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.
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
I am making an MMO right now and what is costs is basically nothing, except time?
I think that a lot of what MMOs cost is marketing and hype and general bureaucratic crap. Also licenses and paying off investors.
I want to know what the profits to investors were.
Also I suspect a lot of money was spent setting up distribution and shelf space and physical product for box sales. If all you need is a server and a website to distribute the game I bet it is a lot cheaper.
In business, time IS money. You have to pay people for the time they spend working on your game. No one at a game studio, except possibly for an unpaid intern working for college credit, is there for free. They've got a passion for games, but they also have to put food on the table and pay their bills.
More talent working on your game = more money spent. And the longer they take to make the game, the more you spend.
I am making an MMO right now and what is costs is basically nothing, except time?
I think that a lot of what MMOs cost is marketing and hype and general bureaucratic crap. Also licenses and paying off investors.
I want to know what the profits to investors were.
Also I suspect a lot of money was spent setting up distribution and shelf space and physical product for box sales. If all you need is a server and a website to distribute the game I bet it is a lot cheaper.
In business, time IS money. You have to pay people for the time they spend working on your game. No one at a game studio, except possibly for an unpaid intern working for college credit, is there for free. They've got a passion for games, but they also have to put food on the table and pay their bills.
More talent working on your game = more money spent. And the longer they take to make the game, the more you spend.
The actual cost to make a game is wildly inflated by other costs. Just the visuals and the programming is not incredibly expensive. Its not cheap either but certainly not hundreds of millions of dollars.
I am making an MMO right now and what is costs is basically nothing, except time?
I think that a lot of what MMOs cost is marketing and hype and general bureaucratic crap. Also licenses and paying off investors.
I want to know what the profits to investors were.
Also I suspect a lot of money was spent setting up distribution and shelf space and physical product for box sales. If all you need is a server and a website to distribute the game I bet it is a lot cheaper.
In business, time IS money. You have to pay people for the time they spend working on your game. No one at a game studio, except possibly for an unpaid intern working for college credit, is there for free. They've got a passion for games, but they also have to put food on the table and pay their bills.
More talent working on your game = more money spent. And the longer they take to make the game, the more you spend.
Sure it has a cost, but the developer team is a fixed cost, no matter if they are doing a new engine from 0 or just coding easy stuff, they will make the same amount of money.
And you dont need the best team in the world, you can have a few experienced devs, some interns.
Ads and distribution should not be a problem, you can just use digital copy wich has a near to 0 cost to you, and with how terrible the current games are, if what you build is good, u wont need ads.
the fact that you dont have to fight with illegal donwloads are also a big plus for the MMO genre.
most gigantic project like swtor are money drain for the big corporate world to sucker down money while making a product that is below average ... That's the reason why you see big AAA fail simply because 20% or so of the money invested in them never ever ever reach the game designing floor and stays in the champagne room....
When blizzard announce titan will cost 1 billion you damn well know it's going to be the pension fund for the Activision CEO branch....
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?
There is no conspiricy against indie developers....it just costs a lot of money to make MMOs these days.
Look at the changes in the market since the days of UO...
Competition, Competition, Competition
Ultima Online & Everquest didn't have a FRACTION of the competition that new MMORPGs today have. There were no Free 2 Play alternatives, no easy mode alternatives, etc. Don't like the lag, tough....deal with it or don't play anything. Don't like a particular mechanic or system within the game, tough....deal with it or don't play anything.
Now that there are more options for players.....new games that release MUST have a smooth launch, and MUST have a high level of polish. Making sure most of the bugs are removed, and having all the t's crossed and i's dotted take a lot of time & money. The fickle playerbase today don't give many second chances.
Game Development Model
New MMORPGs follow a more linear, or themepark, development model. This differs from the old "Sandbox" games in that the developer is responsible for creating all the content for the players, instead of the players creating their own content with ingame tools. This puts the software in a constant development lifecycle. As soon as the developers finish coding & releaseing a content update or expansion, they have to immediately get started on the next content update / expansion to keep up with the rate the players are consuming content. AND....with the push to increase subscribers, the level of difficulty of the content goes down. As the difficulty goes down, the faster the players consume content....and create additional strain on developer resources.
Different Audience
You have a much larger audience playing "MMORPG" games these days...many of which would not consider themselves "gamers", but people that play games. In order to appeal to this large diverse base of players, you have to focus on areas not directly related to gameplay....like having world renown composers & orchestras to lay down the sound track. You also have to have really "pretty" graphics....which include using high tech 3D engines, and hiring support personnel to create the textures, animations, etc.
This audience also doesn't like to wait on things....specifically grouping, so you need complicated network technology that allows players from across servers to group together for instances, etc.
Essentially.....Themepark gaming (to cater to the masses) has a MUCH higher overhead because of factors not related to game play (sound, art, ease of access) .
Technically, you can make an MMO for "free". While not really free, it'll cost time if you don't have cash to pay anyone making it. And I guess that time could be used to make money... so depending on how much you could be getting paid at a job is how much it would cost. If you'd be making minimum wage, you could make an MMO for incredibly cheap compared to companies that pay their developers 60k+ a year.
Of what quaility the final product will be for a team of indy developers that are making a game instead of working professionally is questionable though.
Take MO for example. Seems like they have an inexperienced dev team on that, even though they have millions.
So money doesn't necessarily translate to quality.
But, anyways, as it's been said, people need money to live. Don't know of many people that'll work for peanuts. And if they would, they probably can't program, or create artwork, etc.
Technically, you can make an MMO for "free". While not really free, it'll cost time if you don't have cash to pay anyone making it. And I guess that time could be used to make money... so depending on how much you could be getting paid at a job is how much it would cost. If you'd be making minimum wage, you could make an MMO for incredibly cheap compared to companies that pay their developers 60k+ a year.
Of what quaility the final product will be for a team of indy developers that are making a game instead of working professionally is questionable though.
Take MO for example. Seems like they have an inexperienced dev team on that, even though they have millions.
So money doesn't necessarily translate to quality.
But, anyways, as it's been said, people need money to live. Don't know of many people that'll work for peanuts. And if they would, they probably can't program, or create artwork, etc.
There is more to the cost to make a MMO than labor. You also have to pay for hardware, software, licenses, and utilities, among other things.
Technically, you can make an MMO for "free". While not really free, it'll cost time if you don't have cash to pay anyone making it. And I guess that time could be used to make money... so depending on how much you could be getting paid at a job is how much it would cost. If you'd be making minimum wage, you could make an MMO for incredibly cheap compared to companies that pay their developers 60k+ a year.
Of what quaility the final product will be for a team of indy developers that are making a game instead of working professionally is questionable though.
Take MO for example. Seems like they have an inexperienced dev team on that, even though they have millions.
So money doesn't necessarily translate to quality.
But, anyways, as it's been said, people need money to live. Don't know of many people that'll work for peanuts. And if they would, they probably can't program, or create artwork, etc.
There is more to the cost to make a MMO than labor. You also have to pay for hardware, software, licenses, and utilities, among other things.
If someone really wanted to they could get away with free progams, like express versions of MSVC, Blender, Gimp, etc and I'd assume anyone that is going to be making a computer game already has a computer. Utilities would have to be covered somehow though, Let's just say an indy "net-team", which I know fails more often than not, each has their own utilities covered with some savings or something.
If it costs nothing except time, where are you getting the money to pay for day to day stuff? Savings? You better be adding those costs down because youre basically funding yourself from means other than the game.
A good way of checking if your business is working is if you take out any out of project monetary earnings and see if you can survive from ust the business. If you cant survive only from that then the business is either a zombie or a hobby.
If you were working for that company making games. How much would YOU want to be paid? Free? You have to start seperating hobbies and businesses. Im sure everyone here would quit if their job paid 20k a year and had high demands.
edit : tried gimp last week but it doesnt support all dds formats even with the plugin
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Technically, you can make an MMO for "free". While not really free, it'll cost time if you don't have cash to pay anyone making it. And I guess that time could be used to make money... so depending on how much you could be getting paid at a job is how much it would cost. If you'd be making minimum wage, you could make an MMO for incredibly cheap compared to companies that pay their developers 60k+ a year.
Of what quaility the final product will be for a team of indy developers that are making a game instead of working professionally is questionable though.
Take MO for example. Seems like they have an inexperienced dev team on that, even though they have millions.
So money doesn't necessarily translate to quality.
But, anyways, as it's been said, people need money to live. Don't know of many people that'll work for peanuts. And if they would, they probably can't program, or create artwork, etc.
There is more to the cost to make a MMO than labor. You also have to pay for hardware, software, licenses, and utilities, among other things.
If someone really wanted to they could get away with free progams, like express versions of MSVC, Blender, Gimp, etc and I'd assume anyone that is going to be making a computer game already has a computer. Utilities would have to be covered somehow though, Let's just say an indy "net-team", which I know fails more often than not, each has their own utilities covered with some savings or something.
Well sure...but ultimately it boils down to the scope & frame of the game you're creating. If you're making an iOS or Android game, sure....you can get by with developing on your laptop while sipping a Moca Frappachino on Star-Bucks electricity & internet.
If we are talking about a full blown MMORPG, that's a whole other beast. You need servers, and technical expertise in areas that not many people are capable of on their own.
If your limited on labor, it means it will take more time for you to fully develop & flesh out the game. The longer it takes you roll the game out, the higher risk you are in of having technology you're using to go outdated (and more expensive to support).
Look at Adventurine.....it took them over 6 years to get out Darkfall. They started using a 3rd party 3D engine and half way through development, they had to scrap it and create their own. (now you have a proprietary system to support!)
The life cycle of technology these days is much smaller than it use to be, and you can't constantly recycle your development because the techology you used became outdated in the lengthened development process.
If it costs nothing except time, where are you getting the money to pay for day to day stuff? Savings? You better be adding those costs down because youre basically funding yourself from means other than the game. A good way of checking if your business is working is if you take out any out of project monetary earnings and see if you can survive from ust the business. If you cant survive only from that then the business is either a zombie or a hobby. If you were working for that company making games. How much would YOU want to be paid? Free? You have to start seperating hobbies and businesses. Im sure everyone here would quit if their job paid 20k a year and had high demands.
I was going to put that part in my post, but yes they'd need something, (savings, welfare, rich family, etc) to cover living expenses if making a game full time. Or just work on it during freetime with an 8hr a day job. So I don't think it really does require millions. Maybe for an AAA game, but not necessarily for something that passes as an MMO to some degree.
All I'm saying is that it is technically possible to create some form of MMO without millions as stated. Not that it'll be the next WoW or even the games that feed on WoWs table scraps.
All I'm saying is that it is technically possible to create some form of MMO without millions as stated. Not that it'll be the next WoW or even the games that feed on WoWs table scraps.
That, I can agree with. Whether or not it will be successful is another thing all together. If this game trys to compete with the likes of WOW (and it's clones) for that mainstream audience, then I think it would fail misserably.
However...I've long said that a Sandbox game can be created for FAR less than it takes to make a "Big Tent" mainstream MMORPG. Sandbox MMORPG fans care more about content over graphics, and other feel good asthetics.
As such, you could make a game with pennies on the dollar by leveraging the existing sandbox frameworks that exist in games like Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. You could save money on the graphics engine by going with an isometric 2.5D interface (like Diablo or Battle of Immortal). Go to a Rennisance Festival and sign on a rennisance band on the cheap for the sound track. Sandbox development does not require around the clock development cycle so you'd save some labor costs there.
There is no conspiricy against indie developers....it just costs a lot of money to make MMOs these days.
Look at the changes in the market since the days of UO...
Competition, Competition, Competition
Ultima Online & Everquest didn't have a FRACTION of the competition that new MMORPGs today have. There were no Free 2 Play alternatives, no easy mode alternatives, etc. Don't like the lag, tough....deal with it or don't play anything. Don't like a particular mechanic or system within the game, tough....deal with it or don't play anything.
Now that there are more options for players.....new games that release MUST have a smooth launch, and MUST have a high level of polish. Making sure most of the bugs are removed, and having all the t's crossed and i's dotted take a lot of time & money. The fickle playerbase today don't give many second chances.
Game Development Model
New MMORPGs follow a more linear, or themepark, development model. This differs from the old "Sandbox" games in that the developer is responsible for creating all the content for the players, instead of the players creating their own content with ingame tools. This puts the software in a constant development lifecycle. As soon as the developers finish coding & releaseing a content update or expansion, they have to immediately get started on the next content update / expansion to keep up with the rate the players are consuming content. AND....with the push to increase subscribers, the level of difficulty of the content goes down. As the difficulty goes down, the faster the players consume content....and create additional strain on developer resources.
Different Audience
You have a much larger audience playing "MMORPG" games these days...many of which would not consider themselves "gamers", but people that play games. In order to appeal to this large diverse base of players, you have to focus on areas not directly related to gameplay....like having world renown composers & orchestras to lay down the sound track. You also have to have really "pretty" graphics....which include using high tech 3D engines, and hiring support personnel to create the textures, animations, etc.
This audience also doesn't like to wait on things....specifically grouping, so you need complicated network technology that allows players from across servers to group together for instances, etc.
Essentially.....Themepark gaming (to cater to the masses) has a MUCH higher overhead because of factors not related to game play (sound, art, ease of access) .
Not that in themselves those reasons dont have any truth value, but these days they are just rehashed excuse bs for the most part, only the game development model seems correct.
Wow and aion had terrible launches, runescape is the most notoriosly bugged game there is (small bugs, mostly convenience), yet you see, the focus on a "casual audience" has only made mmos loose players, mmorpgs were and are a niche, and the pretty graphics argument becomes completely invalidated by the success of games like minecraft or farmville, but noone wants those players in a mmo, to endlessly upgrade their housings for example, we just want action game console player junkies, which are for the most part incompatible with the whole rpg game concept...
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?
There is no conspiricy against indie developers....it just costs a lot of money to make MMOs these days.
Look at the changes in the market since the days of UO...
Competition, Competition, Competition
Ultima Online & Everquest didn't have a FRACTION of the competition that new MMORPGs today have. There were no Free 2 Play alternatives, no easy mode alternatives, etc. Don't like the lag, tough....deal with it or don't play anything. Don't like a particular mechanic or system within the game, tough....deal with it or don't play anything.
Now that there are more options for players.....new games that release MUST have a smooth launch, and MUST have a high level of polish. Making sure most of the bugs are removed, and having all the t's crossed and i's dotted take a lot of time & money. The fickle playerbase today don't give many second chances.
Game Development Model
New MMORPGs follow a more linear, or themepark, development model. This differs from the old "Sandbox" games in that the developer is responsible for creating all the content for the players, instead of the players creating their own content with ingame tools. This puts the software in a constant development lifecycle. As soon as the developers finish coding & releaseing a content update or expansion, they have to immediately get started on the next content update / expansion to keep up with the rate the players are consuming content. AND....with the push to increase subscribers, the level of difficulty of the content goes down. As the difficulty goes down, the faster the players consume content....and create additional strain on developer resources.
Different Audience
You have a much larger audience playing "MMORPG" games these days...many of which would not consider themselves "gamers", but people that play games. In order to appeal to this large diverse base of players, you have to focus on areas not directly related to gameplay....like having world renown composers & orchestras to lay down the sound track. You also have to have really "pretty" graphics....which include using high tech 3D engines, and hiring support personnel to create the textures, animations, etc.
This audience also doesn't like to wait on things....specifically grouping, so you need complicated network technology that allows players from across servers to group together for instances, etc.
Essentially.....Themepark gaming (to cater to the masses) has a MUCH higher overhead because of factors not related to game play (sound, art, ease of access) .
^this is the best answer of the thread. Also, Loktofeit is correct to point out the games of today are vastly more expensive to make than the titles that started the genre (e.g., DAoC).
The simplest explanation boils it down to three words: race to "quality." <--- "quality" being a very subjective term, obviously
Want an industry insider's (and MMORPG designer legend's) opinion on the matter? In a 2011 interview, Raph Koster just so happened to explain the general reasons why the costs are skyrocketing and indie studios have it very tough in today's marketplace (starting at 26:00, ending around 31:49): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6_Dq1Bw0Ss&t=26m
Sorry that isn't a specific answer, but I think it is a good summary and overall explanation of what is happening to the game industry in general, to MMORPG's specifically, and why the enormous publishers are squeezing out so many of the smaller companies and it costs so much to make a "AAA" title.
So you see they had 400,000 after 8 hour pledged by gamers who wanted to see a follow up to the genre of the day of tentacle and full throttle ... so far they are at close to 2 million wich is by his( tim schafer) WWWooOOO
it does not cost much more to finance a gaming team of 41 people to create a single player ... Sure mmorpg are more complex but to go from 400,000$ to 120 million for the same amount of people you'd have to be dumb to believe a word of it.The only reason is backroom deal are taking over gaming in general and a very good example is the current fiasco at aventurine where they sold 40% of their company share to keep living la viva.
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.
There is no conspiricy against indie developers....it just costs a lot of money to make MMOs these days.
Look at the changes in the market since the days of UO...
Competition, Competition, Competition
Ultima Online & Everquest didn't have a FRACTION of the competition that new MMORPGs today have. There were no Free 2 Play alternatives, no easy mode alternatives, etc. Don't like the lag, tough....deal with it or don't play anything. Don't like a particular mechanic or system within the game, tough....deal with it or don't play anything.
Now that there are more options for players.....new games that release MUST have a smooth launch, and MUST have a high level of polish. Making sure most of the bugs are removed, and having all the t's crossed and i's dotted take a lot of time & money. The fickle playerbase today don't give many second chances.
Game Development Model
New MMORPGs follow a more linear, or themepark, development model. This differs from the old "Sandbox" games in that the developer is responsible for creating all the content for the players, instead of the players creating their own content with ingame tools. This puts the software in a constant development lifecycle. As soon as the developers finish coding & releaseing a content update or expansion, they have to immediately get started on the next content update / expansion to keep up with the rate the players are consuming content. AND....with the push to increase subscribers, the level of difficulty of the content goes down. As the difficulty goes down, the faster the players consume content....and create additional strain on developer resources.
Different Audience
You have a much larger audience playing "MMORPG" games these days...many of which would not consider themselves "gamers", but people that play games. In order to appeal to this large diverse base of players, you have to focus on areas not directly related to gameplay....like having world renown composers & orchestras to lay down the sound track. You also have to have really "pretty" graphics....which include using high tech 3D engines, and hiring support personnel to create the textures, animations, etc.
This audience also doesn't like to wait on things....specifically grouping, so you need complicated network technology that allows players from across servers to group together for instances, etc.
Essentially.....Themepark gaming (to cater to the masses) has a MUCH higher overhead because of factors not related to game play (sound, art, ease of access) .
Not that in themselves those reasons dont have any truth value, but these days they are just rehashed excuse bs for the most part, only the game development model seems correct.
Wow and aion had terrible launches, runescape is the most notoriosly bugged game there is (small bugs, mostly convenience), yet you see, the focus on a "casual audience" has only made mmos loose players, mmorpgs were and are a niche, and the pretty graphics argument becomes completely invalidated by the success of games like minecraft or farmville, but noone wants those players in a mmo, to endlessly upgrade their housings for example, we just want action game console player junkies, which are for the most part incompatible with the whole rpg game concept...
Flame on!
While WOW & Aion's launch wasn't perfect, it was much better than some other releases...namely SWG, Lineage 2, and some other games that came before them. Since the popularity of WOW, the games that have been successful are the ones that have very limiited launch problems, and are fully polished (Rift, SW:TOR)
On the bit about focus on casual audience causing MMOs to lose players...sorry but I don't follow. The focus on the casual audience has been a boon for Blizzard. Ultima Online topped out around 250,000 subs, and EQ around 500,000. Lineage 2 got to around 1 million...largely due to their Asian following.
Enter World of Warcraft, first mainstream MMO aimed at casual players, and they topped out at 12 MILLION subs.
Sure, the fixation on the casual audience (subscriptions) has tee'd off a lot of tradtional MMORPG fans (myself included), but where else you going to go? Darkfall? Mortal Online? UO Private Servers?
Minecraft was very successful...but was it 10s of millions of players successful? Farmville only grew in popularity because of the inbeded networking infrastructure and ease of access from facebook.
The guy with mincraft did exactly what I advocated above. He understood the audience he was creating the game for was more interested in creating and working cooperatively with other players, than things like fancy graphics and spoon fed content.
There is no conspiricy against indie developers....it just costs a lot of money to make MMOs these days.
Look at the changes in the market since the days of UO...
Competition, Competition, Competition
Ultima Online & Everquest didn't have a FRACTION of the competition that new MMORPGs today have. There were no Free 2 Play alternatives, no easy mode alternatives, etc. Don't like the lag, tough....deal with it or don't play anything. Don't like a particular mechanic or system within the game, tough....deal with it or don't play anything.
Now that there are more options for players.....new games that release MUST have a smooth launch, and MUST have a high level of polish. Making sure most of the bugs are removed, and having all the t's crossed and i's dotted take a lot of time & money. The fickle playerbase today don't give many second chances.
Game Development Model
New MMORPGs follow a more linear, or themepark, development model. This differs from the old "Sandbox" games in that the developer is responsible for creating all the content for the players, instead of the players creating their own content with ingame tools. This puts the software in a constant development lifecycle. As soon as the developers finish coding & releaseing a content update or expansion, they have to immediately get started on the next content update / expansion to keep up with the rate the players are consuming content. AND....with the push to increase subscribers, the level of difficulty of the content goes down. As the difficulty goes down, the faster the players consume content....and create additional strain on developer resources.
Different Audience
You have a much larger audience playing "MMORPG" games these days...many of which would not consider themselves "gamers", but people that play games. In order to appeal to this large diverse base of players, you have to focus on areas not directly related to gameplay....like having world renown composers & orchestras to lay down the sound track. You also have to have really "pretty" graphics....which include using high tech 3D engines, and hiring support personnel to create the textures, animations, etc.
This audience also doesn't like to wait on things....specifically grouping, so you need complicated network technology that allows players from across servers to group together for instances, etc.
Essentially.....Themepark gaming (to cater to the masses) has a MUCH higher overhead because of factors not related to game play (sound, art, ease of access) .
Not that in themselves those reasons dont have any truth value, but these days they are just rehashed excuse bs for the most part, only the game development model seems correct.
Wow and aion had terrible launches, runescape is the most notoriosly bugged game there is (small bugs, mostly convenience), yet you see, the focus on a "casual audience" has only made mmos loose players, mmorpgs were and are a niche, and the pretty graphics argument becomes completely invalidated by the success of games like minecraft or farmville, but noone wants those players in a mmo, to endlessly upgrade their housings for example, we just want action game console player junkies, which are for the most part incompatible with the whole rpg game concept...
Flame on!
While WOW & Aion's launch wasn't perfect, it was much better than some other releases...namely SWG, Lineage 2, and some other games that came before them. Since the popularity of WOW, the games that have been successful are the ones that have very limiited launch problems, and are fully polished (Rift, SW:TOR)
On the bit about focus on casual audience causing MMOs to lose players...sorry but I don't follow. The focus on the casual audience has been a boon for Blizzard. Ultima Online topped out around 250,000 subs, and EQ around 500,000. Lineage 2 got to around 1 million...largely due to their Asian following.
Enter World of Warcraft, first mainstream MMO aimed at casual players, and they topped out at 12 MILLION subs.
Sure, the fixation on the casual audience (subscriptions) has tee'd off a lot of tradtional MMORPG fans (myself included), but where else you going to go? Darkfall? Mortal Online? UO Private Servers?
Minecraft was very successful...but was it 10s of millions of players successful? Farmville only grew in popularity because of the inbeded networking infrastructure and ease of access from facebook.
The guy with mincraft did exactly what I advocated above. He understood the audience he was creating the game for was more interested in creating and working cooperatively with other players, than things like fancy graphics and spoon fed content.
For an indy, I'd say 4+ million copies sold is king of the castle.
What do typical indy games sell? I really don't know, but as a guess I'd say 10k or considerably less.
While WOW & Aion's launch wasn't perfect, it was much better than some other releases...namely SWG, Lineage 2, and some other games that came before them. Since the popularity of WOW, the games that have been successful are the ones that have very limiited launch problems, and are fully polished (Rift, SW:TOR)
On the bit about focus on casual audience causing MMOs to lose players...sorry but I don't follow. The focus on the casual audience has been a boon for Blizzard. Ultima Online topped out around 250,000 subs, and EQ around 500,000. Lineage 2 got to around 1 million...largely due to their Asian following.
Enter World of Warcraft, first mainstream MMO aimed at casual players, and they topped out at 12 MILLION subs.
Sure, the fixation on the casual audience (subscriptions) has tee'd off a lot of tradtional MMORPG fans (myself included), but where else you going to go? Darkfall? Mortal Online? UO Private Servers?
Minecraft was very successful...but was it 10s of millions of players successful? Farmville only grew in popularity because of the inbeded networking infrastructure and ease of access from facebook.
The guy with mincraft did exactly what I advocated above. He understood the audience he was creating the game for was more interested in creating and working cooperatively with other players, than things like fancy graphics and spoon fed content.
Lineage 2 is a specific problem, the start was not the problem, running the game for the company what was running in in the west was, no support, inability to deal with bots... If you want to talk about L2 you should take the hundreds of free servers (500-15k players each) into account, which have done nothing more than offer a good service and keeping the bots at bay.
As for casual focus, it st what it is, FOCUS , not accessibility, there is a difference in terms of magnitude, the difference between "hey, this is easyer than playing UO!" and "hmm, i could play a fps to get the same experience".
Wow reached 12 million when it was casual accessible, not focused, IMO.
As for minecraft, 16 million registered users and 4 millions units sold, not too shabby, even if we dont know the number of players playing, eh?
How many millions does rift (clean launch, polished) have?
I think where we disagree is the magnitude of focus the companies should have for the "flashy crowd", how clever or stupid that is, and what the results of that focus are.
I mean, in the end, if your desire is to have just 100-500k players with no boom and cult following expected as a big company, to play it safe, then you may as well make the game just for the people who will sub for 3 months and then leave, and it is a good plan.
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?
To be honest any respectable AAA single player game takes the same amount of money to make.
What is crazy is spending more than 100 millions like Bioware did for Swtor, since they basically carbon copied WoW and bougth the Engine from Simultronics, that kind of money is not justified.
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?
There are a lot of costs for a modern game.
A single server costs about $900-2000 to purchase. Each game launches with somewhere between 20-40 servers. So right off the bat you are looking at $45,000 just for SERVER space.
If you have a team of 50 developers that have an average salary of $100,000 ay ear it means you are spending $5,000,000 a year on wages. If a decent MMO takes 2-3 years an d a good ones takes 4-5 years you are looking at between $10-25M in wages.
You need a janitor to do maintenance on all the computers and clean everything, another $30,000 a year.
You need professional writers, another $100,000/year per writer.
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))
"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."
Comments
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.
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
In business, time IS money. You have to pay people for the time they spend working on your game. No one at a game studio, except possibly for an unpaid intern working for college credit, is there for free. They've got a passion for games, but they also have to put food on the table and pay their bills.
More talent working on your game = more money spent. And the longer they take to make the game, the more you spend.
The actual cost to make a game is wildly inflated by other costs. Just the visuals and the programming is not incredibly expensive. Its not cheap either but certainly not hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sure it has a cost, but the developer team is a fixed cost, no matter if they are doing a new engine from 0 or just coding easy stuff, they will make the same amount of money.
And you dont need the best team in the world, you can have a few experienced devs, some interns.
Ads and distribution should not be a problem, you can just use digital copy wich has a near to 0 cost to you, and with how terrible the current games are, if what you build is good, u wont need ads.
the fact that you dont have to fight with illegal donwloads are also a big plus for the MMO genre.
most gigantic project like swtor are money drain for the big corporate world to sucker down money while making a product that is below average ... That's the reason why you see big AAA fail simply because 20% or so of the money invested in them never ever ever reach the game designing floor and stays in the champagne room....
When blizzard announce titan will cost 1 billion you damn well know it's going to be the pension fund for the Activision CEO branch....
There is no conspiricy against indie developers....it just costs a lot of money to make MMOs these days.
Look at the changes in the market since the days of UO...
Competition, Competition, Competition
Ultima Online & Everquest didn't have a FRACTION of the competition that new MMORPGs today have. There were no Free 2 Play alternatives, no easy mode alternatives, etc. Don't like the lag, tough....deal with it or don't play anything. Don't like a particular mechanic or system within the game, tough....deal with it or don't play anything.
Now that there are more options for players.....new games that release MUST have a smooth launch, and MUST have a high level of polish. Making sure most of the bugs are removed, and having all the t's crossed and i's dotted take a lot of time & money. The fickle playerbase today don't give many second chances.
Game Development Model
New MMORPGs follow a more linear, or themepark, development model. This differs from the old "Sandbox" games in that the developer is responsible for creating all the content for the players, instead of the players creating their own content with ingame tools. This puts the software in a constant development lifecycle. As soon as the developers finish coding & releaseing a content update or expansion, they have to immediately get started on the next content update / expansion to keep up with the rate the players are consuming content. AND....with the push to increase subscribers, the level of difficulty of the content goes down. As the difficulty goes down, the faster the players consume content....and create additional strain on developer resources.
Different Audience
You have a much larger audience playing "MMORPG" games these days...many of which would not consider themselves "gamers", but people that play games. In order to appeal to this large diverse base of players, you have to focus on areas not directly related to gameplay....like having world renown composers & orchestras to lay down the sound track. You also have to have really "pretty" graphics....which include using high tech 3D engines, and hiring support personnel to create the textures, animations, etc.
This audience also doesn't like to wait on things....specifically grouping, so you need complicated network technology that allows players from across servers to group together for instances, etc.
Essentially.....Themepark gaming (to cater to the masses) has a MUCH higher overhead because of factors not related to game play (sound, art, ease of access) .
Technically, you can make an MMO for "free". While not really free, it'll cost time if you don't have cash to pay anyone making it. And I guess that time could be used to make money... so depending on how much you could be getting paid at a job is how much it would cost. If you'd be making minimum wage, you could make an MMO for incredibly cheap compared to companies that pay their developers 60k+ a year.
Of what quaility the final product will be for a team of indy developers that are making a game instead of working professionally is questionable though.
Take MO for example. Seems like they have an inexperienced dev team on that, even though they have millions.
So money doesn't necessarily translate to quality.
But, anyways, as it's been said, people need money to live. Don't know of many people that'll work for peanuts. And if they would, they probably can't program, or create artwork, etc.
There is more to the cost to make a MMO than labor. You also have to pay for hardware, software, licenses, and utilities, among other things.
If someone really wanted to they could get away with free progams, like express versions of MSVC, Blender, Gimp, etc and I'd assume anyone that is going to be making a computer game already has a computer. Utilities would have to be covered somehow though, Let's just say an indy "net-team", which I know fails more often than not, each has their own utilities covered with some savings or something.
A good way of checking if your business is working is if you take out any out of project monetary earnings and see if you can survive from ust the business. If you cant survive only from that then the business is either a zombie or a hobby.
If you were working for that company making games. How much would YOU want to be paid? Free? You have to start seperating hobbies and businesses. Im sure everyone here would quit if their job paid 20k a year and had high demands.
edit : tried gimp last week but it doesnt support all dds formats even with the plugin
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Well sure...but ultimately it boils down to the scope & frame of the game you're creating. If you're making an iOS or Android game, sure....you can get by with developing on your laptop while sipping a Moca Frappachino on Star-Bucks electricity & internet.
If we are talking about a full blown MMORPG, that's a whole other beast. You need servers, and technical expertise in areas that not many people are capable of on their own.
If your limited on labor, it means it will take more time for you to fully develop & flesh out the game. The longer it takes you roll the game out, the higher risk you are in of having technology you're using to go outdated (and more expensive to support).
Look at Adventurine.....it took them over 6 years to get out Darkfall. They started using a 3rd party 3D engine and half way through development, they had to scrap it and create their own. (now you have a proprietary system to support!)
The life cycle of technology these days is much smaller than it use to be, and you can't constantly recycle your development because the techology you used became outdated in the lengthened development process.
I was going to put that part in my post, but yes they'd need something, (savings, welfare, rich family, etc) to cover living expenses if making a game full time. Or just work on it during freetime with an 8hr a day job. So I don't think it really does require millions. Maybe for an AAA game, but not necessarily for something that passes as an MMO to some degree.
All I'm saying is that it is technically possible to create some form of MMO without millions as stated. Not that it'll be the next WoW or even the games that feed on WoWs table scraps.
That, I can agree with. Whether or not it will be successful is another thing all together. If this game trys to compete with the likes of WOW (and it's clones) for that mainstream audience, then I think it would fail misserably.
However...I've long said that a Sandbox game can be created for FAR less than it takes to make a "Big Tent" mainstream MMORPG. Sandbox MMORPG fans care more about content over graphics, and other feel good asthetics.
As such, you could make a game with pennies on the dollar by leveraging the existing sandbox frameworks that exist in games like Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. You could save money on the graphics engine by going with an isometric 2.5D interface (like Diablo or Battle of Immortal). Go to a Rennisance Festival and sign on a rennisance band on the cheap for the sound track. Sandbox development does not require around the clock development cycle so you'd save some labor costs there.
Not that in themselves those reasons dont have any truth value, but these days they are just rehashed excuse bs for the most part, only the game development model seems correct.
Wow and aion had terrible launches, runescape is the most notoriosly bugged game there is (small bugs, mostly convenience), yet you see, the focus on a "casual audience" has only made mmos loose players, mmorpgs were and are a niche, and the pretty graphics argument becomes completely invalidated by the success of games like minecraft or farmville, but noone wants those players in a mmo, to endlessly upgrade their housings for example, we just want action game console player junkies, which are for the most part incompatible with the whole rpg game concept...
Flame on!
^this is the best answer of the thread. Also, Loktofeit is correct to point out the games of today are vastly more expensive to make than the titles that started the genre (e.g., DAoC).
The simplest explanation boils it down to three words: race to "quality." <--- "quality" being a very subjective term, obviously
Want an industry insider's (and MMORPG designer legend's) opinion on the matter? In a 2011 interview, Raph Koster just so happened to explain the general reasons why the costs are skyrocketing and indie studios have it very tough in today's marketplace (starting at 26:00, ending around 31:49): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6_Dq1Bw0Ss&t=26m
Sorry that isn't a specific answer, but I think it is a good summary and overall explanation of what is happening to the game industry in general, to MMORPG's specifically, and why the enormous publishers are squeezing out so many of the smaller companies and it costs so much to make a "AAA" title.
i'm not sure anyone follows this but here goes :
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure
So you see they had 400,000 after 8 hour pledged by gamers who wanted to see a follow up to the genre of the day of tentacle and full throttle ... so far they are at close to 2 million wich is by his( tim schafer) WWWooOOO
it does not cost much more to finance a gaming team of 41 people to create a single player ... Sure mmorpg are more complex but to go from 400,000$ to 120 million for the same amount of people you'd have to be dumb to believe a word of it.The only reason is backroom deal are taking over gaming in general and a very good example is the current fiasco at aventurine where they sold 40% of their company share to keep living la viva.
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.
While WOW & Aion's launch wasn't perfect, it was much better than some other releases...namely SWG, Lineage 2, and some other games that came before them. Since the popularity of WOW, the games that have been successful are the ones that have very limiited launch problems, and are fully polished (Rift, SW:TOR)
On the bit about focus on casual audience causing MMOs to lose players...sorry but I don't follow. The focus on the casual audience has been a boon for Blizzard. Ultima Online topped out around 250,000 subs, and EQ around 500,000. Lineage 2 got to around 1 million...largely due to their Asian following.
Enter World of Warcraft, first mainstream MMO aimed at casual players, and they topped out at 12 MILLION subs.
Sure, the fixation on the casual audience (subscriptions) has tee'd off a lot of tradtional MMORPG fans (myself included), but where else you going to go? Darkfall? Mortal Online? UO Private Servers?
Minecraft was very successful...but was it 10s of millions of players successful? Farmville only grew in popularity because of the inbeded networking infrastructure and ease of access from facebook.
The guy with mincraft did exactly what I advocated above. He understood the audience he was creating the game for was more interested in creating and working cooperatively with other players, than things like fancy graphics and spoon fed content.
For an indy, I'd say 4+ million copies sold is king of the castle.
What do typical indy games sell? I really don't know, but as a guess I'd say 10k or considerably less.
Lineage 2 is a specific problem, the start was not the problem, running the game for the company what was running in in the west was, no support, inability to deal with bots... If you want to talk about L2 you should take the hundreds of free servers (500-15k players each) into account, which have done nothing more than offer a good service and keeping the bots at bay.
As for casual focus, it st what it is, FOCUS , not accessibility, there is a difference in terms of magnitude, the difference between "hey, this is easyer than playing UO!" and "hmm, i could play a fps to get the same experience".
Wow reached 12 million when it was casual accessible, not focused, IMO.
As for minecraft, 16 million registered users and 4 millions units sold, not too shabby, even if we dont know the number of players playing, eh?
How many millions does rift (clean launch, polished) have?
I think where we disagree is the magnitude of focus the companies should have for the "flashy crowd", how clever or stupid that is, and what the results of that focus are.
I mean, in the end, if your desire is to have just 100-500k players with no boom and cult following expected as a big company, to play it safe, then you may as well make the game just for the people who will sub for 3 months and then leave, and it is a good plan.
Flame on!
To be honest any respectable AAA single player game takes the same amount of money to make.
What is crazy is spending more than 100 millions like Bioware did for Swtor, since they basically carbon copied WoW and bougth the Engine from Simultronics, that kind of money is not justified.
There are a lot of costs for a modern game.
A single server costs about $900-2000 to purchase. Each game launches with somewhere between 20-40 servers. So right off the bat you are looking at $45,000 just for SERVER space.
If you have a team of 50 developers that have an average salary of $100,000 ay ear it means you are spending $5,000,000 a year on wages. If a decent MMO takes 2-3 years an d a good ones takes 4-5 years you are looking at between $10-25M in wages.
You need a janitor to do maintenance on all the computers and clean everything, another $30,000 a year.
You need professional writers, another $100,000/year per writer.
You can't make things cheap.
Website: http://www.thegameguru.me / YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/users/thetroublmaker
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))
"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
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