[...] hundred million dollars is more money than Blizzard put into the initial development of World of Warcraft.  Leaving WoW aside, a hundred million dollars is more than it cost to [...]

[...] video game, World of Warcraft. Yet, whereas World of Warcraft enjoyed a development budget of 60 million dollars over 5 years, Travian was programmed entirely by Gerhard Mueller — a 22 year old chemical [...]

[...] Among those with the surname MMORPG, Second Life and a very few others, have a distinct genetic code. This lack of genetic diversity among those bearing MMORPG surname presents cause for concern. At least one MMORPG-geneticist has commented that this might well contribute to the extinction of the MMORPG surname in the face of growing environmental pressures. [...]

[...] Yet there’s immersion breakers all over the place, like gold from wolves, or misspellings in Quest text, or the exact same sequence of requirements delivered in 20 different zones. People accept this stuff by the truckload though. It’s mostly just an indie/mass thing, something to keep in mind when deciding the sort of game you want to make and how many people you want to play it _________________Darniaq Verbosity unleashed [...]

Years ago my first job was with a wholesale company who’s main product was tobacco. The top cigarette seller at that time was Winstons, by far and away. When cigarette company reps came in and told us that in almost a year Marlboro would become the top seller and replace Winston, even telling us the exact month it would happen, we laughed. How could they know? We lauhged some more. It happened on the exact month they said it would. We didn’t laugh anymore. As I looked back I noticed that Marlboro had that very successful cowboy “Marlboro Man” add running full bore on TV, while Winston was almost completely lost in the advertising arena on TV.
And to think that cigarettes had added “flavor” in the way of extra nicotine, one has to wonder who’s brain child that was. It’s not hard to imagine marketing people involved in that too.

But it’s not like someone’s actually trying to kill us, ya know?

“Even selling as a digital download faces the same constraints, with virtual storefronts have the same space limitations and still needing advertisement.”

Barriers to entry between Brick and Morter store fronts and eCommerce sites are entirely different and unique most of the time, they used to be much more significant and disparate but over time and with the normalization taking place along with the increasing connectivity of the general populace (read, increased comfort level) these differances are diminishing. However there are still unique barriers which will always be present.
The upside of the electronic distribution of goods and services and the advertising of such is that measuring the effectivness and efficiancy of your product, presentation, and its distribution is about 99% more accurate. Little bits and bytes, even the connectivity of one consumer to a product, is easier to capture than say, watching people pass by, and go into a store in a mall (foot traffic count). Mainly because browsing through a storefront window creates no data points.

If my grandfather buys his penny loafers online, and they have caprutred basic data about him as well as his purchase guess what kind of targeted marketing AD he’s going to recieve in his email inbox next week? A targeted marketing AD that is now more often than not completely autogenerated based upon algorithims in a consumer database…

This is why the most efficient system of digital download for games moving forward will likely be not only be good at getting a game on someones system, but a very valuable tool indeed, should someone combine certain database/data mining principles with it. On the most basic level its not the “downloading” of data that is most valuable sometimes moving forward the “uploading” of data helps correct for (or rather disperse) peoples notions of what people like and why. Usually with 99% accuracy. Knowledge is power (and sometimes significant cash), and in this case (Games) the power to improve games, for game players, (or at least avoid making mistakes).

Question: Whats the typical set aside (%) in a game budget for Advertisement/Marketing? Im wondering if its similar to say, the movie industry (which has a fine tuned well oiled machine of a distribution system) or Book publishing.

“They’re ahead of the curve than most, if they can just find that sweet spot”

I said it before and I’ll say it again(and probably get horribly flamed and shamed again): Someone needs to make a Western Themed Gunslinger MMORPG, I’ll even give you the name and the first expansion: Wild West World: Quest for El Dorado…I dont mind if someone steals the idea, as long as they reserve the name “Clint Eastwood” for me on release hehe…just make sure theres no Elves. (bet you cuild fit in some goblins in the ruins of El Dorado though! (or even undead)

With that you bring up a great point. In addition to the other factors that converged for WoW, it should be noted that they did this almost from scratch. I don’t know they were able to use much of the Battle.net back end for WoW, nor how much of the ground-up work contributed to the far higher costs.

I suppose the biggest difference is that the barrier to entry has gotten much higher, much like the barrier to entry for OS’s is so incredibly high.

This is the part I don’t necessarily agree with.

Unlike OS’s, which have traditionally been acquired with the purchase of hardware (Linux does not thrive with the average consumer for example), MMORPGs are all voluntary purchases made after consideration. As such, the barriers that exist for such things would with or without WoW. There’s the resource contraints of delivery, planogram/limitations at retail, limits on advertising budget (getting the message out) and so on. Even selling as a digital download faces the same constraints, with virtual storefronts have the same space limitations and still needing advertisement.

WoW didn’t really change any of that. I’ve long felt it was the environment of consumerism and retail establishments that were the biggest barriers, for new games, whether AAA or indie (ie, a retail chain not wanting to list an item unless the company selling it planned to spend “enough” money selling it). Foot traffic or eye traffic, it’s sort of the same thing, both controlled by the dealer, not the provider.

It’s been pretty much this way for some time no? What was Underlight to EQ for example?

Probably the same sorts of ratios. In the end, a few companies always dominate a software category. I suppose the biggest difference is that the barrier to entry has gotten much higher, much like the barrier to entry for OS’s is so incredibly high. Right now there’s Windows, MacOS, and Linux. 10+ years ago there were some attempts at competition, with BeOS, not to mention variants of Unix from Sun and SGI (which still exist, but greatly diminished). Linux wasn’t terribly large 10 years ago either. In the 1980′s there were tens to hundreds of OSs… Commodore’s, TIs, DOS clones, etc.

Addendum to my last post: I expect that a company that already has a decent MMORPG or two under its belt will have a lower cost of entry since they won’t (a) take as long, and (b) waste as much money. SOE, for example, has a really solid engine in EQII, and could release a new MMORPG more quickly and efficiently than a brand new company with $100M in its coffers.

I wouldn’t try “doing WoW.” I would try doing something else where WoW isn’t, from a positioning perspective.

…and whats scary people will try to “do WoW” again and again…. so much money will go down the drain because current production model is absolutely incompatible with making small quick bets.

MikeRozak wrote: As Sir Bruce’s chart shows, 3 companies control 80%-90% of the market. The scraps are left to the 100+ smaller MMORPG companies. Don’t expect this trend to change any time soon.

It’s been pretty much this way for some time no? What was Underlight to EQ for example?