If people can't even read the "Design Document" you have available, you have a problem...

Saying "well, did you read this?" doesn't cut it. You need to be able to draw someone in from the first capitalized letter in the document to the last period(or exclamation point!). This is the point of any design document. If there are boring parts to the document, what's to say that those same implemented designs in the game won't be just as boring?

Your design document is a reflection on your eventual idea, and like any reflection, it is never perfect or exactly the same. The reflection can be better or worse than the original, whether in its entirety or in pieces.

Less is more... you stated you had a smaller "true" design document. It should highlight what your game does different. If you have that many ideas to where you can't keep it extra short, do what a lot of people suggested. Use pictures. A picture is worth a thousand words. Use all of the tools available to you to present this idea (whether you plan on actually developing the title or not).

Just my 2 cents, and it's time for me to get back to work.

Quote:

Original post by mittens I am, quite frankly, upset with the kind of insincere, sarcastic, and generally rude replies to this thread in regard to Pirate_Lord's original post. As a member of GameDev.net for over seven years, I have come to expect far more of the community than what it is showing itself capable of within the scope of this particular thread. Pirate_Lord or, rather, Marc (if he grants me permission to call him by his first name) is a person that I would have thought the GameDev.net regulars would have paid far more respect to given Marc's candid nature and, if nothing else, his pedigree as both a designer and, more importantly, as a person. One of Marc's excellently-proven points is that the game industry is quickly turning into a loathsome beast of a thing. This is an industry even more despicable than the worst that Hollywood has to offer due solely to the fact that it is, in theory, filled with a number of smart people who simply fail to either care or have the patience to give the time of day to a "design document," however long it may be, that has a very real potential to revolutionize the industry. So, from now on, I'd like to see courteous and sincere replies to Pirate_Lord. He is a user tormented by delusions of grandeur that deserves some honesty in order to, hopefully, drive his megalomania-suffering, arrogance-ridden, criminally verbose demons away.

Why post this?

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Original post by Dinner Why Marc should I play this game instead of Eve Online? (I dont play eve online, thought i might during the holidays i want to see how possible it is for a player to earn subscription with ingame currency which eve allows unlike any other game i know about.)

Well, they are completely different games. It's like comparing apples and oranges. Eve Online is a flight sim, Pirate Dawn is a top-down space combat game. They really aren't similar at all, other than both sharing Trade Wars as an influence. It depends on your personal taste, but I personally prefer the fun arcade-like "asteroids" kind of space ship combat. It's a lot more fun than looking through a straw as you chase someone around in circles.

-- Marc Michalik (A.K.A. Pirate_Lord)
Lost Art Studios -- www.piratedawn.com

Quote:

Original post by trippytarka Your claims are seemingly far-fetched. If you're anything other than a troll then please tell us what commercially released board and computer games you designed and what games were released based on ideas you had sent designs for to game development companies. I expect you either won't reply to this post or will avoid the question somehow...

That information is not difficult to find. Anyone can put my name into Yahoo and see what comes up. Another name I have been known by is "Kavik Kang". Me trying to say what you want me to say would be seized upon by those who are just trying to flame me.

I wouldn't hold your breath on the "borrowed" ones, though. If it wasn't worth trying to sue them, it certainly isn't worth trying to prove a decade after the fact. But that really did happen twice. Then I mostly stopped talking to game industry people.

Marc Michalik (A.K.A. Pirate_Lord)
Lost Art Studios -- www.piratedawn.com

Quote:

Original post by mittens I am, quite frankly, upset with the kind of insincere, sarcastic, and generally rude replies to this thread in regard to Pirate_Lord's original post. As a member of GameDev.net for over seven years, I have come to expect far more of the community than what it is showing itself capable of within the scope of this particular thread. Pirate_Lord or, rather, Marc (if he grants me permission to call him by his first name) is a person that I would have thought the GameDev.net regulars would have paid far more respect to given Marc's candid nature and, if nothing else, his pedigree as both a designer and, more importantly, as a person. One of Marc's excellently-proven points is that the game industry is quickly turning into a loathsome beast of a thing. This is an industry even more despicable than the worst that Hollywood has to offer due solely to the fact that it is, in theory, filled with a number of smart people who simply fail to either care or have the patience to give the time of day to a "design document," however long it may be, that has a very real potential to revolutionize the industry. So, from now on, I'd like to see courteous and sincere replies to Pirate_Lord. He is a user tormented by delusions of grandeur that deserves some honesty in order to, hopefully, drive his megalomania-suffering, arrogance-ridden, criminally verbose demons away.

I have no problem with people flaming me, Mr. Moderator, let them fire away. You are, of course, free too as well...

Marc Michalik (A.K.A. Pirate_Lord)
Lost Art Studios -- www.piratedawn.com

Hopefully there are some out there actually reading Pirate Dawn. If not, well, like I said last night... I am just getting started. I'm going to be around for a while, I'm not going anywhere. If anyone is reading Pirate Dawn, I anxiously await any questions you might have.

Marc Michalik (A.K.A. Pirate_Lord)
Lost Art Studios -- www.piratedawn.com

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Original post by Pirate_Lord I have no problem with people flaming me, Mr. Moderator, let them fire away. You are, of course, free too as well... Marc Michalik (A.K.A. Pirate_Lord) Lost Art Studios -- www.piratedawn.com

Are you honestly so arrogant that you've taken nothing from this thread whatsoever?

People flame you because you deserve it. Every single reply here is, in my mind, giving you well-deserved criticism. You're lucky if absolutely any of the replies here offer constructive criticism because your attitude and pretentiousness warrant nothing aside from LOLcat image after LOLcat image mocking your complete and utter enthrallment with your own self. For being a fifty/sixty-year-old designer in the industry, you show a remarkable amount of ignorance and an inverse amount of experience.

Now, as a moderator, I have been torn about whether or not to shut this thread down within a day after you originally posted it. You may seek help but the way you act and hold yourself on what, quite frankly, must be a very lonely pedestal is putting a dark mark on an otherwise respectable forum. Perhaps you may want to direct your next thread to this forum if, at some point, a decision is made regarding the longevity of this thread.

[Edited by - mittens on December 12, 2007 8:34:26 PM]

As soon as I saw the initial arrogance and delusions of grandeur by the OP I didn't even bother to read anything in this thread. I don't normally get "upset" by reading forum threads, but this one in particular irked me.

This is what I got out of it about the OP:

* Doesn't have an open mind

* Is extremely arrogant (without even having the experience to back it up, I'm sorry, you don't, and it wouldn't be a bad thing except for the fact you think you're the best game designer in the world.)

* Put down other aspiring game designers in other threads with your negative and own personal faults in your own career and trying to say that's what the industry is like.

* Rather than taking everyone's criticism about his attitude and design document (200 is WAY too long) and improving himself, instead flames and lashes out at people. He seems to forget that his game (if it were ever produced) would be played by the same people telling him there are rough edges in the game. See the connection?

Yes, the game industry is very harsh at times, so if it no longer interests or drives you then that's fine, try something else in life. I've seen many friends do that. However if you wish to continue on, you really need to up your positivity and attitude and that's what will allow you to succeed. Not a massive 200 page design document that most people wouldn't read if you were being positive, let alone highly negative.

Anyways, enough from me.

~Graham

I am wondering, why is Pirate Dawn only the #2 MMO? Why not go for #1?

I went to your website and read some of it and skimmed the first few pages of the design document. The best advice I think I can give you there is immediately on the front page you should have a few paragraphs that say what you actually do in Pirate Dawn. For trying to promote this game, I think you start describing it at too abstract a level. Compare to, say, the intro page to World of Warcraft. Anyone who reads this gets a very good idea of what you actually do in the game. The closest I can find is that Pirate Dawn is somehow an MMO of Asteroids.

If you want feedback on your design, perhaps a better approach is to make a thread about a particular aspect of the design, such as how you address making an MMO with an actual ending, or economic balance in a completely player-driven environment.

Lastly, it saddens me that a thread about a game called "Pirate Dawn" doesn't have any talk about pirates.

Sooo.... I read it.

It's not bad. I've read game design documents before. circa 1999 it would be extremely innovative, but impossible to produce. Now most of the ideas in it have already been done in some shape or form, mind you, not all in one place as you have here. It could be a very fun game, but it would also (and I don't believe you could argue this point) very expensive to produce.

Some of the features you list, such as your modding system, are unfeasible from a TECHNICAL perspective at this point in time. Particularly on consoles (which you said your game would be geared towards). Have you taken into account streaming data costs, bandwidth allocations, etc? These are things you have to take into account on a MMO of any scale.

Ive seen less of them nowadays, but about 3-4 years ago there were posts on gamedev about 3 times a week with someone wanting to produce a game that "lives and breaths" on its own. With little to no restriction on players. Player run content is great, but there are A SHIT LOAD of technical pitfalls. In addition the cost of producing the game, the hardware requirements for both the servers and the players running it (particular bandwidth) would be a major issue. Are you really going to expect all your players to have a personal T1 line? Mind you, in 3-4 years... we are heading that route.

For instance, you are talking about streaming things from the players that could create security loopholes. How are you prepared to deal with this? Can you point me to some parts in your design document that deal with the content streams, security precautions, etc?

Your game would be very appealing to game DESIGNERS, which makes sense why you think it would take off so well. Bear in mind that the mass market, your target demographic, might not find it quite as enjoyable because they are NOT designer oriented.

That being said, you are RIGHT in the aspect that what you have here makes most other online games appear as a massively single player game. Your not a programmer as you admitted yourself, so I don't think you have reached the stark realism that what you are endeavoring may actually STILL be technically unfeasible though, at least with huge amounts of money and requirements. Games are , unfortunately, about money. Costs of development aside, it would be difficult to make this game profitable from a purely operational standpoint for at least another 5-10 years I think.