Yo guys, so I was wondering how close to reality this dream could be.
So I’m 16 years old and my plans are to finish school then to move away from friends and everyone and focus on my university. I will most definitely study game design and work towards bachelors. The reason I want to move away and completely isolate from everyone is because, outside of my uni I want to focus on creating my own game. Now you think I’m like the others who post about making a game and think that it can be done in like a year or so and have it succeed, that’s not my case at all, I am completely ready to expect alot of failures and downsides on what I will work towards, I’ve had experiences with UE and game design or pc stuff in general since I was really young, so I am pretty much ready to take this risk. Plans are to start off with a MMORPG, I’m not gonna get into that yet but these are the plans, I also know what most players want to see in a MMORPG and I am also currently full of goals and original ideas + mix of what players have always wanted to see in a MMORPG .etc and I am literally ready to invest more than 3 years of solid work into this, for the game part I am 100% confident that I will know what I am doing and that it will be good, can’t prove it much at the moment, but perhaps in a few years, it might sound stupid when I say it all like this but the goals I have set are pretty big and risky, my only doubts are the finances and the cost of advertisement .etc how would I cover that because besides gaming I have no clue how to market correctly and stuff, I am extremely good at graphic design I’ve worked for few companies before but like you get what I mean, to get the players attention. I am afraid that after putting that many years of hard work and actually accomplishing something game wise, that it would fail because of the lack of money to put into marketing. But like if I get to the point where I have made a great game, and accomplished all of the goals I set then I feel like even if I fail I could get with that good of a portfolio in a great gaming company, but that’s not what I want at all though, I want to have an own game and a team, got big goals for that too, don’t want to be a pion in a company, I want to lead it.
It might sound ■■■■■■■■ but yeah I still got 1,5 years of school to finish before I start uni, until then I will try to improve even more on my skills and in this time I will be also working on storylines, characters, features .etc then by the time I start uni the real development will start. However I will probably have multiple other people helping me on the way, my only worries are the finances though if that gets solved no doubt it will succeed.
So the real question is, are the chances big that I will fail after putting like 1-3 years of hard work every day into the game just because the lack of financial aid for the game?
Do you intend to make the game entirely without outside input?
If so, do you already know how to create digital assets? (Sounds, textures, models, etc)
Are you already well versed in Unreal?
If, on the other hand, you must learn all of these things, then you should probably budget 6 months to a year to learn Unreal and somewhat longer to achieve a practical facility in all the other skill sets needed.
In my opinion, once you have put in the time to learn the tools and to learn how to create assets, you could without much difficulty create a working prototype of a single player or small scale multiplayer game within six months of full time effort, a polished prototype within a year and a finished game within one and a half to two years – presuming that you do it all yourself.
The biggest time sink in creating a MMORPG or any game with a large scope is not the coding, but the content creation. The expectation of the average player is that a MMORPG must have a vast depth of content – quests, locations, dungeons, epic story line, and so forth.
However, most importantly, as with all individual endeavors, you will succeed or fail entirely based upon your own dedication and persistence. All that is required is for you to get started, keep working, and finish.
if you want to work solo on some game 3 years hard, then maybe you can do small complete game, but are you going to buy animations/characters/statics or do it yourself?
If you want to make MMORPG alone, prepare yourself for 100 years of hard work.
My first thoughts were i can finish small game in 3 months, however it took me 1 year and it was so unfinished and unpolished - small game. i was working ~4hrs/day.
The best recommendatin is: dont start with mmorpg. First try something smaller and then you will see how much work cost mmo.
That’s a big mistake, you know very little about game development and your goal is to make one of the most complicated types of games as your first project, you need much more experience and even then unless it’s very simple in some way (like simple graphics) then it will simply be too much work to do even if you know what you’re doing. Take a look at some MMO’s and look at the team sizes and the amount of development time.
I see that type of thing all the time–if you aren’t actually experienced in an area then expect that everything will be much more difficult than you think. Even if it is something you know how to do then it will take more time then what you think. You could end up working on one thing for months that you thought would take a few days.
There’s nothing that beats experience, and it helps if you have much smaller and more reasonable goals before tackling something big. Even at that point you might change your mind and figure out a different project idea you like better. A lot of my long-term project goals have changed drastically and what’s interesting is how dumb my old ideas seem.
Also, as far as college is concerned–note that a degree is not particularly valuable, it’s much more important to have a good portfolio of work since that’s what they’re going to be looking at. Most game development degrees are useless and what’s also bad about it is you don’t have much class time to learn but you’re paying quite a bit for it. Some universities are good, so take a closer look at the school you’re looking to go into and see how successful the students are after they graduate. If it seems like few to no students actually get into games after graduating then it’s not worth the cost.
There’s a lot of learning material online, many people learn on their own. Look into what type of games development job you want and focus on building a portfolio for that type of job. Though I can say one of the benefits of going to college is that you have more free time to learn on your own.
What players think they want is often not the same as what they need or what is feasible. The perfect game for a player is often an almost unlimited amount of meaningful choices that the game will recognise so it does not just become cosmetics. This is what I would call one of the main reasons that an MMORPG is one of the most scary types of games to build besides the technical difficulties of connecting and serving a lot of players reliably at once.
And then there is the content creation… an endless sinkhole that you can keep throwing money into and the players will still not be satisfied.
My point is…“start smaller” or become an intern in a company that is developing an MMORPG (or any other type of game for that matter) and see for yourself the incredible task it is to make a game or MMORPG.
Don’t listen to flammers. I too am working on an mmorpg and i think it is an excellent idea. I have been working on my game for about 3 years now SOLO and have came across some pitfalls
but not much with the unlimited resources out there and websites that sell models, the marketplace here and lots of other things like the thousands of tutorials on . you can do anything you put your mind too. If anyone tells you differently ask them to show the game they are making. just because you work by yourself does not mean anything at all. it just means you will take longer than other teams that have more developers. Ignore negative people that tell you you CAN’T they only say you can’t because they tried and failed. but that don’t mean you will fail. I know many people that do wonderful things using unrteal engine and they don’t need huge teams to do what they needed to make a game. with unreal engine even a 7 year old can make simple games. a complex game is the same as a simple game. just requires more work. think of it like this: if you make a game where you are a fish and you can swim around in a fish bowl. this is pretty simple. then you add sharks that can eat your fish still simple. then you make it multiplayer, then you make the fish have quests to save other players by feeding them it has now went from a simple fish swimming game to a mmorpg Don’t limit yourself DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. a large game is the same as a simple game when you are making a small game or a large game there is no limit. think of a large game as a collection of mini games. there are series about making rpg style games to wet your beak. this guy has some really Amazing tutorials i think would get you up and going starting with your mmorpg check out his tutorial series and go from there
Don’t listen to flammers. I too am working on an mmorpg and i think it is an excellent idea. I have been working on my game for about 3 years now SOLO and have came across some pitfalls
but not much with the unlimited resources out there and websites that sell models, the marketplace here and lots of other things like the thousands of tutorials on . you can do anything you put your mind too. If anyone tells you differently ask them to show the game they are making. just because you work by yourself does not mean anything at all. it just means you will take longer than other teams that have more developers. Ignore negative people that tell you you CAN’T they only say you can’t because they tried and failed. but that don’t mean you will fail. I know many people that do wonderful things using unrteal engine and they don’t need huge teams to do what they needed to make a game. with unreal engine even a 7 year old can make simple games. a complex game is the same as a simple game. just requires more work. think of it like this: if you make a game where you are a fish and you can swim around in a fish bowl. this is pretty simple. then you add sharks that can eat your fish still simple. then you make it multiplayer, then you make the fish have quests to save other players by feeding them it has now went from a simple fish swimming game to a mmorpg Don’t limit yourself DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. a large game is the same as a simple game when you are making a small game or a large game there is no limit. think of a large game as a collection of mini games. there are series about making rpg style games to wet your beak. this guy has some really Amazing tutorials i think would get you up and going starting with your mmorpg check out his tutorial series and go from there
[/QUOTE]
No one of us flaming him…
I remember myself how i downloaded unity, named project by mmorpg name and… uninstalled unity
He can make mmorpg, but what kind of mmorpg u expect after 3 years solo working? Better is just to make complete small game than bad 10% content mmo.
Many ppl who are new in gamedev wants to make mmorpg, i wanted too… but i listened to advices and tried to make very small game. I thought i csn do it in less than 3 months but it took me over 1 year…
But, i changed my mind actually, starting with mmorpg isnt actually bad idea. Ofc its not possible to finish for 1 person at expected quality, but it may motivate him to work on it. Motivation is imo more important than 1 unfinished game, he will learn many things too…
In 2018 i plan to start my pseudo-mmo with very limited content (read arena game) and if prototype will be successful, i can continue extending content.
Near my country, i know 5 ppl working on mmorpg. They are working on 120 km square map (11x11 km probably).
They working on it since 2009 and it looks like pretty content-less.
Imo mmorpg is challenge for 20+ man teams. I think albion was in development for 5 years by 20 people, about month ago they started “full” game…
I don’t take it as flaming don’t worry, I rather take it as an advice and see what my options are. Of course it’s not easy and the chances are like 99% that I will fail, but building a successful environment involves taking the risk. If it was easy and guranteed it wouldn’t be good. I’ll keep you updated, thanks for the advices
