Yes, you are quite right. My point was past performance is not always a good indicator of future human potential.
I agree. People can shift into an entirely different field and get fairly good at it quicker than many would imagine. Once you've proven successful in one intellectual pursuit the biggest factor in becoming proficient in another is passion, because passion leads to putting in the work. In this particular case I just think they may not realize the scope of the work their game idea is going to involve due to their lack of experience. I wish them well and if its looking good by the time it hits beta I'll probably be trying it out.
Yea its so common its basically a meme that the first question a beginner asks when they join /r/gamedev or another gamedev community is "How do I make an MMO?"
Past failures by third party actors should not be taken as discouragement for startups.
To take a blunt example, before Elon Musk started SpaceX there were failed rocket companies started by millionaires all of whom dreamed of commoditizing space...
Sure, their success is improbable. But in this context longshots and improbable bets are the whole point.
I can see you have no experience in game development. Let me explain: with 2 people and a budget of 200K you can make a tiny indie game. With a team of 15 experienced game developers you can make a single player RPG. MMO's are built by huge companies, with lots of experience under their belt.
Newbies that want to build an MMO is a running joke in game dev communities. It basically says you are so stupid that you don't even realize how stupid you are.
As an example I remember reading an article explaining how something like angry birds probably cost approximately this much money to develop, but everyone was treating it like it was a tiny indie project that was made in a garage over a few weekends.
- Levitation through meditation. - An 8 year old kid watching karate kid and then beating an MMA fighter. - Finding underground water with a stick
The MMO falls into this realm. Unless of course they invented an AI that can develop an MMO. But there is no indication of this last part.
I remember Powerhoof Games (a 2 person team) had to downgrade their pixelated graphics on Crawl, so they could have really awesome animations. Think about that: deciding to have some awesome animations in there, and therefore also deciding your pixelated graphics will be very flat and basic.
I hope this does not turn out into a duel of irrelevant anecdata :)
To counter your specific point Studio MDHR started with a team of two and eventually produced a game with outstanding graphics and animations. Scale and outsource. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuphead)
So in the end they did make compromises too.
I would love to see them make an MMO ;p
If going by the above logic that just showing expertise is enough to get funding, then why was an Unreal demo valued as expertise at all?
If they showed expertise by demoing a network server/cluster, or world streaming, or asset import workflow, then i would say that there is some relevant expertise.
But they didn't even import a custom character into Unreal for their demo, how are they going to make a character creator and a clothing system?
There are plenty of small studios that have huge successes, and they are all smart enough to not develop a huge MMO. Simply because they know they don't have the resources to pull this off.
Starting a rock band is a long shot. Beating the best NBA team in basketball is a delusion.
I would argue the NBA example is not a good one. In that the parameter space is quite fixed, whereas in technology and games, I would claim the state space of what success looks like is much broader.
Yes, if you have super accurate metrics of what success looks like and the domain is highly competitive and lucrative then the scrappy upstart has poor chances.
I dont' think you can have a Billy Beane/Moneyball/Sabermetrics moment in NBA like you had in baseball.
But I think gaming and technology still has lots of unfound angles to be discovered.
I would guess the question YC pondered was not "can these guys create an MMO" but "could they have a small chance to bring some value adding innovation to some place in some market".
According to their Kickstarter, this is exactly the place they placed themselves. Head on competition with huge competitors. That was the point that I was making. You can of course create a 2nd "Minecraft" and be successful, but that is clearly not what is happening here.
Their claim is basically "we can be 1000x more productive than any of the established game developers". I can give you my estimate of those odds ;).