The question isn't what you try to do. It's what you successfully do. Everyone who tries to make a game tries it a great one. Some have more success at that than others.
1) I will never give my money to a kickstarter type of thing. My money goes to finished products.
2) I don't look at a game and say "Oh it was done by an Indie so I won't play it". I look at a game and say "Looks interesting, I'll play it". So if an Indie makes and interesting game of course I'd support it.
The thing is way too many people think they can just make an MMO. An MMO is the most time consuming and expensive type of game to make and by quite a large margin.
The reason so many Indie developers go to mobile is 1) The market is exploding and 2) It takes a tiny fraction of the work to make a game and if everything goes just right you can pocket millions for little investment. With an MMO you'd spend years along with lots of money and could easily never make your money back as it is such a hard market to break into.
All Indie developers would be smart to start with mobile games and then, if they've had some success and want to try something bigger, move onto larger projects. Then if those larger projects also work, finally consider making an MMO.
I've played with some of the indie engines like Torque and Unity. It is amazing how many people buy a license pop up and say "Hey I am going to make the next big MMO who wants in?" only to disappear a month later when they realize that making a game takes, you know, work. And with an MMO it is a metric ton of work. Why try to do a major project poorly than do a much simpler project (like a mobile game) well?
An MMO needs tons of animations, tons of models, tons of textures, tons of content, tons of NPCs, tons of features, etc etc etc. You need a decent sized team of all very skilled people to have any hope of pulling it off.
Comments
1) I will never give my money to a kickstarter type of thing. My money goes to finished products.
2) I don't look at a game and say "Oh it was done by an Indie so I won't play it". I look at a game and say "Looks interesting, I'll play it". So if an Indie makes and interesting game of course I'd support it.
The thing is way too many people think they can just make an MMO. An MMO is the most time consuming and expensive type of game to make and by quite a large margin.
The reason so many Indie developers go to mobile is 1) The market is exploding and 2) It takes a tiny fraction of the work to make a game and if everything goes just right you can pocket millions for little investment. With an MMO you'd spend years along with lots of money and could easily never make your money back as it is such a hard market to break into.
All Indie developers would be smart to start with mobile games and then, if they've had some success and want to try something bigger, move onto larger projects. Then if those larger projects also work, finally consider making an MMO.
I've played with some of the indie engines like Torque and Unity. It is amazing how many people buy a license pop up and say "Hey I am going to make the next big MMO who wants in?" only to disappear a month later when they realize that making a game takes, you know, work. And with an MMO it is a metric ton of work. Why try to do a major project poorly than do a much simpler project (like a mobile game) well?
An MMO needs tons of animations, tons of models, tons of textures, tons of content, tons of NPCs, tons of features, etc etc etc. You need a decent sized team of all very skilled people to have any hope of pulling it off.