Possible MM model
by Nathan Hartzell · in Torque Game Engine · 04/19/2001 (1:56 pm) · 18 replies
I'm not sure if this fits in this forum, but here goes.
There is a lot of talk about how to handle MM (massively multiplayer) games within the V12 licensing model. GG has stated in other threads that they are thinking about hosting MM games for developers. Everyone's question, though, is "How do I charge?" Instead of thinking about that, I have a different option.
For MM fee-based games, instead of each developer charging their own fees, why not set up some sort of profit-sharing system? GG would host all games that participate in the system, and charges players a monthly fee (two models for this fee will be given later). Then, at the end of the month, GG totals up how popular and expensive each game was. So, total number of hours played by players in each game, and costs for serving each game. Then, based on some formula from those numbers, each developer gets a certain percentage of the monthly fees, and GG takes the leftover amounts. This way, GG gets money, costs are covered, and developers get money as well.
Now, there are two ways to handle the monthly fee. It could either be a flat fee, a sort of membership to GG's online element. It could also be a base fee, plus extra for each game you regularly play in over X. So, for example, just a $10 fee, which gives you unlimited access. The other option would be say a $5 fee, plus $5 for every game you play for a month or more above 2.
Anyways, it's just a thought, but considering how many people want to do MM games, it's probably better that this question is firmly answered (part of the licensing agreement or another such agreement) sooner rather than later. Plus, this model means that everybody can do a MM game without having to worry about directly "competing" with everyone. Everyone can get a share of the profits.
There is a lot of talk about how to handle MM (massively multiplayer) games within the V12 licensing model. GG has stated in other threads that they are thinking about hosting MM games for developers. Everyone's question, though, is "How do I charge?" Instead of thinking about that, I have a different option.
For MM fee-based games, instead of each developer charging their own fees, why not set up some sort of profit-sharing system? GG would host all games that participate in the system, and charges players a monthly fee (two models for this fee will be given later). Then, at the end of the month, GG totals up how popular and expensive each game was. So, total number of hours played by players in each game, and costs for serving each game. Then, based on some formula from those numbers, each developer gets a certain percentage of the monthly fees, and GG takes the leftover amounts. This way, GG gets money, costs are covered, and developers get money as well.
Now, there are two ways to handle the monthly fee. It could either be a flat fee, a sort of membership to GG's online element. It could also be a base fee, plus extra for each game you regularly play in over X. So, for example, just a $10 fee, which gives you unlimited access. The other option would be say a $5 fee, plus $5 for every game you play for a month or more above 2.
Anyways, it's just a thought, but considering how many people want to do MM games, it's probably better that this question is firmly answered (part of the licensing agreement or another such agreement) sooner rather than later. Plus, this model means that everybody can do a MM game without having to worry about directly "competing" with everyone. Everyone can get a share of the profits.
About the author
#2
Jeff Tunnell GG
04/19/2001 (3:18 pm)
Nathan. You have hit upon one of the methods that we are considering for MM games.Jeff Tunnell GG
#3
#1) Cost of Bandwidth
#2) Technical Support
People get fixated on the cost of servers and such, quite frankly don't sweat the upfront capital overlays. You can put together a 1.33ghz Athlon system with 1GB of PC2100 for about $1,0000. You can get nice Cisco T3 routers off Ebay for $3500-$6500 [75% off normal prices]. But bandwidth is the killer, the month to month cost which will scale upwards with your success level... potentially leaving you a victim of your own success.
Average T1 Cost: $1200/mo [Local loop + ISP charge]
Average 10mb Fractional T3: $10,000 [Loop + ISP Fee]
Now there are some fiber providers out there that can give you good "bang for buck" - as low as $250 per meg when you commit to a 10 megabit connection or faster. Obviously this varies state to state but I think the above bandwidth prices should work well. Sometimes you can cut a honey of a deal if your demand is HUGE [100 megabit or more] but then your talking about $50k+ a month on unmetered service.
The good news if you choose to co-locate your game servers with a provider, you will save that huge "Local Loop" cost from the phone company and instead spend the money on the raw bandwidth. Co-location fees are generally baseline from $250 to $750 a month] which sometimes even includes the computer, rack space, power and either some bandwidth or a fixed per GB transfer allowance. I would advise against the per GB a month transfer pricing model since it will be difficult to model and predict what your monthly prices would end up being!
Now there is support.. Let's presume you say "No Phone Support - Email only" which may not be a bad thing. But you still need someone to answer those emails. General rule of thumb in the ISP world is that one full time tech support person per 1,000 customers. After payroll costs you probably want to guestimate this expense at $3500 per month per person.
After looking at these two major expenses (and of course there's plenty others, I just suspect these are the two most under-estimated line items in the budget) you can more "accurately" calculate what the monthly fee needs to be to pay for expenses and make a nice profit.
Mike
04/19/2001 (5:46 pm)
One thing to keep in mind when creating a business model or case to design and "Massively Multiplayer" game is #1) Cost of Bandwidth
#2) Technical Support
People get fixated on the cost of servers and such, quite frankly don't sweat the upfront capital overlays. You can put together a 1.33ghz Athlon system with 1GB of PC2100 for about $1,0000. You can get nice Cisco T3 routers off Ebay for $3500-$6500 [75% off normal prices]. But bandwidth is the killer, the month to month cost which will scale upwards with your success level... potentially leaving you a victim of your own success.
Average T1 Cost: $1200/mo [Local loop + ISP charge]
Average 10mb Fractional T3: $10,000 [Loop + ISP Fee]
Now there are some fiber providers out there that can give you good "bang for buck" - as low as $250 per meg when you commit to a 10 megabit connection or faster. Obviously this varies state to state but I think the above bandwidth prices should work well. Sometimes you can cut a honey of a deal if your demand is HUGE [100 megabit or more] but then your talking about $50k+ a month on unmetered service.
The good news if you choose to co-locate your game servers with a provider, you will save that huge "Local Loop" cost from the phone company and instead spend the money on the raw bandwidth. Co-location fees are generally baseline from $250 to $750 a month] which sometimes even includes the computer, rack space, power and either some bandwidth or a fixed per GB transfer allowance. I would advise against the per GB a month transfer pricing model since it will be difficult to model and predict what your monthly prices would end up being!
Now there is support.. Let's presume you say "No Phone Support - Email only" which may not be a bad thing. But you still need someone to answer those emails. General rule of thumb in the ISP world is that one full time tech support person per 1,000 customers. After payroll costs you probably want to guestimate this expense at $3500 per month per person.
After looking at these two major expenses (and of course there's plenty others, I just suspect these are the two most under-estimated line items in the budget) you can more "accurately" calculate what the monthly fee needs to be to pay for expenses and make a nice profit.
Mike
#4
04/19/2001 (5:58 pm)
Right, but that would all be taken into account by GG when deciding how much each team gets out of the monthly pool of fees. Since one source is taking care of all the hosting, they can more easily get the larger, arbitrary bandwidth deals that are cheaper per GB. Tech support can be similarly handled, since, although there may be 300,000 subscriptions to games in the GG "stable", there may be only, say, 200,000 or fewer actual players. Bigger is always better, and handling everything from one source means that each developer doesn't have to start from scratch each time and potentially fall flat on their faces again and again. Granted, I haven't thought the idea out fully, not being experienced in business, but I think it stands up to at least casual investigation.
#5
04/19/2001 (6:34 pm)
Kinda thought Id be the voice of reality, but don't forget, how many of these MM games are actually going to get done? No offense guys but I think a lot of V12 licensees are looking at MM games as their first attempt with a new engine. Don't forget by licensing the V12 you can make infinate games with it. I might wanna start a bit smaller, earn some cash to invest in my MM, and gain a name to take to publishers.
#6
Jeff Tunnell GG
04/19/2001 (10:11 pm)
I agree that too many people are fixated on MM games. The backend expenses will kill you and the development effort is huge.Jeff Tunnell GG
#7
If you can break hosting up into server "cells" and have some attraction for running a cell (much like a quake3 or halflife server is run by isp's now to add value), then thats MUCH better as a developer (believe me, running your own servers is a complete and utter pain in the ass).
Basically, thinking more along the lines of a central master server (basically a name resolution and authentication server) and then having distributed servers running individual parts of your world, imho, is a MUCH more managable proposition.
Phil.
04/20/2001 (4:18 am)
One thing everyone seems to forget is that multiplayer games dont always have to be massive. And if you DO want to do a massive game, that doesnt necassarily mean a client/server model.If you can break hosting up into server "cells" and have some attraction for running a cell (much like a quake3 or halflife server is run by isp's now to add value), then thats MUCH better as a developer (believe me, running your own servers is a complete and utter pain in the ass).
Basically, thinking more along the lines of a central master server (basically a name resolution and authentication server) and then having distributed servers running individual parts of your world, imho, is a MUCH more managable proposition.
Phil.
#8
04/20/2001 (1:29 pm)
Wait wiat let me get this straight? so if i'm making an MMORPG and somewhere along the line I start charging, i have to give you guys a percentage in that?
#9
04/26/2001 (10:35 pm)
Yes.
#10
04/27/2001 (5:26 am)
Even if we host the game?
#11
I think having the multiplayer community together would be a great idea, that way many people could go to other games if they wanted, making more money for all games..
I think if you make money off of the engine in any way oyu have to pay Matthew.
That is the point of the engine being so low cost.
They say right in the FAQ, the reason for it being cheap is that there are strings attached.
I like the idea of not running everything client-server.
Many games, like StarCraft, would have to have a server that costs more money than you'd imagine, if they handled all the messages through their server.
That doesn't exactly apply to MMORPGs, but, the point is there...
I'd let GG host the game and not have to worry about the server, and let them have some profit, rather than the alternative of worrying so much about it yourself.
If you could pay a flat fee to play all the games on the server, you would make much more money by having more people join because it is a better deal, and the games would be more popular too.
GG could be the new place for monthly cost multiplayer online gaming.
04/27/2001 (6:05 am)
Okay... Only reading the first post, I will say this...I think having the multiplayer community together would be a great idea, that way many people could go to other games if they wanted, making more money for all games..
I think if you make money off of the engine in any way oyu have to pay Matthew.
That is the point of the engine being so low cost.
They say right in the FAQ, the reason for it being cheap is that there are strings attached.
I like the idea of not running everything client-server.
Many games, like StarCraft, would have to have a server that costs more money than you'd imagine, if they handled all the messages through their server.
That doesn't exactly apply to MMORPGs, but, the point is there...
I'd let GG host the game and not have to worry about the server, and let them have some profit, rather than the alternative of worrying so much about it yourself.
If you could pay a flat fee to play all the games on the server, you would make much more money by having more people join because it is a better deal, and the games would be more popular too.
GG could be the new place for monthly cost multiplayer online gaming.
#12
GG you think you can give us an idea aobut how your going to do hosting with charging and such so we can know more about this to help us decide to buy the engine?
04/27/2001 (10:20 am)
Yes i'm quite aware that that's why the engine is so cheap but the thing is that since we are just making an MMORPG for fun.... Ok see here's the thing. We put out the game and allow people to come in for the "beta". Meanwhile they play the game, have fun, etc... then when we start getting too many people in it we get a host or get a connection and our own server and host it ourselves which isn't cheap either way, so we will pull it from "beta" and start charging to keep the game online, since at that point we will know that this game has really turned out good and people enjoy it. Though now that i think about it once we pull it out of "beta" if we have to pay them a percentage anyway we might just have it so GG hosts..... GG you think you can give us an idea aobut how your going to do hosting with charging and such so we can know more about this to help us decide to buy the engine?
#13
How are we going to handle games that are sold commercially with multiplayer capability.
I wouldn't want to pay for it out of my percentage of course...
Places like EA handle that sort of thing for the games, no real worrying about it....
Maybe GG should handle this free of cost? Multiplayer ability means games sell better, so they should. Or maybe they charge a bit of money for it to us, either way, not much, or that discourages creation of the systems, lower sales...
04/28/2001 (2:00 am)
The server would have to be able to handle a lot, unless it is servers, but still...How are we going to handle games that are sold commercially with multiplayer capability.
I wouldn't want to pay for it out of my percentage of course...
Places like EA handle that sort of thing for the games, no real worrying about it....
Maybe GG should handle this free of cost? Multiplayer ability means games sell better, so they should. Or maybe they charge a bit of money for it to us, either way, not much, or that discourages creation of the systems, lower sales...
#14
04/28/2001 (9:55 am)
Maybe you can talk to like zone.com (ugh microsoft) or won.net or someone and have them do like they did with half-life and tribes 2.. just an idea. or yeah you could talk to GG.
#15
How huge? In the programming area, that is.
I'm looking into an attempt to create something like t1 and t2.. with more stuff loaded into it, with all new textures and shapes, and game types.. When that is completed, about how much code would I have to write to complete everything. (programming frustrates me.., a lord of typo errors) :)
04/29/2001 (4:17 pm)
Quote:I agree that too many people are fixated on MM games. The backend expenses will kill you and the development effort is huge.
How huge? In the programming area, that is.
I'm looking into an attempt to create something like t1 and t2.. with more stuff loaded into it, with all new textures and shapes, and game types.. When that is completed, about how much code would I have to write to complete everything. (programming frustrates me.., a lord of typo errors) :)
#16
Just a thought.
04/30/2001 (2:40 pm)
For an MM Model... how about taking an extra percentage from the money the game makes, and use that for the games server? The more popular the game, the more money for the server?Just a thought.
#17
04/30/2001 (6:12 pm)
Im a firm believer in making an RPG that supports 10 people. And if GG likes it, they'll probably discuss further expansion of your game. I really think some of you guys considering building a MMORPG should reconsider, or set your first milestone WAYYYYYY below what your final product is going to be.
#18
05/20/2001 (8:13 pm)
That is a very good suggestion,however things wont work out as you planned.I can tell you that NO gamer will pay monthly just to play that game.I mean not even CounterStrike for Halflife would have the ability to do so.The reason being is that #1 its annoying to send cheque or payment everymonth just for a game.#2 they wont take the risk.#3 Not all gamers can afford to pay monthly,lets say $7.00usd per month,if they play for 1 year that would cost more then rthe game itself.Also setting up a faciality that tracks the time play will cost big bucks.And who will pay for that? i dont think GG will be willing to pay for it,since they already got rip off with this license deal.If they wont pay then they might charge extra money from license to gather the money for this facility. 
Torque Owner Jeremy Noetzelman