Anonymous Mythic employee dishes dirt on WAR and SWTOR

[Ingmar]

I have a hard time imagining that an artist working on another game entirely is privy to the budget numbers for SWTOR. It would be fairly surprising if he had access to the budget numbers for his own project. Granted I know the gaming industry is perhaps less professional about that sort of thing than others, but I get the impression the dude(?) is at a minimum doing some rounding up.

[UnSub]

Around that $300 million, BioWare has talked about extensive prototyping during development, plus it has been in development for at least 3 years. EA bought BioWare (and Pandemic) back in October 2007.

I'm not saying I agree with that figure - although I've heard it mentioned before as being up around that range - just that if EA-BioWare are doing what I think they are doing, it's not out of the realms of possibility.

[FatuousTwat]

DDO had and has someone narrating parts of quests in a Dungeon Master fashion.

I fucking loved the DM. He was the highlight of that game for me. Because he did it exactly right, he would try to "do voices" and stuff, it was hilarious and awesome and perfect.

About a month ago, I was doing a DDO quest with some friends of mine. At one point the DM starts talking like a emale character we were escorting, and my friend said "How come that princess sounds like a guy trying to talk like a woman" and I said "Becasue it IS a guy trying to talk like a woman." And he paused and said "Oh." From then on that NPC was known as Princess Transvestite.  

It certainly does add atmosphere.  

CATAQUEWWWMBS!

[Velorath]

Shouldn't have bothered splitting this off into its own thread since it just devolved into the same discussions repeated ad nauseum in the SWTOR thread.

[Murgos]

EA is a publicly traded company, isn't their budget public also?

[schild]

Regarding the 300 million, what exactly could they have spent so much money on to make that figure accurate?

You hire all the wrong people to run the studio and then you let that studio grow inconceivably large.

Look, it took a true or not leak to make people question something I've been trying to pound into people's heads for like what, 3 years now? 2, at least. I don't see how any of this is shocking to anyone that reads these forums.

[Reg]

So its not about being bitter over not getting a job there?

[schild]

So its not about being bitter over not getting a job there?

I only wanted  job there to see how bad up it was and to pad my resume :( Edit: Because, seriously, much like this website, Bioware is Bioware - your average person will not differentiate (inside the industry or not) between Bioware Austin and Bioware. That sort of separation is reserved for people that care, apparently.

Full disclosure: A Frag Doll got that job. White schild apparently needs to be mildly hot chick badly.

[Simond]

Budget spiraling up to well over a quarter-billion dollars, for a fucking MMO...

I have a feeling we may witness failure on a more epic scale than any we have ever seen.

So you could say...you have a bad feeling about this? 

[Reg]

Cheer up Schild. I think I can say that almost anyone would be improved by being a mildly hot chick.

[schild]

Cheer up Schild. I think I can say that almost anyone would be improved by being a mildly hot chick.

I'm pretty cheered up. After SWTOR comes to pass, I think landing at Zynga was the vastly superior opportunity. Baustin would've just been a cakewalk of a job. It was a community management position and frankly, it would've been short hours with way above average pay for anyone capable of managing a community well. Particularly like 15 months prior to launch.

Edit: I should add, this was years ago.

[LC]

Regarding the 300 million, what exactly could they have spent so much money on to make that figure accurate?  

I'm sure a big chunk went toward purchasing the hype machine.

I wonder how much it costs to have a big overpriced booth at like 30 conventions each year.

[Abelian75]

You hire all the wrong people to run the studio and then you let that studio grow inconceivably large.

Look, it took a true or not leak to make people question something I've been trying to pound into people's heads for like what, 3 years now? 2, at least. I don't see how any of this is shocking to anyone that reads these forums.

It's just... I mean... it would have to be a LOT of people.  And especially a lot of people really early on.  I mean... I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just a LOT more money than the norm, and I'm having hard time seeing what you could productively throw it at.

I totally get how you could spend the money over a long period of time, don't get me wrong.  Spending it within a normal MMO development time is... impressive if true.

I guess ballooning up your dev team size really early in development would help a lot to reaching that goal.  Maybe that happened?  I dunno.  Regardless, god damn.

[schild]

I guess ballooning up your dev team size really early in development would help a lot to reaching that goal.  Maybe that happened?  I dunno.  Regardless, god damn.

200+ tends to make things expensive.

[Lantyssa]

WAR was around $100 million.  APB, too.  It's very easy to believe a studio that large and properly funded chews through cash.  Almost expected, really.

[Modern Angel]

it needs to be reiterated but the 300mil figure is very possibly off. That's not important. Even if it's 150mil, which is what Lum reverse figured six months ago, that's still in most expensive game ever made range. So this guy's figure could be off wildly and they're STILL fucked. They're just not going to make that back without incredibly steady sub retention.

[ghost]

A couple of things:

1.  300 million is just batshit insane.  There is no way they've spent that much.
2.  MMOs have sound?

[SnakeCharmer]

it needs to be reiterated but the 300mil figure is very possibly off. That's not important. Even if it's 150mil, which is what Lum reverse figured six months ago, that's still in most expensive game ever made range. So this guy's figure could be off wildly and they're STILL fucked. They're just not going to make that back without incredibly steady sub retention.

If they average 200 employees a year since 2006 to launch in 2011, they're looking at ~80 million dolllars (+/- 10 million) in employee costs (basis average of 40K salary, benefits, etc) alone.  

According to their linkedin profile, Bioware Austin has 238 employees.  No idea how current that is, but sounds about right.  Don't forget they're ramping up a support office in....Scotland?  So, that cost has to be figured in somewhere in addition to the above.

[angry.bob]

How much they've spent barely matters. Whatever the ammount is it's almost certainly too much for what they've gotten. Other than that cinematic trailer a while back, everything I've seen and read regarding this game is just boring and subpar. Hint to devs: Your combat animations should not look like you motion capped the robots at Chuck E Cheese. Technologically, we should be at the point where instanced battlegrounds are at least as action-packed and responsive as TF2.

Actually, they should have just taken the money and made a CGI feature length movie with it.

[Reg]

Plus you have to add another 50 million for all the dancing emotes.

[Modern Angel]

How much they've spent barely matters. Whatever the ammount is it's almost certainly too much for what they've gotten. Other than that cinematic trailer a while back, everything I've seen and read regarding this game is just boring and subpar. Hint to devs: Your combat animations should not look like you motion capped the robots at Chuck E Cheese. Technologically, we should be at the point where instanced battlegrounds are at least as action-packed and responsive as TF2.

Actually, they should have just taken the money and made a CGI feature length movie with it.

That's a subjective argument that I happen to agree with but the total cost does matter. That game could offer blowjobs out of the box and they're not going to make it with a 150mil budget, much less the rumored 300mil. As one of the comments in the rant put it, there aren't 14 million MMO fans. There are 14 million Blizzard fans. I didn't always buy that but after the last couple batches of subpar efforts... fuck, after the last batch of decent efforts... I'm a total believer.

[Lantyssa]

They're not Blizzard fans so much as "No one else has a clue" fans.

[kildorn]

They're not Blizzard fans so much as "No one else has a clue" fans.

I'm a blizzard fan in the sense that HORRIBLE writing/story department aside, they're the only people who seem to get that the point of making a game is that the gameplay be fun and engaging.

They're in essence making the games everyone wants to play, not just the game a few of the devs think is totally awesome.

In fairness, I've also heard that the WoW team is an absolute horror to work on.

[NiX]

In fairness, I've also heard that the WoW team is an absolute horror to work on.

That shouldn't be surprising for anyone.

[Soln]

what's the latest in this drama?

[Draegan]

Actually, they should have just taken the money and made a CGI feature length movie with it.

I would buy the DVD series.  Some of their CGI movies were pretty good.

[Arthur_Parker]

what's the latest in this drama?

EA Louse lost his site through a poorly chosen password, so there's not likely to be much else unless MJ has a few bevvies and posts something unwise.

Last semi interesting thing said that might have been from him was this.

As a parting word to prove I am still EA Louse here is another secret project from Mythic.

Grimm Tales Online. Canceled. Was going to be a twisted dark fairytale world. Imagine Warhammer Online with knife-wielding Pinocchios.

[March]

As a parting word to prove I am still EA Louse here is another secret project from Mythic.

Grimm Tales Online. Canceled. Was going to be a twisted dark fairytale world. Imagine Warhammer Online with knife-wielding Pinocchios.

Thank goodness... the lore wars over WoW's shit IP make my eyes bleed; I can only imagine the nightmare of, well, actual lore.

On the other hand, imagine the blunt weapon bonuses to creatures made of gingerbread...

[sinij]

Interesting question was raised earlier in the thread. Can you buy your way into designing decent mmorpg? Assuming you get mediocre, instead of criminally incompetent, management can you buy your way out of failure?

[NiX]

Interesting question was raised earlier in the thread. Can you buy your way into designing decent mmorpg? Assuming you get mediocre, instead of criminally incompetent, management can you buy your way out of failure?

I can't see how money can save you. No amount of money can buy you a clue into why X concept works over your trash.

[UnSub]

Interesting question was raised earlier in the thread. Can you buy your way into designing decent mmorpg? Assuming you get mediocre, instead of criminally incompetent, management can you buy your way out of failure?

EvE.

[Stabs]

Interesting question was raised earlier in the thread. Can you buy your way into designing decent mmorpg? Assuming you get mediocre, instead of criminally incompetent, management can you buy your way out of failure?

EvE.

Eve was indeed saved by a management buyout but I don't think that was the question Sinij intended. (And I'm sure you know that, you sly dog).

Warhammer is probably the textbook case of money compensating poor design. It was very badly designed for a RvR game - 2v2, no population restraints or incentives. But it sold a million copies and is still in the top 10 sub-based Western MMOs. Maybe even top 5.

It's doing much better than games that had better design but less hype and less money for art etc such as Fallen Earth.

Of course it's not doing better than many games in terms of income per dollar spent but in absolute terms if you splash a huge amount of cash you'll get some back, as a consequence of the hype train if nothing else.

Edit: as an afterthought I remembered APB. If you splash a huge amount of cash and don't hype your game it's possible to not make any money whatsoever. I'd forgotten that I shared a planet with anyone stupid enough to do this.

[Arthur_Parker]

WAR was a massive failure, saying things like it might be in the top 5 sub-based Western MMOs doesn't change that.  The only reason it hasn't achieved epic failure status is 1, it's still open and 2, not all the staff have been fired yet.

[Modern Angel]

3, most MMOs simply don't have a lot of subscribers. It's nothing to get in the top 10 or 5.

[Stabs]

Agreed. My point was it would have made less sales with less spent on it.