I am writing this post as a suggestion to all of the people out there in indie land who are willing to take on the daunting task of creating an MMO. I appreciate this is the help wanted area and that it is not a recruiting post so if the moderators feel it does not belong here I completely differ to your judgement and apologize for the inconvenience. Personally, after being a member here for the last 7 years, I think it might help a lot of up and coming hobbiest developers to really show them what it takes to make a game work. For anyone planning a "Free-to-play" MMO can you succeed? Read on...
Can an indie developer make an MMO? - Absolutely. It has been done before. Very few times but it has been done. “A Tale in the Desert” is one that comes to mind readily but the one I know the most about is perhaps "Minions of Mirth" by Prairie Games and that is what I am going to talk to you all about.
Minions of Mirth is probably one of the most well known MMOs in the indie community. It is a fully customize-able game that even allows single-player/offline mode and is 100% stable and fully functional. It was created by Prairie Games in 2006 by a 2 person team. Josh Ritter created Minions of Mirth in a mere 11 months. Now before anyone goes running off thinking "Hey thats not bad I can make an MMO in 11 months and be rich!" lets get some facts straight. Josh is a veteran game producer and programmer who had no less than 10 previous successful game titles under his belt when he took on Minions. He is a coding and scripting dynamo and his ability to focus and produce would put alot of "professional"/industry developers to shame. As a partner in crime his associate for the Minions development was his long-time girlfriend and now wife who is an equally talented modeler and artist. These two trusted each other, shared a dream and shared countless hours of hard, devoted developer time.
Why does all this matter? Minions was released in 2006 for the PC and the MAC and quickly became an instant hit. I say quickly but it took a lot of hard work but in fact I don't think unless a person goes through a software launch they really can appreciate the turmoil and brutal nature of the industry "beast". Prairie Games, being one of only a handful of truly successful unfunded indie MMOs is an example to us all as to what CAN be done but it can also serve as a warning as to what can happen if things go awry or are not planned out effectively.
Minions of Mirth was based on a one time fee that allowed people to play the game forever on the minions servers. PG also encouraged a strong "modding" community for their game that had people running their own Minions game worlds all for the price of the initial game purchase. PG repeatedly defended their pricing structure saying that MMOs could be done without a monthly fee. The Minions project has now fallen on hard times. Josh and family are no longer a part of PG and what was once a shining example of success has become a lesson in hard knocks for us all to notes from. This has been done succesfully (some would argue) by companies like Blizzard (With diablo) and Guildwars is an obvious comparison but those companies DID have revenue streams that worked for them. they paid for their servers and their dev teams with updates, upgrades, expansions etc and so forth. Unless you have the money you simply can NOT run a bank of servers and pay for the bandwidth. It's impossible.
Let me give you an example: - I was actively involved in the legal proceedings during the bankruptcy hearings for "Horizons: Empires of Istaria" (Which is making something of a comeback btw and can be checked out at www.istaria.com) and even though at launch they sold less than 30k boxes, a year later when they filed for bankruptcy do you know what their bandwidth costs showed on the legal documents? Nearly 30k a month.. for a dying MMO with reputedly less than 5k active accounts at the time. What does all this mean to indie MMO developers? It means you need to THINK.
- Think - about what you are attempting to do and how it will scale. Do you know how many actual physical "server" boxes you will need to run for a production MMO?Depending on your world engine you might getaway with 5PCs at the start but most likely you will need more than 10.
− Think − about the size of your client data stream. How many kbps per client are you chewing up in both upstream and downstream and what kind of burst traffic patterns will your game experience. All of these things cost money and although your ISP may let you get away with it for a month, maybe two I assure you the walls WILL come crashing down around you.
− Think − about all of the hard work that you are asking people to pour into your development and where will all that work go when someone flips the switch off to shut you down or you simply dont have the servers to handle the traffic. You only get one chance generally with MMO players today. There are simply too many games for them to choose from and if you show them that you arent capable of running yours they WILL move on without a second thought.
Are you saying that Free-to-play can′t be done?
No I am definitely not saying this. I think I gave 2 examples of free to play platforms that were pretty wildly successful in their day. What I AM saying is that of all of the indie MMO developments that −DO− succeed (And we all know how stacked the odds are already against that happening) it would be a terrible tragedy for the whole community to see those few flickering successes get taken out by bad financial planning or a bad business model.
Guys and gals what I am asking you to do is this:
Before you write "f2p" or non−commerical or anything else down in your design document please give it some thought. Someone is going to have to physically pay money for servers and bandwidth and contrary to what you may think, your $10 or even $50 a month web hosting package isn't going to cut the mustard. It costs thousands. Have a plan, use that plan.
Are you saying I shouldn't even start my MMO if I dont have financials for an MMO? No I am not saying that at all. As long as you PLAN for it. Use your development as a "proof of concept" to present to a financial backer. Use it to get a loan. (Very hard to do these days btw) Use it as simply a learning tool to enhance your skills and learn to work with other people in a development environment. <<-- probably the best thing you will ever get out of your indie MMO.
All of the above is important when you are looking to create the "next big thing" in MMOs. We all know the percentage of games that actually take their dream to completion. It's a fraction of 1%. I felt prompted to write this because as of very recently the Minions project is really falling on some hard times and really it's a blow to all of us to see one of the 1 in a million successes flounder due to poor planning. I dont claim to have the answers, if I did I'd be writing this from my own yacht anchored in my own harbour on my own private island in the Caribbean. Instead I am sitting here in an 8 year old beat up computer chair typing this from my basement where I feverishly work on my own gaming project. :)
Don't let poor planning derail your dreams guys. Always have a plan "B".. I hope someone may find this helpful.
