Wow, my arrogance meter just went off the chart!!

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
I have been designing games and simulations since before the computer game industry even existed. I would like to invite everyone to my “retirement web site”. You see, in over 20 years of trying I’ve only ever received a single response to my resume from the computer game industry.

You've been designing games since 1960? (That's about the time the industry began to form...)
So if you were 20 at the time, that would make you almost 70 now? Sounds about time to retire...

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
It is so revolutionary, in fact, that I actually refer to all previous “MMO” games as MSO, or “Massively Single Player” games. Pirate Dawn creates a whole new structure for MMO games. It has been designed from the ground up, on a foundation of many entirely new and original game mechanics specifically tailored to the MMO environment, to be an actual MMO game rather than merely a single player game that a lot of other people happen to be playing at the same time like all those MSO games that the industry been forced to make so far.

How many "MSO"/MMO's have you played recently? I'm only about 9% of the way through your design, but I haven't seen any mechanics here that I haven't already seen in an existing MMO...
Seriously, go out any play some MMO's (and not just the popular ones) before claiming that you invented things!

For example:

Quote: "Corporations and Cartels" - In previous online games such groups are not actually a part of the game and have no power, influence, or real reputation within the game.

This has been done previously; FoM is based around organisations and politics with powerful groups of players controlling everything from the cost of manufacturing to the players who will be unfairly searched by police to the territories where war will take place (but new Corporations can't be created by users, only the internal hierarchies can be changed)... Trading/expansion games like Earth or TeQ see large amounts of power obtained by user-created organisations, they even manage to manipulate the game's markets in favour of certain industries and maintain strong reputations over several game resets...

Quote: Original post by Pirate_Lord
5. Pirate Dawn is not "vague designs", it is a actually a playable game as it stands right now. There are existing board game rules that could be used to handle the actual moving and shooting, and you could actually play it right now as a board game (in playtest form). I am an experienced board game designer, and Pirate Dawn is actually a playable game as it stands. Maybe you should actually read it.

If it's playable as a board game (what, max 20 people can play a board game?) then it isn't really "specifically tailored to the MMO environment", is it? Either that or it's gonna be a crappy board game... I guess that's why it's a playtest?

[Edited by - Hodgman on December 6, 2007 10:45:12 PM]

Quote: Original post by NickHighIQ
Well, I had to stop reading once I got to about page 19 because you use 'too' when you should be using 'to' WAY too often. I'm a language freak as some people on these forums may know and it was driving me insane.

The to/too issue is in the design document also? I noticed it in quite a few of his posts, but I thought perhaps it was due to careless typing in a forum.

To the OP -- you ought to look into fixing that in your document; it will quickly detract from any polish it may have.

Cheers,
Matt

Quote: Original post by mnizol
The to/too issue is in the design document also? I noticed it in quite a few of his posts, but I thought perhaps it was due to careless typing in a forum.

As did I.

Quote: Original errors by Pirate_Lord

"...after they turned the design over too me during the last few months..."
"...are far less controversial too anyone who has actually read..."

That's from his "Me, me, me!" post just up the page.

@Hodgman: I'm jealous - your post was shorter and far more scathing than mine... I'll have to work on it for next time someone shouts their own praises from the hilltops.

Your game isn't terribly impressive, I read the design doc
there was nothing there that made me go

ooh i want to play this game now

It has nothing that isn't already available, Its desc isn't interesting
its game play is a mismatch of different games

There is nothing that sets it apart, you say other people will be stealing the idea.. which idea? the combat/building from mech warrior, the missions from single player space games, a drenched down version of Eve online, the limited game length, with ooh wow a movie, before they have to start from the beginning again

Maybe when you first did this idea, i would have been impressed, but now, you would have to do alot better,

Goodluck with it, but you really do need some interesting ideas

Ill give you one, i want to see in a space based mmo, the ability to own/terra form planets, that alone would make me read over any space based design doc
I like to own things, Planets, houses, Super giant space ships
closes i can get to in Eve Online is owning a space station.

Off Topic: Anyone play Escape Velocity?

I really think that game was waaaay ahead of it's time. I think being mac only when it came out hurt the sales.

*The summary of the following*
In short, don't TELL us that your game good, SHOW us! We don't care about ALL the details, just the ones we need to know WHY it is so good without expecting us to spend hours finding it ourselves.


Your reply to everyone telling you that they got bored reading your design and flipped it in the trash so to speak that if they had only kept reading we would have been REALLY impressed and want to fork over cash to make it?


You don't see this as a major problem with you design document that you may want to, you know, run out and fix as soon as you can?


I'm a student that loves studying game design, and if *I* feel I'm wasting my (free) time reading your document before I get anywhere with it, how do you think someone working at a game company feels when they sit down and spend their WORKING time to read it? Do you have any idea how many times a day a major game company gets suggestions and 'designs' for games? Most have a delete/destroy on receive policy to avoid lawsuits if they can't simply refuse them anyway.


In short, if I'm not hooked and very interested in your concept by the first paragraph, then your design document down right sucks.

A design document is all about communicating ideas. And the saying "A picture is worth 1000 words" holds true. And saying that 20 page 'design documents' are crap is really a lie. No, they're not usable as a FINAL document, but often they are a hell of a lot better at getting the idea of a game across. Hell, I know a few development studios where it is standard practice to pitch major contracts to publishers in less than 20 pages!

If you can't make us interested in your game in 20 pages, then go home, or hire someone else that can read your whole document, and play your test board game to do it for you.

A GDO, or game design overview, is usually a 6 page (or less) document used to sum up an entire game design and pitch it to a publisher.

To be perfectly frank, I was put off reading the document just from the attitude displayed in the original post.

You make all kinds of preposterously bold claims about how awesome the design is, and then blame everyone except yourself for it's failure to actually get off the drawing board.

Even if we were to assume that your game design would be the best thing since bread, sliced or otherwise, it's a bit disengenous to blame your failure to get the thing off the ground on the industry, when the only person with any responsibility for it is YOU.

Consider your game design proposal from the perspective of a publisher. You're asking for a huge sum of money to be risked on your game design; what do you offer them to convince them that you're a viable risk, and not just Yet Another N00b With An Awesome WoW Beating Idea?
How many of the following boxes can you tick?

[ ] Track record of designing successful games of any genre (list)
[ ] Track record of designing successful games of similar genre (list)
[ ] Clear communication of the gameplay
[ ] Well defined and financially viable target audience
[ ] Playable prototype demonstrating enjoyable gameplay
[ ] Have a proper NDA drawn up.

If you can tick all of those then a publisher might actually bother to read your design and not just file it instantly in the shredder. Invent a few more boxes and tick those too, and they might consider the investment to be worthwhile. And if they still won't help you, with all those things in place it should not be so hard to put together an indie team and start implementing it yourself.

Stop moaning and get it done. Or don't get it done, but stop moaning either way. It really doesn't help.

You will never succeed in your endeavor. If you want a clear reason that this is the case, re-read this whole thread, with special emphasis on your own posts.

Wow. I actually read the entire thing. And I have to say, you are absolutely right. People are going to be ripping this thing off for years to come.

Because there isn't anything particularly revolutionary about it. I don't quite see why you are claiming this to be the end-all be-all of MMO design.

Any noob worth his salt will come in here and tell us that he knows exactly how to make the best game ever: a completely open MMOG where you can do whatever you want and everyone is involved as part of one great big story which is amazing and works perfectly!!! No.

I don't particularly care if you're arrogant in a forum post... but your arrogance is readily perceivable in the document too. That won't fly (and apparently hasn't) and is a huge detrement to you marketing-wise. A publisher might read this (or part of it anyway) and think "geez this guy thinks his game design is the best the world has ever seen. What's going to happen down the road when we want to make changes to the design based on our marketing figures. Is he going to willingly-oblige? Or is he going to call us morons and fight every step of the way."

Ultimately your game idea isn't bad... but it isn't all that spectacular either. I don't care how old you are or how much experience you have. Telling people that your game idea is incredible, that it would be the #2 game for decades, that it will be ripped off by everyone for its ingenuity, is ridiculous. Come off your high horse.

You say that the industry has convinced you that they don't have the slightest idea what they are doing? It looks like you've convinced us here that neither do you.