Now I am new (not too new) at game creation and development. For the past month I have done a massive amount of research and learn the basics of some programming language and gaming engines. This all leads up to what I am trying to make, A MMORPG.
Now before all the “you can do it in 15years/never make it” replies My plan is that me and my friends (sum of 12 people) have a great idea of a new style of MMORPG that combines elements of WoW/Monster Hunter/ Guild wars and a few aspects of other games with amazing storylines for innovative races and such.
Me and my friends (I’m lead) will make a GCD (Game Creation Document) of every single aspect of the game from the races starting cities to each classes skills.
Once that is completed I plan to use a game engine (Unity or Unreal development kit) to create a “demo” for this game that might be public of the starting races/cities few quests and level/combat. Then i plan on sending it to big game publishing/developers to see if they will absorb the idea and work out if they will buy it or give us resources or something.
If established companies will not “accept” the idea or it gets turned down for some reason I believe i will assemble a massive team of indie developers/designers and such to make this game happen.
So I ask before i start this whole process, is this idea feasible in any way? or is it fool-hard, i’m willing to take any harsh critisizm anyone might have.
Oh I do understand that, but we are making everything else. From how the cities look like (have a couple of GFX designers) and the damage of each class how they balance how everyone balances with each other. Quests completions, locations and all.
I do understand that actually APPLYING them will be much much harder and that’s why i will turn to a company to produce these things since they have the developers and resources for it. They might even have their own engine to use instead of reinventing the wheel.
I’d say go ahead and work on creating a detailed document especially if it will help you flesh out your ideas. Just don’t harbor any illusions that any publishers or game studios will be willing to accept your game idea unsolicited. The chances of this are basically zero. The reality is that ideas rarely have a ‘cash value’ associated with them when it comes to games. Implementations on the other hand can have value, and I think you are already aware of this because you are contemplating making a prototype yourself.
I think the idea of assembling an army of indie developers will be quite a difficult to pull off. You can probably find a number of projects that fit that description and the number of MMO’s they have produced is approximately zero. I think you would be better off trying to get a small core group of individuals together that possess the correct skills and produce a small working version of your game and go from there. I say this merely because getting a large group of individuals to agree and focus can be quite difficult, and the type of people you are likely to attract are probably exactly the same type of people that will resist being told what to do.
I won’t reiterate all that has been said on this subject, but if you search the forums you can find a great deal of solid warnings about the folly of trying to make an MMO, and you should take them to heart. All that said, I think is it more feasible than ever for a small group of developers to make large scale multiplayer online games.
Thanks for the quick replies! this community is great!
I understand and take to heart everything you say tigeba, People think it is an extremely long process but it can be shortened dramatically if you use a game engine (not that it’s easy still). So even when I make the demo (for public viewing maybe so that it might attract attention for higher tier game developers of some sort) and focus on getting everything done myself and my core team? or should I send the actual demo to publishing companies rather than the idea itself?
Well I think that if you have a dedicated enough team, why don’t you just make it yourself? Its incredibly hard to sell an idea to a publisher, even if you make a demo they might not take it. You could try creating a demo and selling it to them, no harm in trying. If no one takes it though, mind as well make it yourself.
I do agree with that. Starting to see the actual truth in what you guys are saying and searched up all the topics about MMORPG’s and seems like i am not the first (or last) to have this fool-hardy idea.
Well I am deciding to shift my focus on having a set team of 10 (and add quality developers as needed) and have this Game Design Document completely finished and while this project will indeed take a year to hopefully get the demo done I will keep the morale of the “team” alive by making small iphone/android games and small-scale FPS so we can look back and if this thing burns we can say we had fun making some things.
Thanks for all the help! I feel that this is a great community and gonna spend the next week reading/watching every single tutorial out there to familiarize myself because honestly Unity>UDK (unless your making a FPS) and hopefully I can see what kind of fun games we can make!
On thing Crunx - also, if you’re going to DO the MMO game, make sure the backend you create can handle it. Backend may not be the first thing your players see, but if it’s poorly built, it can kill your game before it gets off the ground.
As you can imagine, making an MMO is not the easiest thing to do. I think its great that you are planning everything out before you do anything. As you probably saw, most of those kids making an MMO had no plans at all. I would spend a couple months in the planning process if I was you. Also…what kills most MMO projects is budgets. During the planning period I would highly suggest you get some money, find investors, a publisher, or anything whatever because you will soon realize that getting servers running is not cheap. Good luck to you! I would like to see some screenshots of the game.
Exactly, you can have all the design docs you want about how things should play, but converting that into real code with a working back-end is far more complicated.
No matter how good you think your concept is now, later down the line in your career (Assuming you plan on becoming a game designer) you will look back and laugh wondering how you ever thought such a game would be a good idea. No offense intended, but thats just the way it is. Ask any designer on this forum and they will tell you, their first couple of games were crap.
You are not going to get the interest of a publisher with your idea, even if it was an absolutely perfect one. Publishers don’t care about ideas, they want an experienced team with a proven track record of releasing popular games. MMO’s NEED funding, and if you want to get it you and your team are going to need an impressive portfolio of a couple dozen games at least. Ideas are only as valuable as their execution, and as a amateur your execution will be just that, amateur.
Putting together “a massive team of indie developers/designers” to work pro-bono is even less likely. People seem to think that programmers and artists don’t have ideas of their own, but I assure you that anyone that has the know how to help you complete your project has a dozen of their own ideas that they would rather work on.
The MMO is no place for an amateur to start. This is akin to an aspiring engineer buying his first drafting set and heading off to make a skyscraper that same day. Start smaller, way way smaller. Once you have a finished game under your belt then decide if you want continue with your MMO concept. Once you see how much work is involved in making a game you will understand why these MMO threads get so much flak.
Good luck mate. I know what you are going thru. Good times.
Writing papers is useless, but great fun and inspiring. Its the mundane uninspiring stuff(networking, scripting basic things, object management, source code management, people dropping off or arguing), that will (make or) break you. Designing guild system and cities is just a shiny tip of a pyramid, that has to be built from solid and heavy stone.
If you want to be useful, post your proggress and results and maybe(just maybe), you will get to stage, where others can buy(use) pieces of code or assets, that you’ve done before you gave up.
Hello, I just wanted to reply to this thread because I understand where are you coming from in this dream of building an MMORPG.
Its been since 2009 since I had the idea, and despite all of the poor reception to the idea amongst folks I know and my own frustrations over the actual building process, I still trudge on towards the goal.
I’ve realized a few things:
Starting small is key. Building even a single player RPG is a monumental task.
Use the resources you have available. There are some good tutorials online that can lead you to your goal. burgzergarcade.com (Not a complete tutorial) http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_home.php
The Burgzerg tutorials took me quite far, and I am currently rebuilding for the 3rd or 4th time from scratch on the programmatic RPG system.
If you have no programmers, you will fail.
If you wish to become a programmer, here is a good place to begin:
This is the free CS course by Harvard. Seems good and puts you straight into programming with something called Scratch, which is a visual programming language.
Here is my progress this time around. Mostly it involves lists of UI objects which save the stat system. swordstack.tumblr.com
I post here pretty much daily so follow me if you’d like.
Good luck guys. If you actually do some programming, and you fail with the RPG, you will still learn a great deal, so don’t stress it.
Why not spend the same time starting small and build up? Not only will you have real world experience on what works and doesn’t - you’ll gain credibility and a few dollars on the side to help out.
Not as much as you think it can. Coding is only one aspect, making a successful MMO also requires a ton of content and that can take a really long time to do as well. Try making a demo first with only 16 players, or so, that’s not too hard to do in Unity. You’ll realize how much work is involved then.
