Then again maybe my perspective is skewed since I work for the regulatory (Op Risk) area of a 1.4 billion dollar bank. I'm guessing our criterion are a little more strenuous than your average MMOG that doesn't have to deal with FED, SEC, and OCC review, 24/7 systems, and the average joe who gets real angry when you mess with their money.
Ah, yes, but do you make around say a lead programmer (81k)? If so then yes, the job is hard and you are compensated accordingly thus proving my point. Also, have you actually priced consultants who specialize in this stuff out? They won't even return your phone calls @ $100/hr. I do have a passing familiarity with bank systems and anyone who needs three-phase commit printers have serious custom technological requirements, it's true. You spend a larger majority of your time dealing with regulatory hurdles than a MMOG developer would, obviously, but you also have a massive amount of capital behind you that dwarfs even MMOG budgets. They are willing to pay that piddly extra few million dollars if it gives them more a better massively redundant critical infrastructure. Presumably that capital also goes into personnel salaries as well.
I'm not saying that MMOG is the end-all-be-all in technology, but it's pretty damn close. A MMOG implementation makes a single player game look like cake. People found that out, which is why the development cycle is so goddamned long.
@stormwaltz
That specific problem seems to come up a lot in 'why our game failed' postmortems. I remember it specifically in klingon academy, to name one of many.
Author
