61 replies to this topic

[starstutter]

NOTE: This article is for the purpose of linking to and saving some typing. I hope I can speak accurately and justly for all the angry devs. Keep in mind though I try to end everything with a positive note ^_^

If you clicked on this post expecting an actual guide on the concept creation, design, programming, networking, debugging, polishing, marketing, distributing, maintaining, securing and continuously developing new content for your new MMO coming out in a few months, then you may also be inclined to calling 1-800 numbers for miracle weight loss pills and picking up books how you can (YES YOU CAN!) become a millionaire by using e-bay.

Now, the first thing you will notice in the previous paragraph (well it's actually just a run-on sentence) is the amount of hostility. However in truth this is really no different and perhaps much more mild than the responses of even the most professional and mature developers that have to read "MMO designer" posts every single day. Every time we turn around there is another person coming on here with no previous (or very little) programming experience announcing that his new MMOFPSRPG will be a WoW and Oblivion killer. So, before we as developers get a bad reputation for being pessimistic internet thugs, let me explain why we say what we do.

Here is a typical *abridged* MMO post

a lot of people said:

Hey guys :)
Me and my friends have gotten together and are putting together a plan for a new and interesting MMORPG. Right now the design is on paper but we plan to start programming soon, but we have a couple of questions:
1. What language do we use?
2. Are there and tutorials for game and network programming around?
3. What engine is good for an MMO?

The new idea is <insert concept that's been done x10,000 here> and we think it's going to be really great. I'm the designer of the game and some others are helping, but we need programmers. If you would like to join please contact us at cheesy.address@freemail.com.

So rather than just going in the order of the post, I want to address typically the most common issues first.

This *offends* us as programmers
Games are not a mature media yet and are not at the moment taken seriously by a lot of people. For whatever reason, countless people think that game programming is an easy slackers job when if fact it's one of the most difficult careers that a person can have. It's extremely rewarding, but that's because it's so insanely hard. This kind of post is literally offensive to us because saying something like "I have no programming experience, but I could make an MMO easy" is really the same as saying "What you guys are so proud of is *sooo* easy."

This is one big reason why we are so hostile. Even if you didn't say it in that exact way, we have seen the attitude so many times that we start to just fill in the blanks after a while, even if you didn't mean it like that. So we've covered the defensive response, but there are also a lot of things that we genuinely get sick of saying, like:

You are not, and there is no need for, a designer
Writer? Fine. Character designer? Fine. Level designer? Fine. Designer? No.
"Designer" is one of the most generic terms in existence and extremely few people know what it actually means. An idea for a game where you are on the moon fighting mutant crabs as ninjas is NOT a design, it's a concept (and a really bad concept in this case). Design is going through every conceivable aspect of a game with a fine tooth comb. Consider the cover system in Gears of War:

1. What is defined as cover?
2. Can some cover break?
3. What's the animation we will use?
4. What are all the moves that a player can use to get in cover?
5. What about getting out of it?
6. What's to stop an enemy from coming up behind you while you're blind in cover giving you a cheap kill?
7. The previous issue can't be solved so every section of every level we need to make sure this doesn't happen.
8. How would you take cover from a Berserker? (an issue I don't think they handled well)
9. What's to stop you from accidentally using cover you don't want to? (A problem that, in fact, was not solved in the first GoW)
10. This list may very count into the 60's or 70's and I'm not going through all those.

I could go on *all day* about this one aspect and this is just one tiny part of the game as a whole. Obviously I can't begin to go through all the design aspects of an MMO, but here's a guy that tried:
http://www.devmaster...ead.php?t=11656
This is a well written and enormous list, but far from everything is covered.

So, we've established that just the design of a good game is overwhelming, but lets examine why, as an indie, you do not even need a designer...

The team you're putting together
If you take the time to read all the articles and especially the one I linked to above, then I truley commend you and you are one in a thousand. But that's just it, you are one in a thousand, and that means that finding someone else with the drive and determination to stick with the development is going to be incredibly difficult. You may find another person through the help of the internet, and if you're really lucky, 3 determined people. With this few people and the need for programmers + artists, you don't have the resources to dedicate a "designer".

Now, I know what you're thinking, and this is what I thought at one time... that you and your friends will develop this together. Let be be as clear as I possibly can [[[this is an EPICLY bad idea]]]. I have lost several friends rather unpleasantly via this logic, so please don't make the same mistakes many of us have. It's just never a good idea to mix serious business and friendship, and I had 2 projects crash and burn because of it.

Quality team members are looking for quality leaders
Now don't get me wrong, it is possible to put together a good team, but you need a tangible product. Good developers and programmers are smart, and they ,from experience, look for leaders that are not going to abandon the project. The best way to do this is with a tangible self made prototype, and a playable demo is a real plus. Developing an actual playable slice of the game will dramatically increase your chances of putting together a quality team.
But let me get off this subject because I have gotten off track.

If you're asking vauge questions about programming languages and engines, you're not ready to create a 3D game, let alone an MMO
It's a general rule of thumb that if a developer asks "which engine do I use?", then they probably don't have the faintest clue of how to use them and what they really are. As far as engines go, there's a lot of questions behind what you're asking.
There's some additional information here:
http://www.devmaster...ead.php?t=11869
and here
http://www.devmaster...ead.php?t=13176
But this question is really a useless one to ask as there is no engine set up to handle the scale of a real MMO, that's a hardware issue, not software. Now don't get confused, there are engines that offer larger than usual multiplayer capacity, but nothing even remotely close to an MMO scale.

NOTE: As mentioned below, I should have made the difference clear between bogus engine questions, valid engine questions and valid beginner questions. You can ask "which engine do I use" but the way to go about that is by providing specific information about your project. There is no master engine forged in the fires of Mt. Doom made to complete every task conceivable by man. Every scenario has a different engine that fits it's needs. So it's fine to ask engine questions, but please give your specific goals and needs. If you are a begginer and need a good direction for learning to program, look through some of the old threads an stickies before asking on the forums. There's nothing inherently wrong with these questions, but look around before asking please.

There is no such tutorial like "how to make an MMO"
If there was and it was valid, it would make history. Even much simpler single player games cannot have a real tutorial because the amount of work, knowledge and experience that goes into them is absolutely massive and simply cannot be effectively communicated in the form of text. It's like reading about baseball as compared to actually playing it. Like reading about a country as compared to living there.

But really, all these arguments don't even need to be said because:

It's just infeasible and impractical
This is a good read if you want to learn why:
http://www.devmaster...ead.php?t=12978
After a fair amount of debate the conclusion that most of us came to is that it's theoretically (with half a life's dedication) possible to make an MMO, but not possible to:

1. Get a player base large enough to qualify as an MMO
2. Afford the server hardware and the brute force computer power to run it fast and reliably
3. Maintain the hardware and the software as well as securing it against hackers
4. Maintain the content creation required to keep an MMO alive.

And once you through all those factors in, it's simply impractical to make one at all.

Now, the idea of friends and people playing with each other is attractive, but there's a much simpler solution to all this:

Make a multiplayer game
There is a tremendous (or should I say massive) difference between an MO and an MMO. Multiplayer is difficult, but it's certainly not impossible and has gotten much more common among indie produced games. Multiplayer or co-op is completely possible and I would encourage you to take on a project like that as it could serve as a good learning experience. Now, most likely you will not finish the game (that's just statistics speaking) but it will have at least served as an in depth learning experience. An MMO, on the other hand, will leave you dazed, confused and unable to gain progress leaving you with much waster time in the end.

But above all, something that just cannot be stated enough:

Set your goals reasonably
Pong -> tick-tac-toe -> Tetris -> Mario -> doom
Work your way up the ladder. Make smaller, releasable, playable segments of these games and see how much effort it takes. I would estimate the average time it takes people to make the list similar to that is around 10 - 13 months assuming they already were fluent with computers in general. It's like everything else, start small, go big.
I once heard someone say "If you shoot for the moon and you miss, you're headed for the stars" and my response was "Oh you mean kind of like that mars probe that just missed its landing target so it crashed and burned?"

The point is, over-ambition kills, and we we've all been through it. I started several projects when I was younger and the after about 1/5th through each of them I realized that I was no longer learning anything from the current project and if I didn't finish it, I would have completely wasted the time. I've learned my lesson sense then and to aim within what I can really do, which is substantially smaller than my goals before. As a result I have finally been able to catch onto a good learning curve, and while I still have so much to learn, I know that pacing will help a lot, and I know it can help you (YES YOU!) do it too.

[alphadog]

Ninja Moon Crabs? I think I once suffered from NMC in college. Penicillin worked then, but there is a "super" strain out now.

Seriously, you summed it all up well. I guess I don't need to come to this forum anymore.

The only "constructive criticism" is the engine help part. I think you should draw a distinction between the "naive seeker of the Master Engine To Rule All MMOs, to be done in under six months", and real game developers inquiring about things like a good entry point into development if new to the scene, or someone finally ending a project and trying to reconnect to "what's what" in the industry.

And, +1 on making this, not the moon crabs, sticky.

[starstutter]

alphadog said:

I think you should draw a distinction between the "naive seeker of the Master Engine To Rule All MMOs, to be done in under six months", and real game developers inquiring about things like a good entry point into development if new to the scene, or someone finally ending a project and trying to reconnect to "what's what" in the industry.

Ah ok, I see, I'll get to fixin that :)

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And, +1 on making this, not the moon crabs

Awww, no one likes my moon crab idea :-(

[fireside]

Yes, nicely done. It's tough to know whether these people are completely naive and perhaps would become programmers or artists, or are just in some strange fantasy world where they think making games is the same as choosing a character's hair and whatnot in the latest MMO they've been playing. I really don't know and go back and forth on it.

[gardon]

Or they're just kids who don't know any better. Most people think everyone posting here is 22 years old and has a college degree. I wanted to create my first MMO when I was 14 and didn't know any better. And since kids don't have any sense of professional etiquette, they are unable to ask the right questions and understand how those questions are being interpreted.

I feel for them because in today's world, the indie developer has to do THAT much more work in order to keep up with the industry. I know so many intelligent people that would have done well in the software industry, but turned away because of how complex everything is.

The days of programming Mario and Zelda in your basement are over. It's either MMORPG or nothing. Thank you very much WOW.

[Sol_HSA]

gardon said:

Or they're just kids who don't know any better. Most people think everyone posting here is 22 years old and has a college degree. I wanted to create my first MMO when I was 14 and didn't know any better.

Back then I wanted to write my own text adventure. You know what? I did. The bar is slightly higher these days, I guess =)

[roel]

roel's guide to creating killer MMORPG's

Forget it. You'll fail for sure. Stop bothering us.

[starstutter]

gardon said:

I feel for them because in today's world, the indie developer has to do THAT much more work in order to keep up with the industry.

Keep in mind though that indies have one thing that the industry will never fully have: innovation. Can an indie compete with a AAA company when it comes to making first person shooters? No. Can an indie compete with AAA in new gameplay concepts? Absolutley, because the industry doesn't innovate (except in rare cases). I've heard plently of complaints that even Mirrors Edge grew standard after a while and felt like a first person prince of persia.

As far as indie production budgets go, the expectations of quality largley come from comparison to the same type of games, and the product can be viewed much less harshly if there's really nothing to compare it to. People think WoW looks great even though many of its visuals resemble 2004 - 2006. What if an MMO came out that was an efficient crysis-style, graphic monster? Would people still think WoW looks good?

[fireside]

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Keep in mind though that indies have one thing that the industry will never fully have: innovation.

There are problems there also. There really is just so much you can do and computer games have been around for a while. You can put a new twist on things, but they all start to look alike after while and you do kind of look at production value, etc. I like the idea of online games myself, because there is a completely different standard. People want something that loads fast and is fun to play and graphics quality, etc, only has to be good enough.

[starstutter]

fireside said:

There really is just so much you can do and computer games have been around for a while. You can put a new twist on things, but they all start to look alike after while and you do kind of look at production value, etc.

Good point. One thing I have to question though is, are we really reaching the limit of what games can take form as, or is our way of thinking about games just constrained because there are so few unique ones?

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I like the idea of online games myself, because there is a completely different standard. People want something that loads fast and is fun to play and graphics quality, etc, only has to be good enough.

I do agree but there seems to be an emergence of expectations going beyond that. Left 4 Dead is a perfect example. To me the characters look fine and everything else is just average, but average doesn't seem to be good enough and so many people have been complaining about how the game looks. Then again, maybe people just expect too much from Valve.

[fireside]

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Good point. One thing I have to question though is, are we really reaching the limit of what games can take form as, or is our way of thinking about games just constrained because there are so few unique ones?

Well, they did sound stuff like Guitar Hero, but there's really only so much of that you can do and it all reminds me of Karaoke. They may come up with input devices that allow a little more innovation but mostly I think we're topping out. The trouble is that games lean more toward simulation and less towards story and simulations really don't feel a lot different. I still don't know how people can play race games over and over. They've managed to add a few story elements that make them slightly different but not much. I think in the end they'll have to develop games that have skill nuances like holding and swinging a golf club and getting slices etc that require endless hours of practice to get right. Button pushing really isn't cutting it anymore unless it's strategy like chess or something.

[starstutter]

fireside said:

Well, they did sound stuff like Guitar Hero, but there's really only so much of that you can do and it all reminds me of Karaoke.

Guitar Hero... I have mixed feelings about. On one hand it was an innovation to have something like that for a console. On the other hand there were so many arcade games building up to that concept that in the end the only origional thing about it was that it was console based.

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They may come up with input devices that allow a little more innovation but mostly I think we're topping out.

But I think we would have to look at how many are true innovations, or just one time gimmicks.

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The trouble is that games lean more toward simulation and less towards story and simulations really don't feel a lot different.

But see this is where I can say that I think our creativity has been severley constrained. I don't think for a second that games are limited to simulation, and I think it would be possible to mix the genre of adventure games with new production technology. I just don't think anyone has tried it yet.
This article is not completley related to this, but it's an interesting read.
http://www.gamasutra...29/adams_02.htm
Especially take a look at rule #4

[fireside]

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Especially take a look at rule #4

That just shows how much we are using simulations. The fantasy genre in books has probably 1000's of different stories using those types. In games, if we've seen it once, it feels like old hat. What if you said "no doctors, lawyers, or cops". You would cover 90% of story media and it really has nothing to do with nothing, since stories are about people not job classifications. It just proves how limited our thinking is when it comes to games. In games we want something always new in game play so air has to blow out of the walls or something, but you run out of that stuff pretty quickly. Also, just because it's something unique doesn't make it good or fun. I can come up with all kinds of ideas that would be unique, but wouldn't be fun to play. The reason mages are used in games so often is because they lend themselves to interesting game play. The same reason we like army games. Well, not me, but most people.

[starstutter]

fireside said:

The fantasy genre in books has probably 1000's of different stories using those types. In games, if we've seen it once, it feels like old hat.

well I admit the #4 rule is a bit flawed because it only pretains to story. I think more of the complaints about origionality are just how the games play. I mean, how many games are there where you don't constantly have a gun in your hand? Not many. Shootings fine to an extent but I am truley getting sick of games based entirley around it. Stories though are kind of... well, a different story.

Stories in games in general are not very good because we haven't quite figure out how to tell them properly. The trend right now seems to be imitating movies but what we need to do is find a way to make the player feel like he's genuinley contributing to the story, rather than having it just presented to the player and then he goes off to solve every imaginable problem by shooting things. On the other hand I don't want the player to feel like the center of the universe, because that's unrealistic too. Now, what I mean by contributing the story is not "having the player write it", because that doesn't turn out very fascinating. I personally think the way to go in that regaurd is to give the player that "the world goes on without you".

As it stands the players insignificant actions trigger earth shaking events that (imo) remove belivability from the story. In HL2 for instance, the combine wait to strike and the entire city is at a standstill untill gordan picks up a gun or walks through a door.

[cnoffsin]

First off this is my first post but i just want to say this is an awesome site and forum!

I really enjoy the "wanna make an MMO" posts (and sanity inspiring replies) and was wondering if maybe there could be a forum group made just for:
"i want to make an MMO"
so that possibly could make an effort to filter them out from the other perhaps more realistic posts?

once again great site

[starstutter]

cnoffsin said:

I really enjoy the "wanna make an MMO" posts (and sanity inspiring replies) and was wondering if maybe there could be a forum group made just for:
"i want to make an MMO"
so that possibly could make an effort to filter them out from the other perhaps more realistic posts?

First off welcome to Dev :)
I'm not quite understanding your proposal though :huh:

[fireside]

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I really enjoy the "wanna make an MMO" posts (and sanity inspiring replies) and was wondering if maybe there could be a forum group made just for:
"i want to make an MMO"
so that possibly could make an effort to filter them out from the other perhaps more realistic posts?

I'm not sure it would help a lot. They liven up the forum if nothing else. Sometimes it gets old, though.

[Reedbeta]

If there's anything universally true about "I want to make an MMO" posters, it's that they don't read. If we create a special forum for them, they probably won't post in it, because they won't be paying enough attention to notice it.

[starstutter]

Reedbeta said:

If there's anything universally true about "I want to make an MMO" posters, it's that they don't read. If we create a special forum for them, they probably won't post in it, because they won't be paying enough attention to notice it. ;)

At least we can say we tried. :)

[fireside]

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Stories in games in general are not very good because we haven't quite figure out how to tell them properly. The trend right now seems to be imitating movies but what we need to do is find a way to make the player feel like he's genuinley contributing to the story, rather than having it just presented to the player and then he goes off to solve every imaginable problem by shooting things. On the other hand I don't want the player to feel like the center of the universe, because that's unrealistic too. Now, what I mean by contributing the story is not "having the player write it", because that doesn't turn out very fascinating. I personally think the way to go in that regaurd is to give the player that "the world goes on without you".

I think the real problem with stories in games is that the industry wants to let players ignore the story if they so desire, which makes it a useless fringe element. I've read all kinds of times in articles things like "they don't have to read this if they don't want, they can skip the cut scene if they want to and still play the game, you can do it the story way or just shoot your way through. If you can do those things, it's because the story is irrelevant. Trying to break up stories with branches, etc, really doesn't work out very well. It's just another way of washing out the story and making it basically useless. As much as we would like to think so, games aren't that much different than movies, however the player needs to discover the story rather than it being presented to a character in a movie. Which is where games seem to fail. They spoon feed it to the player in cut scenes that you can skip if you happen to drool and have an itchy trigger finger.