[gameprogrammer] Re: 3D C++/DirectX programmer wanted

  • From: Kevin Jenkins <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 16:37:16 -0800

Bob Pendleton wrote: 

On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 22:12 -0800, Kevin Jenkins wrote:

An MMO isn't a small investment. You need top-notch programmers for one thing, which is a lost opportunity cost. I think even the smallest MMO would take two programmers a year full-time.

With 14 and 20 years of experience that's a lost opportunity cost of 2 X 200K a year = 400K. An artist with 4 years of experience is another 60K. Bandwidth is nothing in comparison but will run you about $1000 a month for a small game.


Where did the 14 year number come from?


The author made that claim in the original post. He said he had 20 years of experience, his partner had 14, and they had an artist with 4 years.

And where do you get $200K/year
for a programmer?

With that much experience you can get a base $150K salary in Orange County, California. Throw in the 401K, yearly bonuses, free lunches, health benefits, etc. and you're at $200K, especially if the company offers stock.

Of course most of that goes to rent but still :)

As for the rest of it, well there are half a dozen
programmers and engineers in my neighborhood who all have over 20 years
experience, most on the high side of 30 years experience, and not one of
them has been able to find a full time job in the last 4 years.

My company has about a dozen full-time job openings for programmers. If they are looking for a job and willing to relocate to CA I can give them a referal to the HR manager.


Highly experienced programmers are a glut on the market. No matter what
level of experience they have they can't get jobs. Many of them are
teaching math and science in local schools.

I haven't seen that where I live. On the contrary programmers are routinely hired away by other companies. Blizzard offered me a job a few months ago, and some other company did last Thursday. I got 2 contract offers in the last month. I haven't sent out a resume in over a year.

This is not to brag but to point out that there are jobs out there for those who need them.

Oh, yeah, about the bandwidth cost... if you design the game correctly
you can get the bandwidth cost down to near zero. But, you are right the
majority of server centric games does require major bandwidth
expenditures. OTOH, if the game is popular enough to need 1000/month in
bandwidth you can most likely make that back just with advertising. Not
to mention that I didn't see anything about the game being free to play.
I know a fellow who runs an MMO for $600/month for the servers and the
bandwidth and makes a living selling in game merchandise (no physical
reality) to players. Lives nicely and has for a long time.


The cheapest I've found is through Hypernia.

"$30/mbps is up to 30 mbps. 30-40+ commits are $25/mbps, 50+ commits are
$20/mbps."

There is also a monthly fee which I can't remember offhand. I do remember my own costs will be about $1000 a month.


One final comment. You may find it inconceivable that anyone would be
interested in something like this. So, it is unlikely that you would
ever be involved (especially if you are making $200K/year as a
programmer). But there are a lot of people would like to get involved.

Bob Pendleton

It's not that I don't think people would get involved, but that it doesn't make sense to get involved. If the author said they were selling the game at a monthly fee then I'd be all for it. But to do something on this scale as a freeware game is highly unlikely to succeed. Volunteers, if not the authors themselves, will probably quit as soon as they get a job offer or the initial novelty wears off.

Before I started in the game industry I got involved in one of these kinds of things and what I'm describing now is exactly what happened.

I think it's admirable that people will make freeware games to learn. But only when it's realistic. If they were making pac-man 3D I'd be supportive. But an MMO?


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