Thanks!
MMORPG.com Staff
Derek Gordon