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Some good MMO concepts for indie developers...
Jimmy_Scythe
Member CommonPosts: 3,586
Two problems in the MMO industry / community:
1) All MMOs are stuck in a sci-fi and fantasy rut
2) Everyone and their dog wants to make an MMO
In the interest of alleviating these two problems, I submit the following ideas that should be more than doable by a team of 5-10 people, in a little over a year or less, on a thumbnail budget. Some of these aren't MMOs in the traditional sense, but they are MMO none the less.
Sports!!! Good God, I can't believe that aren't more people making sports MMOs. While The games themselves would be "instanced", you would have persistance in the form of Leagues, rankings and team income. Think about all the fantasy sports stuff already out there. Now make it closer to Madden or MLB 2K5. You can extend that to new players making a costum team and increasing the player stats with wins. Add in some player trading and VIOLA!! Be serious now, wouldn't you like to see a version of Mutant League Football online?
In the same vien as sports, there's Professional Wrestling. This is one that will draw the hicks like the diseased, inbred vermin that they are. You create you're own wrestler and then go out and "live the dream" of being a sick characture of macho insecurity. There are alot of possiblities with this one if you give it a chance. Likewise stock car racing would be huge as well. Nascar has something like 100 cars in one race. If you can provide the dedicated server that can support 200 players at once, you've got a racing MMO.
Animal Crossing ripoff. If you haven't played this game, go out to and buy it right now. I don't care if you don't own a Gamecube or a DS, that's no excuse. Go and play this game. Done? Okay, now you may have loved it or you may have hated it, but the fact that this game is insanely popular should count for something. This is also not a hard game to rip off. I don't think it'll take to much thought as to how to turn this into an MMO.
The World. This has been brought up before but I think it's a solid idea that could make some phat cash for an indie developer. Basically, you have permanent servers where players go to meet up, trade and buy stuff. Everything else is an instanced dungeon crawl. You can't play the dungeon crawl unless you log onto a server fist, so you'll be justified in charging $5-$10 a month for the game. <shrugs> It works for Phantasy Star Online....
CCG in a persistant world. Think "Magic: The Gathering meets Puzzle Pirates" and you'll be close to how this one works. Basically you've got your CCG (collectible card game), that is the meat and potates of your game, and you've got a persistant world that stands in for your lobby server. The cool thing about this is that the players don't pay a monthly fee, they buy cards instead. You could also make a reward system for casual play that would allow players to costumize their character's appearance. Don't forget that you can charge entry fees for "official" leagues, ladders and tournaments. Not only that, but you can run your own auction site for players that want to sell their cards and make money on every sale!! This could be the highest profit to overhead ratio idea on earth.
Hopefully these will inspire some of our ambitious programming members who are either independant developers already, or just thinking about becoming independant developers. Help us indie devs, you're only hop.... <cue the Star Wars theme>
Comments
I like the idea of a sports MMO ,however i'm not so sure how lag would ruin a game of players from all regions of the world.Example..quarterback throws ball to reciever,he lags and has no clue ball is coming..lol incomplete.Sports gams tend to be faster paced so the lag i think would ruin it.
I really don't like the card idea,as i have player MTGO and it is a real rip off idea.PLayers buy cards to pay for the banwidth.This is a totally non equal system that favours the person who spends the most cash.I might also add that charging tons of money for cyber items is exactly what gamers don't like from MMO's right now.That is RMT and ebay auctions,its all rubbish and ruins the game.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Actually, I was thinking that the player would play the team manager / coach and the game would play like a regular sports game. I think that ESPN is trying something like what you're describing for baseball, but I'm not to sure how well that would work.
As for MTG, I thought that it was a rip off when I first encountered it in '93. Five years later I was kicking myself for not buying a deck of the alpha edition when I had the chance. By that time, unopened alpha decks were worth a couple of thousand dollars. alpha edition tournament decks could net enough to pay off a mortgage. MTG is different from buying objects in an MMO due to the fact that it's a PvP strategy game. Yes, some cards are more rare than others. But rare cards are not exactly more powerfull than common cards. You usually have to trade for the cards that you want which means that you do need to invest in a good amount of cards for trading. The amount you have to invest varies from one CCG to another. For instance, in Star Chamber, the developers designed it so that a player could be competitive on $25 worth of cards. When I started playing Chron X, a good card base cost about $50. After that however, you don't have to pay for it ever again. Not only that, but you can usually sell your cards for real cash when you're ready to quit. This is actually a much better set up than most MMO subscriptions.
Another thing about MTG is the draft tournament. For $20 you get something like 4 boosters to keep and if you win the tourney you get 4 boosters and 2 event tickets. In short, if you can win every other tourney, you can play for free. Even if you don't do that well, by your 4th tourney you should have more than enough cards to either make a deck for constructed tourneys or trade for the cards that you want. And again, you can sell all your cards for real cash whenever you want.