in theory, if I had a small talented team of friends and money to get the basic things such as a
game engine, hardware and basic marketing, not factoring in the time it would take to do this,
do you think it's possible without a multi million dollar budget and a team of 500 people?

Anything is possible (except two things: (1) time travel to the past, and (2) the Star Trek holo-
deck). Of course it's possible to make a video game with fewer than 500 people and less than two
million dollars. Many many games were made with fewer than 500 people and under two million
dollars. In fact, all the games I worked on in my career fit that category.

(Note: I'm just answering the question as phrased, without considering any specifics discussed
above beyond the question as phrased.)

Making most of those games at the scale they are doesn't just require a big team for time, it requires a big team for ability.

Putting it another way, games are generally made in a certain time frame because they have a team of experienced individuals mixed with some less experienced ones and that's about how long it takes them to finish the game(or the publishers want them to finish it) when they're being paid to work full time on it. Although you probably didn't intend it, your posts come off as a little snarky, sort of like "well I assume anyone can make battlefield 1 if they do it in 6 years instead of 3, right?"

It's really not like that at all though, you'll find it hard to find people that are actually qualified to make games of that quality. The code can be challenging to write, and massive in scale, art is a big problem too, making a game look that good requires professional artists, and those people don't work for beans. You're basically making it sound like you want to build a house from scratch and are wondering if you can do it if you just devote more time to it than a construction team would. Most likely the answer is no.

Can you make games by yourself or with a small team? Of course you can, provided you have money. But even if you accept taking worse quality visuals or coders that work slower or aren't as experienced, there's no guarantee you'll get the thing done in a particular time frame. Making games is hard, that's a fact, if you actually go through and make an entire game(even a small one by yourself) you'll start to realize how deep the rabbit hole goes.

But I'm rambling a bit, focusing more on what you're talking about as well, design, I would say you're probably being a bit naive. Often people feel like they have a much better idea on how to do something than a AAA game does it, and sometimes they do. But often things are that way for a reason, either the publisher wanted it, or the design team had to cut things or change things to fit time constraints, or new systems were added that unbalanced others. A lot of games have features cut, often in big crops, so things you might think should be in the game, they might have wanted in the game too but it just never happened. You're essentially asking about copying them, their multi million dollar projects, and doing it better. It's a little unrealistic.

It's important to be realistic when you undertake any project. This is where most amateurs fail in game development, and this is your main problem now. You may be really intelligent, really talented, and have all the time in the world to learn and work on a game without having to worry about things like earning money for food and rent... and I can tell you right now you will not be able to build a game like what you're talking about, either alone or with a team of friends.

Yes, in theory you and some friends can do it... just like in theory me with some friends can built the Empire State Building even though I have no experience in construction or architecture. But in reality it will never ever happen no matter how much I think we can do it.

Here's your problems...

1) You have no experience. Getting the experience you need for even one aspect of game development will mean many years of college and professional employment. Yeah, some of it you could learn from books or the internet, but much of it you cant.

2) You have no team. Sure, you think you can talk some friends into it, but trust me... no, you cant. Yes they may agree to work on this for a few weeks or months, but eventually they'll realize it's not going to go anywhere and they'd rather be doing something else.

3) Unless you're independently wealthy, you have no money. And you WILL need a lot of money if you plan to spend the next 20 years doing nothing but trying to build a game that even if finished will likely be 20 years out of date by the time you're done.

Now, if you want to make games and are really motivated and excited about it... awesome! Start learning everything you can and start working on small, doable projects. If you can learn enough to be employable as a developer, get a job and learn more. Then you can work on bigger games than you alone could do, and you can also work on stuff on the side. Eventually you might be experienced enough and have enough equally motivated developer friends who might join you in a more ambitious project. But even then you need to be realistic.

The most difficult part, I guess, is to start. Any huge impossible task can be splitted into small doable steps. While moving forward, for sure you will discover more options and opportunities for the project. Maybe it will transform into a totally different concept by the end. The first step, anyway, is to draw a "green triangle" on the screen.

Reading through the comments, I appreciate the frankness! Also, I apologize if I offended experienced developers by conveying the idea that I could do better than them with less people and money and more time. I originally actually didn't even bring cost or team up! I'm fully aware that I need a full development team to do this, but the 24 people that are building Dual Universe is as full a dev team as the 500+ that work on call of duty isn't it?

I actually plan on working for a few large companies in the industry first, before starting my own company to work on my dream game. However, I'd like to start it MUCH sooner as a personal skunkworks project.. im considering starting it off as a mod to an older game like Pioneer.

Since the game has elements from multiple genres, my plan was to build a game for each genre that allows us to test different ideas that will eventually go into the final game.

With that being said, Let me rephrase my question:

I want to know how I, as a 20 year old in college can jumpstart this process by advancing my knowledge of game development as far as possible without professional experience. I would like some advice on where to direct my studies other than the curriculum provided at school, so as to further my knowledge of the subject independently from that of my peers.

Once I get the ball rolling, it's downhill from there (knowledge wise). I'd even like to freelance a little bit to gain experience and earn some money while in college.

I not so naive as not to realize what a monumental task this project is.

If you I had to get to the moon and didn't know how, where would you start?

P.S. I still believe that with experience I can certainly do better than all my favorite devs! Having a product that competes with my favorite games is a dream!

Even if it's simply your reason why you think this game is impossible.

not impossible. it'll just take a REALLY long time.

imagine the better parts of Star Citizen+Civilization+Grand Theft Auto+Halo

that means roughly 1500 years worth of dev time, most of which is done by veteran experience in their specific fields. People with potentially several decades of experience, studios with game engines, assets and prior work to use from many many earlier games, across a multitude of disciplines.

multiply the team size by the years of development for each of those games and add them up. that's how long it will take in man-years, once you have the skills and tools, and a way to support yourself while you build it.

if its 1500 man-years, and you can get together a team of 10, you can do it in 150 years. a team of 50, and you're down to 30 years, so its not impossible - just not practical.

The sad fact is that big games are a lot of work to build. the original version of Skyrim (not SE) is about 500 man-years. (team of 100, 5 years dev time).

its on the order of building a destroyer or cruiser - but not as much work as building a battleship.

and in terms of parts, if you consider each character of code a part, its probably as complex as the space shuttle, which is one of the most complex machines ever made at over 2 million parts.

so, all that being said, how do you proceed to do what you can?

step one, you'll need an engine. something that's suitable for both flight sims and shooters. so start downloading and checking them out. think about what you want your game to do (seamless worlds etc), and see what engines can do it. then start playing around with the engine prototyping things. just learn as you go. starting from scratch, it will take a couple of years to get enough skills in code, paint, modeling, and animation to begin to really do stuff. and don't forget foley and music!

one thing you can do is design your game to require less man-hours.

procedural level generation means you don't need level designers. and all those man-hours of hand editing the game world disappear.

another thing you can do is massive re-use of assets. construct objects from shared meshes, textures, materials / shaders and animations where possible. Caveman 3.0 implements a Paleo-world simulation covering an entire continent with < 500 meshes and < 500 textures total for the whole game.

purchasing assets is another great work / time saver. $100 for a decent skinned mesh beats months of learning to do it yourself. and the time required to learn character rigging and a animation is nothing compared to learning character modeling. many tools come with assets you can use in your games. there are also special tools you can use to create assets faster.

Procedural generation of quests and missions means you don't need writers for quests / missions, and you don't need quest / mission editors.

You may not ever approach the combo of those you listed games plus more, but you can go a long way towards your goal. just take it one feature at at time, starting with whatever is the most important feature at that point in the project.

make a list of features you want, prioritize it from most to least important. add design notes to features so you know how to implement them. this is your todo list. implement a feature, then test, debug, refactor if needed, then move it from the todo list to the done list. then on to the next thing on the todo lsit. project scope is so large you'll never "go gold", but after a few years, you might have some pretty cool beta's you can post.

FYI: Caveman might be a good example of what a solo dev can do. its a seamless randomly generated persistent open world survival game with a stone age setting and an emphasis on realism. It combines FPSrpg gameplay as seen in skyrim with person sim gameplay as seen in The SIMs. you can interact with just about everything in the game world (a la the sims). the world map is 500x500 miles in size. there are 60,000 caves (settlements or hostile encounter areas), 5000 rock shelters (settlements or hostile encounter areas), 18000 huts (settlements), 20000 caverns (dungeons), and 40000 special encounter areas (valley of the tigers, etc). about half a dozen core stats, about a dozen variable stats, about 50 skills, 1-2 dozen types of resources, 300+ types of objects, all off which can be crafted and repaired - including about 65 types of weapons. 50+ differnt species of wild animals with unique models. it uses a custom game engine based off of DX9. its been about 3 man-years so far. and i have 35 years experience building PC games. from scratch it would probably take one about 3-4 years to learn all the coding, artwork, and audio skills required. and even then the game is not exactly AAA quality - especially the graphics. I've just begun working on the final graphics, now that the rest of the game is pretty much done.

I want to know how I, as a 20 year old in college can jumpstart this process by advancing my knowledge of game development as far as possible without professional experience.

Make stuff.

Exactly what isn't all that important, initially. The important part is you keep gaining experience and learning through failure (and success).

Mods, clones, prototypes, apps, games, anything at all.

Once you get experience with making things, start focusing more and more onto making things you feel suit you better. Like graphics programming? Make some cool shaders, or a tech demo of something awesome. Like tools? Identify a problem with a currently used tool and write a new one -- or an extension to the already existing solution. Like AI programming? Make a bot, or a demo showcasing some interesting AI dynamics, etc..

Focus on completing things. Starting something is easy. Finishing a product is a skill on its own. It shows you're able to commit, and you'll learn a lot by actually having to fixing those last "few easy bugs". You'll learn and experience first-hand what polishing means, and where you need to change your initial plans, and why. You'll learn that there are times there is no golden solution, and you need to comprimise, choosing between two or more solutions which all have their own drawbacks and positives.

but the 24 people that are building Dual Universe is as full a dev team as the 500+ that work on call of duty isn't it?

The scale just completely changed here.

In your original post you mentioned taking the best parts of Star Citizen, Grand Theft Audio, Civilization & Halo - all massive titles with huge development teams and resources. Nobody is saying 24 people can't make a project like Dual Universe, but it's an indie title with a much smaller scope than the impression I get from your project... not to mention it's got a few industry veterans on the team.

Lactose is spot on - make stuff, start small and focus on completing things.

1. I actually plan on working for a few large companies in the industry first, before starting my own company to work on my dream game.
2. I want to know how I, as a 20 year old in college can jumpstart this process by advancing my knowledge of game development as far as possible without professional experience.
I would like some advice on where to direct my studies other than the curriculum provided at school, so as to further my knowledge of the subject independently from that of my peers.
3. Once I get the ball rolling, it's downhill from there (knowledge wise).
4. I'd even like to freelance a little bit to gain experience and earn some money while in college.
5. If you I had to get to the moon and didn't know how, where would you start?

1. Three things about that statement:
1.1. Getting experience in the industry is the right first step before starting your own company. http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson29.htm
1.2. But if you focus on large companies, you lose out on a lot of valuable experience and contacts. http://www.sloperama.com/advice/m88.htm
1.3. And it's unlikely you'll get funding to start your company to work on your dream game. Most startups have to do work for other companies to pay the bills, then work on their dream games on the side.

2. Make games on the side. By the way, take business and management and marketing and accounting courses while you're in school, since you intend to start your own company.

3. Um, what? You're dead wrong about that. You'll really start learning after you leave school.

4. That's not so easily done (getting paid, when you're a raw student without a degree or experience). When people need freelancers for paid work, they usually look for professional experience. It's easier to get an unpaid internship than paid freelance work - and the internship will look awesome on your résumé.

5. Two ways:
5.1. Get filthy rich and start your own aerospace company.
5.2. Get degrees in aeronautics and space, and get a job in aerospace, and work on your dream adventure as part of a team.

I apologize if I offended experienced developers by conveying the idea that I could do better than them with less people and money and more time. ...
P.S. I still believe that with experience I can certainly do better than all my favorite devs!

You've got spunk!

I hate spunk.

Perhaps my youth and naïveté are clouding my judgement, but honestly wasn't landing on the moon considered impossible?

No, not impossible, or two of the biggest superpowers at the time wouldn't have spent so much money doing so! (And btw, look up how much the USA actually spent getting there, it's obscene!)

But the important thing here is that they didn't go straight to the moon. They did all these things first :

• Build rocket technology for missiles to blow up cities (actually the Germans but that's not important)
• Improve rocket technology for longer distances (but still crashing!)
• Send satellites up to space (Well, the Russians first but still not important)
• Send dogs and monkeys up into space
• Send men and women up into space and back
• Send rockets to orbit the moon and come back to Earth (without actually landing on the moon)
• Finally, land on the moon!

And that was over a period of a decade learning and discovering loads of new stuff! Basically the point I'm trying to make is, while your fantastic example is obviously something that people think about when gaining inspiration for doing big things, you still have to take smaller steps first. So, when people are saying make Pong, Breakout, Pacman, etc.., they are the first steps you should be taking. I'm not going to say that making a huge open world game is impossible/super difficult, I'm saying start at the beginning with simpler games and then you'll find out yourself what it really takes to make these games! And before you say it's a waste of time making trivial games, you'll find (if you keep at it) that you'll often reuse both concepts and actual code as you go along so it's not a waste at all.

Believe me, I (and many others) were also a little naive when starting and aimed too high but it's only when you really start that you find out how hard it is and what is possible. So, I'd say find one of the billion online tutorials to make Pong or Breakout or some other simple starting game (either coding if that's what you prefer or with an engine like Unity) and then see how it goes. Just maybe you'll prove most of us wrong :-)