Hopefully others have wrestled with this problem and can provide some guidance. I have an idea for a MMORPG game that just gives me goose bumps when i think of it. I am not concerned about the complexity of developing the game since i will have fun designing and implementing the game no matter how complex it becomes (and the opportunity to work on it will be a learning experience no matter what). But i fear that i have taken to too many of the "wouldn''t it be great if" ideas that i have seen or thought of over the years (politics, economics, player driven world, real-time, simulation, and realism in the sense of this particular virtual world). All of this adds up to a theoretically wonderful game, but will people play it? Will it work? How? I am beginning to think that i will have to start taking the axe to some of the features of the game if i ever want it to see the light of day, let alone a player''s computer. I just hate the idea of trimming features from the idea. Each feature seems necessary to my vision of this game. Have any of you faced this problem? How did you approach it? I can give details of my dilemma if prompted. cheers, drtremmie

Sounds like you''re going to need to test your design with Goblin...

quote: Original post by Landfish

Sounds like you''re going to need to test your design with Goblin...

I read some about Goblin...what is the status of it?

quote: Original post by drtremmie

I read some about Goblin...what is the status of it?

Currently? Debate phase. It looks like we''re getting to the point where we can really start designing, and implementation shouldn''t be that hard (it''s a very simple system). It''s going to take a lot of work to use though, from what I can tell. It will be worth it though. Oh yes....

Eric



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"Or a pointed stick!"

But I think Goblin will be ideal to help you with your problem. It should be able to test the legitimacy of an outlandish idea, and also test compatability with other ideas... on a purely statistical level, of course...

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"The unexamined life is not worth living."
-Socrates

"Question everything. Especially Landfish."
-Matt

Well, unfortunately, I know exactly how you feel. Over the years I''ve doomed a number of games to the sock drawer due to "Kitchen-sink-itis." The latest, which I''ve committed to rescuing (and am posting about) was there for a couple of years because of overdesign.

I''ve learned a couple of things over the years that may help. First of all, at the risk of sounding new agey (Designer''s Anonymous, anyone?) let me say that the fact that you''re aware that there''s a problem is a very good sign. You''re self critical. So the next step is to figure out where the design impetus is coming from... in short, why do you want to add what you want to add? Are you going after reality simulation? Are you trying to outcompete other designs? Do you want to mix genres? Knowing your reasons for adding stuff will help you reign it in and focus.

The next question you need to ask yourself is CRITICAL: What is the soul of your game? This can be tricky, but you need to answer it. Try to summarize your design in a few sentences, sort of like the movie descriptions in TV Guide. When you know what the soul of your game is, you''ll have your core design elements. For instance, the idea I mentioned above started its life as an Civilization type game with aliens. I designed a ton of stuff into, and kept cutting and adding, cutting and adding. I finally realized that I wanted a 4X empire game that wasn''t so impersonal. This was the soul of my game. So I revamped my idea to be a mesh between 4X and RPG genre.

OK, two more points (hope this isn''t TOO long): Once you have the soul of your game, you can move into what I call Grand Unified Theory. You take the elements that are important to you and see if you can bring them all under one umbrella. Try to get a small feature set to do as much work as possible. For example, I want my game to feature talking to NPCs. I also want the player to be able to influence empires. Well, it''s a natural step to go from talking to a barkeep to talking to a king. If I use the same set of features to cover different cases, it cuts down on development effort, testing, art, and QA.

Last point: Reality. Working in the game industry for a number of years has given me a strong sense of how ruthless economics can be to a design. Two-thirds of your budget gets swallowed up by art and sound. Features get carved up like a Christmas turkey. Producers and execs are loathe to do big, expansive games unless they come with some kind of guarantee, like a license.
As you begin to finalize your design, I''d try to get a strong sense of what it takes to do what you want to do. Understand your audience, try to figure out your market. If you''re not a coder, get somebody who is to help you with a mock schedule and estimates. If you''re not an artist, get somebody to help you do the same. Ditto for sound.
You may want to resist doing this, because it will take some of the glow off your design. But in the end it is the one thing that saves you from the sock drawer.

-Aaron

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Just waiting for the mothership...

thanks wav...i appreciate the morsels of wisdom. and you are right, i do not want to do any of that stuff since it will remove the "glow" from my idea i have decided that this is just something that i will grapple with for a bit...which is okay since i will go ahead and do some purely technical exercises on some of the parts of the design that will be helpful as a tool to put in my box (Personality Engine, Character Generator...etc...). after working on some of those things as stand-alones, i hopefully will have reached a state of design nirvana.

and to landfish:
i joined the goblin board and have read the messages....i will keep my eye on it, and if i decide to contribute code, it will probably be in the PlayerSim area of things.

My advice is not to lose any of your ideas. Then make the general need''s to get the game working, such as gfx engines and the like. Then once you''ve got that going so you can walk some dude around on a black background start the adding process peice by peice. It may sound stupid at first but its whats called progress. Little piece by little piece, then you realise what doesn''t work and what does. I''ve done it and it really hurts.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!