Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
Please look at Chapter 3 for more information with how to come up with your idea.
Scope and Target Audience
The scope of your MMO will consist of a number of considerations, including
the number of users that will access your service and their average age. Before
you start designing your MMO, you should write a scope document, which will
contain information on the user base, costs, equipment needs, and the audience
you want to target.
If you are making an 18-rated MMO, it
s possible that the number of users will
be significantly less than if you were targeting an MMO for younger users (this is
not always the case, but this will depend on the market you are targeting). Some
say that people who are older have better access to funds to pay for games. A
younger audience is less likely to be able to pay for subscriptions and value
items.
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This isn
t always the case, however. If the parents of the children believe the
game to be suitable and reliable, they will pay for access for their children. Many
child-friendly MMOs are very successful because the parents trust the content
and payment systems provided by those companies.
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The scope of your project will also depend on how much money you intend to
spend on the project. This should also be based on the research that you should
carry out on the number of users who will access your game and how often they
will spend money. You will also need to take into account any hardware/access
and staff costs (if any). Even if you are making an MMO for fun, you may want
to set up some aspect of payment system, and you may rely on these payments
to finance the services to allow it to run, so you should invest some time in
working out how many people/payments you will need to ensure you can
continue to run the game. There is no point in spending 12 months making a
game only to find you cannot afford to actually run it once you
'
ve finished it.
Once you know the scope of your project (whether it takes one month to make
or three years), and how many users you intend to have, as well as the income
expectations, you have a good idea of what is possible. Of course, even the best
projections can lead to miscalculations and errors. There have been cases where
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