Comment by koonsolo
5 years ago
True. Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common. Therefore we also know at which stage of Dunning Kruger they are.
5 years ago
True. Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common. Therefore we also know at which stage of Dunning Kruger they are.
>Claiming you are going to make a huge MMO when you are an inexperienced game developer is pretty common.
Yea its so common its basically a meme that the first question a beginner asks when they join /r/gamedev or another gamedev community is "How do I make an MMO?"
I have no idea at which point of Dunning Kruger they are. For example have they digested all of the technical material available on MMO:s available publicly? If they have and have fair software engineering savvy that puts them already way ahead.
Past failures by third party actors should not be taken as discouragement for startups.
To take a blunt example, before Elon Musk started SpaceX there were failed rocket companies started by millionaires all of whom dreamed of commoditizing space...
Sure, their success is improbable. But in this context longshots and improbable bets are the whole point.
> For example have they digested all of the technical material available on MMO:s available publicly? If they have and have fair software engineering savvy that puts them already way ahead.
I can see you have no experience in game development. Let me explain: with 2 people and a budget of 200K you can make a tiny indie game. With a team of 15 experienced game developers you can make a single player RPG. MMO's are built by huge companies, with lots of experience under their belt.
Newbies that want to build an MMO is a running joke in game dev communities. It basically says you are so stupid that you don't even realize how stupid you are.
>with 2 people and a budget of 200K you can make a tiny indie game.
As an example I remember reading an article explaining how something like angry birds probably cost approximately this much money to develop, but everyone was treating it like it was a tiny indie project that was made in a garage over a few weekends.
I agree with previous commenter: it's impossible to make an MMO on a shoestring budget. Until someone does it. Saying something is impossible because you've seen many failures indicates a lack of imagination, not wisdom.
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Putting together an MMO requires knowledge how to make your software systems scale. Putting together a demo in Unreal is the exact opposite of that. That is why you see so many bad MMO-s, they can make a demo, but they could not make that scale in 100 years.
If going by the above logic that just showing expertise is enough to get funding, then why was an Unreal demo valued as expertise at all?
If they showed expertise by demoing a network server/cluster, or world streaming, or asset import workflow, then i would say that there is some relevant expertise.
But they didn't even import a custom character into Unreal for their demo, how are they going to make a character creator and a clothing system?
The rocket market is not anywhere near as developed as the games industry. Everything related to the development part of games is very much cleared out.
There are plenty of small studios that have huge successes, and they are all smart enough to not develop a huge MMO. Simply because they know they don't have the resources to pull this off.
Starting a rock band is a long shot. Beating the best NBA team in basketball is a delusion.
My point was that if the state space of the market has lots of undiscovered areas all bets are off who is going to succeed an who is not. I would not call gaming tech "complete" by a long shot.
I would argue the NBA example is not a good one. In that the parameter space is quite fixed, whereas in technology and games, I would claim the state space of what success looks like is much broader.
Yes, if you have super accurate metrics of what success looks like and the domain is highly competitive and lucrative then the scrappy upstart has poor chances.
I dont' think you can have a Billy Beane/Moneyball/Sabermetrics moment in NBA like you had in baseball.
But I think gaming and technology still has lots of unfound angles to be discovered.
I would guess the question YC pondered was not "can these guys create an MMO" but "could they have a small chance to bring some value adding innovation to some place in some market".
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