Overview
This guide will go over all the things you’ll need to know about MMOs.
Introduction
So you want to make an MMO. Well, dear reader, I am going to tell you everything you will need to know about MMO’s. In this guide.
So strap on your seatbelts, open up your windows and grab your self a doggy bag because this is going to be a mild ride!
Unlocking MMOs
First things first. You have to unlock the ability to make an MMO before you actually can make it.
So
Step 1: Assign somebody on your team to be a design specialist
Step 2: Open up an R&D department
Step 3: R&D Research “Online Capabilities” or something like that
Step 4: R&D Research “MMO”
Step 5: Research “MMO Support”
Step 6: Add MMO Support to a new engine.
And that’s all you need to do to be able to actually start making MMO’s, so now let’s get into the things that matter. The reasons you came to this guide (probably).
The Making of MMO
When first making an MMO, make sure to check the MMO option when creating a game. Selecting this option will increase the price of making the game exponentially, so make sure you have enough money in the bank before attempting this. (I’d recommend 100 Million before you attempt)
Also, you need to make sure your game is either Large or AAA. Now make sure you select your engine that has MMO Support and then begin development. And from here it’s the same as making any other game.
Simple enough.
After Release
Now that your MMO is released there is something that you will notice, MMO’s have maintenance costs. MMO’s can stay on the market as long as you like but these maintenance costs will slowly rise over time. At release the maintenance costs are fairly low, and you should be making a good amount of money from the sales of the game. So you may go off and make another game, but lord and behold the maintenance costs are costing you more money than the game is selling. So now you need to develop an expansion pack. These expansion packs are just as expensive as developing the MMO itself. Expansion packs are also treated like sequels, so you can’t just keep releasing them and expect it to keep working. So now I’m going to get into something I like to call
“The MMO cycle”
The MMO Cycle
Remember when I said those maintenance costs keep rising over time? Well, guess what? They never stop rising, and it can start to get ridiculous. Before I get into that though let me tell you what the MMO cycle is.
When the maintenance costs outdo the income you have to release an expansion pack. This causes a resurgence in sales. But over time as the maintenance costs climb you still only get so many sales. And the worst part is when you go and develop another game since you can’t just keep making expansion packs, your maintenance costs end up outdoing your sales, so you release an expansion pack, then you make another game. The maintenance costs outdo the sales, you release and expansion pack and so on.
So now, since maintenance costs keep rising, MMO’s can start causing ridiculous amounts of loss. I have 2 cases of MMO’s to share with you, from my personal experience. One was profitable, the other was not so profitable.
First is the profitable one. I released an MMO titled Dota 3, I’ll give you a screenshot of how that ended up.
As you can see, it was profitable and sold well. But the thing is, I would have made more profit if it had chosen to NOT release it as an MMO, granted I got more fans from it than if I released it regularly but the profit still is nothing compared to the amount of money I would have made releasing it as a non-mmo. The game wasn’t even that well received either, it was considered average by reviewers. The only reason it sold so well was because I have a lot of fans. Plus, I took it off the market before it becomes unprofitable. Though speaking of unprofitable MMO’s…..
Prepare for your eyes to be shocked at the numbers you are about to see on this game. Team Fortress 4.
You see that 100 BILLION Units sold and yet I still lost 800 Billion. The maintenance costs reached a point where they were costing over 10 billion a WEEK just to keep it up there. The costs were so ridiculous that even when a well-received expansion pack was released I was still losing money.
MMO’s: Profitable or not?
So, are MMO’s profitable. Yes and no. MMO’s are profitable at first but over time just eat up money without you even noticing. In all the time I have spent playing this game MMO’s have almost never been profitable to me. Releasing expansion packs I find as a waste of time. You’d be better off to just develop a sequel so you can reset the maintenance costs. If you do that then, yeah they can be profitable. But you know what’s more profitable? Releasing a normal ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game! The maintenance costs of MMO’s makes them almost worthless when compared to a standard game. I have made FAR more money developing non-MMO’s than I have with MMO’s. And the thing is, both Dota 3 and Team Fortress 4 were on the market at the same time, and I was juggling between expansion packs for both of them.
So take my advice, don’t develop MMO’s. It’s not worth the money. Yes, it’s good for gaining fans but at the cost of more money than you can even fathom losing. Also, I don’t see many of you having hundreds of billions of dollars in the bank. In fact, you shouldn’t even waste your time researching MMO’s anyways. If it won’t be more profitable than developing standard games.
So yeah, don’t bother with it. Just stick to normal games and it will be less hassle and more money for you.
Addendum
So, recently I conducted another experiment to see how quickly I could bankrupt an extremely successful company using just MMO’s. For this experiment I went back to VALVe (now worth over 200 trillion dollars) and made 4 MMO’s with the intention of crashing the company. I never made any expansion packs and just let these 4 MMO’s drain my money. Within 7 years time we had lost everything and went bankrupt. We were losing trillions a week due to maintenance costs. Just to reiterate, we lost 200 trillion dollars in 7 years time due to MMO’s. Here’s a screenshot.
So, moral of the story? MMO’s are still not profitable, and can in fact completely ruin your company with how much money they drain. So don’t ever bother them unless Greenheart ever fixes them to become viable, but they haven’t yet.