If I want to start a game studio and make an MMORPG, how much money would I need? Would a couple hundred thousdand dollars be enough? Do programmers/artists out there prefer to work on indie projects rather than for big companies where they're just another cog in a machine?

I've also always had the idea of buying a cheap house in a cheap country like India or the Philipines, getting in touch with a bunch of good artists and programmers straight from university, fly them all out to to the 'Headquarters' which is just a large house/compound and make a game. All you need are computers, and you can live very comfortably in these countries for a couple thousand USD per person.

Is this a stupid plan that I should just forget straight away? It's just, if I was a programmer/artist who just got out from university and got offered to work on a project where my cost of living would be paid for, I'd be offered a very reasonable share in a company that could potentially be making a lot of money, and I'd be living in a new cool exotic country... I don't know but that sounds pretty good to me. Worst case scenario the game fails and everyone get's a long holiday. Something like this could probably be done with a budget of around 100 000 USD IF there would be people willing to work for free.

What do you think?

Why would someone want to go work for you very cheaply if he can go work somewhere else and get paid ten times as much?  It would probably be easier to convince one rich venture capitalist to fund you than dozens of programmers and artists to work for you nearly for free.  Not that the former would necessarily be easy, either.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why would someone want to go work for you very cheaply if he can go work somewhere else and get paid ten times as much?  It would probably be easier to convince one rich venture capitalist to fund you than dozens of programmers and artists to work for you nearly for free.  Not that the former would necessarily be easy, either.

Because life isn't about money? Maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression that programmers/artist are told exactly what to do and never have any input whatsoever over the project. Also, you seem to kinda miss the point. Someone working in a big city for a gamestudio as a programmer/artist isnät going to make that much money, programmers and artists are low paid, and when living in the "western world" are going to be spending that 10x as high salary on a quality of life that will be worse than the "free life" they are offered and a job that they would probably enjoy 10x as much..A

Am I completely wrong?

You're not completely wrong at all.  There are plenty of people out there who wish they could make games but instead have to take corporate jobs.  Breaking into the gaming industry is hard, all of their ads say they require that you've already worked on a shipped title before they'll even consider you.  How do they expect you to ever get experience unless you go out your way like this to make your own opportunities?

If you're really intent on getting a game made, PM.  What is your background?  What applicable skills do you have?

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why would someone want to go work for you very cheaply if he can go work somewhere else and get paid ten times as much?  It would probably be easier to convince one rich venture capitalist to fund you than dozens of programmers and artists to work for you nearly for free.  Not that the former would necessarily be easy, either.

Because life isn't about money? Maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression that programmers/artist are told exactly what to do and never have any input whatsoever over the project. Also, you seem to kinda miss the point. Someone working in a big city for a gamestudio as a programmer/artist isnät going to make that much money, programmers and artists are low paid, and when living in the "western world" are going to be spending that 10x as high salary on a quality of life that will be worse than the "free life" they are offered and a job that they would probably enjoy 10x as much..A

 

Am I completely wrong?

So. You want someone to give up their nice house, their nice car, their nice everything, to work for chump change on your project?

They don't make that much money? You realize that a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Computer Information Systems, is one of the highest paying 4yr degrees in the US, right? The only degree that beats it is Registered Nurse.

With that said. Fallen Earth was made for $2.5million. It was released extremely buggy, very unfinished, and with very little content. On release day I fell through the world 3 times where I had to call a GM. 2 more where I fixed it myself.

Also, the cheaper countries where programmers come from........ really aren't all that much cheaper. If they are quite a bit cheaper, then what you pay for is what you get. You get crap. The talented ones, the ones who actually know what they are doing other than writing down some code monkey garbage, move to the US or Europe to make real money.

Not to mention, if you do get the code monkey garbage, it's going to cost you exponentially more to maintain that code, than it would if you were to hire someone who was paid more (generally). I don't think you realize how hard it is to read someone else's code who you've never met, have no idea how they think, or why they do certain things. I'm just talking about small projects here, a couple thousand lines of code. You're talking about a MMORPG.... millions and millions of lines of code. You're not going to get anyone to work on that cheaply. 

It takes time to work through well documented, well written code. It takes alot more time to sift through garbage. To put it relatively, if it takes a programmer 2 days to work through the well written code, it's going to take the same programmer, working on code that does the exact same thing but written poorly and little to no documentation........ around 2 months. Time = Money. If you think a Lawyer's hourly rate is expensive, then you probably haven't had to deal with hiring a programmer. Real contract programmers, through a reputable contract company (not some kid from some crappy website) cost about $500/hr. 

Yeah.... it cost alot of money.

Originally posted by NMStudio

You're not completely wrong at all.  There are plenty of people out there who wish they could make games but instead have to take corporate jobs.  Breaking into the gaming industry is hard, all of their ads say they require that you've already worked on a shipped title before they'll even consider you.  How do they expect you to ever get experience unless you go out your way like this to make your own opportunities?

If you're really intent on getting a game made, PM.  What is your background?  What applicable skills do you have?

I don't really have any applicable skills when it comes to making games. I just think there is a huge 'gap' or demand for a certain type of MMORPG that hasn't been created and doesn't look like it will appear anytime soon. There is a chance I'd have the money to do something like this sometime in the future, although I doubt I would ever really risk 100 000 USD or possibly more on something like this, but it's interesting to discuss and speculate about I think.. there's always the possibility that I decide to go through with it..

I also think there's potentially huge money to be made in MMORPGs, if they're created on extremely small budgets and cater for a certain type of player, it doesn't have to be huge to provide a big profit. It's all relative.

Creating decent AAA mmorpg you'll need at least 30-60 mln $.  This is minimum.

You have really borked vision of the world.  You won't find that much cheaper work force in India or China in programmers space. Especially in skilled programmers.

Corporations are there for a long time, those counties also have domestic corporations that pay well.

Some western games already are made in f.e. China - like newest Alice game. It is bit cheaper, but not much cheaper. Not to mention that this gap in costs will be smaller and smaller. 

Gaming market in Asia in growing faster that in west, companies from there earn more and more, and result of that is that developers and programmers in those countries earn better each year.

Sorry you just don't have enough knowegedle or are very naive.

For couple hundread thousand dollars it would not be enough to create even half-decent indie project. (DFO and MO costed MUCH more than couple hundred thousand of dollars).

It's one thing to make an MMORPG on a budget of a few million dollars.  It's entirely another to do it on $100,000.

Someone doesn't have to get paid all that much working in the US to get ten times as much as the "couple thousand" that you're hoping to pay people.

If you found several people who really believed in your project, and had a simple enough idea that several people would be enough to do everything in a year or two, then maybe you could pull it off.  But if you're such a great visionary, then why can't you raise enough money to give your game a fighting chance at success?

Originally posted by Donev

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why would someone want to go work for you very cheaply if he can go work somewhere else and get paid ten times as much?  It would probably be easier to convince one rich venture capitalist to fund you than dozens of programmers and artists to work for you nearly for free.  Not that the former would necessarily be easy, either.

Because life isn't about money? Maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression that programmers/artist are told exactly what to do and never have any input whatsoever over the project. Also, you seem to kinda miss the point. Someone working in a big city for a gamestudio as a programmer/artist isnät going to make that much money, programmers and artists are low paid, and when living in the "western world" are going to be spending that 10x as high salary on a quality of life that will be worse than the "free life" they are offered and a job that they would probably enjoy 10x as much..A

 

Am I completely wrong?

So. You want someone to give up their nice house, their nice car, their nice everything, to work for chump change on your project?

They don't make that much money? You realize that a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Computer Information Systems, is one of the highest paying 4yr degrees in the US, right? The only degree that beats it is Registered Nurse.

 

With that said. Fallen Earth was made for $2.5million. It was released extremely buggy, very unfinished, and with very little content. On release day I fell through the world 3 times where I had to call a GM. 2 more where I fixed it myself.

Also, the cheaper countries where programmers come from........ really aren't all that much cheaper. If they are quite a bit cheaper, then what you pay for is what you get. You get crap. The talented ones, the ones who actually know what they are doing other than writing down some code monkey garbage, move to the US or Europe to make real money. Not to mention, if you do get the code monkey garbage, it's going to cost you exponentially more to maintain that code, than it would if you were to hire someone who was paid more (generally). I don't think you realize how hard it is to read someone else's code who you've never met, have no idea how they think, or why they do certain things. I'm just talking about small projects here, a couple thousand lines of code. You're talking about a MMORPG.... millions and millions of lines of code. You're not going to get anyone to work on that cheaply. 

 

Yeah.... it cost alot of money.

Ehm, what? First of all, what student straight from university has a nice car, nice house and nice everything unless they have rich parents? None. Secondly, a degree might be able to get high paying jobs, but working as a games programmer is not a well paid job, the high paying jobs are when you work for financial institutions, banks, etc. Not a game studio.

Thirdly, I never said I was going to hire programmers from those countries, I'm aware of how bad they are, I meant setting up a 'HQ' in those countries because of the extremely cheap costs of living and flying people out there. I'm not talking about 30-40 year olds with families and established lives, but students with pretty much nothing.

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by NMStudio

You're not completely wrong at all.  There are plenty of people out there who wish they could make games but instead have to take corporate jobs.  Breaking into the gaming industry is hard, all of their ads say they require that you've already worked on a shipped title before they'll even consider you.  How do they expect you to ever get experience unless you go out your way like this to make your own opportunities?

If you're really intent on getting a game made, PM.  What is your background?  What applicable skills do you have?

I don't really have any applicable skills when it comes to making games. I just think there is a huge 'gap' or demand for a certain type of MMORPG that hasn't been created and doesn't look like it will appear anytime soon. There is a chance I'd have the money to do something like this sometime in the future, although I doubt I would ever really risk 100 000 USD or possibly more on something like this, but it's interesting to discuss and speculate about I think.. there's always the possibility that I decide to go through with it..

 

I also think there's potentially huge money to be made in MMORPGs, if they're created on extremely small budgets and cater for a certain type of player, it doesn't have to be huge to provide a big profit. It's all relative.

It's definitely relative.  There's no need to target a million players.  What it was a small team and you target 10,000 players, and you only charge 10 bucks a month.   There's plenty of room for profit in a niche game that builds a solid following.  It's definitely a workable idea.

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by Donev

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by Quizzical

Why would someone want to go work for you very cheaply if he can go work somewhere else and get paid ten times as much?  It would probably be easier to convince one rich venture capitalist to fund you than dozens of programmers and artists to work for you nearly for free.  Not that the former would necessarily be easy, either.

Because life isn't about money? Maybe I'm wrong, but I got the impression that programmers/artist are told exactly what to do and never have any input whatsoever over the project. Also, you seem to kinda miss the point. Someone working in a big city for a gamestudio as a programmer/artist isnät going to make that much money, programmers and artists are low paid, and when living in the "western world" are going to be spending that 10x as high salary on a quality of life that will be worse than the "free life" they are offered and a job that they would probably enjoy 10x as much..A

 

Am I completely wrong?

So. You want someone to give up their nice house, their nice car, their nice everything, to work for chump change on your project?

They don't make that much money? You realize that a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or Computer Information Systems, is one of the highest paying 4yr degrees in the US, right? The only degree that beats it is Registered Nurse.

 

With that said. Fallen Earth was made for $2.5million. It was released extremely buggy, very unfinished, and with very little content. On release day I fell through the world 3 times where I had to call a GM. 2 more where I fixed it myself.

Also, the cheaper countries where programmers come from........ really aren't all that much cheaper. If they are quite a bit cheaper, then what you pay for is what you get. You get crap. The talented ones, the ones who actually know what they are doing other than writing down some code monkey garbage, move to the US or Europe to make real money. Not to mention, if you do get the code monkey garbage, it's going to cost you exponentially more to maintain that code, than it would if you were to hire someone who was paid more (generally). I don't think you realize how hard it is to read someone else's code who you've never met, have no idea how they think, or why they do certain things. I'm just talking about small projects here, a couple thousand lines of code. You're talking about a MMORPG.... millions and millions of lines of code. You're not going to get anyone to work on that cheaply. 

 

Yeah.... it cost alot of money.

Ehm, what? First of all, what student straight from university has a nice car, nice house and nice everything unless they have rich parents? None. Secondly, a degree might be able to get high paying jobs, but working as a games programmer is not a well paid job, the high paying jobs are when you work for financial institutions, banks, etc. Not a game studio.

 

Thirdly, I never said I was going to hire programmers from those countries, I'm aware of how bad they are, I meant setting up a 'HQ' in those countries because of the extremely cheap costs of living and flying people out there. I'm not talking about 30-40 year olds with families and established lives, but students with pretty much nothing.

The average starting salary for a recent Computer Science, Engineering, etc. student is around $45-$50k per year. 

The average starting salary for a recent graduate that would have the ability and knowledge to work on an MMORPG, is going to start at around $70k per year, because they aren't going to start at entry level. A recent graduate CANNOT feasibly make a MMORPG, unless they have put quite a bit of time into independant study.  I've known people to graduate from college, who spent much of their time on their independant projects, start out as Senior Programmers..... which usually require 5-10yrs in the business.

This is what you're going to need to actually make a MMORPG. There is a reason why small indie game studios do NOT hire recent college graduates. They don't have the experience. They would need 5-10 recent graduates to perform the same things that 1 experienced professional could do. 

Yes, game studios start at around the same as any other place..... if not more. Creating a game requires quite a bit more knowledge in Math than what it takes for someone to create a Financial Application. A game requires an advanced understanding of Linear Algebra, Cal 3, and Probabilities. Financial or general applications for companies require limited knowledge in Basic (10th grade High School Level) Algebra. 

Originally posted by fenistil

Creating decent AAA mmorpg you'll need at least 30-60 mln $.  This is minimum.

 

You have really borked vision of the world.  You won't find that much cheaper work force in India or China in programmers space. Especially in skilled programmers.

 

Corporations are there for a long time, those counties also have domestic corporations that pay well.

 

Some western games already are made in f.e. China - like newest Alice game. It is bit cheaper, but not much cheaper. Not to mention that this gap in costs will be smaller and smaller. 

Gaming market in Asia in growing faster that in west, companies from there earn more and more, and result of that is that developers and programmers in those countries earn better each year.

 

Sorry you just don't have enough knowegedle or are very naive.

 

For couple hundread thousand dollars it would not be enough to create even half-decent indie project. (DFO and MO costed MUCH more than couple hundred thousand of dollars).

30-60 million dollars? Where did you pull that figure out from?

If one guy can create an MMORPG whilst working part time jobs, then a group of people working full time should be able to create something, right? I never said AAA, I said an MMORPG that caters for a certain type of player.

I also said nothing about hiring cheap programmers from india or China, I meant establishing a headquarter there due to the extremely cheap living costs.

"DFO and MO costed much more" - lol.

Originally posted by Quizzical

It's one thing to make an MMORPG on a budget of a few million dollars.  It's entirely another to do it on $100,000.

Someone doesn't have to get paid all that much working in the US to get ten times as much as the "couple thousand" that you're hoping to pay people.

If you found several people who really believed in your project, and had a simple enough idea that several people would be enough to do everything in a year or two, then maybe you could pull it off.  But if you're such a great visionary, then why can't you raise enough money to give your game a fighting chance at success?

Haha dude calm down. It's just an idea I'm running by here. Surely it would be easier to persuade a couple of people what a great idea it is and not pay them. Than to convince a bunch of other people, get money, and then pay them?

"If I'm such a great visionary" - I am, give me time ;)

Oh and btw. 

There is a guy who used to frequent these forums. He has been trying to make an MMORPG for the past decade. 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/X-Shift-Online/119100342848

His main website is down.

A couple years ago he contracted out to a company to help him in development. I have a friend who works for that company he contracted out to. I think my buddy makes somewhere around $80-90k per year. (I judge this by his house and the fact his wife is a hairdresser) I do not know anything about the details of the contract, how much work he wanted, or how much he paid.... but my friend makes a good bit of money. He makes more than me and I work on those "financial applications" you were talking about earlier. 

Originally posted by Donev

The average starting salary for a recent graduate that would have the ability and knowledge to work on an MMORPG, is going to start at around $70k per year, because they aren't going to start at entry level. A recent graduate CANNOT feasibly make a MMORPG, unless they have put quite a bit of time into independant study.  I've known people to graduate from college, who spent much of their time on their independant projects, start out as Senior Programmers..... which usually require 5-10yrs in the business.

This is what you're going to need to actually make a MMORPG. There is a reason why small indie game studios do NOT hire recent college graduates. They don't have the experience. They would need 5-10 recent graduates to perform the same things that 1 experienced professional could do. 

Yes, game studios start at around the same as any other place..... if not more. Creating a game requires quite a bit more knowledge in Math than what it takes for someone to create a Financial Application. A game requires an advanced understanding of Linear Algebra, Cal 3, and Probabilities. Financial or general applications for companies require limited knowledge in Basic (10th grade High School Level) Algebra. 

I'm not saying making games are easy, but (at least here in Europe) game programming is pretty much the lowest paid programming job available. I doubt it's any difference in the USA. People want to make games so there's no reason for giving people a high salary when they're happy to work cheaply. It's the banks that need to give high salary so that people will be willing to put up with the boring tedious work.

Originally posted by Donev

Oh and btw. 

There is a guy who used to frequent these forums. He has been trying to make an MMORPG for the past decade. 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/X-Shift-Online/119100342848

His main website is down.

A couple years ago he contracted out to a company to help him in development. I have a friend who works for that company he contracted out to. I think my buddy makes somewhere around $80-90k per year. (I judge this by his house and the fact his wife is a hairdresser) I do not know anything about the details of the contract, how much work he wanted, or how much he paid.... but my friend makes a good bit of money. He makes more than me and I work on those "financial applications" you were talking about earlier. 

Well, I personally know people that make hell of a lot more than a game progrmmer ever will, maybe you're just too incompitent to get one of those jobs?

An interesting question.  MMORPG products are like pretty much any other large-scale item.  There is a long development cycle where there is no appreciable income from the project, and there is an operational cycle which generates revenues.

The upfront money for an MMORPG depends heavily on exactly what you plan to do.  Once there is a clear concept, you can estimate the number of assets necessary to bring this to fruition and generate rough estimates using something like COCOMO models to get actual numbers, including staffing (the biggest development cost).   The development cycle for an MMO that plans to use a lot of off-the-shelf development tools without changes will cost a lot less than another MMO where they developers determine that the off-the-shelf solutions do not work or need significant enhancement.   The development cycle will need this seed money to sustain the project until the release product can start making money.

I did plot all this out in 2002-2003, with full estimates of costs and personnel schedules.  There weren't as many ready-to-roll MMORPG kits around at the time (and they were expensive and nothing like what I wanted, so would have probably been unusable).  I had a rather optimistic schedule with minimal staffing plans, and I projected that my project would take about 3 years of development with an initial budget of around 3.5 million USD.  I could not finance that, and chose to abandon my project before proceeding further.   I think this estimate for my project would still be a reasonable ballpark figure, given the proliferation of available tools (cutting some of my tool development time) and the inflationary costs of salaries, rent, utilities, etc.

Feel free to PM me if I can help further.

I'm curious as to why you even bother asking this question if you're going to tell everyone they're wrong when they give you an answer. It's pretty clear you think you can accomplish your goal, so go ahead and try it. When you end up broke because you don't know a thing about game development, maybe you'll take the advice next time.

And calling somebody "Incompetent" when you "don't really have any applicable skills when it comes to making games" makes you look like an idiot.

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by fenistil

Creating decent AAA mmorpg you'll need at least 30-60 mln $.  This is minimum.

 

You have really borked vision of the world.  You won't find that much cheaper work force in India or China in programmers space. Especially in skilled programmers.

 

Corporations are there for a long time, those counties also have domestic corporations that pay well.

 

Some western games already are made in f.e. China - like newest Alice game. It is bit cheaper, but not much cheaper. Not to mention that this gap in costs will be smaller and smaller. 

Gaming market in Asia in growing faster that in west, companies from there earn more and more, and result of that is that developers and programmers in those countries earn better each year.

 

Sorry you just don't have enough knowegedle or are very naive.

 

For couple hundread thousand dollars it would not be enough to create even half-decent indie project. (DFO and MO costed MUCH more than couple hundred thousand of dollars).

30-60 million dollars? Where did you pull that figure out from?

 

If one guy can create an MMORPG whilst working part time jobs, then a group of people working full time should be able to create something, right? I never said AAA, I said an MMORPG that caters for a certain type of player.

 

I also said nothing about hiring cheap programmers from india or China, I meant establishing a headquarter there due to the extremely cheap living costs.

 

"DFO and MO costed much more" - lol.

Believe what you want. Your choice.

Also laughing from someone grammar mistake won't take you far.

So you want to establish HQ in India and hire programmers from f.e. USA?

Good luck.

Sorry but either you're trolling or you don't have any idea about thing you want to do.

For cheap profilled games targetted at niche players - sure there is a place in market for those games, but there is PLENTY of mmoprg's like that in the market already.  Anyway couple hundread thousands dollars won't be enough to create even an decent indie mmorpg, - for this kind of money you could maybe hire few inexperienced programmers for a year and rent some office + buy compuiters + pay texes + pay air tickets to India / China.  Not enough to create even small indie mmorpg.

anyway eot for me - this topic is getting nowhere

Originally posted by kevin_123

Originally posted by Donev

Oh and btw. 

There is a guy who used to frequent these forums. He has been trying to make an MMORPG for the past decade. 

http://www.facebook.com/pages/X-Shift-Online/119100342848

His main website is down.

A couple years ago he contracted out to a company to help him in development. I have a friend who works for that company he contracted out to. I think my buddy makes somewhere around $80-90k per year. (I judge this by his house and the fact his wife is a hairdresser) I do not know anything about the details of the contract, how much work he wanted, or how much he paid.... but my friend makes a good bit of money. He makes more than me and I work on those "financial applications" you were talking about earlier. 

Well, I personally know people that make hell of a lot more than a game progrmmer ever will, maybe you're just too incompitent to get one of those jobs?

Na, I just don't find game development fun. It's too computational, repetative, and isn't something I enjoy at all. I developed a few smaller games in college and throughout the years and it's not fun. It takes a special kind of person. I make damn good money and enjoy my job. The people I know from college in the game industry, HATE their jobs. Almost everyone I know who have gone into more traditional programmer jobs, love it. I'm sure it has alot to do with the deadlines and the fact that those of us who have taken the more taditional jobs, actually have time to spend their money and don't work 12hrs a day 6 days a week.

I know people who make more than a programmer too. If you want to turn this into a pissing match then so be it. I'm stating facts that you basically asked for.

Dreamers will be dreamers. Doers will be doers. You're a dreamer.