I went with "Under the right circumstances" although I'm leaning more towards no.
Even if they could find enough skilled volunteers it's going to be almost impossible to coordinate them into forming an effective team. City of Titans was (is?) doing this, and their progress has been incredibly slow.
Of the Indie MMOs we haven't seen much yet, since they are still in production, and likely to stay that way for the next couple of years. If one of them manages to do a good job I imagine we'll see more successful (and higher budget) Kickstarter campaigns in the future.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
no, it's not possible....at least not one that is "full featured" in comparison to recent mmo's. the amount of content AND features some of these new mmo's have right from the start is kind of crazy.
also, to the people that reference EQ.......if EQ launched today in the same state it did back in 1999, it would be considered a fail launch.
We've all seen them, new indie MMORPG's being started via Kickstarters or what not, looking for smaller amounts of money such as $1M or even less. (not talking about SC, which is an anomaly in the indie model)
Yet the vision is to deliver a set of MMORPG features that would rival any of the early titles (EQ, UO, DAOC, AC1 etc) yet promise to do so with a fraction of the money even the early titles had access to, much less the AAA titles that had anywhere from $50M-250M depending on what you believe.
We're told they'll accomplish this with volunteer labor, greater efficiency, magic pixie dust or whatever, but I really question whether this is in the realm of possibility. We hear new terms like Crowdforging to help accomplish the task, and everyone is going to start like EVE did 12 years ago, and release small "base" feature game and build from there. (however some want to start charging fees in alpha, which EVE didn't do)
I realize there's been some good games made at low budget, such as Wasteland 2 and others, but their scope isn't anywhere near what a MMORPG can be. So outside of creating a subset of the genre, such as Camelot Unchained is doing with their smaller budget, I question that a full featured PVE/PVP title can be delivered.
So a quick poll to see what others think:
If you look back to even the early days of usenet, there were people trying to get what we today call open source game projects going. History on those demonstrates little success.
Now imagine trying to do that with something more complicated and code intensive as an mmorpg. Don't bet your money on it.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
Really depends on what you mean by "Full Featured".
A lot of SWTOR's inflated budget when to voice actors - VOs aren't cheap.
Graphics aren't cheap either - there's the artists, the modelers, mocap (if you use that), animators, the engine itself (it has a good bit of cost regardless of if you license a third party or develop one in house), and probably a half dozen other costs I haven't even touched on.
Then there's customer/tech support. There's marketing and publishing. And programmers, and web team, and IT (which is not the same at all as programmers), and some admin overhead (someone has to write the paychecks and pay the taxes), and a director.
And the more "in-game" features you add (Crafting/PvP/Sandbox/PVE/Raids/etc) - you either have to add more time, or more people, or both, to the project - and all of those resources have costs
Could you make "an MMO" for low budget - yes. Original MUDS were pretty darn low budget. But every feature adds cost, and some are more expensive than others.
Depends very much on what full featured means by your definition. I beleive it is possible to save a huge amount on stuff that are not specificly game features, and instead focus on fewer but re-usable game mechanics/design. For example you don't need 200 hours of story line with cut scenes, voice over and fancy cinematics; you don't need to make a visually flashy fluid action combat system with perfect animations; you don't need to spend as much on artwork..and so on.
1mil $ nah, but as we near 10m my guess is it's becomming possible to create a good game. Also a game that shows promise and starts to get players, becomes much more attractive for further investment, or a good game can even make enough profit to support its own expansion.
It is atleast proven many times over the last 10 years, that a huge budget does not equal a successful game.. And some low budget games have had much success because the creators focused on great gameplay.
But even cutting artwork I think you would need atleast 20 man-years of designer work alone. A 3 person team no matter how dedicated and skilled just wont have enough hours to create a "full featured" game in my opinion.. A wild guess is that it would take small company of 10+ skilled people 4-5 years to get a good game going (not to mention very importantly..luck, good game design and bsuiness decision).
If it were easy to do everything you wanted on a small budget, why would anyone ever use a large budget?
There are obvious advantages to making high quality games on small budgets, so if it were easy to do, we'd have tons of such games available. I'm not saying it's impossible; there have been small budget games that I liked. But I am saying that there's no simple formula to do it.
That applies to outsourcing, too. If it were easy to get the same quality of game for half the cost by outsourcing it to foreigners who live in poorer countries, lots of companies would do so. Outsourcing brings a lot of language and cultural barriers such that what the workers in poorer countries think they're supposed to do doesn't necessarily match what the management in wealthier countries thinks the workers are supposed to do. There are some things where outsourcing does work well. But I'm not aware of any game studio that has had much success with outsourcing large swaths of game development to poorer countries.
Here's an idea... I know it's rocket science and all... but how about just buying games that are actually released instead of concepts? I mean really... how did we ever survive as kids back in the day having nothing but off-the-shelf games to play?
I don't recall anyone pining over some Atari game years in advance of it's release, hell, if it wasn't purchasable/playable it didn't exist!
Today we're like focused on games not even due to release for years and then wonder why when release day comes we're not even interested in them... but some other game still yet to be released some years down the road!
Stupidity breeds stupidity... and we got a heap of stupidity going on here.
Like the old saying goes, you can't make a touchdown before you've even have the ball.
It's kinda like saying, "I want a cheap car with all the extras."
Actually it would be possible if game makers lobbied their governments for federal assistants and got grants to pay for it all. Then the tax payers would foot the bill like we do for sugar and corn in the US, allowing the manufacturers to pocket all that money.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Depending what "fully featured" means, with an experienced expert team... maybe. IF the game was original enough to set itself apart from competition. And it would almost certainly have to be a little light on the content.
For everyone else? -Not really.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
If it were easy to do everything you wanted on a small budget, why would anyone ever use a large budget?
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It's absolutely possible, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Many of the older games are still around in one fashion or another, but comparatively few people actually play them still. The one exception being Lineage, which has an insanely large following for how old the game is.
That said, even if you pulled it off, to many gamers it still wouldn't be enough. What constitutes a 'full featured MMORPG' to today's gamer is vastly more than what did back during the inception of MMOs. Many of the features those older games have now were added over time. In the past a lot of MMOs had little more than an open world populated by players and NPCs (mobs), which a few flavor quests sprinkled in here and there and maybe some boss mobs. Anything above that was a bonus. People mostly camped mobs and grinded for exp.
That doesn't really fly anymore. So indie games actually have to do a lot more than what the original MMOs did, indeed ALL new MMOs have to rise above what once was. You can look at some of them (Pathfinder, Chamelot Unchained, Crowfall, etc.) to see that they are trying to deliver the base game+. Adding new features and essentially re-inventing the old.
I'm going to go with 'No' unless a huge army of independently wealthy and capable volunteers shows up.
People should look at the numbers in terms of how many employees it can hire.
$1M buys you 4 employees at $50,000 per year for 5 years. Of course this doesn't take into account other expenses, but it's a quick way to look at a big number and conceptually understand what it can really do.
So the question then becomes, can 4 people create a high quality (or is acceptable a better word?) full featured MMO given 5 years? Star Citizen, for reference, has had up to 300 employees.
Let's look at SWTOR, which is for all intents and purposes a pretty average Themepark; from EA themselves:
30 Production
75 Designers
80 Engineers
40 Platform
10 Localization
10 Audio
140 Artists (Both internal and outsourced)
280 QA (Both internal and outsourced)
Who could we cut here? Let's straight off cut localization and consider the game to only release in English speaking countries. -10. Cut out the QA, it's indie, there will be bugs -280. Let's cut production too, it will be a shared responsibility -30. Platform will also be shared -40. And lastly, let's go ahead and cut audio we won't need the voice overs and orchestral music, we'll just buy assets -10.
75 Designers
80 Engineers
140 Artists
Hmmm, still no where close to 4. I think it's an impossible task, one that people happily gloss over when they read the feature list of some kickstarter campaign. Maybe we should ask, what is the minimum amount it would take to have a respectable product after 5 years of development? Maybe it's $10M, scale it up to 40 staff @ $50k for 5 years and offer them a part of the company.
Even Crowfall with it's $2M and very scaled down "MMO" concept is going to have a tough time imo, but at least they promised something much more compact than a full MMO.
While your point is dead on, I think your numbers are a bit off. You aren't getting much in the way of talent for $50k/year. You also wouldn't expect to take 5 years to build a solid game either. And lastly, $1M isn't even close to what the games you mention cost, even in the past, nor is $1M a "low cost" option when compared to the $100-200M budgets of today's MMOs. Even $10M would be WAY low budget.
So I think it looks more like this: $100k per head per year (ave of 80-120k), with 30 people on the game for 3 years and you're around $10M factoring in costs for equipment, rent, etc. With THAT? Yeah, I think you could build a solid game.
If it were easy to do everything you wanted on a small budget, why would anyone ever use a large budget?
Gets my vote for "greatest fucking concert video" ever!
Oh yeah and his point is: Pure energy by the band and minimal production values still produce the most kick ass concert on film.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Originally posted by Scot Yes they are, as long as you are happy to have low budget graphics.
I think this is the most succinct and accurate answer.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It is absolutely possible but requires some very specific formula to work.
First, you need 3-5 talented and highly motivated people who have deep experience and connections in the game industry, excellent skills, and great chemistry working with each other, who also see the game as their dream project. This team forms the lead designers of the game. Each of these persons has saved some money from previous jobs and invests it in the project. Let's say that each of them invests $50,000. With 3-5 people that's a total pool of $150,000-$250,000.
Before the team gets together like this, they have already spent a year or two carefully planning each and every aspect and feature of the game to save costs in the future. They did this planning during their free time while working for other companies. To make a competitive full-featured MMORPG on a low budget they plan to make the game in many "modules". The plan is to assemble the modules into a full-featured MMORPG during final stages of development. Another important factor is to make the game sufficiently different from high-budget mainstream MMORPGs because otherwise the project is doomed to fail.
After planning and getting together, before full production, they choose a game engine such as CryEngine 3 or Unreal Engine 4. Let's say they choose Unreal Engine 4. For Unreal Engine 4 they don't have to pay anything and if they are lucky, they could even get a +$50,000 grant from Epic Games. Unreal 4 is licensed so that game developers pay a certain royalty only after a game is complete and starts bringing revenue to a gaming company.
Next, the team buys initial graphic assets necessary to complete the first module of the game. Contrary to popular belief, highly-detailed modern graphics are cheap these days. At Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace you can see the prices of models, objects, textures, animations and other assets that game developers buy from different workshop companies. The team either uses their former connections in the game industry or contacts a few workshop companies to order assets tailored specifically for their game.
While the team is acquiring necessary assets to complete the first module of the game, they also hire 3-5 employees to help create the module. These additional staff members are young professionals who don't have much work experience yet but who work at much lower salaries than more experienced workers. The salaries and assets are payed from the initial money pool. Now there are 3-5 dedicated lead designers supervising 3-5 employees making the first module, while the lead designers also use their leisure time to design features past the first module. The money pool of $150,000-$250,000 sustains full production of the first game module and pre-production of many features beyond it for at least 6-12 months.
After the first module of the game is complete, the team either launches crowdfunding or a shop selling game assets or game preorders to players for real money. Initial publicity is gained through interviews and previews made by gaming press. This is a make-or-break stage for the project. If the project is promising and enough gamers throw their money at the game at this point, then production proceeds forward and maybe some day turns into a full-featured MMORPG.
If it were easy to do everything you wanted on a small budget, why would anyone ever use a large budget?
Gets my vote for "greatest fucking concert video" ever!
Oh yeah and his point is: Pure energy by the band and minimal production values still produce the most kick ass concert on film.
The director was not a slouch, and the tech team did a great job. Wasn't like it just had Joe's cousin shooting on phone. Think I read it cost them a million and a quarter to shoot.
But yeah, one of the best concert films ever. Got to see them that tour, most excellent!
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Some really high-budget games have produced massive duds.
By our standards, that is.
I'd say for this audience (the one on this forum), taken as a whole...no, it isn't possible.
Many of them still pine in devotion for the One True Old Game to which no other game can or will ever favorably compare. Regardless of budget size or specific "holy" developers involvement...
Comments
I went with "Under the right circumstances" although I'm leaning more towards no.
Even if they could find enough skilled volunteers it's going to be almost impossible to coordinate them into forming an effective team. City of Titans was (is?) doing this, and their progress has been incredibly slow.
Of the Indie MMOs we haven't seen much yet, since they are still in production, and likely to stay that way for the next couple of years. If one of them manages to do a good job I imagine we'll see more successful (and higher budget) Kickstarter campaigns in the future.
My SWTOR referral link for those wanting to give the game a try. (Newbies get a welcome package while returning players get a few account upgrades to help with their preferred status.)
https://www.ashesofcreation.com/ref/Callaron/
no, it's not possible....at least not one that is "full featured" in comparison to recent mmo's. the amount of content AND features some of these new mmo's have right from the start is kind of crazy.
also, to the people that reference EQ.......if EQ launched today in the same state it did back in 1999, it would be considered a fail launch.
standards are way higher these days.
If you look back to even the early days of usenet, there were people trying to get what we today call open source game projects going. History on those demonstrates little success.
Now imagine trying to do that with something more complicated and code intensive as an mmorpg. Don't bet your money on it.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
DAoC was made on a 1 million dollar budget with a small team.
Passion and experience tend to matter more than budget. WoW is swimming in money and is still pretty feature lite for its age and budget.
Really depends on what you mean by "Full Featured".
A lot of SWTOR's inflated budget when to voice actors - VOs aren't cheap.
Graphics aren't cheap either - there's the artists, the modelers, mocap (if you use that), animators, the engine itself (it has a good bit of cost regardless of if you license a third party or develop one in house), and probably a half dozen other costs I haven't even touched on.
Then there's customer/tech support. There's marketing and publishing. And programmers, and web team, and IT (which is not the same at all as programmers), and some admin overhead (someone has to write the paychecks and pay the taxes), and a director.
And the more "in-game" features you add (Crafting/PvP/Sandbox/PVE/Raids/etc) - you either have to add more time, or more people, or both, to the project - and all of those resources have costs
Could you make "an MMO" for low budget - yes. Original MUDS were pretty darn low budget. But every feature adds cost, and some are more expensive than others.
Depends very much on what full featured means by your definition. I beleive it is possible to save a huge amount on stuff that are not specificly game features, and instead focus on fewer but re-usable game mechanics/design. For example you don't need 200 hours of story line with cut scenes, voice over and fancy cinematics; you don't need to make a visually flashy fluid action combat system with perfect animations; you don't need to spend as much on artwork..and so on.
1mil $ nah, but as we near 10m my guess is it's becomming possible to create a good game. Also a game that shows promise and starts to get players, becomes much more attractive for further investment, or a good game can even make enough profit to support its own expansion.
It is atleast proven many times over the last 10 years, that a huge budget does not equal a successful game.. And some low budget games have had much success because the creators focused on great gameplay.
But even cutting artwork I think you would need atleast 20 man-years of designer work alone. A 3 person team no matter how dedicated and skilled just wont have enough hours to create a "full featured" game in my opinion.. A wild guess is that it would take small company of 10+ skilled people 4-5 years to get a good game going (not to mention very importantly..luck, good game design and bsuiness decision).
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
If it were easy to do everything you wanted on a small budget, why would anyone ever use a large budget?
There are obvious advantages to making high quality games on small budgets, so if it were easy to do, we'd have tons of such games available. I'm not saying it's impossible; there have been small budget games that I liked. But I am saying that there's no simple formula to do it.
That applies to outsourcing, too. If it were easy to get the same quality of game for half the cost by outsourcing it to foreigners who live in poorer countries, lots of companies would do so. Outsourcing brings a lot of language and cultural barriers such that what the workers in poorer countries think they're supposed to do doesn't necessarily match what the management in wealthier countries thinks the workers are supposed to do. There are some things where outsourcing does work well. But I'm not aware of any game studio that has had much success with outsourcing large swaths of game development to poorer countries.
Here's an idea... I know it's rocket science and all... but how about just buying games that are actually released instead of concepts? I mean really... how did we ever survive as kids back in the day having nothing but off-the-shelf games to play?
I don't recall anyone pining over some Atari game years in advance of it's release, hell, if it wasn't purchasable/playable it didn't exist!
Today we're like focused on games not even due to release for years and then wonder why when release day comes we're not even interested in them... but some other game still yet to be released some years down the road!
Stupidity breeds stupidity... and we got a heap of stupidity going on here.
Like the old saying goes, you can't make a touchdown before you've even have the ball.
It's kinda like saying, "I want a cheap car with all the extras."
Actually it would be possible if game makers lobbied their governments for federal assistants and got grants to pay for it all. Then the tax payers would foot the bill like we do for sugar and corn in the US, allowing the manufacturers to pocket all that money.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
No fate but what we make, so make me a ham sandwich please.
Depending what "fully featured" means, with an experienced expert team... maybe. IF the game was original enough to set itself apart from competition. And it would almost certainly have to be a little light on the content.
For everyone else? -Not really.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It's absolutely possible, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Many of the older games are still around in one fashion or another, but comparatively few people actually play them still. The one exception being Lineage, which has an insanely large following for how old the game is.
That said, even if you pulled it off, to many gamers it still wouldn't be enough. What constitutes a 'full featured MMORPG' to today's gamer is vastly more than what did back during the inception of MMOs. Many of the features those older games have now were added over time. In the past a lot of MMOs had little more than an open world populated by players and NPCs (mobs), which a few flavor quests sprinkled in here and there and maybe some boss mobs. Anything above that was a bonus. People mostly camped mobs and grinded for exp.
That doesn't really fly anymore. So indie games actually have to do a lot more than what the original MMOs did, indeed ALL new MMOs have to rise above what once was. You can look at some of them (Pathfinder, Chamelot Unchained, Crowfall, etc.) to see that they are trying to deliver the base game+. Adding new features and essentially re-inventing the old.
While your point is dead on, I think your numbers are a bit off. You aren't getting much in the way of talent for $50k/year. You also wouldn't expect to take 5 years to build a solid game either. And lastly, $1M isn't even close to what the games you mention cost, even in the past, nor is $1M a "low cost" option when compared to the $100-200M budgets of today's MMOs. Even $10M would be WAY low budget.
So I think it looks more like this: $100k per head per year (ave of 80-120k), with 30 people on the game for 3 years and you're around $10M factoring in costs for equipment, rent, etc. With THAT? Yeah, I think you could build a solid game.
Not according to Wiki (wikipedia.org). It was made for about $2.5M - 18 months, 25 developers.
Gets my vote for "greatest fucking concert video" ever!
Oh yeah and his point is: Pure energy by the band and minimal production values still produce the most kick ass concert on film.
FFA Nonconsentual Full Loot PvP ...You know you want it!!
I voted: "Under the right circumstances."
Voice over work is very expensive and marketing can be. With some Kickstarter games, you do have some with volunteers working on the project.
Now, were the question about a low budget, full featured MMO released in a "timely manner", I'd have to say not likely.
Isn't it like any budget? You know what you have to work with. If the desire is there, you make it work and plan accordingly.
VG
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I think this is the most succinct and accurate answer.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
It is absolutely possible but requires some very specific formula to work.
First, you need 3-5 talented and highly motivated people who have deep experience and connections in the game industry, excellent skills, and great chemistry working with each other, who also see the game as their dream project. This team forms the lead designers of the game. Each of these persons has saved some money from previous jobs and invests it in the project. Let's say that each of them invests $50,000. With 3-5 people that's a total pool of $150,000-$250,000.
Before the team gets together like this, they have already spent a year or two carefully planning each and every aspect and feature of the game to save costs in the future. They did this planning during their free time while working for other companies. To make a competitive full-featured MMORPG on a low budget they plan to make the game in many "modules". The plan is to assemble the modules into a full-featured MMORPG during final stages of development. Another important factor is to make the game sufficiently different from high-budget mainstream MMORPGs because otherwise the project is doomed to fail.
After planning and getting together, before full production, they choose a game engine such as CryEngine 3 or Unreal Engine 4. Let's say they choose Unreal Engine 4. For Unreal Engine 4 they don't have to pay anything and if they are lucky, they could even get a +$50,000 grant from Epic Games. Unreal 4 is licensed so that game developers pay a certain royalty only after a game is complete and starts bringing revenue to a gaming company.
Next, the team buys initial graphic assets necessary to complete the first module of the game. Contrary to popular belief, highly-detailed modern graphics are cheap these days. At Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace you can see the prices of models, objects, textures, animations and other assets that game developers buy from different workshop companies. The team either uses their former connections in the game industry or contacts a few workshop companies to order assets tailored specifically for their game.
While the team is acquiring necessary assets to complete the first module of the game, they also hire 3-5 employees to help create the module. These additional staff members are young professionals who don't have much work experience yet but who work at much lower salaries than more experienced workers. The salaries and assets are payed from the initial money pool. Now there are 3-5 dedicated lead designers supervising 3-5 employees making the first module, while the lead designers also use their leisure time to design features past the first module. The money pool of $150,000-$250,000 sustains full production of the first game module and pre-production of many features beyond it for at least 6-12 months.
After the first module of the game is complete, the team either launches crowdfunding or a shop selling game assets or game preorders to players for real money. Initial publicity is gained through interviews and previews made by gaming press. This is a make-or-break stage for the project. If the project is promising and enough gamers throw their money at the game at this point, then production proceeds forward and maybe some day turns into a full-featured MMORPG.
* more info, screenshots and videos here
Possible... Yes.
Realistic... No
beyond that the person above said all i intended to say.
This have been a good conversation
The director was not a slouch, and the tech team did a great job. Wasn't like it just had Joe's cousin shooting on phone. Think I read it cost them a million and a quarter to shoot.
But yeah, one of the best concert films ever. Got to see them that tour, most excellent!
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
Some really high-budget games have produced massive duds.
By our standards, that is.
I'd say for this audience (the one on this forum), taken as a whole...no, it isn't possible.
Many of them still pine in devotion for the One True Old Game to which no other game can or will ever favorably compare. Regardless of budget size or specific "holy" developers involvement...
No, nothing will make them happy, ever.