Being the middle man here, I'm taking both CalusCorps and EmpirezTeam sides.
A game can be released "to early" if the game doesn't have it's verb in place yet. (A verb in the sense of what you do, the actions you accomplish.)
If you keep things simple then you don't have much to figure out, in fact the simple idea in your head is all the game needs to be. For example:
Girl has a zombie game and the goal is straightforward, shoot the zombies. (She wanted a game where you line up correctly and press S to Shoot the enemy) She can easily build off of that and has plenty of room to figure out any other details.
Guy has a MMO and the goal is to best everyone by proving how mindless you can be clicking Punch for ?? hours and collect all of the 5 items. (He wanted a fighting game where you can level up and collect different items which you equip for stat boost. Guy also wants it to be better than the other games, the thing is everyone wants what everyone else has, so Guy makes a copy of another game knowing he wanted That game except "better" somehow.) This guy is in over his head because not only does he want leveling, but he also wants even stats with numerous items and last but not least something that will make his game great (aka on Byond as playable, cause he has 13 games with the same exact gameplay, but better interface/title screen/HUD/etc) He'll need a lot of motivation and time to finish that because it's not simple to have all those things out there.
If you know exactly what you want to do, make that and your game is playble. Graphics will hook people, but if your game's an aimless copy of another then they might as well be play Naruto XGG Final Ninja Fury V.
ps. If your making an MMO, it's going to be a time drainer.
The developer either created a project too complicated for himself, or he never got around to releasing it because he felt the game needed to be 100% complete, or have tons of content. I think a lot of BYOND developers use this as an excuse - they never release the game so you can never see how incomplete it really is. Many BYOND game developers just think that game development has to be complex. They make it complex for themselves because they think that's how it has to be - if it was easy, they'd think they were doing it wrong. People try to do really complex things because they think they're supposed to. When I get the time there are two things I'd like to do: 1. Make videos about how easy it is to make BYOND games. 2. Finish Tiny Heroes so it looks like I follow my own advice. | |
Forum_account wrote:
Many BYOND game developers just think that game development has to be complex. They make it complex for themselves because they think that's how it has to be - if it was easy, they'd think they were doing it wrong. People try to do really complex things because they think they're supposed to. Why? I thought humans were the "easy way out" type of creatures. It's weird that we look for the easiest/fastest route for almost everything, but when it comes to developing games on BYOND, tons of people make things extremely difficult on themselves. I think it's because people think that a game is only good if it's complex and has a lot of depth. Which is completely false. Though there are a lot of popular complex games, like Dwarf Fortress for instance, there are also a lot of really simple games that were a success as well. Like Minecraft. Hit blocks, build stuff, and survive. Very simple and straightforward. | |
I'm always amused by the fact that you people think when it comes to game developing(on BYOND), BYOND developers either doesn't have the motivation to complete their game, or it's too complex. Don't get me wrong now, both of these are partially true, however - not every BYOND developer has the potential to finish a game. If not all, most of them are probably hobbyist game designers/developers. That being said, majority of them of them lack the experience to do so. Most of them also just jump to one gaming engine from the start(ex: BYOND), and when they start looking around, they find that among all of the other games, the ones that attract people the most are Anime games. Because of that, they tend to get adapted to these "anime" fan-games and they're eventually under the impression that I must build a game like this, if not, better than the game I've been playing. This then leads to all other results - ripping of sources, sprites, inheriting bad programming practices from previous programmers, and then eventually not being able to code efficiently. If you're being possessed by all three of these things, I'm pretty sure it's evident that you start getting stressed out and will eventually lead to what Forum_account said, "They never release the game so you can never see how incomplete it really is."
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EmpirezTeam wrote:
Why? I thought humans were the "easy way out" type of creatures. It's weird that we look for the easiest/fastest route for almost everything, but when it comes to developing games on BYOND, tons of people make things extremely difficult on themselves. I agree, but I also think it's because people know they don't have the ability to make a game so they'd rather fail at making a super-complex game than to fail at making a simple game. They'd look silly if they tried to make a simple game and failed. It's also the reason why some developers are obsessed with "tech demo" things that never turn into games. Most habits of BYOND game developers exist to give the developers easy excuses. People can scrap projects because "the iconer quit", rather than having to admit that they scrapped a project because they didn't have the skill to complete it. This creates another problem - people never learn from their mistakes because they don't want to admit that they made them. | |
TBH I play the game on Peaceful all the time because of those things. They scare the crap out of me.