I am about to provide a fairly detailed profile of a game I would like to have made and I want to know two things about it: 1) How much time would this take for a good programmer to code. 2) How much would I end up spending per programmer if I hired them to code it to completion, including fixing bugs. Let's assume the graphical side of things is already provided for them, maybe the trees are already made with SpeedTree, and there is just one model for Player Characters, one model for housing, and the map is just a flat un-detailed terrain perhaps with just a few trees and houses scattered randomly. The graphics won't always stay so crappy, but I'm not worried about that aspect right now so my questions are only relevant to the things that I am worried about having done. Here are the details of the design of this game: The game is 3d 3rd person game and the controls are pretty much the same as others of this type. It's a massive multiplayer game, more commonly called MMORPG. It could be described as a "sandbox". No quests (This should reduce programming time considerably). There is no typical level/experience based character progression. There will be a system of character progression but it is over 3x less complex to program than the generic level crap. There are no npcs and never will be No premade skills (This should reduce programming time as well). Instead player's create their own skills using a customization system, where they choose a skill type, such as magic projectile, but then they would use points which they would use to alter the variables of that magic projectile, variables such as Damage, Velocity, Range, Refire, Energy Efficiency, Size (The bigger the projectile is the harder it is to dodge for instance). Then after they are done customizing the core stats of that skill, they can choose to add optional attributes which are trade-offs, they add a specialized advantage but also have a disadvantage to balance it out. These include making it an elemental attack that does greater damage against someone weak against that element, but increases the energy drain of that attack. A homing attribute that makes the projectile home in on it's target, but it's half as powerful. An explosive attribute which gives it an area of effect for damage but increases energy drain perhaps. And so on. The premade items selection is far slimmer than other MMOs, there is one type of sword instead of 100s, one type of armor, and so on. But that's fine because the player customizes the stats of their sword/armor and any other thing they "craft" using a "stat point" system which they can deposit into different stats of the armor, as well as apply elemental attributes. Eventually they would get many many different armor/sword/etc appearance which they can choose to give their crafted item a fairly unique appearance of their choosing, but that is not part of what is discussed here. This is just like how they customize skills they have created, they deposit points into certain variables of that item, then they can add optional attributes which specialize the weapon for certain purposes (such as elemental attributes). Here is how character combat progression would work. Each character has these core stats: Strength=1 //Increases melee damage done by you. Durability=1 //Decreases melee damage done to you. Your durability and the attacker's strength form a ratio, which is then subtracted from Health. The math is like this: You.Health-=(Attacker.Strength/You.Durability)*5. This means your health will be decreased by 5% if you and your attacker's str/dur are equal, health always maxes at 100(as in 100%). Speed=1 //A multiplier for how fast you run, and a divider for how much delay you have between melee attacks, magic attacks, casting buffs, pretty much anything else that has delays on your character. Efficiency=1 //A divider for anything that drains energy, whether an attack, running, jumping, magic skills. Whatever the base drain is on it, before it is subtracted from your character's energy, the drain is first divided by your character's efficiency. Regeneration=1 //A multiplier for how fast your Health regenerates over time. Recovery=1 //A multiplier for how fast your Energy recovers over time. Force=1 //Same as strength but for any attack that is "energy based" Resistance=1 //Same as durability but for anything that is "energy based" Offense=1 //Let's just forget about the effects of offense and defense for now but just know that they will exist. Their effects are no harder to program than the effects of any of the other stats listed above, so just factor that in. Defense=1 These stats do not INCREASE, they are customized. The player can recustomize them once per day and also once at character creation. There are 10 core stats as you can see, all players get 50 stat points for customization and each one is +0.2 to whatever stat you add it to. When I say recustomize, it means all their stats are lowered back to 1 and they get the 50 points back to do with as they please. There are no "sub stats", for instance, higher Durability does not give "+10 to maximum health" or the myriad of other side-effects stats have on each other in generic MMOs, further complicating game development. There are Health and Energy variables but no matter what they max out at 100, as in 100%. The game includes a fighting system which utilizes the things mentioned above. The fighting system is of the same quality as the game "Darkfall" for instance, which has a better fighting system than WoW if that puts it in perspective for you. It has the typical 3rd person real-time MMOG combat system basically. The 10 stats that you can customize are called "Core Stats", but there is another stat called "Battle Power" which governs (most) of them. Battle Power is comparable to "Levels" in other games, except you don't gain them by some complex system of experience combined with diminishing returns, it's much simpler. You gain Battle Power in increments of +1 as you are doing activities that warrant it, such as combat. If you are fighting a mob that has higher BP than you, each time you gain +1 BP you will also have 1% of their BP added to yours til you equalize with them. That way it doesn't matter if your 100 bp fighting someone with 1000 or someone with 5000, after 100 BP increase "ticks" you would be caught up with them. There is no cap on Battle Power or some complex mathematical system for diminishing returns, that all takes care of itself because 100+1 is more valuable intrinsicly than 1000+1. There is a crafting system but it is very simplistic. There are generic "resources" used for everything from money within the game, to creation of items/technology/whatever else. There is no "wood, iron, copper, bone shards" or whatever other irrelevant crafting materials other MMOs require you to have before you can piece some item together with it. There are no "crafting levels", anyone can make anything they want and the ONLY requirement is getting enough resources required to make it, lets say a sword would cost 1000 resources and 1000 resources takes one player about 1 day to gather on their own with no aid of any kind, just their own character's two hands. The quality of whatever you create is fully based on how well you customized it and/or specialized it towards it's chosen purpose, because there is no "crafting levels" or whatever. Systems will be coded to allow character's to fully utilize the crafting system mentioned above. There will be systems allowing for the player to both walk and fly (Flying need not be elaborated upon at this point, just X/Y/Z axis flying like a flight simulator or something which players can toggle back and forth from.). To clarify, it is the player characters that will be flying as well as able to walk. Freedom is highly valued in the game so there will be no restrictions on your interactions with other players or the world, because every new restriction also increases development time. There are no safe zones or any of that bullcrap, no pvp/nonpvp servers, and so on. If it's not already described in this post, it probably is not a feature included in the game as it is described here, which is considered final-stage alpha. You may be thinking about such things as "Well where will player's get "resources" to craft things in the first place? That wasn't mentioned anywhere!" Don't worry about that or any other things that seem to be missing or inconsistent, just worry about what is described here and the rest will come later but is currently irrelevant. The game will make money by subscriptions but people can make an account and play for free with restrictions, such as: Not able to leave a certain distance from the starting area, gaining Battle Power at half the rate of paid players, and it will cost them twice as much resources to craft something than it takes a paid player. That's about it. And now I redirect you to my original questions at the top of this post so they can be answered. Thanks. I expect to have the budget to create an MMORPG like this within the next year or two assuming it cost <100'000$

Quote:Original post by Hodgman
5 programmers for 1 year.

$250,000 for the game engine.
$400,000 for salaries.

Even for this piece of crap with hardly any graphics. No quests, npcs, or features included outside of what is described here?

You say 250'000$ for the Game Engine but are you saying they make the Game Engine (Using free resources/libraries/etc too) or one will be purchased such as *insert random suitable game engine here* and then we go from there?

What is the average price for either?

If I'm not mistaken it would be much cheaper just to purchase an engine. I don't know which is most suitable to this project though, I would have to leave that decision to game programmers I hire or something.

Wow I can't believe 650'000$ would be required just for what I described if that's true that blows my dreams to bits =P

I'm self employed and average people consider me to have a lot of money but 650'000$ is out of my range.

I have minor programming experience but I am so bored of programming I'll never do it again, and that is also why I don't try to get any better at it. It's not my calling. But I do know about 100x more about game design than the average person, which is still only about 1/10th of what programmer's of WoW/etc's quality would know. Although I think WoW sucks, but only in concept, the programming I'm sure is fine. But your talking to a person who thinks the concepts of all existing MMOs suck, but that of course is not the programmer's fault since they are not responsible for the concept, only carrying it out.

I thought what I described was a very low end MMO requiring about 0.3% of the work put into WoW. But if what you say is true, I must be mistaken.

Looking forward to hearing more input from this forum's users.

I dont have hard numbers on this, but Ive read estimates others have made. Hodgman's price of $250k is a possibility, certainly there could be an engine available for this much, Ive heard numbers of around 300k for quake 3 back years ago, more recently around 750k for something like unreal 2/2.5, taking a guess probably closer to 1 million for unreal 3. Another Ive heard of also went for around the 1 million mark, most of these are full blown engines with tool suites, which may still require work to get something never done before out of it.
To build an engine along these lines could easily take more then 1 year, in short, a lot of money.

I don't think a game engine is a problem as there is free alternatives
The problem I see is the network code witch would probably be hell for something like Darkfall's combat as well as bandwidth costs
You could probably use some already existent mmorpg project as base like ryzom's nel http://dev.ryzom.com/
It really is the content that is the bigger problem
Also looking at your design I don't see anything that sets you apart from the rest of the MMORPG's
From what I see it just looks like a Darkfall clone
Even Mortal Online puts up a better fight than this
Not to mention in your case its harder to ballance