[INFO] Before posting about an MMO, please read this...
by Ted Southard · in General Discussion · 02/05/2009 (4:16 pm) · 49 replies
The following is some advice I both learned the hard way, in having two false starts with my own project, as well as advice I picked up from other community members who have been down the same road as I am travelling and you would like to travel. Because MMOs are very popular and more and more appear every week, many people believe that they, too, can create an MMO. Well, you might very well be able to create an MMO, but before you go running off into the forums to get a team together and start asking questions about how to make that kind of game, take the time to read the below. Even though this is not written to discourage you, you still may not like everything written in this post, but you should note it for when you need it, and read it all the way through, even if you feel discouraged. You'll find some interesting advice and ideas throughout this posting.
Do not take it personal, but do take it to heart:
Golden Rule: Do not look for a team until it is absolutely necessary. What you should do is:
1) Understand what an MMO is: By that, I don't just mean that you should have played a bunch and know what you would like out of your own MMO, but you should read books about what it takes to create and- most importantly- maintain an MMO. An MMO is a business with a continuing life from the time the designer first thinks up a fuzzy idea for the gameworld until five or ten years down the line when the last server is shut down. And business means hardware costs (more than just a "sick rig", unless you want hackers crawling up your server's wazoo at 2am while you're sleeping), software costs (server OS, antivirus, dev apps, database apps, art apps etc), web hosting (you need a front end website), and community management (who's going to answer the help desk at 2am when the hackers turn your server off?).
That means you need to build up knowledge of the business side of MMOs, and it's not easy. You're building something that is not just a game, but a service. It's not impossible either, so go get the books and start reading!
2) Understand what you want your particular MMO to accomplish: After you understand exactly what it takes to build an MMO, and you're still confident that you have the desire to have a go at it in an indie fashion, then it's time to sit down and flesh out your ideas.
The first thing to realize here is that this is NOT the point to go get a team. This is the point where you need to have a by-yourself-meeting and come up with a backstory for your world, the areas, factions, and what makes the world tick at a high level. Find out what kind of gameplay you want to have in the game (if you can only describe that gameplay in terms of a half-dozen games it would be "like", then you're nowhere near done). Sketch out GUIs, NPCs, weapons, towns/cities, or even scenarios. Realize also that these sketches can be horrible or done on napkins, but it helps you understand what you want. If you don't understand what you're building, you cannot expect anyone else to build it.
And when you're done with the high-level view, delve into some details. Not everything needs to be fleshed out in this step, but the more you have on paper, the less you'll have to think about it later in the development cycle when you have other things to think about. Go ahead, geek out on your design and create documents like an encyclopedia, or diary entries or stories that get your point across. Don't be shy about it, let loose- it's the best way to be creative, and you'll find that some of the ideas you normally think would be crazy actually take your game world to new and more interesting directions!
3) Understand your skills: It takes more than just an idea to build an MMO, and I can tell you that there are 1000 MMOs slated to emerge by the end of 2009, all with ideas. About 95% of them will fail miserably, and some of the 5% will be close calls, but still miss the mark. But by this point, you know what they go through to make those games, and you know what you want yours to be like. Now it's time to look in the mirror and see what you have to offer a team.
Now, to be blunt, if all you have is an idea, then you'll get nowhere unless you have an idea and several million dollars. Don't be offended, but it's a fact that applies to us all, for all business ventures large and small. If you're a writer, then you can use your writing skill to some degree to get your visions across to the team, and you can write content for the game. Better still, if you have a bit of sketching skill (and if you practice, you'll probably find that you have enough to communicate your idea to a better artist that you'll bring on board later), or even better if you can pick up scripting and/or coding. Since we're talking about MMOs, you should also know some things about database design, SQL, installing, configuring and maintaining operating systems, and business. These last skills are must-knows.
What coding offers is that you can sit down and bend the game engine you choose to your will, or with scripting you can test out or implement gameplay features, which is invaluable if you want to be a designer. It's absolutely essential, in my (and many others') opinion. But again, you need at least one (preferably two or more) of these skills.
Other skills you should have are MS Office- specifically Word (documents) and Excel. Excel is a not-so-secret, but very overlooked weapon for creating, testing, and balancing gameplay. If you learn just a little bit of Visual Basic, you can put code behind Excel spreadsheets and test most of your core gameplay before you even choose a game engine! Imagination is key as well, since many game developers use pen and paper roleplaying methods to test gamerules before committing to the design, or use scraps of paper as mockups of the interface that they move around to get layouts correct. The point is: Learn and use skills and methods that get you where you need to be!
4) Understand what game engine is best for you: So, by this point, you have a grip on the work involved in MMO projects in general, the scope of your own project in specific, and you have some skills that you bring to the table (if not having some work done on the game mechanics already). So now look for a game engine that suits your needs. Not all game engines are equal, and no engine can be termed "the best". They all have slightly different feature-sets, and that means that you'll spent a couple of weeks (or even a month or two) comparing engines or reading their documentation to understand what they have to offer you (because just asking if they do on their forums will not yield as good information as if you understand what the docs tell you directly). Realize here that any engine you pick is likely to lack some feature you will need. That's just because there is no such thing as an engine that is "perfect" for your project.
After you sort through a bunch and narrow them down, you can compare costs, licensing, and support, because these things are usually not the same for different engines. Then make your choice, but make it well, because if you choose to switch engine in mid-production, it may sink your project.
The second part of this step is that once you've chosen your engine, make a list of the changes you'll need to make to the engine (and hopefully in your review of the engines, you also looked at how much effort changes to the engine are to get your features into it). That list you'll want to set to the side until Step 6, but get it done here...
5) It Begins! Start scripting/coding... BY YOURSELF: Seriously, you should start scripting or coding the gameplay without a team at first. Don't worry if you don't have the best graphics in your gameplay tests, as long as the gameplay is fun. Graphics will come, but icons with stick-figures, placeholder art like cubes, or "stock" art that comes with your engine or purchased for cheap can stand in for better, custom art that you bring in later. Remember what I said about using Excel and other cheap tricks to get your design moving along!
Right now is when you need to be laying the foundation of the game. You do this without a team for as long as you can, because when you finally need a team, you'll have working features, and artists can see their assets in the game right away. If you bring a team on with no functionality to test their assets against, they'll get bored and leave!
Try not to get "married" to features. Understand that sometimes a feature, while cool, may take away from the overall fun factor of the game, and should be tossed or redesigned.
6) You have gameplay, now you need a team! If you've done everything right, you have some skills, documents, knowledge, and gameplay mechanics (or rules) to attract a team, and a list of working features (maybe backed up by screenshots or vids) to show them the gameplay that they need to make look good!
Here's the truth behing the "my game idea is so great/unique, I can't share it": It's just not true. What is true is that any game developer out there who has it in them to create a game has a dozen game ideas floating around in their head waiting for the current project to finish so it can get a chance at being the next project. And because there are so many ideas out there, there is a chance that someone has your idea already, but came up with it themselves. There is nothing to be scared about in this- game development is all about how to execute your ideas- not the ideas themselves, and two game developers with the exact same idea can make wildly different games.
Here's the business part: Make sure you have equity agreements in place, as well as NDA's for intellectual property, and that means that you better not be stealing another game for your own, or you'll get sued from here to the moon! THIS MEANS ANY "FAN" HALO/DRAGON BALL Z/ETC- EVEN IF IT'S NOT A GAME YET, OR YOU'RE MAKING A "FREE" GAME! IT'S NOT YOUR PROPERTY TO USE!
Here's the other business part: Make sure you see 3d artists' portfolios, hear musicians' samples, read writers' samples, and get a feel for the knowledge of coders, dba's, and scriptors. If you don't, you'll get sub-standard or flakey people, and with no one to blame but yourself.
Here's the management part: Make sure you avoid being too bossy. Remember, you're probably not paying your team, and even if you were, no one likes to work for a jerk. It may be your idea, but their work means that they have a stake in it too. So refrain from being curt, short, snippy, arrogant, bullying, snide, sharp, or stupid with your team members. Some of them have school, some have significant others and/or children, many will have day-jobs. Some of them may feel their motivation decrease at some points, and it would be your job to keep them motivated. If they don't feel they can talk to you (and working over the internet already makes that hard), then they may just pack it in rather than stick it out.
7) Get to it: So you have a team. Good for you. Get to work, and push until you hit the finish line. Don't be a dick to your team- they're probably working for free, and they'll leave you. Don't deviate from your vision, or you may get lost. And keep development communities aware of your progress, because they can be the start of your viral marketing (and be your first customers!).
Network with other developers, go to conferences if you can, blog, post on forums, avoid flamewars (it is hard, I know, and we're not perfect, but do try), and let your enthusiasm precede you- especially on the days when you don't feel all that enthusiastic. Stay positive, stay motivated, and kick some ass!
8) Done! Just kidding, you're not. Now that you're ready to launch, you need to build the network infrastructure to handle it (you did network stress tests right? Load-balancing? Do you have payment software set up or are you going through a 3rd party solution? Security? Community managers? You did beta test, right?).
Launch day is the roughest, and expect lots of problems. Knuckle down and get to it. You might be awake for the next 48 hours... And then when that's over, the real work of maintaining the game begins :)
Well, there you go. It's not pretty and sounds discouraging, but if you can't take reading that, then you have no business doing this. Odds are, if you're reading this, you've made it through okay, so go back to step one and start doing it. You may fail. There's nothing wrong with that. Failure is a learning experience, and if you understand your failure and have enough chutzpah, then you might be able to take another swing at it. Or maybe you'll succeed, and I might be a customer. Who knows.
But if you just jump right at your project before you know anything about it, your odds for failing go way up.
Like I said, don't take this personally, but take it to heart.
Do not take it personal, but do take it to heart:
Golden Rule: Do not look for a team until it is absolutely necessary. What you should do is:
1) Understand what an MMO is: By that, I don't just mean that you should have played a bunch and know what you would like out of your own MMO, but you should read books about what it takes to create and- most importantly- maintain an MMO. An MMO is a business with a continuing life from the time the designer first thinks up a fuzzy idea for the gameworld until five or ten years down the line when the last server is shut down. And business means hardware costs (more than just a "sick rig", unless you want hackers crawling up your server's wazoo at 2am while you're sleeping), software costs (server OS, antivirus, dev apps, database apps, art apps etc), web hosting (you need a front end website), and community management (who's going to answer the help desk at 2am when the hackers turn your server off?).
That means you need to build up knowledge of the business side of MMOs, and it's not easy. You're building something that is not just a game, but a service. It's not impossible either, so go get the books and start reading!
2) Understand what you want your particular MMO to accomplish: After you understand exactly what it takes to build an MMO, and you're still confident that you have the desire to have a go at it in an indie fashion, then it's time to sit down and flesh out your ideas.
The first thing to realize here is that this is NOT the point to go get a team. This is the point where you need to have a by-yourself-meeting and come up with a backstory for your world, the areas, factions, and what makes the world tick at a high level. Find out what kind of gameplay you want to have in the game (if you can only describe that gameplay in terms of a half-dozen games it would be "like", then you're nowhere near done). Sketch out GUIs, NPCs, weapons, towns/cities, or even scenarios. Realize also that these sketches can be horrible or done on napkins, but it helps you understand what you want. If you don't understand what you're building, you cannot expect anyone else to build it.
And when you're done with the high-level view, delve into some details. Not everything needs to be fleshed out in this step, but the more you have on paper, the less you'll have to think about it later in the development cycle when you have other things to think about. Go ahead, geek out on your design and create documents like an encyclopedia, or diary entries or stories that get your point across. Don't be shy about it, let loose- it's the best way to be creative, and you'll find that some of the ideas you normally think would be crazy actually take your game world to new and more interesting directions!
3) Understand your skills: It takes more than just an idea to build an MMO, and I can tell you that there are 1000 MMOs slated to emerge by the end of 2009, all with ideas. About 95% of them will fail miserably, and some of the 5% will be close calls, but still miss the mark. But by this point, you know what they go through to make those games, and you know what you want yours to be like. Now it's time to look in the mirror and see what you have to offer a team.
Now, to be blunt, if all you have is an idea, then you'll get nowhere unless you have an idea and several million dollars. Don't be offended, but it's a fact that applies to us all, for all business ventures large and small. If you're a writer, then you can use your writing skill to some degree to get your visions across to the team, and you can write content for the game. Better still, if you have a bit of sketching skill (and if you practice, you'll probably find that you have enough to communicate your idea to a better artist that you'll bring on board later), or even better if you can pick up scripting and/or coding. Since we're talking about MMOs, you should also know some things about database design, SQL, installing, configuring and maintaining operating systems, and business. These last skills are must-knows.
What coding offers is that you can sit down and bend the game engine you choose to your will, or with scripting you can test out or implement gameplay features, which is invaluable if you want to be a designer. It's absolutely essential, in my (and many others') opinion. But again, you need at least one (preferably two or more) of these skills.
Other skills you should have are MS Office- specifically Word (documents) and Excel. Excel is a not-so-secret, but very overlooked weapon for creating, testing, and balancing gameplay. If you learn just a little bit of Visual Basic, you can put code behind Excel spreadsheets and test most of your core gameplay before you even choose a game engine! Imagination is key as well, since many game developers use pen and paper roleplaying methods to test gamerules before committing to the design, or use scraps of paper as mockups of the interface that they move around to get layouts correct. The point is: Learn and use skills and methods that get you where you need to be!
4) Understand what game engine is best for you: So, by this point, you have a grip on the work involved in MMO projects in general, the scope of your own project in specific, and you have some skills that you bring to the table (if not having some work done on the game mechanics already). So now look for a game engine that suits your needs. Not all game engines are equal, and no engine can be termed "the best". They all have slightly different feature-sets, and that means that you'll spent a couple of weeks (or even a month or two) comparing engines or reading their documentation to understand what they have to offer you (because just asking if they do on their forums will not yield as good information as if you understand what the docs tell you directly). Realize here that any engine you pick is likely to lack some feature you will need. That's just because there is no such thing as an engine that is "perfect" for your project.
After you sort through a bunch and narrow them down, you can compare costs, licensing, and support, because these things are usually not the same for different engines. Then make your choice, but make it well, because if you choose to switch engine in mid-production, it may sink your project.
The second part of this step is that once you've chosen your engine, make a list of the changes you'll need to make to the engine (and hopefully in your review of the engines, you also looked at how much effort changes to the engine are to get your features into it). That list you'll want to set to the side until Step 6, but get it done here...
5) It Begins! Start scripting/coding... BY YOURSELF: Seriously, you should start scripting or coding the gameplay without a team at first. Don't worry if you don't have the best graphics in your gameplay tests, as long as the gameplay is fun. Graphics will come, but icons with stick-figures, placeholder art like cubes, or "stock" art that comes with your engine or purchased for cheap can stand in for better, custom art that you bring in later. Remember what I said about using Excel and other cheap tricks to get your design moving along!
Right now is when you need to be laying the foundation of the game. You do this without a team for as long as you can, because when you finally need a team, you'll have working features, and artists can see their assets in the game right away. If you bring a team on with no functionality to test their assets against, they'll get bored and leave!
Try not to get "married" to features. Understand that sometimes a feature, while cool, may take away from the overall fun factor of the game, and should be tossed or redesigned.
6) You have gameplay, now you need a team! If you've done everything right, you have some skills, documents, knowledge, and gameplay mechanics (or rules) to attract a team, and a list of working features (maybe backed up by screenshots or vids) to show them the gameplay that they need to make look good!
Here's the truth behing the "my game idea is so great/unique, I can't share it": It's just not true. What is true is that any game developer out there who has it in them to create a game has a dozen game ideas floating around in their head waiting for the current project to finish so it can get a chance at being the next project. And because there are so many ideas out there, there is a chance that someone has your idea already, but came up with it themselves. There is nothing to be scared about in this- game development is all about how to execute your ideas- not the ideas themselves, and two game developers with the exact same idea can make wildly different games.
Here's the business part: Make sure you have equity agreements in place, as well as NDA's for intellectual property, and that means that you better not be stealing another game for your own, or you'll get sued from here to the moon! THIS MEANS ANY "FAN" HALO/DRAGON BALL Z/ETC- EVEN IF IT'S NOT A GAME YET, OR YOU'RE MAKING A "FREE" GAME! IT'S NOT YOUR PROPERTY TO USE!
Here's the other business part: Make sure you see 3d artists' portfolios, hear musicians' samples, read writers' samples, and get a feel for the knowledge of coders, dba's, and scriptors. If you don't, you'll get sub-standard or flakey people, and with no one to blame but yourself.
Here's the management part: Make sure you avoid being too bossy. Remember, you're probably not paying your team, and even if you were, no one likes to work for a jerk. It may be your idea, but their work means that they have a stake in it too. So refrain from being curt, short, snippy, arrogant, bullying, snide, sharp, or stupid with your team members. Some of them have school, some have significant others and/or children, many will have day-jobs. Some of them may feel their motivation decrease at some points, and it would be your job to keep them motivated. If they don't feel they can talk to you (and working over the internet already makes that hard), then they may just pack it in rather than stick it out.
7) Get to it: So you have a team. Good for you. Get to work, and push until you hit the finish line. Don't be a dick to your team- they're probably working for free, and they'll leave you. Don't deviate from your vision, or you may get lost. And keep development communities aware of your progress, because they can be the start of your viral marketing (and be your first customers!).
Network with other developers, go to conferences if you can, blog, post on forums, avoid flamewars (it is hard, I know, and we're not perfect, but do try), and let your enthusiasm precede you- especially on the days when you don't feel all that enthusiastic. Stay positive, stay motivated, and kick some ass!
8) Done! Just kidding, you're not. Now that you're ready to launch, you need to build the network infrastructure to handle it (you did network stress tests right? Load-balancing? Do you have payment software set up or are you going through a 3rd party solution? Security? Community managers? You did beta test, right?).
Launch day is the roughest, and expect lots of problems. Knuckle down and get to it. You might be awake for the next 48 hours... And then when that's over, the real work of maintaining the game begins :)
Well, there you go. It's not pretty and sounds discouraging, but if you can't take reading that, then you have no business doing this. Odds are, if you're reading this, you've made it through okay, so go back to step one and start doing it. You may fail. There's nothing wrong with that. Failure is a learning experience, and if you understand your failure and have enough chutzpah, then you might be able to take another swing at it. Or maybe you'll succeed, and I might be a customer. Who knows.
But if you just jump right at your project before you know anything about it, your odds for failing go way up.
Like I said, don't take this personally, but take it to heart.
About the author
Started with indie games over a decade ago, and now creates tools and tech for games. Currently working as a contractor for startups and game studios.
#22
Not at all, I'm happy about it.
There have been smaller changes to the architecture in the past few days. Small ones really, but important ones nonetheless.
One of the changes I've made affects the way players are routed to game servers. At first I was going to let the game servers handle the routing, but then I realized, that I wanted it to be a separate service offered by the login server, because it adds lots of stability. I can trust the middleware I'm building, but I have no experience with Torque handling so many players for such a ling time. So I figured, that even if a game server crashes, I need to be able to move players around game servers, and need to be able to recognize if there's an emergency from the outside, because I can not be sure that the game server will be able to report problems back to the system.
Also, the master server passed the role of starting up new instances of game servers to the login server, which after the previous change is the one service that knows all about where players are - and so it is the best place to handle and balance traffic.
As you said, I am hoping to create a cluster that can handle a few thousand users with this architecture. If there are going to be more players visiting, then further clusters ("servers" from the players' point of view) will be fired up - with their own database, master server, login server, etc...
This would separate clusters, but it's better to first separate them and then work on bringing them closer together than planning for them to use certain services together, because that could hurt scalability.
So essentially, the only limitation to this indie friendly mmo architecture would be the strain on the single services that the game servers use within a cluster. MySql with some proper indexing and Apache can take a lot of traffic. I will not stress my current solution further than 3000 simultaneous users - which means about 10k active, registered users on one cluster. Time will tell how many game servers that means. This is pretty optimistic, we'll hopefully see until the end of this year whether that's possible or not. :) (I am optimistic :)
Thanks for the shout-out!
--Konrad
03/27/2009 (1:54 pm)
@TonyQuote:
Xenocell is a good example, and I'm going to snag his design as an example (hopefully he doesn't mind).
Not at all, I'm happy about it.
There have been smaller changes to the architecture in the past few days. Small ones really, but important ones nonetheless.
One of the changes I've made affects the way players are routed to game servers. At first I was going to let the game servers handle the routing, but then I realized, that I wanted it to be a separate service offered by the login server, because it adds lots of stability. I can trust the middleware I'm building, but I have no experience with Torque handling so many players for such a ling time. So I figured, that even if a game server crashes, I need to be able to move players around game servers, and need to be able to recognize if there's an emergency from the outside, because I can not be sure that the game server will be able to report problems back to the system.
Also, the master server passed the role of starting up new instances of game servers to the login server, which after the previous change is the one service that knows all about where players are - and so it is the best place to handle and balance traffic.
As you said, I am hoping to create a cluster that can handle a few thousand users with this architecture. If there are going to be more players visiting, then further clusters ("servers" from the players' point of view) will be fired up - with their own database, master server, login server, etc...
This would separate clusters, but it's better to first separate them and then work on bringing them closer together than planning for them to use certain services together, because that could hurt scalability.
So essentially, the only limitation to this indie friendly mmo architecture would be the strain on the single services that the game servers use within a cluster. MySql with some proper indexing and Apache can take a lot of traffic. I will not stress my current solution further than 3000 simultaneous users - which means about 10k active, registered users on one cluster. Time will tell how many game servers that means. This is pretty optimistic, we'll hopefully see until the end of this year whether that's possible or not. :) (I am optimistic :)
Thanks for the shout-out!
--Konrad
#23
03/27/2009 (4:18 pm)
Good to see this thread getting information from knowledgeable people (Konrad and Tony, that means you two). The more info, the merrier! 
#24
I couldn't agree with you more.
In fact, where possible, all of your services should be loosely coupled, and as little logic as possible should be embedded in your game server.
Obviously this doesn't mean that your game server shouldn't have any game logic at all in it, but the logic inside the game server should mostly be associated with object locations, movement and the interaction among game objects.
One thing that I am doing that possibly you can see if it fits your needs as well is to have another client facing application server using a secure connection via HTTPS or tunneling using some other secure TCP or UDP connection to handle services that the game server doesn't really even need to know about.
Examples?
Trade, auction, chat to name a few. What does an auction have to do with your game server? Absolutely nothing, really.... at least nothing that these servers can't publish to the relevant game servers through a pub/sub mechanism.
One of the things we've done with Zen Worlds is to create a facade layered on top of a messaging system, so that you can directly use a C++ or scripting API, but you don't know nor do you care where the services actually exist.
If the services are local, no overhead is incurred. If a service is remote, only then (and only for that service) is any overhead incurred.
The drawback is that it requires additional programming, unless of course you have some middleware that helps :P
03/27/2009 (5:09 pm)
Quote:One of the changes I've made affects the way players are routed to game servers. At first I was going to let the game servers handle the routing, but then I realized, that I wanted it to be a separate service offered by the login server, because it adds lots of stability. I can trust the middleware I'm building, but I have no experience with Torque handling so many players for such a ling time. So I figured, that even if a game server crashes, I need to be able to move players around game servers, and need to be able to recognize if there's an emergency from the outside, because I can not be sure that the game server will be able to report problems back to the system.
I couldn't agree with you more.
In fact, where possible, all of your services should be loosely coupled, and as little logic as possible should be embedded in your game server.
Obviously this doesn't mean that your game server shouldn't have any game logic at all in it, but the logic inside the game server should mostly be associated with object locations, movement and the interaction among game objects.
One thing that I am doing that possibly you can see if it fits your needs as well is to have another client facing application server using a secure connection via HTTPS or tunneling using some other secure TCP or UDP connection to handle services that the game server doesn't really even need to know about.
Examples?
Trade, auction, chat to name a few. What does an auction have to do with your game server? Absolutely nothing, really.... at least nothing that these servers can't publish to the relevant game servers through a pub/sub mechanism.
One of the things we've done with Zen Worlds is to create a facade layered on top of a messaging system, so that you can directly use a C++ or scripting API, but you don't know nor do you care where the services actually exist.
If the services are local, no overhead is incurred. If a service is remote, only then (and only for that service) is any overhead incurred.
The drawback is that it requires additional programming, unless of course you have some middleware that helps :P
#25
I would like to throw out some numbers that I've put together on my own in the last few months. For those who are hoping to not only recruit a team (us non-programmer types really truly do need at least a small team earlier in the development cycle than what you have listed in this article - but it CAN be done!) but to also hire a full time team might want to run some numbers before they go seeking funding. Not to discourage anyone from seeking funding, I am hoping to find funding for our project at some point also. But to give people a better idea of exactly HOW MUCH funding they are going to need. Again, approach the problem with eyes wide open and then you won't be quite as surprised by the obstacles along the way.
A little background about my team, to give you some perspective. I started writing the design for Visions about 6 years ago, in 2003. I recruited my first volunteer in 2004. I've had a small team of volunteers consistently ever since. We have changed engines three times, due to encountering impassible road blocks. We are finishing the final stages of porting to TGEA 1.8.1 right now, so our game world looks very empty again. Changing engines is NOT an easy decision to make. It is demoralizing, time consuming, and tedious. But sometimes you reach a point where it's either switch or quit. And we didn't want to quit. So we bit the bullet and made the switch. Don't underestimate the power of morale though, the punch in the belly feeling often causes people to take a break, refocus their attention on other things in life for a while - or maybe permanently - and the team structure often takes a morale hit too. We all find ourselves wishing we had funding, a paycheck, even wishing we could work on this FULL TIME instead of after hours and on weekends when we're already tired. Those who are truly dedicated to the project don't want the project to end, they want it to go faster.
And indeed, faster is imperative. We took a break from working on Visions directly for about 19 months while we created a small racing game called Chariots. The reasoning behind creating Chariots (as opposed so a dozen other game ideas we had) was that we could then turn around and incorporate code from Chariots back into Visions when it was done and our time wouldn't really be lost. And in the mean time, it was hoped to be a morale boost for our team to see that we REALLY CAN make a game! And we did. And overall I believe it helped. But I would do it differently if we were to make that decision again. Because time is of the essence, and we're running out of time.
I've looked at how long it took us to make Chariots, one tiny little fraction of the Visions design document, and if we continue at the same pace to complete all the components for Visions, it is going to take us roughly 125 years to finish Visions. We need a full time, full scale team if we are going to finish in this lifetime. 10 hours a week just isn't going to cut it. So I started looking at funding options. There are no grant opportunities for profit-oriented companies. And Angel Investors are about as rare as divine angels themselves (though not impossible, highly unlikely to find one!). Loans are out of the question because unanimously, business loans require payback to start in 30 days. And it will take at least 2 years to finish Visions even with a full scale team of 180 people.
How much does a full scale full time team of 180 people cost? About $20 million a year. That's for average wages at the current Oregon salary standards found on this website: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/State=Oregon/Salary The cost of running a full scale team, JUST IN SALARIES ALONE is over $12 million, and this is a conservative estimate.
NOTE: The reply box won't let me post the full data in one window, so I have broken this up into 2 posts. Hopefully the information is useful to someone....
07/20/2009 (10:52 am)
This is good information. In the 5 years I have been developing Visions, I would wager 99.9999% of the advice I got was "that's impossible" or "you can't make an MMO without a big budget" or "You can't make a game unless you are a programmer" and a myriad of other "pipe dream" type comments that were meant to discourage me from trying. I am really happy to see that you DO in fact want to encourage people, and that you are just trying to help them tackle this GARGANTUAN sized project with open eyes. It is refreshing. :)I would like to throw out some numbers that I've put together on my own in the last few months. For those who are hoping to not only recruit a team (us non-programmer types really truly do need at least a small team earlier in the development cycle than what you have listed in this article - but it CAN be done!) but to also hire a full time team might want to run some numbers before they go seeking funding. Not to discourage anyone from seeking funding, I am hoping to find funding for our project at some point also. But to give people a better idea of exactly HOW MUCH funding they are going to need. Again, approach the problem with eyes wide open and then you won't be quite as surprised by the obstacles along the way.
A little background about my team, to give you some perspective. I started writing the design for Visions about 6 years ago, in 2003. I recruited my first volunteer in 2004. I've had a small team of volunteers consistently ever since. We have changed engines three times, due to encountering impassible road blocks. We are finishing the final stages of porting to TGEA 1.8.1 right now, so our game world looks very empty again. Changing engines is NOT an easy decision to make. It is demoralizing, time consuming, and tedious. But sometimes you reach a point where it's either switch or quit. And we didn't want to quit. So we bit the bullet and made the switch. Don't underestimate the power of morale though, the punch in the belly feeling often causes people to take a break, refocus their attention on other things in life for a while - or maybe permanently - and the team structure often takes a morale hit too. We all find ourselves wishing we had funding, a paycheck, even wishing we could work on this FULL TIME instead of after hours and on weekends when we're already tired. Those who are truly dedicated to the project don't want the project to end, they want it to go faster.
And indeed, faster is imperative. We took a break from working on Visions directly for about 19 months while we created a small racing game called Chariots. The reasoning behind creating Chariots (as opposed so a dozen other game ideas we had) was that we could then turn around and incorporate code from Chariots back into Visions when it was done and our time wouldn't really be lost. And in the mean time, it was hoped to be a morale boost for our team to see that we REALLY CAN make a game! And we did. And overall I believe it helped. But I would do it differently if we were to make that decision again. Because time is of the essence, and we're running out of time.
I've looked at how long it took us to make Chariots, one tiny little fraction of the Visions design document, and if we continue at the same pace to complete all the components for Visions, it is going to take us roughly 125 years to finish Visions. We need a full time, full scale team if we are going to finish in this lifetime. 10 hours a week just isn't going to cut it. So I started looking at funding options. There are no grant opportunities for profit-oriented companies. And Angel Investors are about as rare as divine angels themselves (though not impossible, highly unlikely to find one!). Loans are out of the question because unanimously, business loans require payback to start in 30 days. And it will take at least 2 years to finish Visions even with a full scale team of 180 people.
How much does a full scale full time team of 180 people cost? About $20 million a year. That's for average wages at the current Oregon salary standards found on this website: http://www.payscale.com/research/US/State=Oregon/Salary The cost of running a full scale team, JUST IN SALARIES ALONE is over $12 million, and this is a conservative estimate.
NOTE: The reply box won't let me post the full data in one window, so I have broken this up into 2 posts. Hopefully the information is useful to someone....
#26
If you want to offer competitive salaries to retain employees, the cost will be higher. Here is my breakdown for 179 staff:
1 Producer - $99,000
2 Executive Assistants - $58,000 per year per employee
1 Receptionist – $35,000 per year
1 Accountant - $58,000 per year
5 HR Associates - $60,000 per year per employee
1 Art director - $70,000 per year
6 Lead artists - $67,000 per year per employee
55 artists - $60,000 per year per employee
1 Programming Director - $99,000 per year
5 Programming Leads - $96,000 per year per employee
50 Programmers & Scripters - $89,000 per year per employee
1 IT Director - $89,000
8 IT Network Engineers - $60,000 per year per employee
1 – Senior Service Manager - $60,000
6 – Customer Service Managers - $57,000 per year per employee (Plus 15 to 25 – CS Volunteers)
1 Marketing Director - $77,000
2 Marketing Managers - $67,000 per year per employee
10 Marketing & Web Developers - $60,000 per year per employee
1 Quest Writer Director - $67,000
3 Quest Writer Managers - $60,000 per year per employee
15 Quest Writers - $57,000 per year per employee
3 Researchers - $57,000 per year per employee
= 179 Total Skilled Developers. $12,129,000 in total annual salary projections.
Then you need office space, and the costs associated with that. This area I am the most unsure about my estimates, as I have never actually operated an office of this size, and my numbers might be too low. There are likely additional hidden costs and if possible a cushion should be added to buffer this number. But it is important to have a starting point, and this is what I came up with:
6500 Sq Ft. x $23.40 per SF per year = $152,100 per year lease
Stage 2 Office Supplies $45,000 per year estimated
Stage 2 Computer Equipment $445,000
-Office stations, conference tables, chairs, Filing systems:
Stage 2 Office Furniture TOTAL $5,683,220
=TOTAL Stage 2 Office Expenses: $6,325,320
Utilities and services add up real fast, particularly with bandwidth costs which can run over $25,000 a month for an MMO if you're not careful. These are some numbers that I came up with, based on inquiries to local utilities and other business people who are familiar with such expenses.
Legal Services cost $150,000 per year estimate
Business Insurance cost $12,000 per year estimated
Janitoral services $65,000 per year estimate
Phone Service $12,000 per year estimated
Internet $180,000 per year estimated
Power $24,000 per year estimated
Groundskeeping $12,000 per year estimated
=TOTAL utilities and services: $455,000
If you want to upgrade to an engine that is ACTUALLY DESIGNED for an MMOG, like Hero Engine or BigWorld, that comes at a high pricetag. If you can get funding for it though, it could save you many months of development required to modify a single player FPS engine that was never really meant to be a MMOG engine. If you're happy with your current engine, you can deduct $1 million from this group. The rest of the technology licenses are estimates, and likely to vary depending on your team's particular needs.
MMOG (Hero or BigWorld) Engine $1,000,000
Site Licenses for Photoshop CS4 $60,000
Site Licenses for Max $80,000
Site Licenses for MS VS C++ $25,000
MoCap Editor Software License $50,000
MoCap cameras & equipment $150,000
Server Software Site Licenses $5,000
Audio Software licenses $10,000
Sound Equipment $50,000
=TOTAL Technology Expenses: $1,380,000
If you want your game to reach players, SOME amount of marketing is going to have to be invested also. The more you can put into marketing, if it is spent wisely, the higher your chances of success will be. These marketing estimates are VERY conservative. For example, if a person wanted to put a full page ad in a Gamer magazine, it will cost upwards of $250,000 for one issue. Sure there are free marketing opportunities too, blogs, social networking, letters to editors, article authoring, etc. But everything takes time, at the least you will need to spend time writing articles instead of developing the game for a while. There is always a cost somewhere. Weigh the balance carefully.
Ads $100,000
Promotional products $50,000
Conference Fees $25,000
Travel expenses $75,000
=Total Marketing Expenses: $250,000
So as you can see, I am not exaggerating when I say, it costs over $20 million a year to run a full time team on a conservative budget. If you need to add in relocation packages to get your team members moved to your headquarters location, add additional funding estimates for that. There is a lot to consider. And I hope that this post resoundingly confirms that making a MMOG is not so much about making a game as it is about building a business. I don't particularly like the business side of it, but it is necessary for the game to happen. Making a game is not all fun and games. But it can be rewarding.
God bless you.
-Sparkling
07/20/2009 (10:55 am)
...continued...If you want to offer competitive salaries to retain employees, the cost will be higher. Here is my breakdown for 179 staff:
1 Producer - $99,000
2 Executive Assistants - $58,000 per year per employee
1 Receptionist – $35,000 per year
1 Accountant - $58,000 per year
5 HR Associates - $60,000 per year per employee
1 Art director - $70,000 per year
6 Lead artists - $67,000 per year per employee
55 artists - $60,000 per year per employee
1 Programming Director - $99,000 per year
5 Programming Leads - $96,000 per year per employee
50 Programmers & Scripters - $89,000 per year per employee
1 IT Director - $89,000
8 IT Network Engineers - $60,000 per year per employee
1 – Senior Service Manager - $60,000
6 – Customer Service Managers - $57,000 per year per employee (Plus 15 to 25 – CS Volunteers)
1 Marketing Director - $77,000
2 Marketing Managers - $67,000 per year per employee
10 Marketing & Web Developers - $60,000 per year per employee
1 Quest Writer Director - $67,000
3 Quest Writer Managers - $60,000 per year per employee
15 Quest Writers - $57,000 per year per employee
3 Researchers - $57,000 per year per employee
= 179 Total Skilled Developers. $12,129,000 in total annual salary projections.
Then you need office space, and the costs associated with that. This area I am the most unsure about my estimates, as I have never actually operated an office of this size, and my numbers might be too low. There are likely additional hidden costs and if possible a cushion should be added to buffer this number. But it is important to have a starting point, and this is what I came up with:
6500 Sq Ft. x $23.40 per SF per year = $152,100 per year lease
Stage 2 Office Supplies $45,000 per year estimated
Stage 2 Computer Equipment $445,000
-Office stations, conference tables, chairs, Filing systems:
Stage 2 Office Furniture TOTAL $5,683,220
=TOTAL Stage 2 Office Expenses: $6,325,320
Utilities and services add up real fast, particularly with bandwidth costs which can run over $25,000 a month for an MMO if you're not careful. These are some numbers that I came up with, based on inquiries to local utilities and other business people who are familiar with such expenses.
Legal Services cost $150,000 per year estimate
Business Insurance cost $12,000 per year estimated
Janitoral services $65,000 per year estimate
Phone Service $12,000 per year estimated
Internet $180,000 per year estimated
Power $24,000 per year estimated
Groundskeeping $12,000 per year estimated
=TOTAL utilities and services: $455,000
If you want to upgrade to an engine that is ACTUALLY DESIGNED for an MMOG, like Hero Engine or BigWorld, that comes at a high pricetag. If you can get funding for it though, it could save you many months of development required to modify a single player FPS engine that was never really meant to be a MMOG engine. If you're happy with your current engine, you can deduct $1 million from this group. The rest of the technology licenses are estimates, and likely to vary depending on your team's particular needs.
MMOG (Hero or BigWorld) Engine $1,000,000
Site Licenses for Photoshop CS4 $60,000
Site Licenses for Max $80,000
Site Licenses for MS VS C++ $25,000
MoCap Editor Software License $50,000
MoCap cameras & equipment $150,000
Server Software Site Licenses $5,000
Audio Software licenses $10,000
Sound Equipment $50,000
=TOTAL Technology Expenses: $1,380,000
If you want your game to reach players, SOME amount of marketing is going to have to be invested also. The more you can put into marketing, if it is spent wisely, the higher your chances of success will be. These marketing estimates are VERY conservative. For example, if a person wanted to put a full page ad in a Gamer magazine, it will cost upwards of $250,000 for one issue. Sure there are free marketing opportunities too, blogs, social networking, letters to editors, article authoring, etc. But everything takes time, at the least you will need to spend time writing articles instead of developing the game for a while. There is always a cost somewhere. Weigh the balance carefully.
Ads $100,000
Promotional products $50,000
Conference Fees $25,000
Travel expenses $75,000
=Total Marketing Expenses: $250,000
So as you can see, I am not exaggerating when I say, it costs over $20 million a year to run a full time team on a conservative budget. If you need to add in relocation packages to get your team members moved to your headquarters location, add additional funding estimates for that. There is a lot to consider. And I hope that this post resoundingly confirms that making a MMOG is not so much about making a game as it is about building a business. I don't particularly like the business side of it, but it is necessary for the game to happen. Making a game is not all fun and games. But it can be rewarding.
God bless you.
-Sparkling
#27
07/20/2009 (2:39 pm)
Nice breakdown. Please paste this all over the Internet so fewer people waste time trying to make an MMO on a shoestring budget :)
#28
I'm sorry, but the purpose of this thread is not to say that the creation of an MMO on a shoestring budget is impossible, because it's actually not.
The fact is, Minions of Mirth is a fantastic example of MMO creation by a small team on a shoestring budget. Other MMOs are currently in development that do not have staffs anywhere near what Sparkling has posted.
And while I agree with the spirit of Sparkling's assessment (you do need people, and you do have an immensely large workload to tackle in order to make an MMO, I take issue with some of the numbers/salaries he's posted.
For instance, my last job at a financial company of 130 people, had 3 people in the HR department, with 2 of them pulling double duty with internal finance work and one very bored HR director. For a small company, you can combine the HR jobs with that of the executive assistants into an executive administrator position, saving you money.
Additionally, while it is generally advisable to have several programmers on a project (I feel the bite of being the only one on mine, and it would be a lot more comfortable to have two more), I would like to know why 56 are needed. Ten? Okay. 56? I think that number is too high, unless your team is coding up a custom engine.
I also take issue with having 13 people in marketing, especially at the beginning of a development cycle. Going back to Minions of Mirth, it's been said that without spending money on a marketing push, they were able to get tens of thousands of registered users. With one or two dedicated marketing people, a community manager and a web designer (4 total), you have a very good team to handle things until you feel the need to expand. And with so many coders, you don't really need 3 "Researchers". In all, the numbers above are, in my own opinion, excessive.
To reiterate: You can create an MMO with a small team, and you can do it on a relatively (key word) shoestring budget. Can you do it in a year? Most likely not. Can you do it while you learn to program? Yes- but only if you're learning to program on the side because you have a programmer(s) who is amply capable of the tasks. Can you do it for zero dollars? No. Can you do it for under a million dollars? Yes, if you're very creative, or have access to technology and a team ready, willing, and able to do the work on a volunteer, sweat-equity, royalty, or other deferred-payment basis. It does not require $12MM a year, even though companies routinely spend such amounts on their MMOs- though you will probably wind up paying $12MM a year to maintain it!
So I agree in spirit with the numbers, but not with the numbers themselves, and I do not in any way want what I have posted to be used to tell Indies to avoid attempting an MMO if they have the abilities simply because they don't have a multi-million-dollar budget. This is not what being an Indie is all about :)
07/20/2009 (3:59 pm)
Quote:Please paste this all over the Internet so fewer people waste time trying to make an MMO on a shoestring budget :)
I'm sorry, but the purpose of this thread is not to say that the creation of an MMO on a shoestring budget is impossible, because it's actually not.
The fact is, Minions of Mirth is a fantastic example of MMO creation by a small team on a shoestring budget. Other MMOs are currently in development that do not have staffs anywhere near what Sparkling has posted.
And while I agree with the spirit of Sparkling's assessment (you do need people, and you do have an immensely large workload to tackle in order to make an MMO, I take issue with some of the numbers/salaries he's posted.
For instance, my last job at a financial company of 130 people, had 3 people in the HR department, with 2 of them pulling double duty with internal finance work and one very bored HR director. For a small company, you can combine the HR jobs with that of the executive assistants into an executive administrator position, saving you money.
Additionally, while it is generally advisable to have several programmers on a project (I feel the bite of being the only one on mine, and it would be a lot more comfortable to have two more), I would like to know why 56 are needed. Ten? Okay. 56? I think that number is too high, unless your team is coding up a custom engine.
I also take issue with having 13 people in marketing, especially at the beginning of a development cycle. Going back to Minions of Mirth, it's been said that without spending money on a marketing push, they were able to get tens of thousands of registered users. With one or two dedicated marketing people, a community manager and a web designer (4 total), you have a very good team to handle things until you feel the need to expand. And with so many coders, you don't really need 3 "Researchers". In all, the numbers above are, in my own opinion, excessive.
To reiterate: You can create an MMO with a small team, and you can do it on a relatively (key word) shoestring budget. Can you do it in a year? Most likely not. Can you do it while you learn to program? Yes- but only if you're learning to program on the side because you have a programmer(s) who is amply capable of the tasks. Can you do it for zero dollars? No. Can you do it for under a million dollars? Yes, if you're very creative, or have access to technology and a team ready, willing, and able to do the work on a volunteer, sweat-equity, royalty, or other deferred-payment basis. It does not require $12MM a year, even though companies routinely spend such amounts on their MMOs- though you will probably wind up paying $12MM a year to maintain it!
So I agree in spirit with the numbers, but not with the numbers themselves, and I do not in any way want what I have posted to be used to tell Indies to avoid attempting an MMO if they have the abilities simply because they don't have a multi-million-dollar budget. This is not what being an Indie is all about :)
#29
I am fully aware of Minions of Mirth. MoM was made by the sort of dedicated people who would still be standing after being blasted with numbers like Sparkling posted :)
07/20/2009 (4:17 pm)
Notice how I left the option for SOME to make it on a shoestring budget ;)I am fully aware of Minions of Mirth. MoM was made by the sort of dedicated people who would still be standing after being blasted with numbers like Sparkling posted :)
#30
I know it is possible to create an MMO on a shoestring. Please don't take it that I'm arguing against it. But an MMO is not equivalent to making a little flash game for the web. It is MUCH MORE an act of building a business than smaller games, and even those have very definite business attributes. We had to do all the marketing, publishing and distribution with Chariots too. It will be even more involved with Visions. I was just saying, go in with your eyes open.
Please don't read my words with a defensive tone. I was limited to 5000 characters per message. I had to cut some of the content I wanted to say to get it to fit. I'm not here to discourage anyone. I just wanted to share some information. If it is going to cause strife though, I just assume delete it. I'm on your side... I'm not your enemy. Make more games! No one game is going to be the perfect game for everyone. So make your game. Just be prepared for the journey. :)
God bless you,
-Sparkling
PS - Sparkling is a she. :)
07/20/2009 (6:06 pm)
My apologies for it coming across that I seemed to be saying it's impossible to make an MMO on a shoestring. That is not what I meant. Rather, I was trying to say there comes a point when you realize you need more people working more hours and it's VERY HARD to find people who are willing to do that for free. But not impossible. :) I have a wonderful team who has been working as volunteers for 5 years. We DID finish Chariots. And we ARE making an MMO. And we are not giving up, even if we don't get funding. But we would LIKE funding so that we could make it faster, and more efficiently. And the post(s) that I made were meant to reflect exactly how much it costs to accomplish that. In discussion with my specific team and our specific goals, we decided that this was the approximate breakdown of what we would need. Your team needs may be different. We are not at the begining of development - begining of the new engine yes, but we have over 300 pages in design docs, 10 gig of art, and many pages of quests, and a fair ammount of code done. We just have tog et it ported in. Slightly different than just starting out. I know it is possible to create an MMO on a shoestring. Please don't take it that I'm arguing against it. But an MMO is not equivalent to making a little flash game for the web. It is MUCH MORE an act of building a business than smaller games, and even those have very definite business attributes. We had to do all the marketing, publishing and distribution with Chariots too. It will be even more involved with Visions. I was just saying, go in with your eyes open.
Please don't read my words with a defensive tone. I was limited to 5000 characters per message. I had to cut some of the content I wanted to say to get it to fit. I'm not here to discourage anyone. I just wanted to share some information. If it is going to cause strife though, I just assume delete it. I'm on your side... I'm not your enemy. Make more games! No one game is going to be the perfect game for everyone. So make your game. Just be prepared for the journey. :)
God bless you,
-Sparkling
PS - Sparkling is a she. :)
#31
I think the biggest thing to become aware of us the time suck and the reality it will take 3 years of constant work before you have something that looks somewhat like a game. A demo perhaps a bit sooner than that, but 3-5 years to get something out the door.
07/20/2009 (11:03 pm)
It is possible to run things cheaply if you set goals and realize that simply put you aren't going to complete with a game that has a 20M budget. I think it is realistic though to expect to spend at least some money as you are going to have to fill some gaps here and there (luckily we have a lot of technical talent in the programming and hosting/networking aspect as we have a lot of experience and resources in that area), but we lack in the artistic side right now and we have paid a bit there to get some work done as we needed it. I think the biggest thing to become aware of us the time suck and the reality it will take 3 years of constant work before you have something that looks somewhat like a game. A demo perhaps a bit sooner than that, but 3-5 years to get something out the door.
#32
In regards to the numbers, I would still like to know why they are the way they are- it adds to the information here. You're completely right in that each company will differ in it's organization, and I think that if you specify some of your needs that led to those numbers, it would help people, even if they see other ways to organize their own teams.
In a general sense, I think the biggest problem for us Indies is that we're not always good with the business side of things, and so tend to focus more on making the game than keeping their business up and running.
07/21/2009 (10:35 am)
@Sparkling: I'm not saying that your numbers are geared towards discouraging Indies from making MMOs, I was just reacting (possibly too tiredly after a weekend of camping and such) to the call to post it around the 'net in the hopes that fewer would attempt to make an MMO- I thought the statement was a bit more heavy-handed than it should have been, which is where my post came from.In regards to the numbers, I would still like to know why they are the way they are- it adds to the information here. You're completely right in that each company will differ in it's organization, and I think that if you specify some of your needs that led to those numbers, it would help people, even if they see other ways to organize their own teams.
In a general sense, I think the biggest problem for us Indies is that we're not always good with the business side of things, and so tend to focus more on making the game than keeping their business up and running.
#33
We started alpha testing less than 90 days after we started development.
That experience showed us that while it's possible to create a small game in a short period of time with a small number of people, if we really wanted to compete with the people throwing millions of dollars at a game, we needed better tools.
And so that's what we've been doing ever since... but soon we'll be done and resuming full development on the new and improved Fractured Universe.
07/21/2009 (12:32 pm)
It took a team of 5 people under 6 months to complete Fractured Universe with 3 Zones, 30 quests, 5 NPC's, 2 character classes with 5 levels for each class created.We started alpha testing less than 90 days after we started development.
That experience showed us that while it's possible to create a small game in a short period of time with a small number of people, if we really wanted to compete with the people throwing millions of dollars at a game, we needed better tools.
And so that's what we've been doing ever since... but soon we'll be done and resuming full development on the new and improved Fractured Universe.
#34
Thank you Ted, I understand about long tiring weekends. :)
Very briefly.
1) We need 3 (actually maybe more but 3 will do for now) researchers because we are making an historical game with historical quests on a linear timeline. So it's not like once the game launches that's all the quests that will ever be in the game. As time progresses the old history quests will be phased out and new history quests will be implemented. We also need localized quests for each specific area that very likely will come from obscure archeological research. We're not just doing big well know battles. We're also doing the small stuff, like specific styles of pottery available from localized regions, and special statues being carved from rare marble deposits. We need more research on these details to fill in every city of the map.
2) The historical and linear nature of Visions will require an ongoing development team to maintain the evolving quests, gameplay and activities in the game. This will include all manner of developers.
3) We have a myriad of animals, and our greatest need is in animation. Our experience in the last 5 years is that even college trained 3D animators do not have experience with animating animals. I don't know what they teach them at those game dev schools, but they aren't teaching them everything they need to know. So we need a combination of trained artists who DO know how to animate animals, artists who have teaching skills to teach the rest of the staff how to do what we need, and Mo-Cap equipment to capture animations that are difficult to hand animate.
4) We have planned 18 character professions (we've cut 2 from the original 20 and may cut more but right now we have 18 planned), and 3 primary quest tracks in a quest and skill based game. Each of these professions has to branches of mastery. If I had 40 teams of 4-5 programmers each working on a specific aspect the game we might be able to get the core development done in less than a year. As it is now, we're just focusing on the first phase of the game, and building the basic structure that will let us get to Beta phase. We have a very functional plan and I do believe we will get there in the next year. I was hoping to make it by Christmas but our team has experienced several medical emergencies this year and as such we are behind schedule, so we may not make it by Christmas at this point.
Anyway... there is more that went into the planning of those numbers.l But I'm out of time. Hope this information helps give some perspective into how we arrived at our needs. And also realise that we do NOT currently have 180 people on staff. We have about 15. So we are constantly feeling the pressure of not enough help and too much work. But we'll get there. Perseverance. :)
God bless you,
-Sparkling
07/21/2009 (5:56 pm)
i have to attend a meeting shortly but I wanted to give a quick (and very likely incomplete, so please take that into account) reply.Thank you Ted, I understand about long tiring weekends. :)
Very briefly.
1) We need 3 (actually maybe more but 3 will do for now) researchers because we are making an historical game with historical quests on a linear timeline. So it's not like once the game launches that's all the quests that will ever be in the game. As time progresses the old history quests will be phased out and new history quests will be implemented. We also need localized quests for each specific area that very likely will come from obscure archeological research. We're not just doing big well know battles. We're also doing the small stuff, like specific styles of pottery available from localized regions, and special statues being carved from rare marble deposits. We need more research on these details to fill in every city of the map.
2) The historical and linear nature of Visions will require an ongoing development team to maintain the evolving quests, gameplay and activities in the game. This will include all manner of developers.
3) We have a myriad of animals, and our greatest need is in animation. Our experience in the last 5 years is that even college trained 3D animators do not have experience with animating animals. I don't know what they teach them at those game dev schools, but they aren't teaching them everything they need to know. So we need a combination of trained artists who DO know how to animate animals, artists who have teaching skills to teach the rest of the staff how to do what we need, and Mo-Cap equipment to capture animations that are difficult to hand animate.
4) We have planned 18 character professions (we've cut 2 from the original 20 and may cut more but right now we have 18 planned), and 3 primary quest tracks in a quest and skill based game. Each of these professions has to branches of mastery. If I had 40 teams of 4-5 programmers each working on a specific aspect the game we might be able to get the core development done in less than a year. As it is now, we're just focusing on the first phase of the game, and building the basic structure that will let us get to Beta phase. We have a very functional plan and I do believe we will get there in the next year. I was hoping to make it by Christmas but our team has experienced several medical emergencies this year and as such we are behind schedule, so we may not make it by Christmas at this point.
Anyway... there is more that went into the planning of those numbers.l But I'm out of time. Hope this information helps give some perspective into how we arrived at our needs. And also realise that we do NOT currently have 180 people on staff. We have about 15. So we are constantly feeling the pressure of not enough help and too much work. But we'll get there. Perseverance. :)
God bless you,
-Sparkling
#35
07/22/2009 (6:39 am)
@Sparkling: Those explanations give a lot more background on the numbers you posted, thanks! =)
#36
I am sorry I ran out of time last night, but i hope it helped. I wanted to talk a bit more about the size of our current team and the progress of our project currently, and why we were aiming for a team of 180, as opposed to maybe 65 or some smaller number.
Could we do it with less? Absolutely. It will just take longer. I've been looking hard at what we can accomplish with the team I have right now (which I would call a skeleton team of amazing talent! Each person right now is carrying the load of about 3-4 people, and they do a wonderful job!) and how long it takes us to finish what they set out to do, and what it really comes down to is man hours.
We are wanting to finish the first ... era? as it were, in a year. In an IDEAL world (yes I know the ideal world is a fantasy land for Indies, but this is what we are all aiming for right? You have to set goals or you will never know if you got there) we would like to launch the Visions with feature complete functionality with the entire expanse of the planned terrain and all historical content, and all dream quests for the Biblical content, and quests for all professions with both branches for each profession through to Grandmaster level. In an ideal world... That represents many thousands of man hours to accomplish that goal. Can a small team do that? Yes. But it will still take the SAME number of man hours to do that... calculated out that equates to many years. We were applying for some special funding that, had it been awarded, would have given us only ONE YEAR of salaries funded and then we would be on our own. So I needed to figure out how many people I would need approximately to accomplish our goal in to full launch in one year. I think my numbers were actually a little low in some areas. But I was trying to balance realistic with conservative probability. If I ask for too much, that reduces the chance it will be awarded, so it was a fine line to walk.
But I've experienced personally how long it takes to build the game world. That's after all the models are done! JUST putting them in the world and trying to make it look like a realistic believable environment is extremely time consuming. Maybe someone else could do it faster, but even so, if we were actually trying to build the entire game world in a year, we would need several teams working on the different areas to make it all come together. And to do the size world I would LIKE to do, I could really use about 60 people just working on worldbuilding alone, working in groups of 3-4 people per zone. I would love that. But we're not there yet, we don't have funding for that size of team. We have no funding at all, so what we have is 1 person (me) doing worldbuilding all alone, along with about 10 other hats that I wear, and it takes me about a month to two months just to do one small city.
And with everything that the worldbuilders do, there are artists that have work to do too that facilitates the worldbuilding. And programmers who make the magic happen, and implement the mods that provide the tools for the worldbuilders to use, and quest writers who write the scripts for the content that the players will experience, and scripters who make the magic happen for when the players complete a quest, and if we're really lucky we'll find a musician who is up for the challenge of creating the style of music that we want for the game as well. And all of this takes time. Yeah we could do it with 60 people, but it will take about 2-3 years to get where we want to be instead of 1 year. And we can do it with 20 people, but it will take about 6-8 years to get half way to where we want to be. I don't want to wait 8 to 16 years to get to our starting point. That's why we're looking for funding and why we need the number of people that we need. We're making a very big game that pushes the envelope of possibilities even in the real of MMORPGs. Not because we want to break records, I'm sure other better funded teams will get there before we do. We just want to make the game the way it is designed, and that requires a very large terrain, and a tremendous amount of quest content, and a lot of game art.
So what if we don't get funding? Well, we have a multi-stage release plan, and we're on that development track right now. We will proceed with our current plan until we achieve self-sufficient financial viability, or we obtain funding (whichever comes first - at which point we will increase our team size accordingly) and release small portions of content for play in a sort of Beta release until we get the game to the point we want it to be.
Hope this helps give a little more detailed perspective. :) I know not everyone is making this kind of game. Certainly many teams can achieve release with much smaller teams in less time. This is just what we need for our goals.
God bless you,
-Sparkling
07/22/2009 (8:24 am)
You're welcome Ted.I am sorry I ran out of time last night, but i hope it helped. I wanted to talk a bit more about the size of our current team and the progress of our project currently, and why we were aiming for a team of 180, as opposed to maybe 65 or some smaller number.
Could we do it with less? Absolutely. It will just take longer. I've been looking hard at what we can accomplish with the team I have right now (which I would call a skeleton team of amazing talent! Each person right now is carrying the load of about 3-4 people, and they do a wonderful job!) and how long it takes us to finish what they set out to do, and what it really comes down to is man hours.
We are wanting to finish the first ... era? as it were, in a year. In an IDEAL world (yes I know the ideal world is a fantasy land for Indies, but this is what we are all aiming for right? You have to set goals or you will never know if you got there) we would like to launch the Visions with feature complete functionality with the entire expanse of the planned terrain and all historical content, and all dream quests for the Biblical content, and quests for all professions with both branches for each profession through to Grandmaster level. In an ideal world... That represents many thousands of man hours to accomplish that goal. Can a small team do that? Yes. But it will still take the SAME number of man hours to do that... calculated out that equates to many years. We were applying for some special funding that, had it been awarded, would have given us only ONE YEAR of salaries funded and then we would be on our own. So I needed to figure out how many people I would need approximately to accomplish our goal in to full launch in one year. I think my numbers were actually a little low in some areas. But I was trying to balance realistic with conservative probability. If I ask for too much, that reduces the chance it will be awarded, so it was a fine line to walk.
But I've experienced personally how long it takes to build the game world. That's after all the models are done! JUST putting them in the world and trying to make it look like a realistic believable environment is extremely time consuming. Maybe someone else could do it faster, but even so, if we were actually trying to build the entire game world in a year, we would need several teams working on the different areas to make it all come together. And to do the size world I would LIKE to do, I could really use about 60 people just working on worldbuilding alone, working in groups of 3-4 people per zone. I would love that. But we're not there yet, we don't have funding for that size of team. We have no funding at all, so what we have is 1 person (me) doing worldbuilding all alone, along with about 10 other hats that I wear, and it takes me about a month to two months just to do one small city.
And with everything that the worldbuilders do, there are artists that have work to do too that facilitates the worldbuilding. And programmers who make the magic happen, and implement the mods that provide the tools for the worldbuilders to use, and quest writers who write the scripts for the content that the players will experience, and scripters who make the magic happen for when the players complete a quest, and if we're really lucky we'll find a musician who is up for the challenge of creating the style of music that we want for the game as well. And all of this takes time. Yeah we could do it with 60 people, but it will take about 2-3 years to get where we want to be instead of 1 year. And we can do it with 20 people, but it will take about 6-8 years to get half way to where we want to be. I don't want to wait 8 to 16 years to get to our starting point. That's why we're looking for funding and why we need the number of people that we need. We're making a very big game that pushes the envelope of possibilities even in the real of MMORPGs. Not because we want to break records, I'm sure other better funded teams will get there before we do. We just want to make the game the way it is designed, and that requires a very large terrain, and a tremendous amount of quest content, and a lot of game art.
So what if we don't get funding? Well, we have a multi-stage release plan, and we're on that development track right now. We will proceed with our current plan until we achieve self-sufficient financial viability, or we obtain funding (whichever comes first - at which point we will increase our team size accordingly) and release small portions of content for play in a sort of Beta release until we get the game to the point we want it to be.
Hope this helps give a little more detailed perspective. :) I know not everyone is making this kind of game. Certainly many teams can achieve release with much smaller teams in less time. This is just what we need for our goals.
God bless you,
-Sparkling
#37
Currently I am trying to find my way around Cryengine in respect of Blue Mars. Steep learning curve but I am enjoying it.
www.metavercity.net
09/09/2009 (9:42 am)
I am new to garagegames, so hi to everyone. If this is the standard of threads I can expect then I have come to the right place. Awesome posts..thanks.Currently I am trying to find my way around Cryengine in respect of Blue Mars. Steep learning curve but I am enjoying it.
www.metavercity.net
#38
12/11/2009 (11:03 pm)
Now that is well written. Hope you all got this through your heads, I know I did. Even so I'm goin to continue with my work as it is in progress. It's best to start small before you do your actual project. 
#39
how ever if some one like me want to just buy license & maintain that server how much it cost any one have any idea,
lets say like MMO WOW/PW/Runes Of Magic.
i'll be happy if anyone can give me headsup in this matter.
thanks
11/18/2010 (8:05 am)
Well your note about cost of creation & maintaing MMO, its really enlightening note.thanks for sharing such a great informationhow ever if some one like me want to just buy license & maintain that server how much it cost any one have any idea,
lets say like MMO WOW/PW/Runes Of Magic.
i'll be happy if anyone can give me headsup in this matter.
thanks
#40
Good question. I don't know how many player run per-server for those games, or how much bandwidth those games use, so it's hard to say. I do know that WoW runs on approximately 22,500 blade servers though, so running one of their shards is likely very expensive.
11/18/2010 (11:43 am)
Quote:how ever if some one like me want to just buy license & maintain that server how much it cost any one have any idea,
lets say like MMO WOW/PW/Runes Of Magic.
Good question. I don't know how many player run per-server for those games, or how much bandwidth those games use, so it's hard to say. I do know that WoW runs on approximately 22,500 blade servers though, so running one of their shards is likely very expensive.
Torque 3D Owner Tony Richards
One reason I'm recommending Zen Worlds is because it's free, open source and in use by a handful of Indie game development teams.
Currently only one game client is being used with it, but I would love to see T3D working with it.
And... I've already pre-ordered T3D (yay!) and I'll be taking the necessary steps for making a dedicated server that runs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X and integrating it with the Zen World's messaging system and providing it as a free resource to all T3D Pro owners.
Now... this is not an MMO RPG resource as it does not contain any RPG elements. It only contains the set of services that I mentioned earlier: