Why is it that the title of this thread is the most consistent thing that comes through on game design. What is it about MMO's that enables people to overlook the multiple people needed to build, enormous sums of money to pay for it in the first place and still say with a straight face:

I have an idea for an MMO.

Why is it that the title of this thread is the most consistent thing that comes through on game design. What is it about MMO's that enables people to overlook the multiple people needed to build, enormous sums of money to pay for it in the first place and still say with a straight face:

I have an idea for an MMO.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

I think that about sums it up.

Am so adding that link to my favourites for future use

Yes, the Dunning-Kruger effect definitely plays its role. It's amazing how much this pops up when it comes to game development

<rant>
It's not just MMOs though, there are tons of people who have these 'amazing' ideas for an FPS, RPG, RTS, a hybrid of those, or any other genre which will blow away existing AAA games and which will be developed by a small team of at most 5 inexperienced friends of which some have maybe dabbled around in some modelling program once or twice. This will all be done with a minimal budget of course, if any. This super awesome game will also be completed and published within a year and the entire gamer community will be in awe of what they have accomplished.

I find this kind of attitude quite insulting to those who actually work or have worked on serious projects. Apparently the idea that games require no specific skills or talents and that anyone with a computer can build an AAA game is quite widespread considering the posts we get on these boards sometimes. There's a certain mentality among some gamers which makes them think that they can always do a better job than the developers who spent years working on a game can. There are enough of these so-called hardcore gamers who immediately point out what they would've done with a game and what they would've implemented with their 'superior intellect' and that the decisions the developers made just suck. Of course when it comes down to it these people wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to properly develop a game.

</rant>

I find this kind of attitude quite insulting to those who actually work or have worked on serious projects. Apparently the idea that games require no specific skills or talents and that anyone with a computer can build an AAA game is quite widespread considering the posts we get on these boards sometimes.

I think it's just the "Web 2.0" at work. Teenagers grew up with Facebook and feel the need of announcing to the world every time they need to use the toilet.
What happened to wannabe devs long ago was that you tried to do an MMO or whatever game you thought you could do and realise that making games is HARD and requires skilled individuals... and this process happened in the silence of a bedroom with no forum post to announce it.

I do feel pretty insulted yes, I have to admit.. but it's just ignorance, I don't think there is any bad intention there... let them burn themselves, experience will teach them, and some of these kids might become good devs in the future.

It is not that hard to come up with Game Idea these days, especially MMO idea as MMO games have become accepted by most casual players and as MMO rewarding systems are addictive even more people play them.

This leads to them think about what would be their favorite MMO and soon its completely new idea in their head and some of these realize that with "little" work they might be able to do it like everyone else. Then they come here or some other game development forum with their idea to find people to work on the idea as they do not have millions to hire professionals or do not know how to go to a producer with their idea.

Which makes some of us damn annoyed when you find these posts once in a while and everyone asks the same damn questions, but then again I also dislike when someone replies that making MMO is nearly impossible or so hard that you need thousands of developers. Of course making polished AAA title does need lots of developers if you are planning to do it in few years. But these developers are needed to produce the huge amount of content. The game code can actually be done by few guys if they use existing tools and do try to write everything themselves.

Though these "gamers" who know nothing about game development do not know tools like Ogre3D, Bullet, sockets, SQL, etc.. So instead they try to find someone who might know. Then again they can not easily know if the person replying is qualified to answer their questions.

Now I will stop analyzing this stupid thing once again and say that this post is even more useless compared to those who actually are asking how to make their idea reality.

If you play mmos, it's only natural to think about that genre. It's almost impossible to play a game and not come up with any related game design ideas. Whether you have a snowball's chance in hell of making one is a different question.

I don't know why its so surprising that people under 21 have an unrealistic view of the world.

I think part of it is the fault of non gamers always trashing gaming as lazy and frivolous. People are inculcated with the idea that game design is trivial and fun and something people who can't do real jobs do. So they don't think it could be that hard because of the wrong messages people put in their heads.

I know several MMO's that were basically made by one person (with some help from others, but not the enormous sums of money you guys are talking about here). One of them was Akarra. Unfortunately it only lived a few years because it was fantastic.

Another one was by someone I knew in person, he bought a 2D RPG engine somewhere, and created the worldmap, and the game did have continiously 100+ people online for a long while. He even got money by selling special premium equipment. This was all before the age of Facebook games!

I think part of the appeal of creating an MMO is that it's one of the best opportunities to play god. Essentially creating a civilization and seeing whether or not it works sounds like fun to me. You watch some game's economy reach a ridiculous state of dysfunction, come up with your own idea and want to try it out to see if it's any better. You watch in some other game intense griefing and trolling and come up with your own idea for a justice system and you want to try it out. I gotta say, reading some of the discussions of economy & justice I started to be impressed that society has worked out as well as it has. The idea of trying experiments like that makes me want to give it a try too and I know the scope of such a project is beyond my capacity to handle.