Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Quote: Original post by frob

Unless you have a quarter billion dollars or so needed to create a small but successful MMO game...

are you sure about that? a quarter billion? im guessing youre referring to maintenance costs and not initial dev costs.

assuming blizzard has 6 million annual subscribers, they alone are generating 1 billion in subscription fees. that means MMOGs generated at a minimum $3.0BN for 2005. so $5.0BN by 2008, though not a small chunk of change, sounds kinda low to me...dont mind me...just thinking to myself.

WoW production costs are usually rumoured to be around $70-$100 pre-launch. There might have been an official statement about it, but I cannot confirm it.

While 1 bil may seem a lot, this isn't profit. They have several full datacenters to maintain (US, Europe, Asia), and those come with full support, maintainance, billing staff, ... I believe employee numbers are in the hundreds for these. Even if at minimal wages, they add up. The operating costs of servers and bandwidth are non-negligible either, the number is usually cited at 20% total operating cost.

So yes, MMOs do turn a lot of cash, but not necessarily profit.

Quote: Original post by tsloper
frob wrote:

>Add them up and you are easily at a quarter billion dollars.

No. Realistically adding it up should not amount to more than tens of millions.

Either way, it's more than the pocket change I have available to me.

I think you're just being a tightwad. I'm sure I could easily spend $50M on global advertizing, and $30M just on buildings. [wink] But yeah, the cost totals up to be whatever you actually spend.

Frob responded:

>I think you're just being a tightwad. I'm sure I could easily spend $50M on global advertizing, and $30M just on buildings

You are aware, are you not, that being a tightwad is essential in business? Also, I thought we were talking just about the initial development costs - marketing shouldn't be part of that particular calculation. Not having experience in marketing myself, I'm not familiar with what those costs ought to be. But $50M sounds a little high to this tightwad...

Tom

Sorry, it was a joke.

Yes, I understand the importance of keeping costs in line with the benefit they provide.

I really had two points I was trying to go for:

One of the points that I was trying to make is that the actual game programming costs of such a huge undertaking are relatively small compared to everything else that needs to take place.

Second -- it doesn't really matter (to most of us) what the costs are for creating a real MMO, or what the potential market is for an MMO game. The financial barrier to entry is just too high.



Another digression

Lets consider a financial object other than salary and software development tools -- the working space for employees. Let's say they'll need to get around a 25,000 square foot place to work to accomodate a slim staff of workers. Since we're talking about the number of people in an MMO, that's probably about enough just during the development.

Where I live, that size of building will set you back around $2M. You're in LA, so I ran a search for tax records of commercial properties in farther out (cheaper) areas -- Google shows that size of builing around Riverside for between $2M to $5M depending on location. If you prefer being close to the airport, you might want the property at 689 E. Maitland Ave. Ontario, CA for just over $3M, although you'd have to spend a hundred thousand or so getting the open space converted to offices in the rest of the building. It also only has 44 parking stalls which is enough room for the people you'd need to get started but not enough to keep everybody involved in making an MMO.

That's just the building. It doesn't include those pesky details like taxes, utilities, desks, cubicles, wiring, and so on.

Of the wealthy people I personally know, only one of them *might* have the resources to finance an MMO -- but he already has his hands full with the several businesses he owns. Yes, I am talking about the rich guy who bought the company I am at (and moved it into one of his buildings that also has a bunch of executive suites). I'm pretty sure he bought the company just to build up his portfolio of companies, which range from software companies, software consulting, executive services, realty, and ([oh]) a lingere company and two nanny companies... (Makes you wonder, doesn't it?)


Individual products, hardware, and software are fairly cheap. People are expensive. Accomodating those people can be even more expensive.