[MUD-Dev2] [Design] Where are all the amateur MMORPG devs?

[Richard Boehme]

On Jan 30, 2008 5:16 PM, Mike Rozak <Mike at mxac.com.au> wrote:
> Several amateur MMORPG development kits are now on the market (Multiverse, Realmcrafter, Torque), with more to come. Some amateur authors are using the toolkits, but despite the fact that there are around 100x as many MMORPG players as MUD players, there only seem to be 10x as many amateur MMORPG authors as amateur MUD authors. Why is this? Where are all the amateur MMORPG devs?


I think the answer is that content creation is exponentially harder
for graphical games. Even when you restrict yourselves to 2 or 2.5 D,
you have to create art or use premade art, graphically sculpt the
room, and so on. A room description that can take a paragraph or two
of text (an empty room with a description) could take quite a while
for a graphical world.

Added to this complexity is that current MMOs are set in a 3d world,
and thus the initial take on 'what would it be cool to create' is
3D... which takes a lot of effort from a large team, and can't readily
be accomplished with a small team.

Thanks.

Richard