Indie Dev here, and he's not wrong. You need to start small, like, if you can't make a multiplayer pong, or a multiplayer shooter or a multiplayer platformer or adventure game, then you simply can't make an MMO yet. Start small, fail often, release a few. Rince and repeat. Making games is hard.
Indie Dev here too, i also confirm i mainly do it as a "hobby" (for almost 20y now) until i can turn it into full time (if i ever complete a project), i am a consultant and been working with AWS Architecture for years. Do not start with an MMO.
Agreed. You think everything's fine, you're enjoying yourself and whatnot, then you encounter a glitch that sours your mood and makes you want to quit. And you can't just 'make it work' either, because if it's not fun then it's still a failure. A lot of people want to start with their dream idea or go big out of the gate, which just doesn't work. You also have 'ideas people' that just come up with game concepts with no idea on how to actually make them work in practice.
So why not attempt to make a MMO, fail, start over, fail, start over, and such, continually improving towards and actual product? Of course don't crowdfund it though.
@@BrentMalice You are completely missing the point. You and everyone else is absolutely free to try and make MMO game if you want. Just do not ask people to fund your personal learning experience when you can not guarantee that you will actualy get feasible results in reasonable timeframe. If you already at start expects to fail because you know that you are not skilled/expereienced enough and you are still asking money for developing such game, you are scammer. That is why people are pointing fingerrs at these run-of-the-mill MMO kickstarters. If those people were honest and openly said something like "I have no experience in making MMOs but I really want to give it a try to make my dreams come true, please give me 10k usd every month", no one would get pissy about it. But what actually happens is that they will promise everything and anything while delivering unoptimized substandard results, often created by downloading pre-made assets and using default engine settings. Its the combination of making unrealistic promises with no experience and poor track record that makes these MMO kickstarters laughing stocks. It is absolutely fine to try and make your own car from scratch even if you have no experience as automechanic. Its completely different thing if you would promise to build Lamborgini to someone in exchange for him paying you monthly payments when you do not even know how to change oil.
Thinking you can make an MMO as a 1 man team with little/no game dev experience is like thinking “I’ve never driven a car, but I bet I could land a spaceship on the moon”
Shonen Jump is very happy to defend its IP. Your One Piece/Bleach game will get the lawyers rubbing their hands together with glee if it ever makes money enough for them to actually notice it.
Seriously, it's bad enough that people are overly ambitious about what they can accomplish, but what's with so many games on Kickstarter that involve existing IP that the project won't have legal access to?
Had a friend who also started making an MMO / minecraft thingy. As much as I respect his dedication and also talent with own engine and all, it was always so hard to tell him that he WILL NOT have success with it in any form. I'ts now... 7-8 years later and while I do not have contact with him anymore, I do sometimes search on reddit how the game is going along. It's still alpha, I don't think there were ever any substantial amount of players and he is still actively at developing it. No idea if he ever made another kickstarter/indiegogo for it. Just hurts, honestly. There was a bit of potential in the game, in a Daggerfall kinda way. But then there was also a whole no mans sky infinite universe + space combat + voxel mc worlds on top of it. And he never ever played any space games so ofc that whole aspect was just not working.
The brilliance of Kickstarter games is that anyone can make the game they've always wanted to, without the huge obstacles of traditional publishing or the financial risk of self-published indie. The problem with Kickstarter games is that *anyone* can make the game they've always wanted to, without the huge obstacles of traditional publishing or the financial risk of self-published indie.
Steam Early Access is a similar beast. How many early access games have been abandoned after a few months? How many are just asset flips designed for a cash grab? More than there should be.
@@BitwiseMobile but in that case you have the game in your hand since the beginning And except for the ones that gets abandoned it's your fault if you aren't able to recognise Assets Flips
Game developer here! I recently got back into making games and I have something on this topic. Manage your scope!! You’ll never make a massive MMORPG with 5000000 people and 3 developers you need to scale your scope down and go “I wish to make a ___ rpg in which you do ___” start with a basic outline like that!
Former game developer here. I worked in the early 00s in the industry - and I'll never go back. I work in business software now and I can actually spend weekends with my family ;) I agree though, keep your scope small. Make iterative improvements and build up from there. You can't put the cart in front of the horse and expect to get anywhere.
I like the Kickstarter MMORPG meme. It's like Fry saying "Shut up and take my money!" or the shiba inu doge. It's always there, making something about the internet feel unchanging.
As a small indie game developer, who works at a company that usually work on educational games or similar recreational and informative games, I can safely confirm any indie dev trying to create massive multiplayer games are mad men.
There are so many really incredible indie games, some of them done by tiny teams or by people with little experience in the industry, and one commonality between all them is that they're not mmo's
I genuinely wish these games could or would succeed and create the next great persistent world. But as an adult with realistic expectations I know it will never happen.
Companies have completely fucked the definition of "remake" in video games by inventing "remaster". They've misappropriated a term exclusove to analog media and applied it to every remake to avoid the "Why would I buy a remake? I already own the original?" discourse and the masses took the bait hook, line, and sinker.
4:22 ultimately the problem is that passion can’t fund man hours. Because beyond the ongoing moderation and infrastructure expense of an MMO. The games are just massive undertakings requiring artists, network engineers, quest writers and programmers. One person has no chance of keeping up with the task, because even IF they can make the game and it’s good. MMO’s require a constant drip feed of new content to stay alive, so there’s just no hope without copious funding.
I would bet my left nut that over 90% of the people watching this had the exact same reaction Kira had when he clicked unmute and all you hear is the word "Metaverse". Instant full body cringe
I was drinking coffee when Kira said "mate, who would want to buy a gamer, they fucking stink" and it made me snort coffee so hard that it hurt to laugh XD
A lot of aspiring game devs suffer from the same problem - they've learned the basics of game dev on a short Unity course, and assume that's as hard as it's ever going to get. They don't seem to realise that the difficult part of making an MMO is writing highly optimised networking code. It's hard to do, and importantly requires significant knowledge and experience to get it right. By comparison, making the pretty pictures on the screen is actual child's play. They know enough to see their own potential, but don't know enough to see their own limitations.
Been burned now twice on Kickstarter on "non MMO" games, no way I'd ever back a MMO on there. Heck, I doubt I'll ever throw money at KS again after getting scammed twice. Good times.
When experience of playing a lot of different MMOs gives people the idea that they can make a good MMO. one of core elements of an MMO is the backend - SQL server or similar that can handle 100s or 1000s of concurrent players.. not scaling up a crappy Unity RPG that can barely cope with 8 players.
I believe that those people who want to make mmos, should look for games or services that allow them to make a online game they can play with friends, instead of trying to tackle on it. Byond is one of those services that allow people to make online games and host them, beside I don't know if they changed something about that. Games like Roblox could also help with that, maybe. I don't know of any other services that allow you to create or host online games, but those are some alternatives. If anyone knows of any other service like that, except for Manticore, because it is tied to NFTs and Metaverse, maybe post here, in case some other passionate developer want to make their own online game.
The closest thing to MMO kickstarter I supported with sryth kickstarters for 2019 and 2020. The reasons were. 1. the game already existed so I new the guy could do it. 2. I add already been playing it for years 3. Everything promised was realistic, just the game that already existed but more and continuing to exist 4. It is pretty much the only game were people who are blind get the full experience.
A have backed quite a few farming/life sims on Kickstarter and I always feel so bad for MMORPG fans because most of them don’t come out or they come out and are garbage. All the farming/life sims I’ve back have come out and are pretty neat.
Star citizen is a fucking joke. I wish I never bought into that game. There was no real warning on how buggy and unplayable it is, and yet they're selling $1000 ships while leaving the community high, dry, and covered in bugs. It's pathetic, thank god I saw it for what it is, and didn't get trapped in the lost cause fallacy the entire community is under.
Even if you have the technical know-how and can code a serviceable client/server, there is sooooo much content that goes into a mmo. It's just not feasible.
Metaverse doesn't need to mean crypto and block chain. It's basically Roblox, VR Chat, and what fortnite is doing. While the marketing is often nonsensical, the concept does exist in functional form, but it existed before the term "Metaverse". But games like Roblox is what they mean even if they don't know it.
Watching your videos every day has become a comfort thing for me, so cheers Kira! Also I'm baffled that ppl continue to attempt this, especially those with teams with no other game dev exp smh.
Haha! My brother worked on Star City at the UK office for a couple of years. That "game" literally is a mess! That nutter that's running the show is so insane my brother had to get out of there. He had to have meetings with the guy every week and he was just throwing crazy ideas all over the place and my poor brother had to figure out how to make it all work properly so that it actually made sense and was enjoyable to play but it was just too insane. Literally every week he would throw out new ideas without any direction as to how they were going to work or anything. He just expected it all to just work. So glad he left there. He's a lot better off now with a much more stable company and he's a lot happier too
Most of them never even made a Game. EVER. It's like creating your first building as architect and it is a skyscraper. Noo you start from smaller projects and gain experience that lets you make bigger projects. Because than you can judge better how much time and money you need to create them based on the experience of a smaller project you did.
Kira, I would love to see a video where you do go through the history of kickstarter MMOs. Just to show truly how many have failed and the few that made it. Obviously you’ve covered so many of them already, but a video with a quick rundown of a bunch of them would be cool. I think it would show just how low the success rate really is
I am sure all these people are trolling. You need around 2 millions to make a small MMORPG. And people ask for like 50.000. Sure. Just make a small Single Player RPG!
Has anyone spoken to any of these indie devs and asked them why they think they could succeed in making a MMORPG when established companies made up of hundreds of staff with millions of dollars rarely get it right. I mean there has to be at least some common sense that kicks in.
Weren't Larian's Original Sin games crowdfunded? Though I doubt that was funding from the ground up and more guaging interest or something along those lines.
Speaking of good games that work, has anyone played tunic? Im blown away and its changed my outlook on the industry. Small team made a beautiful work of art thats fun to interact with, what else can you ask for
I had my eyes on it briefly, been out for a longer while, let me screencap this and perhaps pull it further up my wishlist or backlog, thanks. Although maybe Gris will come first.
As a starcitizen player that came in late is my opinion: i bought myself a ticket on an development i can check in on from time to time with new stuff to experience be it mechanics ships or bugs and i enjoy it
Oh yeah. Star Citizen is quite the story over the years. They keep adding and adding, which delays the game. They seriously needed a project manager willing to say "NO!" and keep things focused.
Kickstarter's consumer protection got a lot stricter a while back after so many of these kinds of scams. Perhaps every aspiring MMORPG dev should just get together and actually make something.
They don't want to make someone else's MMORPG though, they want to make *their* MMORPG. Then it'd be a case of "too many cooks in the kitchen" and a huge disaster.
i think it would be easyer to croudfund to buy the servers for an mmo, than to croudfund the mmo, because you can release a semifunctional product to show you have something, with the multiplayer required parts being what dosent work due to not having a server
Indie dev here. I'm making a 2D mobile MMORPG as a solo dev. After years of planning and 4 months of development, it's cost me a total of 10K (of personal funds) for assets and infrastructure. It's not cheap.
thing is instead of starting with a normal game with online features/coop, starting with and mmorpg is essentially like knowing nothing about building cars and starting by building a rocket
The whole point of KS should be to prove proof of concept and that whomever is doing the project has an actual plan and expertise. So many of the videos lack even one of these precepts.
The kickstarter for a Roblox game using copyrighted materials seems dodgy to me. I can understand letting people use your character if they make something for free, that’s publicity to a younger audience (Roblox) about your material. But when you start asking for money to make something using other people’s material I feel like that will get a cease and desist order pretty quickly right?
I was thinking the same. I don't know much about Roblox, but I'm fairly sure the moment you make a commerical game using or even just greatly inspired by XYZ that you could be in serious trouble.
If people decided to make an anime style Battlefield or CoD clone, I can guarantee they would have 10x more of a chance to be funded than any kind of MMORPG. The result would be equally as bad, but just saying.
Kira should take a look at ethyrial and how their indie mmo launch has gone, Devs double charging people, claimed 5k servers but having queues at 800 concurrent people across multiple servers. and devs not acknowledging how bad they've messed up to top it off.
Thats depends, if you have the experience to make the game, go for it, its no problem, but if you got 0 experience and is trying to make a massive game, chances is, that it will fail.
Every time I lose motivation as an indie developer, I come to your channel to get mad and renew my vigor towards this do-anything-you-want MMORPG that I'm making. Thank you for your valuable service! But don't worry, I'm going to be pushing out at least two or three other smaller products first.
Hope and motivation is one thing, having the knowledge,the experience and talent goes a very long way in making a successful video game. Don’t seek to be hurt by something that you can control, Kira’s opinion is informative and factual about first time indie developers trying to produce a MMORPG game as they first game. “If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.” - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
While Kickstater is intended to "kickstart" projects, you still need a proper proof of concept. They need to think of it like presenting an idea to any other investor and not very many people are going to invest money into something they cannot metaphorically hold in their hands. I can sit there and say "hey I can make a game with dynamic quests, intelligent AI, dynamic AI voice acting, an open world shaped by the players, a realistic world and 10000000000 players in a single area" but who tf cares what I say I can do?
Even if AI became so good you could create an MMORPG by describing it to a ChatBot, you'd still fail, because thousands of people would do exactly that, and the population of players who are interested in indie MMOs would be split across fifty thousand games.
I swear on my life, what is with people being so overly focused on MMOs!!!! I recently had a guy ask me as a future indie dev if I would ever be open to making my strictly singleplayer Open-World RPG game plan an MMO instead. I promptly laughed at him. No.1 my dev team will be small as heck (20 people at most), no.2 MMOs go dead so quickly there is literally no point investing in it, and 3, making it an MMO would literally kill my vision on the spot. Anyone this fixated on MMOs is delusional and really doesn't understand the true complexities, dangers, and risks of this whole thing. Thanks but no thanks, I want no part of the MMO trainwreck!
Now the only way to crowdfund is tricking cryptobros, but everyone who does that instead is just straight scamming 😂😂 And even that ship has sailed for a big part what with the state of crypto
People dont realize that literally 90% of the work in mmos is the networking & db work. The RPG with its assets and stuff is nice and all, but people usually dont even finish that part before giving up/expanding the scope to infinity, and the networking and db is really difficult, boring to learn, and long. A decent amount of the really technical mathsy part of how games sync players is also specific to large multiplayer games and isnt really useful elsewhere. Theres a reason studios typically have a specialized guy to do networking, separate to the rest of the dev team.
None of these look compelling, and even if it was playable and fun to play have fun with the other six players online. Fail. Thanks for the advice Kira, now I know which ones to avoid should they ever make it to market.
I am trying to make an MMO and I support this message. From the user perspective, if the dev doesn't have gameplay to show AND a demo I can try AND a *working, absolutely killer feature*, what are you doing? (I know I don't)
I plan to go on Kickstarter with my MMO as soon as I have a playable version that is open to play so everyone can check out what they might back for. Would anyone consider that still an issue?
Kira isn't wrong about Early Access games. I brought into The Stomping Land on steam's Early Access and the developers just up and abandoned it. took my money (and everyone else's) and just left.
