This is an extension of my previous question.
Recently I had an idea of making an, as I could describe it, agile open-source player-financial-profitable MMORPG, which has an interesting (from my POV) project and development model.
Agile means that development should be iterative, with world extending every fixed period of time. And maybe even game universe\plot may be based on iterative development.
Open-source means that everybody can participate, but, obviously, I wish to establish some kind of core team. I estimate that about 0,01% of players will contribute. And this is where I want to make the number grow to about 0,1%.
That's third part: player-financial-profitable means that every player that has outgrown some reputation ceiling (level or another kind) could contribute some kind of *thing to the game. I think about things as special items for now, but they could be transformed into anything on later architecture stage. Special items can be obtained without any financial donations, of course, but if one player wish to buy it from another, it should be sold for real money, presented as some special "platinum coins" in the game. Money should be parted between solder and creator of the item.
But there is one rule — the item, that one creates, must be unique. Under unique I mean unique. It should have unique look, unique animation, and, most importantly, unique ability, that was not presented by any other item so far, not just exterminator sword with +10000 damage. And unique ability should be coded and designed uniquely. That means, that if creator player is not a one-person collaboration between designer and programmer, he should appeal to off-site labour, or to the core team itself. Working places are created and everybody is happy.
So, that is the model as I see it now (and I invented it yesterday night). The main question is:
1) Should I even bother? The idea is so ambitious, that could be interpreted as flying in the sky with the help of no wings. And I don't want to spend next ten years of my life (that's the minimum period in which I expect the project to become successful) working on unfortunate from the beginning project.
I have many other questions, but this text already gone too big, so I'll ask only most important:
2) Isn't there some similar game project-model already? I've seen PlaneShift, but they definitely aren't what I'm talking about.
3) Are open-source practices suitable for game development? There are so few good professionals in the field, will they bother to contribute?
4) On how many people should I count on early development stage? Later?
5) How to do all this thing without any reasonable budget?
6) Where do I begin without XP in game development, but with XP in programming per se?
Note to moderators: Please make this community wiki, I don't see my checkbox.
Answer
"Should I even bother?" + "Where do I begin without XP in game development"
Sorry, but the simple answer is No
The long answer is that MMO's are the hardest possible type of game to develop, with open-world titles being the only other thing close to as difficult. They often take teams of several hundred people with a wide range of skills, massive costs in server/back-end investments, and an ludicrously large amount of content.
The development scene is littered with teams filled with people with over a decade of experience in game development who tried and failed to build an MMO. Realtime Worlds being the most recent, and painfully expensive ($100m down the drain for APB) example.
There are some exceptions if you set your sights low enough. Text/webpage based MMO's like Urban Dead or the various projects from Gameforge are in theory, buildable by a single individual or a small group of people. These games are mostly giant databases with a pretty web interface.
This doesn't even address the inherent security issues of a P2P financial economy paired with open source development which is a recipe for extreme direct financial griefing.
Don't be discouraged though
If you really want to learn how to make games that's great, and right now is one of the easiest times in the world to both build games and distribute them to people. You've got the indie channel of XBLA, iPhone app stores, Facebook, Flash portals. All of which are fantastic places to start and don't require you to spend either the time, money, or find the people needed to make a big project.
I encourage you to build games, but start small.
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