Blogpost 6: Creating Your World

Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game is the most widespread and most common gaming genre of the century. As of today, MMORPG subscription rates are more than half a billion dollars. It is one of the most common source of income to graphic designers, programmers, digital artists and all multimedia arts people. Unlike others, this type of businesses involves in the rendered services of the said professionals, thus requiring a great amount of labour.  Aside from that, capital and material resources are also factors to consider.  But how is an MMORP game created? What are the factors needed to do so?

                Since Role-playing games commonly involves a 1^st and 2^nd person point of view, the first step in making your MMORPG is writing an outline of your story. Most gamers are about the story itself, on how the main character of the game battles through the odds of the game. For me, the story is one of the two main points in classifying a good game. But in order to make a story, somewhat make a slogan slash tagline of your game. A tagline or slogan is a two to three sentence summary of what the game is about.  Also make brief descriptions of your characters, the setting, the idea of the game and the scope it has. This is really going to cost you headaches and migraines but hardwork always pays off. According to the article “How To Write A Brief Game Outline” by Aaron Callahan of the site makeyourownmmorpg.com, “Make sure that your game concept excites you as you will be putting a lot of time and effort into this game; therefore it should be interesting and motivating to you for the long-haul.”  The story also makes the game interesting in a way. Most MMORPG games I played either have a good story or a good gameplay.  

Gameplay on the other hand, is the greatest factor to consider in creating your game. What is the gameplay of your game?  What will the players do in your game? Is it a 3 Dimensional classic platformer, or a simple 2D side-scroll? Apparently if the gameplay is complicated and has a lot of methods, this will also say what software you are going to use.  Last year we had a project of creating our own game using a programing software Unity and to be honest it is hard. But all efforts in creating and coding our game might be profitable in the end. If you are a newbie at programing, try to study each functions in the system and make simple games. But if you are a prodigy and can produce stunning cause and after-effects in different programing softwares, this might be a big shot.  This is the hardest and toughest part of making the game but also the most important necessity in doing so. According to the article “Make Your Own MMO!” by Lore Hound (name of the team), of the site www.lorehound.com, “While the big games may be fun and exciting, it really is the indy games that live through the community.”

              After creating the story and making the game itself, visuals is another factor to consider. Nowadays people only appreciate what their eyes see and looks can be deceiving. If your game has a stunning art, it probably would catch the attention of the users right away.  From the character designs to the background layout, it all counts. Remember that good art will captivate the users to play your game. It is one way of faking the game itself. If you see deceiving advertisements of different MMORP games on the World Wide Web and it turns out the game sucks, this is somehow a way of drawing the users to play your game.

                These are only 3 of the many things an MMORPG development needs.  Imagine the time and effort a game needs in order to be successful. Whilst you got addicted to a game, try to appreciate it in a different way. You don’t know the blood and sweat the multimedia people gave to it and you might become part of this world as well.