Just something I've been wondering lately as I've been reading about the rise and fall of MMOs. Pretty much every title released has cost their companies millions of dollars to develop and implement. Anywhere from an extremely conservative 10-20 million to upwards of 150-200 million. And this is just to create and release the game. It can cost hundreds of thousands more (or millions) to support it after release. As far as my very limited knowledge of City of Titans finances and expenses go, you've been doing this on about 700k up to now. I was really curious to know how this is possible, or if the dev team is getting additional funding support from elsewhere. Is it down to improved current development tools? Does volunteering save THAT much? I would love to know how MWM is doing it. Thanks!
Currently trapped inside the Speed Force...
The lions share of any MMORPG's development cost is in the labor needed. I calculated out once that if we were trying to develop this full time, with every volunteer turned into a full time employee, our budget would be $16.3 million to reach the development milestone we are at right now, with easily another $6-$8 million to launch. A big reason why it is so low is a design decision we made early on to not do any voice over work. MMORPG's are labor intensive. Tools help, purchased assets help, but they only reduce the labor demand by so much.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Labor of love.
A labor which those of us who did not labor will greatly benefit from.
I have no game development skills that I can contribute other than maybe creative input (which I feel like has already been covered amply) or MAYBE copy editing (I'm an English Major and my wife, while a Biology major, is a better copy editor than I am).
Anyway, thank you, MWM, for all of the labor that will make this game possible.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
When you see estimates in the $150M range there are many complex (and stupid) things going on. It is usually a AAA title or company that had to pay for licensing, mass marketing and bucket loads of talent. It also usually means that at some point the current state or vision of the project did not live up to expectations and/or deadlines were not being met. Thus they had to redesign the project or change the scope, then dive back into coding and set new deadlines. Now when you have a project that is tied to a specific release date (sports titles, movie tie in, etc) you are fighting the clock harder, so there is less flexibility. Your options typically are throw more people & money at it until it works.
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That's basically a feature film's financing.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
I've worked in cinema before. I've seen films shot for $10k which outshone movies shot for $100m.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
And we'll see what you can do with $678k.
[i]Has anyone seen my mind? It was right here...[/i]
What Doc T said. Labor isma huge cost. Also, other studios have a physical location, typically by lease (some own their building - which still involves property tax). Then there are utilities, healthcare, usually some form of security, and custodial care to say the least. So not only are we saving on the labor cost but the location costs too.
When people ask me what this is like, I liken it to a team of ten people climbing a mountain with only a tenth of the gear for one person. But the team still keeps reaching ledges just large enough for them to hang on long enough to switch things around, rest up, and get back to climbing.
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- Combat Mechanic -
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team. [/color]
I feel like while in the short run this is a major challenge, in the long run this could be an important advantage for MWM and CoT.
Having to learn to develop in lieu of typical levels of funding, and having to developing the game and the team in this low-capital environment, should help MWM be able to survive and thrive on far less income than a normal AAA title--which could be a necessity, at least at first.
And IF the monetary success of the game starts bringing in really serious cash (fingers crossed!), hopefully it will also help MWM understand the most efficient and effective way to utilize the capital to both improve and grow the game and to create a healthy and stable company to support the continued existence of CoT.
I know this is all very theoretical and speculative--lots of ifs, ands, and buts--yet I think it's likely at least somewhat true.
FIGHT EVIL! (or go cause trouble so the Heroes have something to do.)
I'm sure this has come up before as a possible option; but has it been considered to solicit the playerbase to do pro bono voice over work? I'm sure there are people out there who would be willing to further support the game and literally be a part of it.
Or do you mean that there is nothing within the game's design and implementation to even input voices for NPCs?
Voice acting is one of those things where you want it either done well, or don't do it at all. When it comes to "free" - well you very often get what you pay for so to speak. Plus, recording voice for everything would seriously slow down the rate at which they could add new content to the game. I'm quite content with them leaving it out.
I agree that voice-overs are completely unnecessary. At most, general greetings, congratulations or similar for major characters (contacts?) could work but I'd rather have none than cheesy and cheap.
On the topic of sound, it was mentioned that CoH used sound packs which are readily available for purchase... Can we please have some of the original sounds in that case? It'd make me very happy indeed hearing the slotting, selection and badge noises again in a new game. ;)
Human Flea / Union / Sci SR/Claws Scrapper
H3-AL / Union / Sci Emp/Psi Defender
If we could find the right sound packs, would grab them in a heartbeat. But as of yet, not located the correct ones. There are literally tens of thousands of possibilities out there.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
I agree that they're not necessary, however when describing games to people that I've played since CoX, usually the ones that I would suggest to them to play also, more often than not had solid voice acting in them. TSW, SWTOR, etc. It should be noted that I would also mention the slower content rate that those games produced, so I also agree that it has that effect. So yeah, you'd have to balance the measure of quality of the content that would include the voice acting against how much you could create without it. So, quality vs. quantity. I'm generally a quality person, but the reason I stopped playing TSW was their rate of content generation was glacial. Top notch stuff, but man, it would take forever. There was some additional stuff that contributed to it, but I, like the majority of people, play games for content. Would the story in TSW been as good without Peter Stormaire knocking out some crazy body doctor? Sure, but it just wouldn't been as immersive.
Don't suppose Michael Henry (credited for sound on CoHrelease) would be up for a quick conversation would he? Does anyone have contacts that could arrange a meeting? :)
Sorry if that's already been explored!
Human Flea / Union / Sci SR/Claws Scrapper
H3-AL / Union / Sci Emp/Psi Defender
Our dialog system enables for audio hooks certainly. Someone could make their own dialog pack on their own for the game. It is just not going to be something that MWM will be endorsing or supporting.
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
Right on. Thank you for answering my question.
Its been said before but bears repeating here in this context that some of the best lore delivery I've experienced are with the investigations and briefings in DCUO (they're the equivalent of CoX badges, but each is an audioclip of some notable hero, villain or NPC).
Brilliantly done and delivered with some amazingly good voice talent. My favorites are the psychopathically narcissistic Circe voiced by [url=http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000405/]Michelle Forbes[/url] and Jack Ryder with his "you are wrong" bits.
Maybe we won't be able to get that caliber of voice talent, but the use of audible bits meant that I could keep playing the game while listening to it. In other words, I never felt the need to just click through the text to get on with things. I could just click on the glowie and be about my way as the audio recording played for the next 20 seconds. And if I ever wanted to hear it again, all I had to do was click on its icon in my collections. (yes, there are subtitles provided as well)
In my opinion that is superb implementation and injection of lore/immersion into gameplay.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
I admit, I enjoyed those 'badges' in DCUO. I also had a love/hate relationship with the Booster Gold 'tour' content. DCUO did many things well, UI and Controls was the worst aspect, followed by the structure of the Powers. Also, the non-costume system, which did some things well and others badly. The Travel powers were pretty cool, though.
Be Well!
Fireheart
It's going to be interesting to see how the game feels without any spoken dialogue/voice acting. It's so commonplace nowadays you don't even notice it.
Currently trapped inside the Speed Force...
In most games, I enable subtitles and click through the voice acting because I've read what they have to say before they've said the third or fourth word...
Human Flea / Union / Sci SR/Claws Scrapper
H3-AL / Union / Sci Emp/Psi Defender
Try playing Final Fantasy 14 if you want to experience what it's like these days; that game reserves Voice Acting for important scenes, with 98% of quests being entirely unvoiced.
An infinite number of tries doesn't mean that any one of those tries will succeed. I could flip an infinite number of pennies an infinite number of times and, barring genuine randomness, they will never come up "Waffles".
That's a thing about FFXIV that I both love and get incredibly aggravated with. It's more jarring than you would think to have one scene be beautifully voice acted, only to click on a character again to continue a cutscene, only now it's silent.
They seem to be leaning more to the side of voice acting in the latest patches, though.
I do like FFXIV a lot, but I wish they had kind of stuck with all one or the other.
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I agree
The best part of DCUO was probably the DC brand. If Missing Worlds Media put out a product similar to DCUO, they would fail, hard. Imagine DCUO with no Batman, Cyborg or any other iconic heroes. It would be a watered down Champions Online, with slightly better game-play. The combat and voice acting were solid.
As a child, I thought my name was handsome, cause that is what everyone called me.
So very true. I'll admit, 90% of my enjoyment is hearing Batman or Superman, or anyone of the Justice League praising us. Hell, I run the Booster Gold tourist quest because it's freaking Booster Gold!
Technical Director
Read enough Facebook and you have to make Sanity Checks. I guess FB is the Great Old One of the interent these days... - Beamrider
[youtube]XbswX18YXRU[/youtube]
One of the standout voices used for ESO.
[center][img=44x100]https://i.imgur.com/sMUQ928.gif[/img]
[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
the Know did a little bit on game production costs. It's not wholly accurate in the math. They list the average dev as making ~80k/year and extrapolate that to a team of 300, but in reality there are a lot of testers included in the "team" as well as support staff (accounting, management, etc) that make less than that by a fair margin. But it does provide a good break down of how the box cost is distributed and explain some of the factors that increase the games cost that wont be an issue for MWM since they are using volunteer labor and self publishing. Anyway video below. That is not to say that MWM shouldn't charge $60/box as every dollar will be critical for expansion and further development.
[youtube]xvTd8wsRKpo[/youtube]
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