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

[Tess Snider]

On Jan 30, 2008 4:16 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?

1.) Historically speaking, "amateur MMORPG devs" *are*, in many cases, MUD devs.
2.) Building an MMO requires certain specialized skill sets, in
addition to the ones that were required for making MUDs.

Most amateur MUDs were historically built by university students.  It
is not at all hard to find computer science majors who are willing to
hack around on something fun in their spare time.  Also, *scads* of
people think they know how to write (whether they do or not) and
design games (whether they do or not).  However, finding almost anyone
at a traditional University who is both capable of making game art and
is willing to do massive amounts of content development for free is...
well, almost impossible.  A lot of amateur game developers (and
original machinimaters) face this problem, but MMOs are particularly
problematic due to the sheer quantity of art that is required.

Back when my ACM chapter decided (in the pre-UO days) that we wanted
to try making a "graphical MUD," they turned to me -- a fellow
computer science major -- to do the art for them, because no one in
the art department was even doing digital stuff, at the time.  In
fact, one of my art major friends frequently argued with me over
whether it was even possible to make art with a computer.  Ha!

Tess