Appearance of the game

Next item on the list:
MMO Appearance? (text, 3D, first or third person)

Ok I think I have pretty much established to be a 3D First person shooter environment.  If I could have my way I would probably make it look and feel a lot like Unreal Tournament 3 minus the blood, gore, and sexiness.  Many of the things I would love to implement already exist there after all, such as vehicles, turrets, and the outline of red or blue around the characters depending on which team they find themselves.  In reality it will probably not look very good at all, with graphics comparable to something like Ace of Spades or possibly Minecraft.  If the concept takes off though I would hope to be able to get the support of a big game producer and the big game making machines that they control.  In reality the big video game companies appear to have little in the way of motivation to do so, since MMOs have an upkeep cost in order to keep operating every month and people already pay premium money for their products.  I can still be hopeful though.  This is a dream after all.

I think I will take a moment to discuss my personal feelings regarding how I feel the game business is going.  I have played a large number of games over the course of my life over a lot of different genres.  If even half the gamers out there are similar to me, then I think that many of them are tired of playing the same game with new and updated graphics.  There are only so many ways to add detail to a model before it becomes something that takes too much time to make and is not appreciated at all.  The biggest reason I am taking the time to outline so much detail of a game that may or may not happen is because it is a game that I would enjoy playing.  I don't think that I am alone in this boredom with the state of the average first person shooter game.  Conversely I am becoming increasingly aware of the difficulty of making a game though.  I also acknowledge the great risk a company or publisher takes when they agree to fund a game.  One bad game could ruin a company financially, and unless someone presents an awesome final product there is little chance that people are going to financially back it.  So for all the people out there thinking "yeah this would be cool if this actually existed, but there is no way it is going to happen" I hear you.  I am just not content to make a repeat of tetris and/or doom and be satisfied with my effort.  So as crazy and overambitious as this game is, this is going to continue to be my goal.  Hopefully I one day will look back at this and think "Man, this took a ton of effort, but it's finally ready to go."

Also, if there is anyone reading this and thinking "I know of (insert name of project) that was just like this and failed because (insert reason)".  If you are one of these people please do me a favor and email me at d12har at gmail dot com.  Thanks