Legit indie mmo projects?
April 18, 2011 1:45 PM Subscribe
I need help finding an Indie mmorpg project.
I am an economist with quite a lot of math and programming skills, looking to contribute to someone else's project in the hopes of getting some real experience. The problem is there are so many non-serious projects out there it's been impossible to tell who is legitimate. To make matters worse, any time I have mentioned my interest in forums, my email has exploded with offers from questionable folks making the next world of Warcraft only better.
How can I find reasonable projects without all of this headache?
I am an economist with quite a lot of math and programming skills, looking to contribute to someone else's project in the hopes of getting some real experience. The problem is there are so many non-serious projects out there it's been impossible to tell who is legitimate. To make matters worse, any time I have mentioned my interest in forums, my email has exploded with offers from questionable folks making the next world of Warcraft only better.
How can I find reasonable projects without all of this headache?
A Tale in the Desert is the epitome of indie MMOs, and has been running successfully with several thousand players for several years now, through several 'generations'--the server is periodically wiped and restarted, mainly because the game is designed to have server-wide goals that get met.
posted by fatbird at 8:30 PM on April 18, 2011
posted by fatbird at 8:30 PM on April 18, 2011
Best answer: You're going to have your luck cut out for you if what you want is to jump right in on a "serious project" when (and I'm making an assumption from what you've posted) you've got little experience or reputation to offer to other people in the scene you want in on.
Are you talking unpaid or paid contributions? Are you talking about a game which is commercial or non-commercial?
If you're inclined to commercial and/or paid, +1 to Xoebe's advice. Essentially, you need to ingrain yourself in the community, work up some experience, earn a bit of a reputation, make some friends, and after a while you'll manage to weasel your way on to the ground floor of something cool. It may be a very long while. If WoW isn't your thing, doing some work in any sufficiently large user-mod scene will give you the connections you need: Neverwinter Nights Modules used to be all the rage when it came to demonstrating skill and talent at design in a multiplayer environment. Pick a dozen multiplayer-focused, moderately popular games released in the last three years, investigate if they've got a mod scene, and dive in.
If you're inclined to unpaid and/or non-commercial, different ball-game. Because there's no money at risk, everyone and their dog will have an idea. Avoid anything that isn't actually open and available to play right this very instant. Instead, pick out a few released and running projects and then set yourself a goal of worming your way inside your favourite. The best way is paying your dues as a dedicated player and active community member while demonstrating your competency to the people currently running the show. Because everyone here is a volunteer, someone competent will quit sooner or later, and then you'll make it in at the lowest level. Then, you use your position to network and make connections. From this base, when someone has a great new idea, you'll at the very least get to hear about it, if not be offered a chance to join in.
Apologies for being vague, but mmorpg is just too broad a field to generalise - do you want to build Facebook Apps, WoW-clones, pirate UO Shards, L4D2 campaigns, MU*s?
posted by kithrater at 4:27 AM on April 19, 2011
Are you talking unpaid or paid contributions? Are you talking about a game which is commercial or non-commercial?
If you're inclined to commercial and/or paid, +1 to Xoebe's advice. Essentially, you need to ingrain yourself in the community, work up some experience, earn a bit of a reputation, make some friends, and after a while you'll manage to weasel your way on to the ground floor of something cool. It may be a very long while. If WoW isn't your thing, doing some work in any sufficiently large user-mod scene will give you the connections you need: Neverwinter Nights Modules used to be all the rage when it came to demonstrating skill and talent at design in a multiplayer environment. Pick a dozen multiplayer-focused, moderately popular games released in the last three years, investigate if they've got a mod scene, and dive in.
If you're inclined to unpaid and/or non-commercial, different ball-game. Because there's no money at risk, everyone and their dog will have an idea. Avoid anything that isn't actually open and available to play right this very instant. Instead, pick out a few released and running projects and then set yourself a goal of worming your way inside your favourite. The best way is paying your dues as a dedicated player and active community member while demonstrating your competency to the people currently running the show. Because everyone here is a volunteer, someone competent will quit sooner or later, and then you'll make it in at the lowest level. Then, you use your position to network and make connections. From this base, when someone has a great new idea, you'll at the very least get to hear about it, if not be offered a chance to join in.
Apologies for being vague, but mmorpg is just too broad a field to generalise - do you want to build Facebook Apps, WoW-clones, pirate UO Shards, L4D2 campaigns, MU*s?
posted by kithrater at 4:27 AM on April 19, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
Thottbot, Wowhead, CTMod, Curse Gaming, RAWR, DeadlyBossMods, Titan, Wowecon, to name just a few of the top ones, might be a place to start looking or asking. The amount of work that goes into data collection and processing is staggering to me. Some of the really good UI modders seem to develop close relationships with the game developers as well. Certainly a lot of independent UI work has been adapted into live WoW.
TL;DR Perhaps getting involved with aftermarket/user based development projects may be a way to gain experience and contacts with reputable, established game developers.
posted by Xoebe at 2:02 PM on April 18, 2011