This is my first post. I am happy to have come across this discussion and appreciate the details that you have brought up. I have been researching the process and costs of MMO development and ownership for about 4 months now.

I am a student of entrepreneurship with a business idea that uses 3D Web and gaming technologies. I have had success finding out the costs of ownership and maintenance in terms of broadband and server needs, dependent on estimated concurrent users and whether it is a high, med. or low impact game. (in my case, I believe it qualifies as high because I will need numerous NPC’s (Non-player characters) aka robots and a decent size AI database to customize the experience for players.

So, my needs are not exactly that of the formula for MMO’s but getting the costs of developing a high-impact MMO would really help me project my expenses.

I find it very interesting how much I have heard the responders to this post say that a person/company needs to establish their budget and then figure out what the design of the game will be.
Now, I know that it is considered close to delusional to think that you can just “break into the games industry” with “an amazing idea” never having done it before…etc etc…but, that said, answering a question about the development costs of an MMO should not be that difficult.

References to how much illustrators/artists tend to make, the average costs of generating art assets vs. buying them. How much a an animator, texture artist, and modeler tend to get paid…how much a project manager makes, lead programmer etc etc. And then how many people are needed in each position in relation to how quickly you are trying to complete the game and how complex it is, how much office space is needed…etc…isn’t anybody writing about this?

All of these components are what a person (who is thinking entrepreneurially and intends to raise the funds necessary to bring their idea to life) needs to know in order to build the founding team and make any kind of a case for their idea to investors.

I guess I am just surprised that as many questions as have been asked about this and as many lengthy responses and discussions that go on, nobody seems to have a place to refer someone with these questions, nor the time or perhaps interest in unearthing these details (not even Tom Sloper!) It always stays so theoretical and devoid of numbers.

Why is that? and is there anyone interested in this aspect of it? If so, I look forward to hearing your insight and suggestions.

Schweet! Can’t wait to hear from you.

Our internal project is also scheduled to cost under 1M $ to develop and still the game is pretty massive and the engine is pretty complex.

J#
http://www.gogogic.com
http://gogogic.wordpress.com/

Oh definitely. But the thing is you’re tossing around numbers with no discussion of design. Unless you have a good shot at some serious funding, you have to be keeping your budget and your available talent (or lack of) in mind as you design, just as you can’t work out a budget without a design in mind. I just don’t think you can talk about one (budget) without the other (design). Sometimes good design leads to low budgets, but sometimes low budgets lead to good design.

As a sort of twist on the budget/design thing, imagine someone gave you $6m to make a “solitaire” game. Personally I’d come back and say “Sure”, put $5.9m in my pocket and spend $0.1m to develop the game - because you don’t make solitaire a better game by adding more to it. At it’s core is a good game, and throwing no amounts of money at it will make it a better game. 3D rendered cards with specular lighting, animated hands reaching for cards and so on won’t make it better.

It’s exactly that kind of design mindset I think that fits well with low budget targets. Create a design where a) you have a really good game, and b) throwing more money at it won’t make it that much better. Come up with that and you’re good.

And any post on this topic needs to always link to the “Boutique MMO” article at http://www.escapistmagazine.com/issue/75/15 and the “Learning from Touring Bands” article at http://lostgarden.com/2005/10/game-business-model-learning-from.html