My name is Dean. And I’m here because I have an idea for a computer game and need some thoughts on it’s feasibility. (Huge thanks to Daniel Paine for forwarding this site to me).
My concept is an Online game (you could say MMO) where you the player is a Pilot. It’s a game that simulates a worldwide air travel experience. Players make money and experience through delivering passengers & cargo to thousands of destinations across the world.
Please leave your criticisms and feedback in the comments, your words are welcome here!
It’s not a terrible idea. I have a few thoughts on the subject as you’ve presented it.
MMO + Flight sim = HUGE scale. Like, the size of the whole world, right? And you’re not just talking landmass, you’re dealing with functioning airports and cities, full day cycles… It’d be a big task for a large studio to take on, so a small indie group would be facing an even bigger challenge.
That said, what benefit is gained from being MMO? Flying all the way around the world like that, how likely is it you’d encounter other players in meaningful ways? The only interaction I could foresee would be having to wait for them to land before your turn. Or… well, crashing into them.
Would the game be better served being single player, but everyone shares world state? So if you’re flying over NYC, it’s the same time in your game as everyone else’s? (Might as well be real time, right?) Similarly, the economy for regions can be handled by the server, so what one player does can affect other player’s games as well. This way players are interacting without directly interacting, since being in the same game space would really only cause problems that are against the core experience anyway.
You don’t really need the MMO component; it’s way more than what you’re likely capable of at this point.
However, the single-player simulator/‘Tycoon’ aspect is a great, and simple idea with plenty of established work out there for you to refer to (e.g. Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc.) What’s more there’s ways you could limit the size of the game, so that you’re dealing in broad enough strokes to get something done, and well-polished, on a relatively quick schedule. Try tracking a ‘Tycoon’ game down and giving it a spin. You’ll often find these in the Casual Games section (hint: this makes it great for mobile!)
As this is your first project, I don’t recommend spending any more than three to six months on this (that’s including time for you to learn a lot of things.) Also, remember to write and post a post mortem! It’s a great way for others to give you high level feedback here, in addition to low-level game feedback! You specifically want to address:
What went right
What didn’t go right
What ‘best practices’ you discovered
…But that’s down the road. Start by designing your Air Travel Tycoon game, first.
It depends on how detailed you want to get with all of this. I agree with the others that I’m not sure how the MMO aspect fits. Pilots don’t typically see much of other pilots, except at the lounge between flights, and even then not much. (I’m assuming there’s a lounge.) There could be a chatroom, but that’s hardly an MMO.
How detailed is the ‘flying’ aspect? Flight Simulator put a lot of work into just the flying aspect, and it doesn’t have any other gameplay mechanics. And that took a huge company. If you’re looking for something that big, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.
However, if you wanted a simplified map and weren’t interested in totally realistic flight, that would be a lot easier, and totally do-able, IMO.
The economics simulation is a beast all in itself, but again, you could simplify it and make it do-able.
In short, if you scale it way back, it could be done. I think it’d even be fun to do.
Make something simpler like just the flight mechanics, a simple prototype with boxes and a plane that flies around. Then you’ll understand feasibility of the larger task.
If you plan to do mutliplayer, triple the time expectation, if you plan a server based mmo sort of thing, triple it again.
Sorry to be a little harsh, but it a harsh truth. An idea is worth absolutely nothing, not in game development. At first I found this hard to come to terms with, but you’ll soon learn, as I did, that the only worth of a game is in its implementation, and of course, the ‘bigger’ the idea, the harder it is to make, and so usually, the worse it is.
I have a document of, I think its now 250 ideas. All mean something to me, but to anyone on the forums, if Im lucky I could sell all those for maybe £10.
Sorry to be so bitter about it, and Im not saying you cant do it, not at all. Im just saying an idea alone will get you nowhere.
As for feasibility, it depends really. Do you need a realistic graphic style, or could it be minimalist? Could it even be 2d? Could the world be very basic, and randomly generated, or does it need detail? How big is the world, I’d imagine it’d be funner with a small world, it means other players flying into you is a constant threat. These are all things to consider.
It depends on the idea, and how excited I am/was about them. Its probably not worth £13, Im kind of sporadic about how I lay about my ideas. I just kind of write the base idea down, and then have about 50 post it notes and text documents everywhere, most of which are me talking to myself
‘Do I need X. Yeh I do because of Y. But ostrich, you didnt think of Z’
Thats pretty much how the notes are
