SWTOR

[eldaec]

With the right authoring tools, the focus on bioware style story as content, and relatively lightweight wow+ combat mechanics, I don't see any reason a content authoring team couldn't outpace my ability to consume content. If, as advertised, the primary campaign for a class is equivalent to a DA or ME game, that means Bioware have to churn out one new campaign every couple of months, and they have at least a year's head start while I burn through the first 8 campaigns.

If it was possible to crank out content this fast, someone would've been doing it already I think.

It obviously is possible. You get 15 of my dollars every month, you don't need to develop an engine, any new game mechanics, you don't need to distribute anything, and authoring tools already exist.

15 dollars is the price of an expansion pack. So you clearly have the resources for a content team large enough, if that is how you want to spend the money you're getting.

Most development houses have a laughable approach to efficient content generation, because they are set up for the push to one big release, not organised for continuous output. But it clearly is possible. Especially given the advantage a mmog team has, that it knows it will need to produce post launch content. A one off title will never be able to justify spending money preparing for expansion that might never happen, a mmog team should be laughed out the door if it isn't central to their entire organisation.

[pxib]

It obviously is possible. You get 15 of my dollars every month, you don't need to develop an engine, any new game mechanics, you don't need to distribute anything, and authoring tools already exist.

15 dollars is the price of an expansion pack. So you clearly have the resources for a content team large enough, if that is how you want to spend the money you're getting.

You're getting into Mythical Man-Month territory. Throwing more money at a project doesn't work any better than throwing more people at it. Worthwhile creative impulse doesn't work that way.

I believe that a project could be designed, from the ground up, with constant updating in mind. RIFT, LotRO, and Asheron's Call have all done pretty passable jobs of it. That doesn't mean that getting an expansion pack worth of cash every month automatically allows any company to do so with any game they happen to be running.

[sam, an eggplant]

You're getting into Mythical Man-Month territory.

The most obvious solution is to maintain multiple small live teams and release content updates in a staggered fashion.

[eldaec]

You obviously need a game large enough, and you obviously would have multiple content teams working on different campaigns to allow for longer elapsed time.

As I mentioned to keep up with me you'd need a campaign every couple of months. EA seem to be able to put out a DA campaign every six months or so. Meaning you'd only need 3 teams to be able to publish every two months. You have 180 of my dollars each year to fund that.

People asked earlier in this thread what made it ok to pay a subscription for a game based on solo play. This would be it.

[Sky]

Daniel did say in that last interview that the writers have been projecting out for future updates. He didn't pin a timeline on it but they're definitely putting their chips on enough success to continue development.

[ajax34i]

Eldaec, the reason why it's not done has been ranted about on the EVE boards.  CCP made a statement that creating a new game brings in more revenue than updating, expanding, or patching an old game.  According to whatever source or research they have, not sure.

Looking at the current MMO development cycles (from the outside, I'm not a dev), it seems like the preferred method is to work hard (and creatively) for 5 years, release the game, then reap the benefits / pass it on to the operations team.  Then start the same process for a new game.  Your "continued content development" thing would mean having to put in hard work for the 10+ years of an MMO's lifespan, to stay ahead of the playerbase, while someone else does the "fun" job of developing the next thing.

In any case, it's 10+ years of hard work instead of only 5.

[Velorath]

Eldaec, the reason why it's not done has been ranted about on the EVE boards.  CCP made a statement that creating a new game brings in more revenue than updating, expanding, or patching an old game.  According to whatever source or research they have, not sure.

I'm not sure CCP is the company to look towards for solid financial advice right now.  Keeping people interested in spending money on a successful game you already released seems like a fairly safe business model to me.

[eldaec]

What CCP actually keep saying is that adding features increases subs more than enhancing existing features. What we're talking about here has nothing to do with the new game / old game balance, it's about what the live team of whatever size are focussed on.

You clearly can make a choice to focus that effort on content instead of mechanics and features, and if you want to sell the game as story focussed, that is pretty much the only way to maintain that line.

[sam, an eggplant]

People asked earlier in this thread what made it ok to pay a subscription for a game based on solo play. This would be it.

Major new solo content patches every 2 months is extremely ambitious, and it doesn't serve the traditional MMO endgame needs. If it were me I would build out four content teams.

Story
Responsible for releasing two major story updates per year. Think of them as new chapters for each class quest line.

Casual
Two casual content releases per year. New group content, daily quests, minigames, socializer pandering, exploration bonuses, integration with new social media, cosmetic itemshop items, minipets, etc.

Hardcore Progression
Two major endgame raids per year. Standard MMO fare.

PvP
Two major PvP content releases per year. New warfronts, shared PvP flashpoints, conflict areas, territory and asset control, etc.

And then of course you'd have a larger fifth team focused on expansions on a rigid 18 month release schedule.

[eldaec]

People asked earlier in this thread what made it ok to pay a subscription for a game based on solo play. This would be it.

Major new solo content patches every 2 months is extremely ambitious, and it doesn't serve the traditional MMO endgame needs. If it were me I would build out four content teams.

Seriously, in the context of SWTOR, fuck the traditional MMO endgame. People need to stop bitching that all these games end up the same while at the same time suggesting that copying WoW is the only possible approach.

CoX has the most fun endgame of any MMO ever, and the most suitable for this game. Start an alt.


I'm not saying the content they are adding has to be exclusively solo, adding raids etc is fine in sensible proportions, raids contain some amount of story content. It takes me a couple of months to casually work my way through a Bioware RPG. I play through once and once only. Maybe the design means helping friends out these campaigns will take slightly longer. Anyway, once I'm done, I'll happily move on to the next. If I find other campaigns contain the same basic content, I'll stop and move on to the next straight away (those Sith Warrior/Inquisitor starter videos look awful similar). If I run out of things to do for the first time I'll be unsubbing, because I'm sure as hell not staying for World of Warcraft's combat model.

The format makes SWTOR quests inherently less repeatable than say WoW. I don't want to hear the 5 minute cutscene 50 times.


Also, fuck daily quests. They would be fucking tiresome in the fully voiced dialog wheel format.


Btw, I love the full on MMO sandbox endgame of EVE. So I have nothing against endgames in general. But SWTOR's design isn't suitable for it; it's great that they are trying something different, but if they chicken out and start pandering to "endgame" guilds they are going to end up with a shitty game.

[Murgos]

You're getting into Mythical Man-Month territory.

The most obvious solution is to maintain multiple small live teams and release content updates in a staggered fashion.

It would be very hard to maintain that schedule for an indefinite period.  Key people coming and going, being unable to find enough 'good' people to fill the roles of that large a team, schedule slips for various reasons, ideas that just don't work and etc... unless the content being released is fairly trivial and formulaic so as to be easily scheduled and flexible.  Which would then beg the question of if it would be worth it at that point?

[Sky]

Btw, I love the full on MMO sandbox endgame of EVE. So I have nothing against endgames in general. But SWTOR's design isn't suitable for it; it's great that they are trying something different, but if they chicken out and start pandering to "endgame" guilds they are going to end up with a shitty game.

Sorry, eldaec, but I agree with you. Putting in tired old mmo tropes, raiding and dailies and warfronts oh my, is just a cop-out.  From that last interview, it really sounds like they've got some hardcore mmo people in the test group. Same thing happened with Rift, and this Summer Update from Scott is the first whisper of supporting non-hardcore gameplay over there (and even that is only a slice of the overall raid/pvp endgame enhancement he's talking about).

But that team was pretty obviously pvp/raid oriented and the game reflects it with a linear level grind to the cap and then sport pvp/raid/daily. It's really my main concern with TOR, and I get the feeling this current phase of testing is giving them some bad ideas about what to focus on.

On the other hand, can an mmo afford to /not/ launch with all the wowtard features that wowtards expect, when you have pointy-headed suits saying 'make me wow money!'?

[Malakili]

On the other hand, can an mmo afford to /not/ launch with all the wowtard features that wowtards expect, when you have pointy-headed suits saying 'make me wow money!'?

There needs to be stuff to do when people blow through the story line.  It *will* happen, and whether or not we want to write it off as wowtards or whatever, the fact remains that if they don't have some kind of endgame at launch, they are going to be dealing with a lot of bad press/word of mouth because there  is "nothing to do"

I still fully expect most people to spam through voice overs and run to quest objectives on their map.  Whether people should, or whether or not that makes them a vocal minority of poopsockers or anything else is to miss the point I think.  Otherwise, they are taking a HUGE risk on assuming that Mass Effect with co-op is worth 15 bucks a month to people.  Maybe it is, but I think they are feeling some pressure to include some proven types of content.

[Nija]

CoX has the most fun endgame of any MMO ever, and the most suitable for this game. Start an alt.

An alt won't be much fun. If I've rescued one padawan from a cage I've rescued a hundred. How people can repeat the same terrible content so many times is beyond me.

[01101010]

CoX has the most fun endgame of any MMO ever, and the most suitable for this game. Start an alt.

An alt won't be much fun. If I've rescued one padawan from a cage I've rescued a hundred. How people can repeat the same terrible content so many times is beyond me.

Depends on how similar the content is for say a bounty hunter vs a sith warrior. I concur with you as rolling an alt in a lot of games is trundling through the same exact quests. WoW was sorta fun in that there are several starting points each with their own story, but say in Rift were you start with the exact same questlines... yeah, it can be rough to do that more than once. I gotta feeling the story will be different for each class - how different is the question.

[Numtini]

COX gameplay is fun. Blasting dozens of enemies and all that. That's why rolling alts works.

In a solo-quest-grind like WoW it would be torture.

[WindupAtheist]

So I haven't been following this thread. Have we talked about last month's rumor that this game's budget is up around half a billion dollars?

[Malakili]

So I haven't been following this thread. Have we talked about last month's rumor that this game's budget is up around half a billion dollars?

I don't think so, but then again, we've had several discussions about the cost throughout.  I just don't know if we talked about that specific rumor.

So let me start:

500 million dollars, at 50 bucks a pop, well, they only need to sell 10 million copies to break even!

[Paelos]

So I haven't been following this thread. Have we talked about last month's rumor that this game's budget is up around half a billion dollars?

It came up somewhere in the hundreds. We mocked it roundly.

[WindupAtheist]

Mocked it for not being true, or for being way too fucking much? Because there was that self-proclaimed "whistleblower" who said it was up around $300 million last year, and then this $500 million rumor last month.

[Lantyssa]

Mocked it for being too much.  I think the number we settled on, given better verification, was $200m for development, and another sizable chunk for marketing.

[Lakov_Sanite]

For anywhere upwards of 100mil what we are being shown is disappointing.  It'll probably be a fun game still but I would have expected more.

[WindupAtheist]

Two-hundred million bucks is still way too fucking much, but personally I don't have a hard time believing it's spiralled way past that. A big company with deep pockets chasing dreams of a multi-billion dollar prize that would make virtually any budget easily recoverable? I could see them signing off on way the hell more than they ever planned, knowing that to get cold feet halfway in would just guarantee the loss of everything invested thus far.

I just don't know WTF the money has been spent ON, whether it be half a billion or a quarter. Wasn't WoW made for like fifty to eighty million?

[01101010]

Two-hundred million bucks is still way too fucking much, but personally I don't have a hard time believing it's spiralled way past that. A big company with deep pockets chasing dreams of a multi-billion dollar prize that would make virtually any budget easily recoverable? I could see them signing off on way the hell more than they ever planned, knowing that to get cold feet halfway in would just guarantee the loss of everything invested thus far.

I just don't know WTF the money has been spent ON, whether it be half a billion or a quarter. Wasn't WoW made for like fifty to eighty million?

Probably all the people they have to pay to read into the microphones.

[WindupAtheist]

So DraconianOne was just saying in the SWG thread how LA were originally going to jointly publish with EA, until the end of last year when it came out that EA was going to be sole publisher. That does sound like LA getting the fuck out from under a budget that's out of control.

[DraconianOne]

Figures need to be tempered here though. This is EA we're talking about who have just bought PopCap for $1.3bn. EA turn over a $1bn every year already so $200m is pocket change and $500m (spread over 3 - 5 years) is going to be a headache for their investors but I don't think it'll sink the company. They'll just sell more hats in Battlefield 3 to recoup some of the cost.

Some figures on WSJ here may be of interest (article from Feb 2011 - a few months after EA became sole publisher)

EA said its net loss for the period jumped to $322 million, or 97 cents a share, from $82 million, or 25 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. The company said the loss reflected a big increase in deferred revenue stemming from online sales associated with its games, which EA recognizes over a period of six months.

Some of that may well be from development on Origin but I'm guessing a significant chunk will be related to SWTOR. Unfortunately, while I recognise it's written in English, most of it reads like gibberish to me.

[Merusk]

I just don't know WTF the money has been spent ON, whether it be half a billion or a quarter. Wasn't WoW made for like fifty to eighty million?

Meetings.  Lots and lots of meetings.

You know the drill.  The bigger the team, the more progress meetings have to happen.  Then the pre and post-meetings with your team so you can be updated on status and then update them on their new marching orders.  Then the bigger pre and post meetings at that upper level before the actual meeting with the decision makers, which also involves more pre and post meetings with your team.

Ah, "efficiency."

[UnSub]

A number of movie studios are getting out of video games for pretty much anything that isn't an iApp or Facebook game. Disney is a big one - they keep dumping staff and studios that release 'traditional' titles. LucasArts could be following the same idea. More than happy to sell the IP rights to develop a title, but they aren't going to put their hand in their pocket for it anymore for it.

The figure I've seen thrown about more recently is US$80m plus US$20m in marketing and distribution costs, which came from Patcher.

The more I look at that figure, the more I think it is wrong because US$20 for marketing is a pittance for EA's biggest game ever. If EA wants to have TV ads - and they will if they want SWOR in the mainstream - then that US$20m will disappear in the blink of an eye, even in just the US. A national (or even international) ad campaign for that budget isn't going to happen.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 allegedly had US$200 million spent on its launch; EA may not want to go that high, but a worldwide campaign isn't cheap.

[sam, an eggplant]

COX gameplay is fun. Blasting dozens of enemies and all that. That's why rolling alts works.

In a solo-quest-grind like WoW it would be torture.

You're still collecting 10 jawa uterii, but you don't get the quest by clicking on an exclamation point and selecting accept. You're part of an ongoing story, whether that be your personal class story or a local one, and each quest is bracketed by fully voiced dialogue. Quite a few take place in small solo instances allowing for scripted encounters and some even offer choices beyond accept/decline. I find that concept attractive, even if I would prefer not to collect 12 rancor penises, at least I'm entertained in between seeking out monster cock.

[Malakili]

COX gameplay is fun. Blasting dozens of enemies and all that. That's why rolling alts works.

In a solo-quest-grind like WoW it would be torture.

You're still collecting 10 jawa uterii, but you don't get the quest by clicking on an exclamation point and selecting accept. You're part of an ongoing story, whether that be your personal class story or a local one, and each quest is bracketed by fully voiced dialogue. Quite a few take place in small solo instances allowing for scripted encounters and some even offer choices beyond accept/decline. I find that concept attractive, even if I would prefer not to collect 12 rancor penises, at least I'm entertained in between seeking out monster cock.

I sort of agree, but there is still that nagging voice in the back of my mind that just says "Watch the star wars movies if you want to watch star wars movies."  Luckily I don't *hate* Diku gameplay, I've gotten a lot out of it over the years, and I do think that their model could change the pacing of the game to make it more enjoyable.  Lately Diku games have become a sprint for me.  Log in, gogogogogoggogogo do as much as you can until you log off and then done until the next play session.   I know part of that is on me, but it also seems developers have come to encourage that kind of play as well.  The fact that Bioware doesn't seem to be is at least worth a look I figure.

[Murgos]

So DraconianOne was just saying in the SWG thread how LA were originally going to jointly publish with EA, until the end of last year when it came out that EA was going to be sole publisher. That does sound like LA getting the fuck out from under a budget that's out of control.

Blah, someone on NeoGAF pulled 775 million out of their ass.  Rumor speculation about cost is rampant and pretty much ancillary to everything relevant in a reasonable timeline anyway.

[Lantyssa]

If EA paid $80 million, how much was spent before EA bought Bioware?

[Amaron]

Voice actors are expensive but not that expensive.     It's obvious that it's been a great deal more expensive than WoW.   Probably they tried to spend too little at first then had to spend a lot more later to make up for it.   Beyond that though the numbers quoted here and there are silly.  700 million?  Maybe if they prepaid every voice actor for 10 years of future updates.

[Malakili]

There also are a LOT of planets, I don't know how much those things take to make, but theres got to be a metric load of art, writing, texturing, whatever.

[Sky]

I'm so glad we're getting away from discussing the actual gameplay.