looking for partners to develop a profitable massive multiplayer game.

[aniche]

Hi all,
I am looking to build an online collective of developers to build this online massive multi player role playing flash game.
This will be a “man vs. machine” kind of game, in the true sense that the online creativeness of players contributing characters and gestures will compete with our own efforts to control them with our computer controlled characters.

The first version of this game will be an online multi player flash game. This will allow many players to easily join without downloading special software. This game will depend heavily on the online community support, will ask the online community to develop many aspects and features of the game (peer production).
As a flash game it would be graphically limited, We will probably have to use only 2.5 dimensions, as in the pixel art attached. We should take this as an advantage to allow us to offer very simple tools for the players to develop new characters, tools, gestures and actions.

The game will take place in some post-modern metropolis. This city will behave quite like any real world city, with people going to work, cars moving around, and many advertisements. This city will be mostly filled with zombies. Zombies are computer controlled characters which all have a very basic routine: get up, go to work, and go home. The goal of the game is to wake up all of those zombies. Once a zombie has been woken up, he would be under the control of the player who liberated him. This way a player can build a group of characters for his disposal. A big group means bigger power to reach your goal.
So beside the many zombies walking the streets there will also be many groups of activists roaming around.

This game can follow the same business model as SecondLife, i.e selling virtual real estate and property. and can also profit from adds.

I am looking for around 3 freelance flash programmers to join as full partners.
If you are interested I will send you the game specification.

contact me at
uri.lazar@gmail.com

[renderhjs]

I have some questions:
- how old are you?
- what are you planning to do for the project?
- do you have any insight in flash or expierence (communication)?
- do you have already anything besides a raw description?

[everfornever]

Is this paid work?

If so this should be moved to the freelance forum.

[Renderman25]

I have some questions:
- how old are you?
- what are you planning to do for the project?
- do you have any insight in flash or expierence (communication)?
- do you have already anything besides a raw description?
+ who will provide the artwok?
+ do you have a portfolio of work? something to show you have seen something through to the end
+ what are your ideas for managing game development?
+ what current commitments do you have?
+

[tidenburg]

And we'd gone soo long without one of these

[everfornever]

[pentru]

here we go again......

[this.Alex]

Yes i would ask the same questiongs as every one else.

[Beatcow]

Ok, now to decide who's going to break the news to him...

[this.Alex]

what news if hes a realy realy good programmer he could make a rpg like club penguin. Nothing is never impossable if you work realy hard at it. (but hes proberly 12 and only knows basic AS a lol.

[Cimmerian]

As a flash game it would be graphically limited, We will probably have to use only 2.5 dimensions,

Now,2d and 3d i understand, but 2.5?? thats new

[Renderman25]

2.5 is a concept for faking 3d

[aniche]

Hello friends,
some answers for your questions:
- how old are you?
I am 27 and own a small company in Tel Aviv
- what are you planning to do for the project?
This project will be for free online gaming, profits for this game will come from ads and selling virtual real estate. profits would be divided equally among developers once they come
- do you have any insight in flash or expierence (communication)?
I have built myself several flash application.
unfortunately , they are currently offline I hope this will be fixed soon.
- do you have already anything besides a raw description?
+ who will provide the artwok?
I need to find partners for this, too. but i think the general look is something like this:
http://hello.eboy.com/eboy/wp-conten...onCity_06t.png

+ what are your ideas for managing game development?
I will try to divide the work equally among the developers. Give each certain tasks to work on.
+ what current commitments do you have?
I have a project for flash e-learning but this is not very demanding. and will be over soon.

[SaphuA]

Dear Aniche,

Atleast you soun fair and not like the scriptkiddies that pass here once every few weeks...

But a MMO Game requires a whole lot more planning than the few answers you give us. This only gives me (and proerbly everyone else) the impression you do not know what you're talking about, hence the made replies so far.

I hihgly recommend you search some proffesional help and first work out this game. Everything is to vague now and it will never work out like this.

~Sph

[Renderman25]

personally I would love to be involved in a project like the one suggested. I agree that it will be hard to find people to take the project seriously without a lot of work going into project before proposal:

I realised after my last post that you live in a completely different country to myself so I would not be interested in joining for this reason alone.

If you are serious then I wish you the best, I myself have pondered over what I could achieve if I could meet a team of likeminded people who would dedicate their time into developing something from scratch (Without funding). This day and age most projects require collaboration from many, leaving little room for startups who do not have appropriate funding.

One bit of advice is to seek people from your own country as this will ensure legal issues will be much easier to implement and you have less chance of being conned.


best of luck

[VENGEANCE MX]

You don't seem to have mentioned what funding you have..? You'll need an incredibly good server and internet connection to serve an MMO game, how're you going to afford that?

Plus, might I add that there have only ever been about 5 multiplayer games ever made in Flash that have actually turned out well (thinking Dofus, Dofus Arena, Adventure Quest, Stick Arena and Battalion Online in particular). What makes you think you'll succeed? We get people here pretty much weekly seeking to start an MMO, and even those who actually know all of the coding behind it fail before even starting.

Being one of the handful of people on FK who have actually made multiplayer games in Flash before (never tried to finish one because it became painfully clear that my connection and server weren't up to the job, but I still got multiple machines sending messages to and receiving them from each other), I can say without a doubt that it is very, VERY hard. Not because of the coding itself, but because you have to code under the assumption that the game will be lagging, since you'll have no way of assuring that your messages will get through at the right time. Even with two people connected to the server, with one just sending a 'move left' message once every second, I got inconsistent speeds.

Plus, you've got security to worry about. The general rule is that anything in Flash is going to be hacked. No important variables such as gold or score can be held in Flash, they have to be handled by the server, with Flash just displaying the information that the server edits. And remember that if it's an MMO, you have to be able to protect yourself against and outwit billions of potential hackers, while still leaving a gap in your defences to let Flash play the game properly.

The main obstacles to overcome are communicating reliably and briskly with the server, and finding a way to handle data that doesn't involve Flash at any point other than reading information to put on-screen.

It's very hard.

Generally, you should only even consider making such a game if you could do the whole engine and server-side stuff by yourself, and just need to get a few people to help develop content for it. So far, you've basically just said, "here's what I want the game to be like, make it for me and I'll give you some money if we get any."

I'm going to use Dofus as an example here to show you just how much work goes into an MMO. It had 25 artists and 25 coders on its dev team. With a $1million budget, it took 5 years to make.

You're trying to get this done with just three people. When you say 'freelance', do you mean to say that you'll be paying them at an hourly rate until the game is finished? Or are you promising them some of this supposed 'advert money' after the game goes public? It'll take years before you even break even, let alone reach a position in which you can pay the developers for the amount of work they did.

I'll end my post by repeating a famous FK quote (if anyone here remembers who originally said it, or can be bothered to use the forum search, please tell me ): It's as if you're trying to build a limousine when you can only supply one of the hubcaps.

[webgeek]

Plus, might I add that there have only ever been about 5 multiplayer games ever made in Flash that have actually turned out well.

Ouch I'd have liked to think that our MP games for Comedy Central and Mattel we're reasonably popular and/or didn't totally suck.

I'm going to use Dofus as an example here to show you just how much work goes into an MMO. It had 25 artists and 25 coders on its dev team. With a $1million budget, it took 5 years to make.

Are these numbers right? 1,000,000 / 5 = 200,000 per year. 200,000 / 50 people = 4,000 per year per person. This would be on part with a VERY part time grocery bagger at the local supermarket at best.

Either way, VENGEANCE MX is correct. It's a lot of work and a large undertaking the difficulty of which can't be over-stated. I wish you the best of luck in it.

[VENGEANCE MX]

Sorry webgeek I was already considering your Electrotank games, which is why I changed the wording from the original "had any success whatsoever". Haven't seen your other stuff, though ('cept the examples you provided in Flash MX Game Design Demystified).

And yes, I was also dubious about that figure (did the same calculations myself, except I was also wondering how they fit their server and hosting costs into that, too). My brother couldn't find the original site he saw the number on, but a few minutes of Googling on my part found another one:

http://www.gameproducer.net/2006/01/...-playing-game/

See 'Edit #2' of the first post.

Aha! Note this comment on the same webpage:

Casey Gatti Says:
January 12th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Dofus had a $1 million budget. Yes, $1 million! The budget was presented on their entry for the Independent Game Festival website. Believe me, I should know. I had access to that data since I also entered my retro side-scroller for the mac called “The Adventures of El Ballo” http://www.elballo.com which had a budget of $2,500.

Looks reasonably reliable.

Not so sure about the number of people on the dev team, though. I direct you to this page of the Ankama Studios (they're the guys who made Dofus) website:

http://www.ankama-studio.com/studio.htm

Which says:

About Ankama Studio
Developer and publisher of DOFUS, the Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game
Ankama Studio is a online computer game developer located in Lille (France). We were founded in 2001 by Camille Chafer, Emmanuel Darras and Anthony Roux.

In May 2005, the staff of the studio was composed of 25 graphic designers and developers, a marketing communication service and outside contributors for the creation of sound effects.

Ankama Studio is behind the MMORPG phenomenon which is DOFUS. Since September 2004 on the French-speaking market and September 2005 for the rest of the world, this unique video game achieves a great success.

DOFUS : www.dofus.com



Gotoandplay.it did a Spotlight on Dofus:

http://gotoandplay.it/spotLight/dofus/

We were 3 at the beginning and gradually we increased the team to reach more than 25 persons.

Although saying 'more than 25 persons' (as opposed to saying 'more than 50 persons') makes me wonder if the quote from the official website meant that rather than 25 artists and 25 coders, they just had 25 people of which some where artists and some were coders. Difficult to tell.

[everfornever]

You got me for graphics.

But require monies up front. Look me up if this is an option.

[luxregina]

In France, Video Game is 'sometimes' considered as an Art, as well as CG, etc ... therefore, it can sometimes apply to some form of State-sponsoring, specially for young, innovative projects, and I think I remember that they benefited from one of them, as well as a partnership with a bank ( but I could be wrong, it's quite a while ago )

So yeah, they had a bit of money to have a headstart, but that wasn't much either... I think that while they were developping Dofus, their salaries weren't very high ...
25, is after they launched Dofus in France, but I beleive they were way less while they were half-way through ...