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

[Aurel]

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?
>
 <snip>
>
> Why haven't amateur authors flocked to these tools?

For the same reason that amateurs don't flock to create amateur movies,
but scifi and fantasy magazines are inundated with submissions. Making
an expertly crafted story with words is relatively easy. A complete
novice with great natural talent could out-write the greatest authors in
history. Text is a great equalizer. Graphics, on the other hand, are
incredibly tricky to get right. Even making a house look realistic in
one of those authoring tools is going to take a long time and then
you've got the rest of the town/countryside/world to go through... so
why bother? Maybe if the momentum were already going and there were a
huge number of players standing around just waiting for the next amateur
MMO to come along like back in the day when we'd wait for the next
coolest MUD to come out... But the momentum isn't there because it's so
much easier to pay your $15 a month and play a world that's already
stable, mature, and populated.

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Make a great world using
amateur tools and you won't get more than a dozen people to give it a
shot. Get people interested in amateur MMOs and they'll give up trying
to find a good one after an afternoon's search and just go play WoW
instead. So there's no incentive for anyone to sink the time required to
make a great graphical MMO.