Cultivating Your MMO Ideas - Wizards and Warriors: Massively Multiplayer Online Game Creation - page 48

n Team: The number of people on your team and their skills will
determine what type of MMO you can create and might also define the
scope/size of the project. Knowing the skills on your team will also
help you identify any shortcomings. Do you have enough writers,
designers, and graphic artists, and do you need a programmer?
n Obtaining and creating assets: An MMO needs assets, which are the
graphics and sounds that appear in your game. The type of game
you create might be limited based on the assets you can buy, make, or
use. If you are using free assets off the Internet, there may only be
enough assets of a particular time frame (for example, modern) and this
may have a direct effect on the type of game you can make. If you
have a 3D artist you will have more room to be more selective in your
MMO choice.
n Difficulty and time: These two items are directly related; the more
difficult and complex an MMO, the longer it will take to create. Do you
or your team have time to create an MMO over the course of two years
or are you intending to make a small area first and build it up step
by step?
Now that you have a better idea of the resources you need and have access to,
you can start to make your list of MMO ideas that fit within your capabilities. I
recommend that you keep the list as simple as possible. Create a simple brief
that makes it easy to recall the general basis of the game. You can see a simple
example of a list in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 shows three possible games to consider; these ideas are separated into
the following column headings:
n Game Name: The name of the game. This is only a placeholder name,
but allows you to quickly remember what each line item refers to.
n Introduction: This is a brief introduction to the game. This is not meant
as an in-depth discussion of the game in question, but instead is a quick
description to remind you of the game idea.
n Core Factions: The starting point of what groups/races/character types
will be part of the game. I will break this idea down further later in this
chapter.