Just Dreaming...

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Buggy(Posted 2006) [#1]
The New York Times announced today that Dungeons and Dragons Online will be launched tomorrow. They had 300,000 people sign up to test it, and all players will pay $15 per month.

I used my incredibly-good-at-math brain to figure out that if you could make a respectable game on your own for only $1 a month, you're making $300,000 per month! And if you have a good nerd friend do the graphics for you, you still each make $150,000 per month! That's nuts!

...It sure is a shame I can only comprehend 2D programming...


Rob Farley(Posted 2006) [#2]
Yes, but then there's servers to build and maintain, you'll probably need to be a point of presence on t'internet for latency seeing as going though an ISP probably isn't going to cut it, pay pal isn't going to be good enough for billing...

You've got to let people know it's available so you'll need to do lots of marketing...

Oh... and you've got to write a game worth playing, nothing to do with 2D or 3D.


n8r2k(Posted 2006) [#3]

I used my incredibly-good-at-math brain to figure out that if you could make a respectable game on your own for only $1 a month, you're making $300,000 per month! And if you have a good nerd friend do the graphics for you, you still each make $150,000 per month! That's nuts!


Making a game thats 'decent' would take a long time on your own.

also maintaining a game that big would take alot of time. all the bug fixes and trying to keep the game interesting so you dont lose players.


_PJ_(Posted 2006) [#4]
((All the above plus....)) Especially considering that online games global and therefore will pretty much require 24hr presence, minus the occasional server downtime for whatever reason which WILL happen. and the fact that an initial boom of interest may die out very rapidly unless the interest is maintained. People generally seem extremely adverse to paying for online gaming


stayne(Posted 2006) [#5]
hypothetical:

- 40 employees averaging 20 dollars an hour: $128,000 a month.

- bandwidth and server costs... eh, around 25% of a popular mmorpg's revenue i'd imagine: $75,000 a month.

$203,000 gone already in one month. toss in packaging and shipping costs, paying this guy and that guy, etc.

i think it's safe to say that the cost to develop a game like D&D Online over 2 - 3 years is in the millions.


Buggy(Posted 2006) [#6]
But that's if you're a big corporation. If you and a friend are just doing it together, that's $128,000 a month you're saving!

But anyway, you guys are right... I knew there was some reason why I wasn't rich!


jfk EO-11110(Posted 2006) [#7]
This also shows that the highest value you can own in the games business is a big community and a high popularity.

Imagine even if you made a real cool game - who cares when it's not hip?


Floyd(Posted 2006) [#8]
This reminds me of an old Steve Martin bit. You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes!

First, get a million dollars...

Now you can also be an online game mogul. First get 300,000 customers...


_PJ_(Posted 2006) [#9]
mah- better than that.... leave your job. Play a MMORPG non-stop for a year, then sell the character login on ebay for $1mil :D


stayne(Posted 2006) [#10]
- the reason WoW is popular: the world of warcraft series
- the reason everquest is popular: the first real fantasy mmorpg
- the reason anarchy online is popular: the first scifi-based mmorpg
- the reason daoc is popular: the first with enough money to decently benchmark off of everquest
- the reason swg is popular: star wars

you'd better be either creative or have a world famous history of previous titles.


Wings(Posted 2006) [#11]
i can talk for my self. but support is verry bigg issue.
i hade about 300 diferent ip connected to mine little world. most of users left before 1 min :)


n8r2k(Posted 2006) [#12]
you need to make your game more user friendly wings, i was trying it out and it looked fairly nice, except for i had no idea how to do anything. If you keep working on it, it could turn into a very nice game.


IPete2(Posted 2006) [#13]
Ha ha ha many of us would make more money in one week than we'd ever do in a lifetime of hard graft - if it were that easy and that fruitful many people would be doing it.

Keeping a large community 'fed' with new areas to explore, objects to use, characters, task, animals, creature, magic etc is a huge task - especially when dealign with a license the size of D&D.

No reason why you couldn't attempt a much smaller enterprse, but advertising and marketing it properly would eat a huge chunk of any initial capital - and I think thats where you'd need to spend money besides on creating, running servers, keeping it fresh - still I reckon it could be done.

IPete2


Buggy(Posted 2006) [#14]
Wings, the screenshot on the site looks plain ol' awful! I think I remember seeing updated ones, so update the site. Also, I have a feeling you may not be a native English speaker, so I'll spare you the grammer speech (on your website).

At least you actually did it, man. You're my new hero.


Crawdad(Posted 2006) [#15]
THE NAME THE NAME THE NAME.

Corp Execs will chance it because of the name. I still know 40 year olds the are playing today infact on paper.