OK so me and my friends were dicusing bout MMORPG (or online game in general)and normal traditional games(offline game): My friend says that offline game is harder to make since it always has some advantec technology like graphic, AI, motion capture,... but I think different. Advance technology is just matter of money, u have enough money to buy high-end engine then you have the technology. Of course you still need to be skilled to make use of the engine, but there are plenty of good programmers, artists around.In MMORPG you need to be creative to come up with something that can keep the players busy for a long while. ANd creativity is something that money cant buy. Not that offline game doesnt require creativity, but the different is in the game's life-span. Offline game is about 10 -100 hours while MMORPG is months or years. Since we'r both newbie with little to none experience, we would like someone to judge whos rite and whos wrong, or both :) Edit: fixed abbreviations. Sory for the spellings [Edited by - Tutukun on January 26, 2006 2:22:22 AM]

Ok so what you guys saying is: single-player and multi-player r both equally hard. So why they always say that : to first time developer , making MMO games is abit adventurous? I am not being sarcastic here, just want to clear my confustion thats all :)

Quote:Original post by RAZORUNREAL
it's that all the new people want to make mmo's for some reason. In fact they should probably be attempting a tetris clone.

Quote:Most people tell newbs to not go out and make a mmo is because they cant. Creating Pong/Pac-Man clones is hard for newbies. Start out small and work your way up. MMOs are more complicated than alot of people can handle.

I just want to make one thing clear, we dont want to make MMO games, this is simply a discussion about which one is harder to make. So please dont go to "OMG you dont know what you are doing, you cant make MMO, go make pong" zone, because i've seen it too many times here already.

another newbie's opinion. I think the discussion is non-relevant. Both types of games have different sets of requirements. MMORPG, you will need a large capital and maintainance frame in order to run - but you can say, start off at 60% stage and start getting your returns before you complete the final stages of the game. Or atleast throw out a BETA test etc, to get a estimate about your fan-base and if nessesary pull the plug on the project, if it's really a screw up. But it requires continual updates and game balancing, there is room for error in game balancing, bugs, etc. The major issue with MMORPG is not anything else, but majorly - security. I think this is where MMORPG cost the most. If your came is hack-prone, you'll lose appeal very fast.


Other version games have other issues to worry about. They have practically only 1 shot to get it right. There is no "in-between" showcase of product between here and the end product, but some companies like SI-GAMES do release demo. Nevertheless, you don't get your returns until you've completed the production. Your workrate will drop dramatically after 3-4 months after completion once all your patches are done etc... Then you have to worry about issues like piracy, and if your game sells. Content and gameplay for offline games, in my opinion is arguabilly 10x harder than MMORPG. While in MMORPG, you can always add contents as ideas come in, and some games like Shadowbane didn't even need content, you need major content and interesting gameplay to keep people interested in buying CD-games these days.

I know I'm rather blunt...

generally a simple single player game is easier to make than a simple multiplayer game since singleplayer games doesn't have to deal with more than one player.
but once you start talking about AAA games its pretty irrelevant. a large scale singleplayer game such as Oblivion with advanced AI, physics, huge world, etc is harder to make than your average mmorpg. (it requires less maintainance once its done though)