City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

A look into the life of a MMO designer

Dark_Respite

By Dark_Respite,
Posted on: 2012-02-16 15:22 in CoH and CoV General Discussions

 

Posted

If you've ever wanted a glimpse into the job of a MMO designer, then here is an interesting glimpse into what one designer at a rival MMO does with his time. The page is public so you should not need a facebook account to read it despite it being a facebook page.


Similarly, on the chance that interested parties might have missed seeing it, Matt Miller aka Positron has a game design blog that is often enlightening.

(Note that the first link is the personal page of the designer in question and the rival MMO is never explicitly named, so I believe this should squeak by the mod gods, but I may report the thread myself just to get a judgment on that early.)

There's a certain charm in turning an entire office wall into a whiteboard...

 

Posted

Wow, I like that last link. As someone studying games development, it's good to get the personal/professional opinions on parts of the MMO market

I was doing some playthroughs of City of Heroes. Now they will serve as memories of a better time ...

 

Posted

lots of work *nod*

 

Posted

FINALLY, acknowledgement that there's a need for documentation! (At least in the first picture's description.)

There may yet be hope for me to find a job in this industry!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

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Posted

Seems like a lot of work. Always thoughts MMOs boiled down to:

1)Idea;
2)Discuss idea in a meeting;
3)Tell engineers to implement idea;
4)Get Marketing to publicize idea;
5)Have some lunch and play nerfball;
6)Release Arcanaville for feedback.

How wrong I was...

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Respite View Post
FINALLY, acknowledgement that there's a need for documentation! (At least in the first picture's description.)

There may yet be hope for me to find a job in this industry!

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

Funny you should bring that up, Michelle. I was listening to a very interesting Q&A session with a very well respected games journalist out here by the name of Junglist. (I recommend looking up his 5 Inch Floppy series on Youtube for a good mix of humor and serious journalism) He was asked 'how do you get in the games industry?' and without a word of a lie he answered:

Drink beer.

In other words, find out where the local indy game makers are hanging out and go and meet them and build your contact base. I think a good starting point for you would be find indy MMO makers or the small-timers; there's bound to be game dev meetups in most cities and the point is you'll make good initial contacts and those contacts will introduce you to other contacts and so on. It's not one hundred percent, but word of mouth would go a long way. I'd even PM Zwill or whomever you have a good relationship with about that sort of thing. Everyone started somewhere, and they might be able to get you a foot in the door, even if it's not NCSoft initially. But I'd be more than willing to bet Paragon would speak of you well to others.

To round out that thought, Junglist was in the number one Counter-Strike team in Australia and it so happened the producer of the tv show that gave him his break also did Counter-Strike and thought he had personality. It can be that fortuitous and that random.


Just a thought, anyways.



S.

Part of Sister Flame's Clickey-Clack Posse