Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Interview

Thirteen1 is offering up an interview with Funcom’s Jørgen Tharaldsen about various topics related to both Age of Conan and Anarchy Online.
You mentioned the capital gained for Conan was in the region of 80m dollars, how much of that has been spent so far?

Well we haven’t spent it all yet that’s for sure, we still have some of it left for marketing, and for further work on both Conan & Anarchy, which is still going very well considering it is now 7 years old, which still looks great and will also hopefully continue for many years to come.

Do you have a ball park figure for the cost of the game?

No, but what we have said if your going to make this game its starts at around $20 million, that’s what you need and have to have and then it goes up to $50 million. I think you will find that the Conan project has landed nicely somewhere in the middle, but you also have to think that we started our engine and our technology development in 1995. That engine alone is a $20 million investment which has of course been used in both Anarchy & Age of Conan. Its pretty much the foundation of what we do, so you can look at this in different ways but its not always about the budget, I think its more the people behind the project, money really doesn’t matter in online games industry in the long run. It matters in terms of hiring more staff but at the end of the day you need the smart guy to understand the system so it doesn’t run wild with everything you can do because its so easy.