Azaroth

Ah! What a telling title!

Actually, what’s been going on is a blog-to-blog topic, spreading around like a virus, on the topic of the lowest end cost of a MMO. Someone said two million. Then someone else said 3.5. Matt Mihaly, in the latest incarnation of the topic, says less than one.

I fully respect and endorse this point of view. Eschewing the silly notion of in-house artists, central offices, and dedicated QA/tech/legal teams - there’s no reason why you should have to budget around something more than a million dollars for a respectably sized MMO.

Brian went on for some time about taxes, benefits, lawyers, “business guys”, PR managers, etc. I say nuts to that. If the budget is what it is, it is what it is. Sometimes things that seem very important when you have larger budgets simply fall by the wayside through the process of rational thinking when you have a set budget, or have a need to ship a product with the lowest possible budget. Suddenly a PR manager doesn’t seem as important as, say, ART FOR THE GAME. You know.

One thing Brian certainly had right was the notion of outsourcing. Find yourself a quality producer of art in India or China and you’re crusin’. Not such a good idea with code.

Can’t find something to your liking overseas? There are plenty of very high quality art contracting solutions in the western world. They’ll cost you more, but budget accordingly. A quality visual presentation is your user’s first impression. Where do you click first when you visit the site of a new MMO? Screenshots!

As far as a dedicated marketing person, I think Mr. Mihaly hit the nail on the head:

5. A marketing person is nice but I don’t think you really need one. A project this size lives and dies on word-of-mouth. Marketing and advertising certainly do not hurt, but thus far I’ve been handling our marketing efforts (though we recently opened a blog on IGN’s RPG Vault with about an article a week written by one of our interns). It’s not THAT hard to get some coverage for your game. Google “earth eternal” and see. I’ve largely just sent out a few press releases that I wrote. A press release is not rocket science. We’ve also allocated funds for advertising but won’t spend on that until we’re into open beta.

Now think back to IPY. For what it was, its population was huge. And that population was created solely by? Of course, word of mouth. Paying $50,000 a year to a dedicated marketing person is overkill when I can personally forge relationships with MMO websites, place a few strategic advertisements in print media, and write press releases with the greatest of ease.

Would a marketing person provide more than a good bang for my buck at 50k a year?

Sure, probably. But what if I don’t have that 50k in my budget. What if that 50k is more wisely spent actually creating a game TO market. I could take the entire budget and spend it on massive amounts of marketing if I want, but if all I had were 3 classes of grey, black, and red stickmen running around on a green 2d field - word of mouth is going to kill me very quickly. Just like, in the ever tight knit MMO community, word of mouth will propel the name of my game and my URL through the cosmos at light speed if I actually have a decent product.

But it all depends what you want to put IN to your game. I suppose word of mouth is hard when you don’t have many features, and/or no specific hook. Matt’s snowball will start rolling from his work on successful and quality text MUDs. My IPY snowball started rolling because of my years of Pre-UO:R rants, where I did that ranting (many very popular websites, including a few of my own), and the main basic fact that I was filling a need with a comfy, visible brand. What better to satiate someone looking to play oldschool Ultima Online with than… oldschool Ultima Online? Now THAT’S marketing.

Would IPY have been as successful had I hired a team of programmers and graphics artists to create a 2d MMO with the exact same ruleset? Or was the name and the familiarity that came with it the most important part?

Of course, word of mouth and popularity can ultimately be a bad thing if your game design is fatally flawed in relation to your market. See IPY. See Darkfall. See the same result. But that’s more of a sidebar comment.

In the end, I totally agree that it’s possible to get a MMO done with a budget of under a million. It just takes creativity, and people at the helm that KNOW they’re not going to compete with WoW (and don’t try).