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

[Aurel]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 5:41 PM, Jeffrey Kesselman <jeffpk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Aurel <aurel.gets.mail at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Wrong.
>
> Writing hack crap is easy.  Which is what the vast majority of fanfic
> is.
>
> "Making an expertly crafted story with words" is very difficult.
>
> Unfortunately the reading public by and large doesnt know the
> difference anymore.  The fact that the Drizt novels topped the NYt
> bets seller list proves that rather conclusively.
>
> You are correct however that writing a crap piece of fiction doesn't
> cost anything more then a word processor and some time.  Making even a
> crap movie requires some skills and more equipment.  So in general, i
> think your analogy holds, i just differ on the details.
>

Sorry, but I have to nitpick. Relative is a key word, and we can disagree on
how much relatively easier it is to write something excellent than it is to
produce an excellent MMO or movie, but my point is this:

How many man-hours did it take Tolkien to write the LoTR series? How many
man-hours did it take to turn an already well established saga into an epic
movie trilogy of the same name? Both took years to do, but one took an army
of people while the other took one guy with an amazing vision and a few
others to read and edit his work.

With just a pen and paper (or a word processor) you can achieve amazing
heights of creativity right now. This very instant. That's an incredible
statement. With a decent command of language you can describe anything you
can imagine. When the same thing will be able to be said about a medium that
uses pictures instead of words to convey meaning and entertainment, then
you'll have amateur development on the scale of MUDs... and probably far
more than that actually.

I think we're in complete agreement in our points, but I just wanted to
point out how high the bar is set when we're talking about text versus
graphic development. I don't think it's unrealistic to say that the
difficulty in making a graphical MMO on par with a good text MUD, in terms
of workmanship in their respective mediums, is several orders of magnitude
greater.