Ok, now before I tell you my plan, my name is Tucker, I am 17, I have no extreme programming skills. Flame on. But, I do have ideas... and I do have money... So, I have done the research and most say it would cost me around, 2-3 million $ for the first year.... possibly 1.5.... and around 20-30 experienced workers. I plan on hiring a team, and a Co-Designer with experience, because I hear leadership is very important, and I feel I would need to be experienced to be a good leader... yet I would be in full control and, if the game DOES come out like it is in my head, I WILL have the #1 MMORPG no doubt. Problems: -Are my ideas possible? -Is that enough money to run a top notch extreme graphics game? -I am going to finish college out first, majoring in Game Developing -Is it possibly for me to get a team to do exactly as I want it? Positive side: -I know the team who worked with Mythic on Dark Ages Of Camelot personally. -I know the Lead Designer of multiple Xbox games. Aquaintences I hear help. Now I want to hear from people who have more experience then me, and what they think.

If YOU control the money, then YOU can have any game made that you want. The question is, where do you get the money from?

$3M is likely enough to create a small-scale, modest-graphics commercial MMOG, especially if you buy good, proven middleware where possible and locate in a low-cost area. If you want the likes of WoW or EQ2, then you need more money than that.

Are you saying you have $2-3million on hand?
All those numbers depend on scale. If you going for AAA, then your going to burn 2million a year for things like art, talent, programmers, perks etc. If you go a little more low key, you can operate on half that.

Still doesn't change the fact that development time is going to be 2-4 years. (Possibly longer). Since you've admited you have essentially no experenice (running a software development firm or launching comercial products), no-one (Venture Capital firms) is going to just hand over ($500k * 4 = $2mil) 2million dollars to you. You may be able to get $250k if you can prove you have a VERY sound idea, and allow the VC firm to setup the board of directors and control hiring.

Well, yes i have 2.5 mill, but I can also get sponsors, and how much more do I need to make it up to par with WoW?

if you have that sort of cash your better off setting up a studio to do non mmo games at first and hopefully you could get revenue in from other projects to fund your mmo development.

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Original post by KillerChaos Well, yes i have 2.5 mill, but I can also get sponsors, and how much more do I need to make it up to par with WoW?

Just wait a few years until you get some expierence even making small games that are FUN.

If you attempted this without expierence then I would say your best option would to act as an investor and let others design and implement it.

You would need alot more than $3 mil to compete with WoW.

Well if you already have a basis capital. (Nice if you do ;)

I'd say setup a company in a location that is a realitivly cheap location for taxes and rent space. Then scour the local area for talent. Find someone that you trust with their technical abilites. Since you lack the background, it'll be VERY hard for you to seperate bullshit from truth in employee resumes. Get a co-designer and 1-2 artist to work on concept drawings etc. Get your design rolling. Shortly after bring in a techincal lead that will be responible for security/server development/program design to start coverting the general design into a system design that can accomidate that idea. This person is absoultly critical, and even more so if you don't have the technical background.

Then start hiring devlopment staff, programmers, artists, etc. They'll work on the prototype, and product development. Depending if you want to self publish or seek support from a outside publisher, you should either get the prototype laid down as early as possible that'll act as the core for your application(s), vesus doing a well done prototype to show off to publishers.

You still need to fill in positions of Accounting, Public Relations/Bussiness Development, and Production Manager.



Thinking about it HAM may have the right idea, might be a better idea to do one or two small games under the house to build a knowledgeable staff (the whole you won't know BS from truth and quality vs shit, it does matter. Go look at thedailywtf, and if you don't laugh you don't have the technical knowledge to properly hire qualified individuals)

Personally I wish you luck.

Thanks for the feedback. And I guess it looks like I will just have to make more money before I start =/

I wish I had two million dollars to throw at a project! I would be spending the money differently, but that's just me. Just wondering - where did you get that amount of money? Inheritance?

Just give it away to charity.