Ultima Online cost only 5-6 million

So I've heard a lot of people compare Shroud of the Avatar to Ultima Online and someone seems to always mention how Shroud of the Avatar doesn't have the resources of a huge company like EA behind it when trying to explain the reason for differences in the various comparison points such as the dual-scale world vs. the seamless open world and many other points as well which I won't get into here.

Well, let's set the record straight.

The history of UO is storied. It was originally a project codenamed Multima. For years, both fans and developers of Ultima discussed what it would be like to play a multiplayer Ultima. Finally, after years of talking about it, Garriot and company set about to create a prototype with the U6 engine and were able to successfully prove the concept with a playable demo.

Garriot then asked EA for funding for the project to continue several times. The amount he was able to obtain was a paltry sum of roughly $50k. EA was only convinced they'd sell about 30,000 copies over the lifetime of the product, so they were unwilling to risk any further money than that.

Garriot and company then proceeded to create the UO pre-alpha. They opened up the pre-alpha test to the public back in 1995. In my signature, you can see a screenshot of the UO pre-alpha. Pre-alpha UO was an amazing experience at the time. Even though it was a very small map and there was minimal gameplay, everyone could see the enormous potential it had. There were only a small handful of us that ever participated in this test.



Garriot and company then set about to develop the alpha version of UO throughout the rest of 1995-96. It was never made available to the public, but during this time Origin began publishing more and more information about the game. On the game's official website, there was a FAQ that clearly articulated the vision of what UO was to become. This FAQ described an incredible game which made all of our imaginations run wild about the possibilities of inhabiting a living, breathing world with thousands of other players. To this day I still have a printed copy of this FAQ which has long since faded out.

On this website was also a solicitation to join the UO beta by sending in $5 to Origin.

Roughly 50,000 players sent in $5, raising about $250,000. The amazing thing is, this happened at a time when crowdfunding had never been heard of and the internet was still in its infancy.

It was then that Garriot was able to convince EA that the project was worthy of funding further.

Development continued and eventually, in mid 1997, the UO beta phase 1 began with a limited block of player invites. Later, phase 2 opened and they let in even more players.

By the end of 1997, UO had released to the public.

In total, UO cost $5-6 million to develop, as per Richard Garriot. His thinking--at least at the time of the article I am about to quote--is that's what Shroud of the Avatar will cost as well.

All told, Shroud will probably cost around $5 million. "That's probably where we'll be. Something to the order of $5 million - plus or minus $2 million, who knows?" That, incidentally, is how much Ultima Online cost to make ($5-6 million). "Tabula Rasa," he said, "was $10-20 million, something around there."[1]

So, hopefully that puts to rest any additional comments comparing the budgets/resources of UO to SotA. We can now compare apples to apples here.

References

1. Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar: What's the big idea?

 

The value of the dollar is significantly lower now than it was in 1997. That should be taken into account.

 

Unfortunately, even if that's true, it tells us little. Because "develop" is a tiny fraction of the picture. Possibly their plan is to build something, then get some publisher to come in and do marketing, sales, and distribution. Then get someone to to hosting and support, etc.

I don't know enough about the game industry. Certainly there are groups who build games and then work with people like NCSoft or EA to do the heavy lifting.

 

Nowhere near enough to account for the difference. And the biggest cost in these types of projects is personnel, followed by software licensing. The inflation that has occurred is mostly in the price of goods. Salaries have not kept pace with inflation. Software is also much cheaper to license now. Many goods like computer hardware are also actually cheaper today than in the 90's.

Also, technology has improved, enabling us to develop things much faster and cheaper than ever before. An entire game engine did not have to be made from scratch, for instance.

I would argue a game like UO would cost even less today, even with inflation.

 

We're going to have significantly less functionality than UO, that should also be taken into account. The product we're producing may or may not be revolutionary but the way we're getting there is. I know that may not be comforting to those of us who are focused on the end product but it is one of the more interesting aspects of this journey to me.

 

Intriguing.

I'm curious as to what you consider will be missing from the initial release of SotA, as compared to the initial release of UO.

 

Well it is almost 20 years after the initial development of UO and I am sure the dollar will play some role. I've also read on several occasions that Garriot wasn't happy with the release of UO and wanted more time to polish things up. Long and short of it, it would shock the heck out of me if they could pull this off on the same budget as UO. Awesome if I am wrong... but... I am never wrong

mittens

 

No reason to guess.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

 

The rate of inflation doesn't apply here directly one-to-one since we're not talking about costs tightly bound to the inflation rate. In math, we usually ignore terms that cancel each other out for the purposes of making a rough comparison or estimation. There are factors that roughly cancel out inflation as a factor as I mentioned in post #4.

 

Just to see what the difference would be, I Googled for "inflation calculators" and hit up a few of the results, supplying $5,000,000 as the initial value and 1997 as the initial date.

According to this privately-developed (US-based) calculator, the 2013 value would be $7,209,712.

According to the Bank of Canada, the 2014 value would be $6,940,133.

According to the US Inflation Calculator website, the 2014 value would be $7,411,214.

And according to the US BLS, the 2014 value would be $7,385,420.

Let's discard the Canadian statistic; I really only included it for novelty, and because I'm Canadian myself. The average of the US results is about $7,335,448, or roughly 1.46 times the initial value. That's a pretty significant increase...and would probably be considered a bit on the low side for an MMORPG today (Googling around some more, I see the figure of $10,000,000 tossed around a lot as the "average" modern MMORPG budget, although obviously there's a ton of variability in that respect depending on the size of the team working on the game, the scope of the game and the amount of content that needs to be developed for it, and the "bells and whistles" that get thrown in - voice acting accounts for a huge portion of SWTOR's Titanic-like budget, for example).

This is an interesting analysis of base development costs for an MMO.

As well, this data about median household income is also interesting to consider. In 1997, MHI was $36,210 (equivalent to $52,784 in 2014). In 2012, MHI was $50,099 ($51,017 in 2014). So there's been a bit of a decline there, but not a particularly huge one overall. Salaries haven't kept pace with inflation; this is true...but in the average case, the overall impact is smaller than one might expect. And the strict numerical value is, of course, higher.

So could UO be made for less today than it was sixteen years ago? I'm skeptical, even allowing for advances in technology and development tools since that time. Especially if we extrapolate the context of its development forward as well.

UO grew organically out of the Ultima series; it was prototyped using Ultima 6, and the release version is a very logical evolution of both Ultima 7 and Ultima 8. If we assume that this took place sixteen years after it did, we should probably extrapolate the single-player series forward another sixteen years as well...which would mean that it would have been an offshoot of an RPG series that had made the jump to immersive 3D gameplay over a decade beforehand.

I mean, okay, yes, an exact clone of UO could probably be made for less now than the original cost in 1997...but the expectations of the gaming community have kept pace with advances in game technology, for the most part. Were it being made today, UO would have a very different visual aesthetic, would be in 3D instead of 2D, would likely use at least some voice acting...there'd be a lot of things about it that would be different, and it would probably be more expensive overall. Probably, it would cost more than $7,335,448, too.

 

I just have to address this particular point. What you should be comparing is median salaries within the industry over time, not household income. Household income reflects the entire household and covers other industries. There are other contributing factors in those statistics such as the rise of the dual income household.

Globalization and outsourcing has disproportionately affected the technology sector, including the games industry. There is also a greater supply of talent now. Salaries have stagnated for years.

The generalized statistic of median household income is not a good measure of the rise in the true cost increase of labor, if there even is any to talk about.

I would still suggest it's possible to create games cheaper today than in the 1990's, for a variety of factors. Why do you think we are in the midst of an indie revolution, and development teams have shrank while the scale of projects has grown?

 

I have no inside information on salaries, but looking at the age and experience of several people on the team, and assuming salary commensurate with experience, many of the Devs are getting paid considerably more than they were in the mid '90s, discounting any inflation. I also suspect that this experience is partially responsible for the shorter development time. While these 2 factors may cancel each other out, it does add an additional variable to consider.

 

Good post.

One more difference that I see is planning. It stated Richard and his team were planning UO for years and Sota I believe was only concepted the year before the kickstarter.

Then there is the Unity topic, which likely will reduce costs and the same time make the seamless world far less likely - a huge downside that probably outweighs the benefits.

Many variables but I agree the differences are roughly on the same level - give or take 2 million sounds about right.

Now if they could only utilize more of the hundreds of dev+ volunteers to make up some more ground.

 

That's a trickier one to pin down, because it's difficult to find statistics on developer salaries that go as far back as 1997.

This Gamasutra article discusses average gaming industry salaries for 2006 (and mentions the 2005 average as well); this one discusses them for 2012. So we can do a small snapshot comparison, the results of which are actually kind of interesting:

Comparing the 2006 average salary to the 2012 average salary, game developers actually beat inflation slightly ($73,316 in 2006 is worth about $83,496 in 2012; the 2012 salary average was $84,337).

Comparing the 2005 average salary to the 2012 average salary, game developers didn't beat inflation, and in fact lost a fair bit of ground thereto ($75,039 in 2006 is worth about $$88,215 in 2012; the 2012 salary average was $84,337).

Oooh, I just found 2001 results! This makes it even more interesting.

Comparing the 2001 average salary to the 2012 average salary...game developers beat inflation again ($61,448 in 2001 is worth about $79,706 in 2012; the 2012 salary average was $84,337).

All inflation calculations from here, by the way. Though the results don't vary dramatically if I use any of the other calculators I linked to before.

So what can we conclude from all this? I'm honestly not sure...save to say that I wouldn't rely on game developer salary and its adjustments for inflation to bolster your argument. Overall, it would seem that the industry bucks the trend, slightly, of its workers losing ground to inflation year after year. Overall, I think this portion of my point continues to stand.

 

The Gamasutra statistics reflect averages which include a variety of job functions including programmers and especially veteran programmers which are mostly responsible for the growth in salaries and the average beating inflation. First of all, less programmers than ever are needed to create games today than in the 1990's. Artists and various types of designers now make up a larger proportion of teams.

The statistics are also limited to the United States. Many developers now take advantage of globalization and outsourcing to stretch their budgets even further.

Notice the following quote as well:

"Indies still struggling. Despite the fact that indie devs are receiving more attention than ever before, the average indie still isn't very well-compensated; individual indie developers averaged $23,130 (down $420 from 2011), and members of indie teams averaged $19,487."

 

I would tend to agree with you. I imagine SotA's labor costs are pretty high for that and other reasons. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Here's where I can't agree. I've not seen the benefit myself.

 

True, the stats reflect averages...most such stats do. And yes, if we keep moving the goalposts enough we'll eventually find the point at which the calculations and the averages break down.

Comparing to indies is a bit disingenuous since UO wasn't made by an indie studio, and it's worth noting too that the indie dev averages are probably getting pulled down by the (very cutthroat!) mobile market.

Equally, globalization of development is...more the province of big publishers rather than small, plucky studios. Cloud Imperium Games is really bucking the indie trend by having offices in...four cities, I think, in three different countries. But Star Citizen is also the most well-funded crowdfunded project of all time, so...kind of an edge case.

And again, while I concede that the technology has improved, I note that the expectations of the audience have kept pace with those improvements. So yes, you could make a clone of UO today for (probably) cheaper than the original game cost. But you couldn't, I don't think, make a modern UO-like groundbreaker/genre-definer for less than UO originally cost, even adjusting for inflation.

UO brought the best that single player RPGs were offering players into a multiplayer context. In 1997, that meant Ultima 7 and Ultima 8. These days, it would mean Skyrim and Dragon Age...or it would mean Ultima XV, in whatever form that might hypothetically have taken. Either way...$7.4 million would be the EXTREME FLOOR of the development costs to make an MMO out of games like that. Even $10 million seems like an absurdly low-ball estimate, really.

 

Totally agree, which is why I posted it.

The difference in actual invested money doesn't really amount to much.

So, with that pretty much eliminated (and even if anyone wants to argue about that single point, RG had already given this project much more money from his personal coffers prior to the KS, which is gestimated to overshadow even the 7.2 mil number), the only thing remaining is technology.

Given that they are some of the very champions of being able to do MORE with LESS team members leveraging tech platforms like Unity, this game, for even its current 4.5 million dollar level, should easily surpass UO in terms of achieved game goals.

This is why I have repeatedly said stop catering to making more stuff via feature creep or forum creep pressure, and just make the game as was pitched in the original KS for the pile of cash they have on hand.

It should be, by all accounts, entirely achievable, especially given the experience of the team leadership.

Where I feel it is falling down is in the production planning side because of all the stop-starts when bending to the user base.

You can make a game/software/car/house/etc..., with community feedback and involvement, without literally burning down one bridge of some material to make another one of some other material in the exact same spot!

Exactly this, and the single most thing I have burned into almost every forum message I have started.

All it takes is communication and planning beforehand.

 

Small indie developers take advantage of it as well.

Here's just one example:

 

You'll note that my wording was that it was a phenomenon that was "more the province" of big publishers. By that wording choice, I did in fact acknowledge that some indies also use it, but also suggested that such cases may be an exception rather than a rule*. Though I'll concede that things like the Unity Asset Store really blur the lines there.

(* Whereas one naturally expects that...say...Ubisoft will have a thousand developers in a bunch of offices worldwide working on the next Assassin's Creed game.)

And again, I don't think this changes or disproves the point that it's highly improbable that you could make a game as key and as influential as UO today for the same (or inflation-adjusted) cost as the original UO.