5 things you need to make an MMO: 1: gameplay footage of a game that doesnt acually exist 2: all the features people want, ever (but you know you will never be able to implement) 3: be as positive as possible to pull in the naive people 4: a kickstarter goal that is nowhere near the required amount needed to make the game 5: a clause on your kickstarter project that gives you the best possible defense in court
@@AchEdeJungeNeDu a small price to pay for something that will last forever, you could even pass the account down to your kids (unless the servers get turned off) 👀
Don't forget a $25,000 "Meet the Team" option where they spend $500 to fly you coach to their bedroom office and the other 2 people claiming to be working on it, then name an NPC after you.
It actually will be. It'll have a mystical world full of fantastic creatures. You'll play as the outcast nobody turned world renowned legend. It'll have almost no microtransactions. It won't be pay to win for at least a week. It'll be great. I think I'll call it World of Fantasy: "insert evil sounding gibberish name here, idk, Mysticoth?" awakens. It's unique. No game ever uses a colon in its name.
@@DefectivePieceofChalk I came up with my game after a breakup with my gf, who is also a model. It will be a dream to make. I have my good friend on it. It will have thousands of monsters and it will have building. I don't what I will call it though. ;)
People don't think about the amount of iterations each system/mechanic goes through before it's done. Never mind the amount of them that just get removed entirely.
The hard part was making the engine from scratch, if you're working with a decent engine with a lot of tools, you'll save A LOT of work, there is a reason why there are so many Unreal and Unity Games. You want your own engine? Plan that you'll need 500% more time.
He's completely wrong, you need good ideas. Everything he's talking about with "mediocre" ideas... = GARBAGE . There's not too many good ideas guys.. it's the subtle stuff that works. Low iQ don't understand substance. They like polish ✨
“I made a gravel walkway in my backyard by myself, so I’m now ready to build an interstate highway by myself” - if the ‘I’m making an independent MMO’ mentality were applied to construction.
Ironically, this would be a better start than most self-made MMO projects. Most Kickstarters would be like, "I've driven on a lot of interstate highways, and I know a really great way we could make an entire interstate highway out of bread."
Watching videos like this really helps me appreciate the MMO genre in general even more. Its hard to pinpoint why, but it makes me love it even more than I do
For sure! Was a project for school a English teacher gave me when I said I was interested in making table top, card, or video games. She had each of us do something along the lines of the career we where thinking of to get a feel for the work side of it...I ended up joining the Army after because that was way to stressful of work to balance that game.
@@Monstein if you actually got to the point where balancing the game became stressful that you changed jobs, then I guess we can genuinely call you someone with game dev experience
I made a fairly good space 🚀 ship 🚢 boardgame loosely based on StarCraft. It was pretty cool IMO, I enjoyed playing it. Different drag effects and inertia. I don't agree with the video. You need good ideas and some frameworks.. then you can beef it up. This video disappoint. Money = all is not much of substantive construct
A longlife dream of mine, since I was a kid, has been to make a Runescape without the things I don't like about it. As I began studying computer science, the first aspect that I realised was completely unfeasible was the MM part, so my dream changed to making a glorious open-world RPG with meaningful skills and crafting, but single player. I knew from the start that I couldn't begin with an open world RPG, so I began making text adventures, then puzzle games and platformers, then a mini-roguelike (it was pretty much just a battle arena with an item shop - but it had AI, menus and persistence). Recently this old dream of mine has been flaring up. I've taken to game making once again and I'm learning a serious engine and working on a small puzzle game. This time I want it to be a full game - with all features and quality expected from a commercial game, even though I don't on making anything out of it.
heyy im making a game using a way most take for grannted. if your down to help let me know. its a semi open world inspired by the original fable, the riddick series , and the Asthetics resemble that of the night elfs on world of warcraft mixed with stormwind alliance..
If you do eventually do attempt this, all the big engines allow you to give the game a MMO option at the start, but you can develop it as a single player at the start. Otherwise it's a lot harder to go back and implement online capabilities.
The best burn of the "idea guy" concept ever came from the audio commentary for "The Martian" between novel author Andy Weir and screenwriter Drew Goddard. Paraphrasing Goddard: "you hear a lot of people come up to you and say 'here's this great idea for a movie but the script is only so-so'. The script is what you pay for! Having an idea... it's not special"
Saw this as recently as a couple days ago, some rando on a game-dev forum saying, "I have an idea, looking for a [game-dev] team". Nobody tries out for a sports team saying, I really like basketball, but can't run, shoot, block, or coach. Also can't do cheer, and no cash to be an owner. So what's your contribution, water boy??
Exactly why game design is actually a job. Everybody's got ideas but synthesising everything in a game design document, doing the math, communicating things clearly to everyone involved to make a functioning game out of it... That's work.
As a software developer I can only encourage to try to build one at some point, at least the base technical stuff: A server software able to handle a lot of clients, develop some kind of protocol with op codes or whatever, make it fully authoritative, build some small client where you can move squares around, try to cheat it by using something like cheat engine and manipulating variables to see if you can detect and prevent it server side and so on. Its really a fun experiment, but don't go in with the mindset that "yes, I will build a great MMO!" because you really won't and will be disappointed. But as a technical exercise you will learn a lot :) Even more fun if you can get some dev buddies together and experiment with different methods, like agile development models and stick to the rules of it.
A server that can handle multiple clients isn't so hard. A server that can expand to MANY clients without bogging down, active content scaling with the number of players, is harder. As for "agile", I've concluded it's a method designed for projects where nobody is sure what they're building. Be prepared to build everything at least twice when the first version fails.
@@hanelyp1 "As for "agile", I've concluded it's a method designed for projects where nobody is sure what they're building." Bro, have you ever been in an agile team?
You can't cheat if you make authoritative, server based application. Unless your packet parser sucks and will choke on some strings, doesn't check for packet size or valid data inside those. If server says "no", client can cry all he wants about it but he will not be able to get his way. Sure, you can render yourself in best armor (or golden color of square in your example), you can change rendered position to "bypass" the walls, you can make your square bigger etc. but it's all inside your client. Nobody is affected by it.
Five things you need to make an MMO: 1 - A ton of money 2 - A second ton of money 3 - A third ton of money 4 - A fourth ton of money 5 - More than a snowball's chance in hell
@@vickyvvvv8182 That's why #5 was "More than a snowball's chance in Hell." :P There have been an uncountable number of MMOs that have gone into production that get cancelled mid-stream. You can have the best MMO idea, the best team, and the best community support and still not get the thing out of the gate because of dumbass decisions made by corporate suits who do not understand the potential that they are slamming the door on. LOL... I remember when EA shut down development on Ultima Online 2 in favor of The Sims Online, and that game never once even got close to the number of subscribers that UO had at its peak. But then, if they hadn't shut it down, Raph Koster probably would not have gone on to join SOE and Star Wars Galaxies would never have been what it was at launch. Of course, the dumbass suits decided that there was too much reading leveling and pew pew and castrated the game with the NGE, from which they never recovered the loss of subscribers... NANcy McIntyre was the murderer of a once great game. Too much reading... The she ended up going on to be in charge of childrens' games... Go figure... Sick to death of MMOs being murdered by ignorant corporate suits who act like they don't have a clue what an MMO is and why it was originally designed a certain way whose mentality is "WoW does it this way, so we will too..." Get the freaking corporate marketing suits out of developers' faces and then maybe more MMOs would have more than a snowball's chance in hell...
A good team is more important than money. a group of friends not worried about getting paid and rather just be happy with a solid end game product. Money is needed, but it's not that important at all, unless you're greedy. Some of the best games we play today didn't need a shit ton of money just great concepts... EQ, Dark age of camelot, most games in 2000's weren't cost heavy. yet people still rather play these older titles than anything being made today. DAoC has Phoenix and live, EQ died but it still has a huge following dedicated.
Interesting fact here: There is actually a punk band in Hungary which consists of musicians who initially couldn't play any instruments, but they got pretty good and they became one of the most famous punk bands here. They are called "HétköznaPI CSalódások" which basically means "Ordinary Disappointments" but reading the last 2 letters of the first word and the first 3 letters of the second word together gives you the word for "ass"
@@kiister8126 oh sorry. I said first 2 letters but I meant 3. Actually "cs" is 1 letter in the hungarian alphabet. It is pronounced as "ch" in the word chew.
I agree. I have been trying to explain this to my kid. I started writing a game for her to play with her friends and she immediately wanted it to be an MMO. I KNOW I can't write an MMO by the simple fact that I am one guy and I don't write games for a living. There are not enough hours in a day.
and while genshin impact has a co-op mode, it's not even an MMO ^^ does make a TON of money tho (like 175.000.000 USD a month on average just on the mobile platform)
Yep. They have a talented team, pre existing player base, and went all out on the marketing and it served them well. Mihoyo was already known for high quality mobile titles and even leveraged their previous big game by borrowing its name despite not being related. I saw ads for it constantly in the months leading up to release. And now, they don’t even need to market anything. Their sizable player base will willingly do it for them for free just by being excited over content updates. I see that constantly these days too.
@@MrZer093 i started with genshin and because of that i checked out honkai. Their honkai impact animations are amazing, music is 10/10 and the game has an amazing story. Its a gacha game, and originally made for mobile, but its fun to play, and more enjoyable than most games on pc. Im still surprised how both games even run on phones.
I mean, imo the monetization for LoL and Runeterra are fair. In Runeterra's case it's actually more than fair (not sure about Valorant since I haven't played it yet). So I can only hope that the monetization for their upcoming mmo would mostly focus on cosmetics.
"You have moved your 250 meters for today. You can buy the Movement Pack for 83 diamond dust sneezes, or a Permanent Movement Unlimited Super Pack for 61 emerald bags. No, there is no way to convert either of those directly to any real currency."
@@michaelthomas5433 Imo Riot can monetize cosmetics however they want. Its not a real problem unless they start to monetize stuff that actually impacts on the gameplay. And so far they seem to be following this standard quite nicely. You don't need to buy the 300 dollars skin to play the game, neither does the person who bought the 300 dollars skin have an easier time with the game for it. And thats how fair monetization works.
I'm expecting overpriced cosmetics and a $15 a month sub fee. I don't really think they'll go the P2W route unless the game starts failing. I'm more expecting them to turn it into a giant Skinner box than a Korean MMO.
I started from going to GDS - [Game Dev School]. As i was taught in GDS - Ideas are cheap. Marketing is a biatch. Completed game is around 160% work - where 60% is deleted in a process
Back in the late 90s/ early 2000s mmos where an untapped market, the internet was a new thing. The Gower brothers focused on core gameplay before graphics, story, design, and everything else, they just had good gameplay and readable visuals, which nowadays isn’t good enough and complex and innovative systems are required to get players hyped.
They didn't have money, but Andrew Gower had programmed several games on different platforms with his brothers contributing graphics/art/music starting on Atari ST in the mid-90s, and had a small audience from the Java games they had made in the 3-4 years leading up to RuneScape. Also RuneScape was released in 2001, which was a very different time in internet history.
Starting a band with your friends because you all like music but none of you plays an instrument is exactly how basically every Punkband ever started. :P
Not so - a lot of 60s-80s punk & rock bands in the US/Canada/UK/Australia grew either out of studio musicians, or folks cobbled together from other, earlier bands. Although ironically The Beatles, when they first started, had more looks than musical talent - compared to the likes of the Stones, the Who, Yardbirds, or Zep, at the beginning the Beatles were basically more marketing than music. (They got better LOL)
Yeah, a professional orchestra would be a better comparison. You need a bunch of skilled people and you need to satisfy the very high quality standards of a lot of customers to pay all those skilled people.
I feel you. I programmed a game of Go as an end of studies project in cegep and spent all my free time and more in the last two weeks before due date debugging the rules system
@HyperImaginative Yeah, 22 years ago in 2001 and was really bad looking in comparison to todays standards. If you released runescape as it was back then, now, it would not survive or be successful. Sherwood Dungeon is the same. Came out in 2005. 8BitMMO is clearly much lower scale then what is normal for the industry and I have no idea what "Love" is. But kind of bad analogies to use to prove a point or debunk what Josh is saying here.
it could be done easily enough on ue5.. with a bunch of bought assets(not in the same lazy way flippers do it, but similar to dbk and the spacebourne games by him)
This should be required viewing for potential devs BEFORE they post their Kickstarter. And then it should be required for potential patrons before they give money for an MMO to a Kickstarter.
I think creators should spend time to make a playable prototype, then justify needing the Kickstarter money to polish the game and hire experienced developers so the game can finish faster...
Josh, I absolutely adore this video and now consider it my favorite of yours. This breakdown of the economic realities of MMO development was incredibly insightful and i would love to see more videos somewhere along these lines. I always throw on one of your videos as something to listen to while folding laundry or doing any other menial task. Your voice is always very easy to listen to and your scripts are both clear and to-the-point. Thanks for the content!
Great video! This applies not only to people who want to make MMOs, but pretty much any game. If you are starting out, your first project will suck or fail and most probably both. Those who ultimately went and made gigantic games, are those who failed enough times.
Was worried this list would be stuff like "fun gameplay" and "cool races/classes" but im glad you hit us with the real truth aspiring devs need to hear
I have a degree in computer science. I have written dozens of games that are played by 1000s people everyday. I would not even think of writing an MMO without a lot of help. That help can be money (to hire help) or finding people that are willing to work up front for a piece on the back end - people like me. Unless you personally have money, you are going to have to give away part of the back end no matter what. You need some people right away - programmers and artists. A lot of the other people Josh mentioned are down the road. A 3+ year development time means marketing is not really necessary for a while. You can and must create a Proof of Concept - and that can be done with just a few people.
5 Things you need to make an MMO 1) A great name for your new MMO idea 2) A Kickstarter and/or Gofundme page 3) Cheap/free Unity assets 4) Other people's source code 5) A place to put all that money you'll be making Rinse and repeat.
I know I'm really late for the party. But if I get there one day, will be most thanks to you. Not just that one video but all of them, keep the good work and thank you.
I played that one up to where I would do the final fight in a few minutes . Then I punched a wall at work and went to visit a buddy in Chicago for a week . Came back and just couldn't get back into it lol
I remember playing it as a kid but i didn't get far. I'm trying, in what small free time i get, to finish a load of emulated games, i can add xenogears to the list!
;-; hearing about AQW at the end made me remember all the good times of my childhood, except that one time getting virtually cat-called in the tavern, that was an experience 8 year old me did not expect
I couldnt agree more. As soon as someone even asks "I want to make an MMO! What do I need?" or "How do I make an MMO?" the battle is already lost, because anyone who is remotely capable of participating in such a project would know the answers already (or putting it that way: only those who know the answers already can hope to be capable of tackling that scope). It's tragic and sometimes frustrating but great ideas are worthless without a specific and detailed plan on how to realize them. I've been battling the scope of my game projects for 10 years now and scrapped countless ones until I recently published my first and until now only "game", which is just a tiny math puzzler made in two days. But that's how you start. I just saw Kiras video about "Project Steel" that perfectly showcases how this MMO ambition is either based on arrogance or ignorance (or its just a scam, who knows). One possible way I can think about, could be to create a small limited but playable MVP with working multiplayer features and trying to pitch that to a larger publisher and see if they would take on it.
To my knowledge there is one single example of a group of friends who liked games, getting together and successfully making and publishing an MMO. The group of friends in question were all MIT Grad students studying in core related fields. The game was Asheron's Call. I think a few of them picked up the key needed skills at MIT while helping develop Military Simulators. MMO's are what can at best be thought of as having "High Bars to Entry".
If someone is interested in building an MMO, if just for the experience- They could start with a small text-based MUD for themselves and their friends. Great way to learn how to build mechanics, worlds, and networking without worrying about going all out.
From someone that has actually lead many successful teams. (this is to say teams that set multiple records within their companies) I would definitely have to add to the reviewers list. 1. Realistic production goals- Daydreams are lovely. But, they don't keep the lights on. In my industry the most common method to arrive at them used to be something called "time studies." A client would make a request. Before you ever let it get to a salesman you literally got folks together and, saw how much time based on a believable pace it took to complete the task. From this you could assess real labor costs. etc. Once you knew how much time and effort under believable conditions it took, you passed that on to those going to the bargaining table. Not doing the above was a lovely way to get yourself a money sink account. (to those wondering believable is literally the speed your experience told that you could get folks to work at) 2. Communications skills- I DO NOT mean the ability to post to social media product 394. I mean the ability to actually communicate to effectively the tasks and goals. Guess what most days that don't involve college level English. A life time of working with teams has shown me most folks respond best to things being made as simple as possible. Sounds simple but, allot of times it means learning how to lower the discussion without talking down to anyone. Trust me it's a Hell of allot easier to say than do. I'm a fairly educated cat. But I'm also a hick from a small town. Take a wild guess which of those two things works better for communication with a team. 3. Effective leadership- Once again a real easy thing to say. But, not so easy to do. Getting to actually know your team takes time. Learning how to motivate and, inspire them is a a job in it's own right. But you'll never have a successful team if someone doesn't give it at least rudimentary direction. Oh yes and the even less fun part of said leadership the accountability, that's to literally everyone. You bosses, your team, you clients, this list goes on. The other really fun part is having to actually be the one presenting your boss with can actually be done as compared to what the picture in their mind is. Trust me good leads are damn rare. 4. The ability to fail- Yepp, I said it. If you actually want to be able to get to the point of succeeding you'd best be able to fail. If one failure is going to kill you, stick to what's paying your bills. Because failure is part of the formula to any businesses success. Henry Ford failed an insane amount of times before he created what today is a world recognized brand name. It's why you see fleet of Korean and Chinese release and damn few Western releases. They have figured out successful business models for themselves and, can afford the take the risk. They have real capital to burn. In the end the idea of doing anything is wonderful. But always and forever finish the thought. Because half finished ideas just don't lead to good places.
Everyone that Thinks they want to make an MMO should highly consider either making a single player game [if you are after mechanics] or a particularly involved forum game [if you are after the players] I feel. Also, you should Really look into ARPGs [Art RolePlaying Games, the most basic example being ArtFight] it's fascinating because many do have all the component of an MMORPG but instead of clicking at monsters for five hours one "grinds" by making art/writing, it's kind of insane and beautiful. I'm essentially in the middle of a long process of putting one together right now, it's quite something to behold.
My desire to make a MMO was always tempered by my experience coding with other mmo server emulators. The back-end for a MMO server is probably bigger than the client itself and upon understanding that I'm really developing 2 things at the same time, I opted for my projects to be either single player or small-scale multiplayer with dedicated server support.
Btw, 30grand a year costs far more than 30grand a year for a business owner. You have additional taxes & benefits you standard are forced to additionally pay. Realistically add +30-50% of the wages and you're seeing what the employer has to pay required by law, not even to mention industry standard benefits. So 5 employees making 30k a year = 225k bare minimum.
how to get developer recognition 101: 1. get job at blizzard/guild wars/etc 2. do the job for 1+ year, while posting a lot of stuff about the job 3. quit 4. have developer recognition 5. ??? 6. profit
1: experience with game design 2: experience with network design 3: software development experience 4: time, partners and or money. 5: did someone say time?
I somewhat agree, but still there are some points (little background - I'm a developer (running my own company for 10+ years), Master's degree in software development/3D graphics, while mostly in commercial areas and engine development, I worked on games in the past). I was indirectly involved in MMO development by working on engine/networking for disclosed title (the project has been cancelled). The problem with money is relative - investors exist, crowdfunding (as mentioned) exists, costs can be higher or lower based on what you need to pay for. There is one thing not mentioned - MMOs have high running costs. Even in development you need development server(s) running. Testers are going to need another one. Then you have production servers. This is going to be a major part in budget. Technical difficulty is heavily underestimated. While "buy an engine" is an advice - it is very likely major parts of code need to be written from scratch - networking is likely going to be one of them. General rule applies - either you are skilled enough or you need to hire somebody skilled enough. Individual making of MMO is possible. Vast majority of people who went for it have failed. Those who succeeded had realistic goals from the beginning - and went step by step. ... It all boils down to: "Set realistic goals, and do it step by step." I heavily recommend to every team that is not professional - to try to make a small game for a game jam or anything. You will either pass and make a game, or fail and realize that you won't be able to do anything bigger as a team. It is often short-term (mostly from just 48 hours to weeks) and small game (realistic goals!). I personally sometimes still participate in jams - as there is no better feeling that finishing something.
a realistic perspective and good advice ! One of the things most angel investors, people that work with startups, or people specialised in innovation will tell you, is: a very good idea is probably less than 1% of your project… It all comes down to how a team executes that idea XD From my own experience I will say 1M is not enough (even as a bare min) and the dev timeframe for a full-time team could be 5y upwards… of course it depends on the scope of the project. If it's a "conventional" RPG and the world needs to be populated by NPCs and stories… those amounts are likely to tripple… A larger team, can shorten the timeframe but will increase the costs… and larger teams can be less efficient than smaller teams… AlI in all I would say the most important trait to be able to make any game, are the skills and knowledge, which can be honed with a lot of work and authentic fascination for the art. Will let you know how acquiring a player-base as an unknown studio works out ;)
When I worked for a small startup, I volunteered to make a few games as an attraction for our booth. One was a puzzle that taught regular expressions, and the other was a social engineering simulator. What amounted to roughly 20 minutes of "gameplay" for the players took roughly 360 hours. I had a two months, and I literally lost weight from sleep deprivation. And I already knew how to program and use Unity. I can't imagine doing all that from the aspiration stage. And in an MMO my two games would only actually be the menu system and the NPC dialog system. So yes, these estimates sound about right.
I made non-MMOs aka MUDs in the 90s. My most successful one was a starwars based mud with 50-100 players every day. Back when games were fun, good times.
To be fair I think making an mmorpg with a small team and little funding is entirely doable if you keep your scope low and have a solid single player experience in the off chance it doesnt do well at the start. The biggest problem is people aren't satisfied with a small unique experience, their game has to be this huge amazing world with a grand story, 20 factions, an economy, world pvp, shit like that. Game development is getting rediculously easy nowadays since you can just buy assets and code off of various asset stores. Like hell I think the unity asset store alone has like 20 different "mmo" kits that already include things like net code, so the mmo part of the game is already created for you, you just have to supply the RPG part.
Start with the most basic Tetris Clone. It will surprise you how much work a mediocre Tetris Clone by itself takes. Menus, Keycontrols, Highscore Counters, Random Blocks, Basic Collision Detection, Animated Block Dropping, Pause Buttons and screens....
Best video I've ever seen about gamedev reality. But I want to add one important thing, to make MMO RPG you need an Engine yes, but more important you need a server that can handle all potentional connections from all of the world and this is bigest challenge for your team, because the are no servers in any engine from the box that can handle MMO RPGs. And if your server sux then ppl will lag and rage quit and never come back, believe me I was one of those players :) Once again - Amazing video.
1. 48 pot noodles; beef and tomato is preferred but chicken mushroom flavour will be okay if you can compromise gameplay a bit; we're getting the crafting simulation going here. Avoid anything that is called Big or Bad or Boy unless making an 18+ game or you're going Anime style. 2. Aled Jones; he has to sing walking in the air constantly for staff to stay motivated. similar to that undead elf in WoW but more wholesome. And less undead. Aled Jones in not Undead, that's just misinformation. 3. Shopping Trolley, throw them into the water to simulate MMO physics, also nice underwater zone simulation to retreive one poind coins 4. Creatively challenged so NFT 5. Add a unique edgy race to be an opponent, so anything from the highest rated movies or films from the last 50 years. Bonus if it's Biff from Back to the Future. That's my five simple steps to make a world beating MMO.
Amazing video. Amazing quality. Amazing insights. Spicy, yet gentle: like the hand of a fond, guiding, friend. Leonine. Color corrected. Also: Is Josh hinting he's going to be going into bodybuilding at 12:17? Given his background in martial arts and his gun shows in recent videos, I suspect this is just the first stage in his evolution...
I was thinking about what kind of MMO I would make, it would be really casual game where you can just jump in for 30 minutes do your thing and get out. You could do various things like classical adventuring but also farming and cooking or mining and smithing. Instead of standard classes like mage or warrior you could choose adventurer, farmer of smith and each would have bonuses to their specific thing but that doesn't mean farmer can't go on a wild adventure, just if you like farming the most you can specialize in it. But then I think about how to make it, how to maintain servers, how to program multiplayer, models, map, quests, music, cosmetics, items, enemies, statistics and I really don't want to make it all
The good, thoughtful, experienced, and depth of understanding "ideas guy" seems to be in short supply based on much of what we've seen in the genre. Perhaps game companies should be looking a little more for those folks, and perhaps a little less for the marketing guy.
@@gnerkus Right, and if the game is a WoW clone, it dies in a month. If you make a great game, people will play it. Even if it takes longer to get the word out, you will be successful. If you market a poor game, it may have a burst at the beginning, but will quickly die.
Finally a comment section I can add some value to! I am the lead developer on a hobbyist MMORPG project. My team has me as the sole software developer, and two writers. Often when you see advice like what is in the video, there will be people that balk at it. You always hear stuff like "well, there are fully 3D MMORPGs made by solo developers" or "technology is in a place where making games is fast and efficient". Both of those statements are true, but when you dig in deep you find that they have massive caveats attached to them. Most solo developed MMOs are either crap, or have insanely long dev times. Games like Project Gorgon are amazing, but they are going to be in perpetual alpha. Games made very quickly using store-bought assets may or may not be good, but they will never stand out. If you want to make an MMORPG as a solo dev, or as a very small team, you need to either accept that your project will be a labour of love that you will never see a sane return on, or you need to accept that your scope will be very limited, and you need to focus in on one or two things in order to stand out in a crowded market. The MMORPG I am making is largely text based (it's not a MUD though, it has graphics, a UI, representations of your surroundings, visual combat etc), and coded using a framework I developed for it. You can see some screenshots here: i.imgur.com/Ke5olDW.png i.imgur.com/Ktt3acT.png I am targetting this at a very, very niche audience. Many corners have been cut in presentation in order to implement complex mechanics. If I paid someone with my skillset to make what we have so far, it would STILL have cost more than $100,000. Given that there are probably less than 1000 people in the world that would even be interested in this game, you can see why commerically speaking, most smallscale MMOs are non-starters.
@@ksAbis Passion, an interest in creation tools, and the joy of programming. Our game is also a non-commercial passion project. I started it purely because I wanted to play it.
This video was actually very helpful. I actually have quite a lot of RPG experience and want to apply some of that skill to an MMORPG. I have some marketing and artistic skill, but lack the funding, the player base and only have a couple of team members. Based on what you’ve laid out here, my best bet would be to shill my work like mad and (hopefully) run a successful crowdfunding campaign to raise money and hype. For now, though, time to go back to recruiting. Thank you for the insight and advice. ^_^
Newbie game developers who wants to start right in the mmo genre is like watching the newly junior co-worker looking at the CEO's chair just because he believes in himself without investing money in your ideas or time in your own career to make this possible. they want to be at the top without losing time with the stairs
As someone who has developed several online games, including an arguably successful "MMO" (but not an MMORG), some of your development times and costs are very much fantasy theme related, but not necessarily MMO. A lof of the difficulty in MMORG development come from conventions in the genre like player races, a hero character rig with support for modular components for example may take a month or so to develop - if you make an MMO with say 8 races, multiply by two genders, and that's 16 hero characters before you move onto the modular visible inventory assets - but you don't have to make a high fantasy game with 8 playable races. In regards to community that limitation applies to ALL games, not just MMO games. It's pretty much the defining line separating many commercial studios from the indie space.
meanwhile. players like: i want a free to pay and no micro transaction with the best ingame experience, continues update, dungeon, realistic ingame graphic, i want the best. as long its for FREEEE. buying ingame items big or small = salary. its a business.
DUDE!!! You totally crushed it!!! Of course "it" being dreams... Seriously, though! Great advice, well thought out, perfectly put together. I hope EVERY MMO idea person watches this and heads your perfectly rational advice.
Imagine you want to start a RUclips channel and instead of a small camera and a desk you decide to build an entire studio with green screen and a rail way camera for action shots. Now imagine starting game design and u decide to create what is the equivalent of a block buster movie
The true 5: 1. A Kickstarter 2. Outlandish Promises that no one could keep. 3. Constant "developer" blogs to make it seem like you're getting somewhere 4. Absolutely zero ability to have concrete deadlines 5. See 1-4.
i really want to get into the gaming creative industry, but a this date i am in college just begin my journey as a programmer. (eventually i want to make something begin to the little) as a pasion so always. i am looking to this type of content to know "what to not do developing a game" but as a childish dream that i have is what is helping to look forward
Yo Josh, have you ever checked out Wynncraft? It's a MMO serve built inside of minecraft and honestly feels like an entirely different game. I would heavily recommend checking it out.
"Having an idea, isn't enough - everyone has ideas. Ideas are only valuable when given to people with the ability to make them a reality." - I am writing this shit down to use it at work. Thanks Josh!
Plenty of people - roughly 80% of the entire human population - *DON'T* have ideas. They will consume whatever is put in front of them if it comes from an authority figure telling them to do so.
even though you emphasized game dev experience, i really feel like you didn't emphasize game dev experience enough. i have experience working on a MOBA, a VR world war 2 simulation, and several RPGs as an artist, modeller, rigger, animator and texturer. i don't even feel remotely experienced enough to make an MMO, its such a huge endeavor.
I gotta say, you are correct in those 5 things, but it seems as a rather random thing to suggest people have... Especially the playerbase, kind of hard to have a functioning playerbase without a complete product is it not?
As a fun pastime, I've recently taken to designing elements of an MMO set in the world I've created for the novels I'm writing. I know that it will most likely never get made, as I would first need to win the lottery in becoming a famous author, earn a ton of money, make connections in the video game industry, assemble a trustworthy team, and then convince people to take a risk on an MMO using my IP. Statistically speaking, that just won't happen. But it's fun to think about how to translate my writing into an online game like WoW. It's an exercise in thinking about game design and balancing in-universe rules with gameplay mechanics, and I just really like picturing it even knowing it will only ever be in my head. It always makes me a little sad to see people passionate about the genre just like me trying to make their dreams a reality when they're in a similar situation to me. This is absolutely not a project to take lightly, and even if you think you're up for the challenge, you probably aren't. This is a great video outlining exactly why MMOs are such a huge investment in time, money, and skills, and I hope it makes at least one would-be team reconsider their prospects. Keep it up!
1) "The best and last game you will ever play" 2) 0 Years of Dev Expierence 3) "It's like totally different from other MMOs you guys" 4) Sell Players land or noticable ingame changes for money 5) A small loan of a few million dollars
1. An excessively large ego 2. No ability to judge one's own talent 3. Game idea / Promo video that simply promises everything 4. No background in video games development 5. K I C K S T A R T E R
One thing I've seen that may be a shortcut for some, I've been on private emulated servers for popular MMORPGs that already exist, and some of those servers have completely changed all the NPCs, weapon stats, the story, and names of places to sort of half - butted create their own world.
in the finances, it seems to me you forgot the taxes, especially when counting for salaries to verse: companies don't just hand over the salary, they actually spend way more in various taxes, which only a part of it goes to the employee. (And no, that isn't the same as the income taxes). Also another expanse comes with office space: maintenance. Some countries make it mandatory to also have some form of kitchen area, or to even provide lunchtime in some way. You also need to finance the work equipment. And since we are talking about PCs, you also need to consider even more maintenance costs just for your computer park, and also a substantial increase in electricity bill that's way beyond your common office consumption. Also, multiply your air conditioning billing and maintenance if you don't live in a fresh environment in the first place. You can go down the list deeper and deeper like that, tons of expanses everywhere that either add lots and lots of small expanses that sum up to big amounts, or straight up multiply big chunks of your expanses - sometimes exponentially as time goes by or employee count goes up. I've seen many people trying to "solve" these issues with weird statements like "we'll have no office and all work from home"! Sure, but you can't possibily expect people to spend money just to be able to do their job, so you still need to provide work equipment, shipping, maintenance. And now you also need a secured remote access pipeline, which means servers, robust ones, with equally robust maintenance and tech support because you don't want to have your entire company waiting for a week withj no way to keep working whenever there's a small issue making your pipeline inaccessible. And if you think Another great funny solution is "but my team is a bunch of people doing it on the side as a hobby" to justify reduced cost, because side-gigs can't be possibly lucrative apparently. This last bit aside, you are confirming that your team is less committed and can spend only a small fraction of time than what actual employed people could do. Which insanely drops the development speed and talent retention. Which leads to the next point: Talent retention is a big thing in an amateur video game project. If you can't keep people working on your project, it's as good as dead. The longer and more daunting the project is, the more it is an issue. If on top of that you don't give people the right tools, a tangible project to work on, good stuff to put on their future demo reel, good work experience, and enough money to pay their bills, ... What do you expect from them?
![Runes of Tragic - The Dire State of Runes of Magic [MMOPINION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QMmSWOpm-wE/mqdefault.jpg)
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
5 things you need to make an MMO:
1: gameplay footage of a game that doesnt acually exist
2: all the features people want, ever (but you know you will never be able to implement)
3: be as positive as possible to pull in the naive people
4: a kickstarter goal that is nowhere near the required amount needed to make the game
5: a clause on your kickstarter project that gives you the best possible defense in court
Can we also add extremely expensive pre-release bonuses that will not amount to anything? Maybe a golden dolphin mount for $5,000, real dollars.
@@grizzgo Oh you are right, or what about a piece of land or your own fully customizable castle if you put 10k on the table
sounds like this dreamworld thing or what ever that was
@@AchEdeJungeNeDu a small price to pay for something that will last forever, you could even pass the account down to your kids (unless the servers get turned off) 👀
Don't forget a $25,000 "Meet the Team" option where they spend $500 to fly you coach to their bedroom office and the other 2 people claiming to be working on it, then name an NPC after you.
_"Yeah, but my game will be different."_
It actually will be. It'll have a mystical world full of fantastic creatures. You'll play as the outcast nobody turned world renowned legend. It'll have almost no microtransactions. It won't be pay to win for at least a week. It'll be great. I think I'll call it World of Fantasy: "insert evil sounding gibberish name here, idk, Mysticoth?" awakens. It's unique. No game ever uses a colon in its name.
You'll also be able to do whatever you want.
@@DefectivePieceofChalk I came up with my game after a breakup with my gf, who is also a model. It will be a dream to make. I have my good friend on it. It will have thousands of monsters and it will have building. I don't what I will call it though. ;)
@@MetaBinding wait are you the marketing dude behind dreamworld or smth?
Hi Zach. You here?
Person who made Stardew Valley said he was spending 10h a day everyday for 3 years.
Damn
Wow, I had no idea that gem was made by one person.. I bet he was so engrossed in that world. Like a 3 year long manic episode haha
@@W_0_W you must spend very little time on that then
People don't think about the amount of iterations each system/mechanic goes through before it's done. Never mind the amount of them that just get removed entirely.
The hard part was making the engine from scratch, if you're working with a decent engine with a lot of tools, you'll save A LOT of work, there is a reason why there are so many Unreal and Unity Games. You want your own engine? Plan that you'll need 500% more time.
1. A breakup
2. A good friend
3. A great idea
4. A camera
5. A sofa
lmao.
This is the one
Sounds like more of a porn flim than a mmo lol.
@@pushstart1t Would probably make much more money that way, too.
Is this the Dream World model?
"The ideas guy is not a position you want to fill"
Ah well.....
you're the Ideas MAN, though! there's always room for the ideas MAN, screw the ideas guy
...I wouldnt say that everyone is
an Ideas-Guy...
Right?! I always wanted to be that guy 😅. Now I do Design and stuff.
He's completely wrong, you need good ideas. Everything he's talking about with "mediocre" ideas... = GARBAGE . There's not too many good ideas guys.. it's the subtle stuff that works. Low iQ don't understand substance. They like polish ✨
“I made a gravel walkway in my backyard by myself, so I’m now ready to build an interstate highway by myself”
- if the ‘I’m making an independent MMO’ mentality were applied to construction.
I mean, at least he did make a walkway before, he didn't straight jump to interstate highway from no experience
if it was a well made gravel walkway, then it's a start.
Ironically, this would be a better start than most self-made MMO projects. Most Kickstarters would be like, "I've driven on a lot of interstate highways, and I know a really great way we could make an entire interstate highway out of bread."
@@SigmaSyndicate Tale of Toast?
I wasn't planning to make an MMO, but because it's Josh I'll still watch!
Neither was I but now I have to start one, wanna give me money?
I watch for Josh :)
Same
It puts so much of this channel into context anyway
Watching videos like this really helps me appreciate the MMO genre in general even more. Its hard to pinpoint why, but it makes me love it even more than I do
I remember trying to make a card game as a teen. Just wrote what the card does on paper and stuck it in a card sleeve with a MTG card behind it.
homebrew card games are a whole different world
For sure! Was a project for school a English teacher gave me when I said I was interested in making table top, card, or video games. She had each of us do something along the lines of the career we where thinking of to get a feel for the work side of it...I ended up joining the Army after because that was way to stressful of work to balance that game.
You're hired.
@@Monstein if you actually got to the point where balancing the game became stressful that you changed jobs, then I guess we can genuinely call you someone with game dev experience
I made a fairly good space 🚀 ship 🚢 boardgame loosely based on StarCraft. It was pretty cool IMO, I enjoyed playing it. Different drag effects and inertia. I don't agree with the video. You need good ideas and some frameworks.. then you can beef it up. This video disappoint. Money = all is not much of substantive construct
A longlife dream of mine, since I was a kid, has been to make a Runescape without the things I don't like about it. As I began studying computer science, the first aspect that I realised was completely unfeasible was the MM part, so my dream changed to making a glorious open-world RPG with meaningful skills and crafting, but single player. I knew from the start that I couldn't begin with an open world RPG, so I began making text adventures, then puzzle games and platformers, then a mini-roguelike (it was pretty much just a battle arena with an item shop - but it had AI, menus and persistence).
Recently this old dream of mine has been flaring up. I've taken to game making once again and I'm learning a serious engine and working on a small puzzle game. This time I want it to be a full game - with all features and quality expected from a commercial game, even though I don't on making anything out of it.
ohh what games are they called? I like those
heyy im making a game using a way most take for grannted. if your down to help let me know. its a semi open world inspired by the original fable, the riddick series , and the Asthetics resemble that of the night elfs on world of warcraft mixed with stormwind alliance..
What engine and language are you using to build your smaller games, @desanimoosrs6443?
you could have gotten into RuneScape private servers like i did, literally a server and client ready for you to implement content
If you do eventually do attempt this, all the big engines allow you to give the game a MMO option at the start, but you can develop it as a single player at the start. Otherwise it's a lot harder to go back and implement online capabilities.
If josh strife hayes really taught karate, that means my favorite youtuber is cannonically a ninja.
OMG NINJA
lol ninjas use ninjutsu not karate
@@Suds_Mc_Duffit’s a joke kid chill
@@Paprika_Real4 🤫
@@Paprika_Real4their comment was quite chill
The best burn of the "idea guy" concept ever came from the audio commentary for "The Martian" between novel author Andy Weir and screenwriter Drew Goddard. Paraphrasing Goddard: "you hear a lot of people come up to you and say 'here's this great idea for a movie but the script is only so-so'. The script is what you pay for! Having an idea... it's not special"
Amen, I don't care what the plot is if the writing is awful it's hard to get invested.
Saw this as recently as a couple days ago, some rando on a game-dev forum saying, "I have an idea, looking for a [game-dev] team". Nobody tries out for a sports team saying, I really like basketball, but can't run, shoot, block, or coach. Also can't do cheer, and no cash to be an owner. So what's your contribution, water boy??
Exactly why game design is actually a job. Everybody's got ideas but synthesising everything in a game design document, doing the math, communicating things clearly to everyone involved to make a functioning game out of it... That's work.
Fun fact Andy Weir worked for Blizzard developing Warcraft 2
As a software developer I can only encourage to try to build one at some point, at least the base technical stuff: A server software able to handle a lot of clients, develop some kind of protocol with op codes or whatever, make it fully authoritative, build some small client where you can move squares around, try to cheat it by using something like cheat engine and manipulating variables to see if you can detect and prevent it server side and so on.
Its really a fun experiment, but don't go in with the mindset that "yes, I will build a great MMO!" because you really won't and will be disappointed. But as a technical exercise you will learn a lot :)
Even more fun if you can get some dev buddies together and experiment with different methods, like agile development models and stick to the rules of it.
this is the best answer. just do it to become better at development.
A server that can handle multiple clients isn't so hard. A server that can expand to MANY clients without bogging down, active content scaling with the number of players, is harder.
As for "agile", I've concluded it's a method designed for projects where nobody is sure what they're building. Be prepared to build everything at least twice when the first version fails.
@@hanelyp1 "As for "agile", I've concluded it's a method designed for projects where nobody is sure what they're building."
Bro, have you ever been in an agile team?
You can't cheat if you make authoritative, server based application. Unless your packet parser sucks and will choke on some strings, doesn't check for packet size or valid data inside those. If server says "no", client can cry all he wants about it but he will not be able to get his way. Sure, you can render yourself in best armor (or golden color of square in your example), you can change rendered position to "bypass" the walls, you can make your square bigger etc. but it's all inside your client. Nobody is affected by it.
@@lionart5230 would make it all authoritative (not sure how would that be implemented) affect performance?
Five things you need to make an MMO:
1 - A ton of money
2 - A second ton of money
3 - A third ton of money
4 - A fourth ton of money
5 - More than a snowball's chance in hell
even when you have an amazon ton amount of money, you can't ensure success.
@@vickyvvvv8182 That's why #5 was "More than a snowball's chance in Hell." :P
There have been an uncountable number of MMOs that have gone into production that get cancelled mid-stream. You can have the best MMO idea, the best team, and the best community support and still not get the thing out of the gate because of dumbass decisions made by corporate suits who do not understand the potential that they are slamming the door on. LOL... I remember when EA shut down development on Ultima Online 2 in favor of The Sims Online, and that game never once even got close to the number of subscribers that UO had at its peak.
But then, if they hadn't shut it down, Raph Koster probably would not have gone on to join SOE and Star Wars Galaxies would never have been what it was at launch. Of course, the dumbass suits decided that there was too much reading leveling and pew pew and castrated the game with the NGE, from which they never recovered the loss of subscribers... NANcy McIntyre was the murderer of a once great game. Too much reading... The she ended up going on to be in charge of childrens' games... Go figure...
Sick to death of MMOs being murdered by ignorant corporate suits who act like they don't have a clue what an MMO is and why it was originally designed a certain way whose mentality is "WoW does it this way, so we will too..."
Get the freaking corporate marketing suits out of developers' faces and then maybe more MMOs would have more than a snowball's chance in hell...
A good team is more important than money. a group of friends not worried about getting paid and rather just be happy with a solid end game product.
Money is needed, but it's not that important at all, unless you're greedy. Some of the best games we play today didn't need a shit ton of money just great concepts... EQ, Dark age of camelot, most games in 2000's weren't cost heavy. yet people still rather play these older titles than anything being made today. DAoC has Phoenix and live, EQ died but it still has a huge following dedicated.
Wrong, clearly you didn't watch the video.
Even with money you can still fail.
Just like your comment -.-
@@CaptainJackedPickle Last thing said "5 - More than a snowball's chance in hell"
Interesting fact here: There is actually a punk band in Hungary which consists of musicians who initially couldn't play any instruments, but they got pretty good and they became one of the most famous punk bands here. They are called "HétköznaPI CSalódások" which basically means "Ordinary Disappointments" but reading the last 2 letters of the first word and the first 3 letters of the second word together gives you the word for "ass"
OrDi! That’s pretty funny
Yeah but that's basically every punk band ever XD
Now if those same guys had gone for playing orchestral pieces this wouldn't have ended well :p
That is the best self aware title they must be awesome people
PICS hehe
@@kiister8126 oh sorry. I said first 2 letters but I meant 3. Actually "cs" is 1 letter in the hungarian alphabet. It is pronounced as "ch" in the word chew.
The only Channel where i actually want a notification when there is a premier
Yes!
@@Rengarsus im not even a sub and ive made to premiers
One of the best but... Digital Foundry and some more worth it. But can listen to this man for hours.
@@MisfortuneFeeva Well subscribe then :)
I agree. I have been trying to explain this to my kid. I started writing a game for her to play with her friends and she immediately wanted it to be an MMO. I KNOW I can't write an MMO by the simple fact that I am one guy and I don't write games for a living. There are not enough hours in a day.
- Plop down a lot of AI
- Make a large world
- Done
a simple multiplayer game isn't difficult, you only need a few parent classes replicated...
You can make it "MMO" for children though. You can even skip all data validation, children won't try to cheat using advanced methods.
An MMO isn't a starter quest. It's the final boss of game development.
The starter quests of game development are things like Breakout and Tetris.
Josh: "here are the 5 things you will need"
RUclips: ** rolls geshin impact ad **
Ironic
I got ad for Friends. Fitting.
and while genshin impact has a co-op mode, it's not even an MMO ^^ does make a TON of money tho (like 175.000.000 USD a month on average just on the mobile platform)
Yep. They have a talented team, pre existing player base, and went all out on the marketing and it served them well. Mihoyo was already known for high quality mobile titles and even leveraged their previous big game by borrowing its name despite not being related. I saw ads for it constantly in the months leading up to release. And now, they don’t even need to market anything. Their sizable player base will willingly do it for them for free just by being excited over content updates. I see that constantly these days too.
@@MrZer093 i started with genshin and because of that i checked out honkai. Their honkai impact animations are amazing, music is 10/10 and the game has an amazing story.
Its a gacha game, and originally made for mobile, but its fun to play, and more enjoyable than most games on pc.
Im still surprised how both games even run on phones.
Plot Twist: Josh is working on his own MMO!
How to make Korean MMO:
Step 1: Have money
Step 2: Copy other korean MMO
Step 3: Add bunch loot boxes, gacha mechanics and autoplay
Step 4: Profit
Ah yes, League of Angels
I can't even fathom the level of monetization the League of Legends MMO will have.
I mean, imo the monetization for LoL and Runeterra are fair. In Runeterra's case it's actually more than fair (not sure about Valorant since I haven't played it yet).
So I can only hope that the monetization for their upcoming mmo would mostly focus on cosmetics.
@@Ran-nii Valorant has a $300 skin.
"You have moved your 250 meters for today. You can buy the Movement Pack for 83 diamond dust sneezes, or a Permanent Movement Unlimited Super Pack for 61 emerald bags. No, there is no way to convert either of those directly to any real currency."
@@michaelthomas5433 Imo Riot can monetize cosmetics however they want. Its not a real problem unless they start to monetize stuff that actually impacts on the gameplay. And so far they seem to be following this standard quite nicely. You don't need to buy the 300 dollars skin to play the game, neither does the person who bought the 300 dollars skin have an easier time with the game for it. And thats how fair monetization works.
I'm expecting overpriced cosmetics and a $15 a month sub fee. I don't really think they'll go the P2W route unless the game starts failing. I'm more expecting them to turn it into a giant Skinner box than a Korean MMO.
I started from going to GDS - [Game Dev School].
As i was taught in GDS - Ideas are cheap. Marketing is a biatch. Completed game is around 160% work - where 60% is deleted in a process
An mmo needs a big team and budget. Somewhere, the Gower brothers are laughing/crying at their beginnings
@regi grenski yeah, I know, still mind boggling how big that little project became
The Gowers are also no longer involved in Runescape's development.
Back in the late 90s/ early 2000s mmos where an untapped market, the internet was a new thing. The Gower brothers focused on core gameplay before graphics, story, design, and everything else, they just had good gameplay and readable visuals, which nowadays isn’t good enough and complex and innovative systems are required to get players hyped.
They didn't have money, but Andrew Gower had programmed several games on different platforms with his brothers contributing graphics/art/music starting on Atari ST in the mid-90s, and had a small audience from the Java games they had made in the 3-4 years leading up to RuneScape. Also RuneScape was released in 2001, which was a very different time in internet history.
Starting a band with your friends because you all like music but none of you plays an instrument is exactly how basically every Punkband ever started. :P
Not so - a lot of 60s-80s punk & rock bands in the US/Canada/UK/Australia grew either out of studio musicians, or folks cobbled together from other, earlier bands. Although ironically The Beatles, when they first started, had more looks than musical talent - compared to the likes of the Stones, the Who, Yardbirds, or Zep, at the beginning the Beatles were basically more marketing than music. (They got better LOL)
But I do play an instrument!
@@mandisaw yeah I was rather on about Punk specifically. But in Music you can sort of fake it till you make it, not in MMO-Design I guess. :D
@@catriona_drummond Yeah, I don't know the origins of punk bands as well, much more into rock
Yeah, a professional orchestra would be a better comparison. You need a bunch of skilled people and you need to satisfy the very high quality standards of a lot of customers to pay all those skilled people.
Currently making a game for university and I’m struggling with a point and click lol
Just try to stay positive, if you aren't struggling then you aren't pushing yourself to learn anything.
@@gingerbeargames thanks I really appreciate that, finals a rough haha
Struggling is good. Everything you learn the hard way is time saved on future projects. Keep going, GL HF ;)
Scummvm is free and you can learn a lot from it.
I feel you. I programmed a game of Go as an end of studies project in cegep and spent all my free time and more in the last two weeks before due date debugging the rules system
Sherwood Dungeon, Love and 8BitMMO are some examples of MMOs made by a single person. It can be done with enough effort and will.
Ey Oldschool Runescale was by 2 people
@HyperImaginative Yeah, 22 years ago in 2001 and was really bad looking in comparison to todays standards.
If you released runescape as it was back then, now, it would not survive or be successful.
Sherwood Dungeon is the same. Came out in 2005.
8BitMMO is clearly much lower scale then what is normal for the industry
and I have no idea what "Love" is.
But kind of bad analogies to use to prove a point or debunk what Josh is saying here.
it could be done easily enough on ue5.. with a bunch of bought assets(not in the same lazy way flippers do it, but similar to dbk and the spacebourne games by him)
I got some 2x4's, nails and a hammer in the garage. I am qualified and can start working on player housing right now.
Do you have any experience with the construction of demonic or elvish gravity-defying masonry?
@@GerardMenvussa Did you really just mention fantasy masonry without mentioning dwarves?
@@actually5004 meh, just add rock, then remove rock..... presto dwarven buildings.
This should be required viewing for potential devs BEFORE they post their Kickstarter.
And then it should be required for potential patrons before they give money for an MMO to a Kickstarter.
I think creators should spend time to make a playable prototype, then justify needing the Kickstarter money to polish the game and hire experienced developers so the game can finish faster...
Josh, I absolutely adore this video and now consider it my favorite of yours. This breakdown of the economic realities of MMO development was incredibly insightful and i would love to see more videos somewhere along these lines. I always throw on one of your videos as something to listen to while folding laundry or doing any other menial task. Your voice is always very easy to listen to and your scripts are both clear and to-the-point. Thanks for the content!
Great video! This applies not only to people who want to make MMOs, but pretty much any game. If you are starting out, your first project will suck or fail and most probably both. Those who ultimately went and made gigantic games, are those who failed enough times.
Was worried this list would be stuff like "fun gameplay" and "cool races/classes" but im glad you hit us with the real truth aspiring devs need to hear
This should be a Public Information video broadcast by the BBC.
Big Black C-
Oh, the other BBC
BBC hasnt yet realized
that the Internet-Age is a thing...
BBC is busy spreading old politicians agendas
@@drakenaenae6244 Eeehm. No.
@@drakenaenae6244 exactamundo, agenda network
I have a degree in computer science.
I have written dozens of games that are played by 1000s people everyday.
I would not even think of writing an MMO without a lot of help. That help can be money (to hire help) or finding people that are willing to work up front for a piece on the back end - people like me. Unless you personally have money, you are going to have to give away part of the back end no matter what. You need some people right away - programmers and artists. A lot of the other people Josh mentioned are down the road. A 3+ year development time means marketing is not really necessary for a while. You can and must create a Proof of Concept - and that can be done with just a few people.
What are the games if you don’t mind sharing?
🧢
I think you honestly need to add luck to the requirements. So many things can go wrong in a 5-year project.
Thanks Josh for listening. I am excited for this episode.
5 Things you need to make an MMO
1) A great name for your new MMO idea
2) A Kickstarter and/or Gofundme page
3) Cheap/free Unity assets
4) Other people's source code
5) A place to put all that money you'll be making
Rinse and repeat.
I don‘t give a damn about mmorpgs, but I got hooked on this channel. Your presentation and speech alone is worthwile
I know I'm really late for the party.
But if I get there one day, will be most thanks to you. Not just that one video but all of them, keep the good work and thank you.
Yo JSH, do you like Xenogears on the PS1?
I played that one up to where I would do the final fight in a few minutes . Then I punched a wall at work and went to visit a buddy in Chicago for a week . Came back and just couldn't get back into it lol
xenogears is legit
I remember playing it as a kid but i didn't get far. I'm trying, in what small free time i get, to finish a load of emulated games, i can add xenogears to the list!
@@JoshStrifeHayes that is very tight! Please reply to this comment when you grow an opinion on it! :D
@@JoshStrifeHayes Your thoughts on this behind the scenes move by Tencent?
ruclips.net/video/WU4xrdQgRJo/видео.html&ab_channel=UpperEchelonGamers
;-; hearing about AQW at the end made me remember all the good times of my childhood, except that one time getting virtually cat-called in the tavern, that was an experience 8 year old me did not expect
I couldnt agree more. As soon as someone even asks "I want to make an MMO! What do I need?" or "How do I make an MMO?" the battle is already lost, because anyone who is remotely capable of participating in such a project would know the answers already (or putting it that way: only those who know the answers already can hope to be capable of tackling that scope).
It's tragic and sometimes frustrating but great ideas are worthless without a specific and detailed plan on how to realize them.
I've been battling the scope of my game projects for 10 years now and scrapped countless ones until I recently published my first and until now only "game", which is just a tiny math puzzler made in two days. But that's how you start.
I just saw Kiras video about "Project Steel" that perfectly showcases how this MMO ambition is either based on arrogance or ignorance (or its just a scam, who knows).
One possible way I can think about, could be to create a small limited but playable MVP with working multiplayer features and trying to pitch that to a larger publisher and see if they would take on it.
To my knowledge there is one single example of a group of friends who liked games, getting together and successfully making and publishing an MMO. The group of friends in question were all MIT Grad students studying in core related fields. The game was Asheron's Call. I think a few of them picked up the key needed skills at MIT while helping develop Military Simulators. MMO's are what can at best be thought of as having "High Bars to Entry".
If someone is interested in building an MMO, if just for the experience- They could start with a small text-based MUD for themselves and their friends. Great way to learn how to build mechanics, worlds, and networking without worrying about going all out.
It's not too hard to make a simple game in Unity/Unreal Engine and add simple netcode that synchronizes players' positions and rotations.
I will add, just do a board game. It helps a lot to think about mechanics and multiplayer.
love how brutally honest you are. XD thanks i needed to hear this before i jump into something that'll only hurt me in the long run!
From someone that has actually lead many successful teams. (this is to say teams that set multiple records within their companies) I would definitely have to add to the reviewers list.
1. Realistic production goals- Daydreams are lovely. But, they don't keep the lights on. In my industry the most common method to arrive at them used to be something called "time studies." A client would make a request. Before you ever let it get to a salesman you literally got folks together and, saw how much time based on a believable pace it took to complete the task. From this you could assess real labor costs. etc. Once you knew how much time and effort under believable conditions it took, you passed that on to those going to the bargaining table. Not doing the above was a lovely way to get yourself a money sink account. (to those wondering believable is literally the speed your experience told that you could get folks to work at)
2. Communications skills- I DO NOT mean the ability to post to social media product 394. I mean the ability to actually communicate to effectively the tasks and goals. Guess what most days that don't involve college level English. A life time of working with teams has shown me most folks respond best to things being made as simple as possible. Sounds simple but, allot of times it means learning how to lower the discussion without talking down to anyone. Trust me it's a Hell of allot easier to say than do. I'm a fairly educated cat. But I'm also a hick from a small town. Take a wild guess which of those two things works better for communication with a team.
3. Effective leadership- Once again a real easy thing to say. But, not so easy to do. Getting to actually know your team takes time. Learning how to motivate and, inspire them is a a job in it's own right. But you'll never have a successful team if someone doesn't give it at least rudimentary direction. Oh yes and the even less fun part of said leadership the accountability, that's to literally everyone. You bosses, your team, you clients, this list goes on. The other really fun part is having to actually be the one presenting your boss with can actually be done as compared to what the picture in their mind is. Trust me good leads are damn rare.
4. The ability to fail- Yepp, I said it. If you actually want to be able to get to the point of succeeding you'd best be able to fail. If one failure is going to kill you, stick to what's paying your bills. Because failure is part of the formula to any businesses success. Henry Ford failed an insane amount of times before he created what today is a world recognized brand name. It's why you see fleet of Korean and Chinese release and damn few Western releases. They have figured out successful business models for themselves and, can afford the take the risk. They have real capital to burn.
In the end the idea of doing anything is wonderful. But always and forever finish the thought. Because half finished ideas just don't lead to good places.
Everyone that Thinks they want to make an MMO should highly consider either making a single player game [if you are after mechanics] or a particularly involved forum game [if you are after the players] I feel.
Also, you should Really look into ARPGs [Art RolePlaying Games, the most basic example being ArtFight] it's fascinating because many do have all the component of an MMORPG but instead of clicking at monsters for five hours one "grinds" by making art/writing, it's kind of insane and beautiful. I'm essentially in the middle of a long process of putting one together right now, it's quite something to behold.
My desire to make a MMO was always tempered by my experience coding with other mmo server emulators. The back-end for a MMO server is probably bigger than the client itself and upon understanding that I'm really developing 2 things at the same time, I opted for my projects to be either single player or small-scale multiplayer with dedicated server support.
Now thats a man with confidence. You speak and present your videos so well
"Star Citizen development" with no end in sight, gave me a chuckle =P
Btw, 30grand a year costs far more than 30grand a year for a business owner. You have additional taxes & benefits you standard are forced to additionally pay. Realistically add +30-50% of the wages and you're seeing what the employer has to pay required by law, not even to mention industry standard benefits. So 5 employees making 30k a year = 225k bare minimum.
This is absolutely applicable to practically anything people want to do to make money.
how to get developer recognition 101:
1. get job at blizzard/guild wars/etc
2. do the job for 1+ year, while posting a lot of stuff about the job
3. quit
4. have developer recognition
5. ???
6. profit
1: experience with game design
2: experience with network design
3: software development experience
4: time, partners and or money.
5: did someone say time?
ruclips.net/video/VY3O2aGfzhs/видео.html
I guess I should start then :D
I somewhat agree, but still there are some points (little background - I'm a developer (running my own company for 10+ years), Master's degree in software development/3D graphics, while mostly in commercial areas and engine development, I worked on games in the past). I was indirectly involved in MMO development by working on engine/networking for disclosed title (the project has been cancelled).
The problem with money is relative - investors exist, crowdfunding (as mentioned) exists, costs can be higher or lower based on what you need to pay for. There is one thing not mentioned - MMOs have high running costs. Even in development you need development server(s) running. Testers are going to need another one. Then you have production servers. This is going to be a major part in budget.
Technical difficulty is heavily underestimated. While "buy an engine" is an advice - it is very likely major parts of code need to be written from scratch - networking is likely going to be one of them. General rule applies - either you are skilled enough or you need to hire somebody skilled enough.
Individual making of MMO is possible. Vast majority of people who went for it have failed. Those who succeeded had realistic goals from the beginning - and went step by step.
...
It all boils down to: "Set realistic goals, and do it step by step." I heavily recommend to every team that is not professional - to try to make a small game for a game jam or anything. You will either pass and make a game, or fail and realize that you won't be able to do anything bigger as a team. It is often short-term (mostly from just 48 hours to weeks) and small game (realistic goals!). I personally sometimes still participate in jams - as there is no better feeling that finishing something.
a realistic perspective and good advice !
One of the things most angel investors, people that work with startups, or people specialised in innovation will tell you, is: a very good idea is probably less than 1% of your project… It all comes down to how a team executes that idea XD
From my own experience I will say 1M is not enough (even as a bare min) and the dev timeframe for a full-time team could be 5y upwards… of course it depends on the scope of the project. If it's a "conventional" RPG and the world needs to be populated by NPCs and stories… those amounts are likely to tripple… A larger team, can shorten the timeframe but will increase the costs… and larger teams can be less efficient than smaller teams…
AlI in all I would say the most important trait to be able to make any game, are the skills and knowledge, which can be honed with a lot of work and authentic fascination for the art.
Will let you know how acquiring a player-base as an unknown studio works out ;)
When I worked for a small startup, I volunteered to make a few games as an attraction for our booth. One was a puzzle that taught regular expressions, and the other was a social engineering simulator. What amounted to roughly 20 minutes of "gameplay" for the players took roughly 360 hours. I had a two months, and I literally lost weight from sleep deprivation.
And I already knew how to program and use Unity. I can't imagine doing all that from the aspiration stage. And in an MMO my two games would only actually be the menu system and the NPC dialog system. So yes, these estimates sound about right.
I made non-MMOs aka MUDs in the 90s. My most successful one was a starwars based mud with 50-100 players every day. Back when games were fun, good times.
@Alex Hicks Okay
@Alex Hicks ok good for nothing meme-loving piece of trash
@Alex Hicks that's Gen X you silly little adorable twat
To be fair I think making an mmorpg with a small team and little funding is entirely doable if you keep your scope low and have a solid single player experience in the off chance it doesnt do well at the start. The biggest problem is people aren't satisfied with a small unique experience, their game has to be this huge amazing world with a grand story, 20 factions, an economy, world pvp, shit like that. Game development is getting rediculously easy nowadays since you can just buy assets and code off of various asset stores. Like hell I think the unity asset store alone has like 20 different "mmo" kits that already include things like net code, so the mmo part of the game is already created for you, you just have to supply the RPG part.
First time seeing someone hold a cup for aesthetics
Different mug each video
Never watched sarah Z huh.
@@JoshStrifeHayes sponsorship?
@@JoshStrifeHayes What's in the mug this time? Space marines? Moblins? Loose Change?
Start with the most basic Tetris Clone. It will surprise you how much work a mediocre Tetris Clone by itself takes. Menus, Keycontrols, Highscore Counters, Random Blocks, Basic Collision Detection, Animated Block Dropping, Pause Buttons and screens....
Wow. TIL about Adam Bohn. Loved AQ as a kid, then remember loving DragonFable in my early teens. What an inspiration.
...I wouldnt say that everyone is
an Ideas-Guy...
i honestly thought his real name was artix
Best video I've ever seen about gamedev reality. But I want to add one important thing, to make MMO RPG you need an Engine yes, but more important you need a server that can handle all potentional connections from all of the world and this is bigest challenge for your team, because the are no servers in any engine from the box that can handle MMO RPGs. And if your server sux then ppl will lag and rage quit and never come back, believe me I was one of those players :)
Once again - Amazing video.
These videos remind me of those times when my dad would sit me down and tell me he was very, very disappointed in me.
1. 48 pot noodles; beef and tomato is preferred but chicken mushroom flavour will be okay if you can compromise gameplay a bit; we're getting the crafting simulation going here. Avoid anything that is called Big or Bad or Boy unless making an 18+ game or you're going Anime style.
2. Aled Jones; he has to sing walking in the air constantly for staff to stay motivated. similar to that undead elf in WoW but more wholesome. And less undead. Aled Jones in not Undead, that's just misinformation.
3. Shopping Trolley, throw them into the water to simulate MMO physics, also nice underwater zone simulation to retreive one poind coins
4. Creatively challenged so NFT
5. Add a unique edgy race to be an opponent, so anything from the highest rated movies or films from the last 50 years. Bonus if it's Biff from Back to the Future.
That's my five simple steps to make a world beating MMO.
Well it's not rare that Sean Bean's character got killed again. This time along with an entire game.
Pro-tip: There are a plethora of open source animation libraries of motion captured movements. You can save money there.
*FIVE THINGS YOU NEED TO MAKE AN MMO*
1. Money.
2. More money.
3. Even more money.
4. Definitely money.
5. Did we mention money?
6. And then some
And it can still fail!
To be fair though, that seems to be damn near any game these days.
8:48 - It's annoying that this article states Shemue, but shows a picture of Shenmue II. Unforgivable!
Amazing video. Amazing quality. Amazing insights. Spicy, yet gentle: like the hand of a fond, guiding, friend. Leonine. Color corrected.
Also: Is Josh hinting he's going to be going into bodybuilding at 12:17? Given his background in martial arts and his gun shows in recent videos, I suspect this is just the first stage in his evolution...
I was thinking about what kind of MMO I would make, it would be really casual game where you can just jump in for 30 minutes do your thing and get out. You could do various things like classical adventuring but also farming and cooking or mining and smithing. Instead of standard classes like mage or warrior you could choose adventurer, farmer of smith and each would have bonuses to their specific thing but that doesn't mean farmer can't go on a wild adventure, just if you like farming the most you can specialize in it.
But then I think about how to make it, how to maintain servers, how to program multiplayer, models, map, quests, music, cosmetics, items, enemies, statistics and I really don't want to make it all
The good, thoughtful, experienced, and depth of understanding "ideas guy" seems to be in short supply based on much of what we've seen in the genre. Perhaps game companies should be looking a little more for those folks, and perhaps a little less for the marketing guy.
The marketing guy gets the users for the "MM". Otherwise, the game would die out.
Correct, not everyone has good ideas
@@gnerkus Right, and if the game is a WoW clone, it dies in a month. If you make a great game, people will play it. Even if it takes longer to get the word out, you will be successful. If you market a poor game, it may have a burst at the beginning, but will quickly die.
Love this, this is so true for any industry not just games
Finally a comment section I can add some value to!
I am the lead developer on a hobbyist MMORPG project. My team has me as the sole software developer, and two writers.
Often when you see advice like what is in the video, there will be people that balk at it. You always hear stuff like "well, there are fully 3D MMORPGs made by solo developers" or "technology is in a place where making games is fast and efficient".
Both of those statements are true, but when you dig in deep you find that they have massive caveats attached to them. Most solo developed MMOs are either crap, or have insanely long dev times. Games like Project Gorgon are amazing, but they are going to be in perpetual alpha. Games made very quickly using store-bought assets may or may not be good, but they will never stand out.
If you want to make an MMORPG as a solo dev, or as a very small team, you need to either accept that your project will be a labour of love that you will never see a sane return on, or you need to accept that your scope will be very limited, and you need to focus in on one or two things in order to stand out in a crowded market.
The MMORPG I am making is largely text based (it's not a MUD though, it has graphics, a UI, representations of your surroundings, visual combat etc), and coded using a framework I developed for it. You can see some screenshots here:
i.imgur.com/Ke5olDW.png
i.imgur.com/Ktt3acT.png
I am targetting this at a very, very niche audience. Many corners have been cut in presentation in order to implement complex mechanics. If I paid someone with my skillset to make what we have so far, it would STILL have cost more than $100,000. Given that there are probably less than 1000 people in the world that would even be interested in this game, you can see why commerically speaking, most smallscale MMOs are non-starters.
Why are you making a game that you know will flop?
@@ksAbis Passion, an interest in creation tools, and the joy of programming. Our game is also a non-commercial passion project. I started it purely because I wanted to play it.
This video was actually very helpful. I actually have quite a lot of RPG experience and want to apply some of that skill to an MMORPG. I have some marketing and artistic skill, but lack the funding, the player base and only have a couple of team members. Based on what you’ve laid out here, my best bet would be to shill my work like mad and (hopefully) run a successful crowdfunding campaign to raise money and hype.
For now, though, time to go back to recruiting. Thank you for the insight and advice. ^_^
This is the most underrated channel on youtube
That was actually, really really helpful. Thanks for the amazing content!
Newbie game developers who wants to start right in the mmo genre is like watching the newly junior co-worker looking at the CEO's chair just because he believes in himself without investing money in your ideas or time in your own career to make this possible.
they want to be at the top without losing time with the stairs
It's a heady mix of ambition, entitlement, and ignorance of just how much work & luck got the person at the top to that point.
As someone who has developed several online games, including an arguably successful "MMO" (but not an MMORG), some of your development times and costs are very much fantasy theme related, but not necessarily MMO. A lof of the difficulty in MMORG development come from conventions in the genre like player races, a hero character rig with support for modular components for example may take a month or so to develop - if you make an MMO with say 8 races, multiply by two genders, and that's 16 hero characters before you move onto the modular visible inventory assets - but you don't have to make a high fantasy game with 8 playable races.
In regards to community that limitation applies to ALL games, not just MMO games. It's pretty much the defining line separating many commercial studios from the indie space.
meanwhile. players like: i want a free to pay and no micro transaction with the best ingame experience, continues update, dungeon, realistic ingame graphic, i want the best. as long its for FREEEE. buying ingame items big or small = salary. its a business.
Path of Exile seems to do pretty well. No clue how really.
Maybe if you sale player data to some big company
DUDE!!! You totally crushed it!!!
Of course "it" being dreams...
Seriously, though! Great advice, well thought out, perfectly put together.
I hope EVERY MMO idea person watches this and heads your perfectly rational advice.
Imagine you want to start a RUclips channel and instead of a small camera and a desk you decide to build an entire studio with green screen and a rail way camera for action shots. Now imagine starting game design and u decide to create what is the equivalent of a block buster movie
The true 5:
1. A Kickstarter
2. Outlandish Promises that no one could keep.
3. Constant "developer" blogs to make it seem like you're getting somewhere
4. Absolutely zero ability to have concrete deadlines
5. See 1-4.
Pantheon...?
Chronicles of Elyria.
I can't help but think about Valheim during this video. Seems to be the perfect compromise for a small team and a great game.
My friends and I had more fun with Valheim than many of the big AAA "MMO" games being released today.
i really want to get into the gaming creative industry, but a this date i am in college just begin my journey as a programmer. (eventually i want to make something begin to the little) as a pasion so always. i am looking to this type of content to know "what to not do developing a game" but as a childish dream that i have is what is helping to look forward
Just to add, this great advice by our host here can be, and should be, applied to anything in life. Thank you Josh Strife Hayes!
Yo Josh, have you ever checked out Wynncraft? It's a MMO serve built inside of minecraft and honestly feels like an entirely different game. I would heavily recommend checking it out.
"Having an idea, isn't enough - everyone has ideas. Ideas are only valuable when given to people with the ability to make them a reality." - I am writing this shit down to use it at work. Thanks Josh!
Plenty of people - roughly 80% of the entire human population - *DON'T* have ideas. They will consume whatever is put in front of them if it comes from an authority figure telling them to do so.
even though you emphasized game dev experience, i really feel like you didn't emphasize game dev experience enough. i have experience working on a MOBA, a VR world war 2 simulation, and several RPGs as an artist, modeller, rigger, animator and texturer. i don't even feel remotely experienced enough to make an MMO, its such a huge endeavor.
Still waiting for someone to make a monster girl quest mmo.
Monster High MMO hell yeah
I gotta say, you are correct in those 5 things, but it seems as a rather random thing to suggest people have... Especially the playerbase, kind of hard to have a functioning playerbase without a complete product is it not?
As a fun pastime, I've recently taken to designing elements of an MMO set in the world I've created for the novels I'm writing. I know that it will most likely never get made, as I would first need to win the lottery in becoming a famous author, earn a ton of money, make connections in the video game industry, assemble a trustworthy team, and then convince people to take a risk on an MMO using my IP. Statistically speaking, that just won't happen. But it's fun to think about how to translate my writing into an online game like WoW. It's an exercise in thinking about game design and balancing in-universe rules with gameplay mechanics, and I just really like picturing it even knowing it will only ever be in my head.
It always makes me a little sad to see people passionate about the genre just like me trying to make their dreams a reality when they're in a similar situation to me. This is absolutely not a project to take lightly, and even if you think you're up for the challenge, you probably aren't. This is a great video outlining exactly why MMOs are such a huge investment in time, money, and skills, and I hope it makes at least one would-be team reconsider their prospects. Keep it up!
This is the video that I needed to hear, thank you greatly for making it.
1) "The best and last game you will ever play"
2) 0 Years of Dev Expierence
3) "It's like totally different from other MMOs you guys"
4) Sell Players land or noticable ingame changes for money
5) A small loan of a few million dollars
I'm glad to see Robb Stark followed his dream of reviewing games.
1. An excessively large ego
2. No ability to judge one's own talent
3. Game idea / Promo video that simply promises everything
4. No background in video games development
5. K I C K S T A R T E R
Gottem
1. Got that.
2. You’re born with or without talent.
3. True
4. Everyone starts somewhere
5. True
Great video, it gives a realistic starting point for anyone seriously thinking about jumping into it.
One thing I've seen that may be a shortcut for some, I've been on private emulated servers for popular MMORPGs that already exist, and some of those servers have completely changed all the NPCs, weapon stats, the story, and names of places to sort of half - butted create their own world.
When I finally make my MMO, I'll have this channel to thank. This was eye opening and oddly motivating.
Josh: Explaining how to make a good MMO.
Me, a learning game designer: Not a fan of MMOs, but taking in the information anyways.
in the finances, it seems to me you forgot the taxes, especially when counting for salaries to verse: companies don't just hand over the salary, they actually spend way more in various taxes, which only a part of it goes to the employee. (And no, that isn't the same as the income taxes). Also another expanse comes with office space: maintenance. Some countries make it mandatory to also have some form of kitchen area, or to even provide lunchtime in some way. You also need to finance the work equipment. And since we are talking about PCs, you also need to consider even more maintenance costs just for your computer park, and also a substantial increase in electricity bill that's way beyond your common office consumption. Also, multiply your air conditioning billing and maintenance if you don't live in a fresh environment in the first place. You can go down the list deeper and deeper like that, tons of expanses everywhere that either add lots and lots of small expanses that sum up to big amounts, or straight up multiply big chunks of your expanses - sometimes exponentially as time goes by or employee count goes up.
I've seen many people trying to "solve" these issues with weird statements like "we'll have no office and all work from home"! Sure, but you can't possibily expect people to spend money just to be able to do their job, so you still need to provide work equipment, shipping, maintenance. And now you also need a secured remote access pipeline, which means servers, robust ones, with equally robust maintenance and tech support because you don't want to have your entire company waiting for a week withj no way to keep working whenever there's a small issue making your pipeline inaccessible. And if you think
Another great funny solution is "but my team is a bunch of people doing it on the side as a hobby" to justify reduced cost, because side-gigs can't be possibly lucrative apparently. This last bit aside, you are confirming that your team is less committed and can spend only a small fraction of time than what actual employed people could do. Which insanely drops the development speed and talent retention. Which leads to the next point:
Talent retention is a big thing in an amateur video game project. If you can't keep people working on your project, it's as good as dead. The longer and more daunting the project is, the more it is an issue. If on top of that you don't give people the right tools, a tangible project to work on, good stuff to put on their future demo reel, good work experience, and enough money to pay their bills, ... What do you expect from them?