Actually my curiosity would be to maybe direct towards wondering what methods of development do the MMOG devs use?

I know EVE-Online used prototyping (14 times in 2 years or something like that; it's in the free interview vids you can on the site). I think that connectivity issuesare getting better but maybe it has to do with how the products are conceived? EVE went very smoothly as far as I saw, and even testing the servers were extremely stable. Of course, they had backing from a few big names and 10-12 milion budget I believe.

But could development process affect the cost? Maybe not since with technology growing we keep pushing the complexity of the problems to max our efforts, but maybe you (or Mr. Marchant seems to be quite knowledgeable on this thread as well) can give some insight on what costs so much? (I'm guessing servers/tech support rather than content development of the actual game)

I'm sorry for rambbling a bit off topic but it hits the budget aspect of making a game so I feel it can tie in.

Quote: Original post by Obscure

Quote: Original post by netflow
Realistically I think you could 'startup' for a lot less than 15 million...

..... I say give yourself 2 million USD to start up, develop a good game and then find a publisher to take over the rest.. If you have a good product and you have already developed the game your chances of getting picked up by a publisher will increase exponentially

What experience/information do you have to back this up? $2 million isn't even enough to develop a standard PS2 triple A (single player) game, let alone a MMPOG. I just spent the last few months budgeting a triple A PS2/Xbox game and that cost in excess of $3.5 million. There are plenty of post-mortems and articles out there that show the cost of a MMPOG and it is in the 15 million region.

$2 million would possibly get you a working prototype but unless you have proven industry experience (and a team with the same) then no publisher is going to invest an additional $10-13 million. They wont even invest $3,000,000 into a start-up these days unless they have a track record that makes the Indy500 look like a drive around the block.

Your numbers are still way off.. I have been in business for 6 years, I know what costs are involved and I know how to run a business. I know for a fact that there are a LOT of ways around a 15 million dollar budget.. I also know that I can have a prototype demo up and running for under a million dollars very VERY easily. The fact that an indie hobbiest game programmer can even come up with anything decent for FREE is a sure sign that you don't need 15 million to launch a decent online game.
It is just like the space shuttle, that thing costs 250 million to launch every single time, but I can bet you sure as hell aren't going to tell me today that it could be done for 25 times less money. Perhaps 10 years ago, but not today...

Where there is a will there is always a way, however I am not saying that a bunch of new programmers can get together and make a FFXI style game for 50 grand.. But your 15 million dollar price tag to Develop the game, not publish it just develop it, is ridiculous in my mind.

Also, developing a PS2 title and a PC title are completely different processes, so applying budget costs for a AAA PS2 title is irrelevant.