If you’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing video game crowdsourcing, here’s a brief synopsis of how it it works:
- Person 1 has an idea for a video game.
- Person 1 realizes he has no actual talents related to making video games, so he becomes the “ideas guy.”
- Person 1 has no money to hire people to make his game for him.
- Person 1 posts a request on the internet for people to make it for him for free.
- Persons 2-5 join up. They also have no talents and become “idea guys.”
- Persons 6-10 join up as artists, and set out doodling hundreds of pictures of Orcs.
- Persons 11-15 join as modelers, and make dozens of untextured barrels and cups.
- Persons 1-5 write dozens of pages of incomprehensible lore.
- Persons 6-10 have a bitter falling out over what the HUD should look like and quit.
- Persons 11-15 get bored and just kinda forget about it.
- Persons 2-5 leave to crowdsource their own games.
- Person 1 closes the project down after he comes up with an idea for a better game.
These games are always doomed to fail for several reasons, although it’s mainly due to the fact that “ideas guy” hasn’t been a viable gaming career option since 1991. Anyone can come up with an idea for a video game. Making it happen requires people who actually know what they’re doing, and those people are too busy making their own games and actually releasing them to spend their free time making generic fantasy MMOs about Orcs.
I read a request from one of these recently, asking for someone to write the class lore for their space sim. I sent in the following sample. Feel free to use it for your own game, or write to me and ask for some badass Orc doodles.
Arcturian Spacedwarves shun modern technology and prefer to travel via flying steam-powered locomotives and giant mechanized aerospyders. Hailing from Arcturus, spacedwarves consider space travel physically impossible. They will declare war on any race more technologically advanced than them (they consider space travel to be the work of evil wizards), and will quickly mow them down with their Arcturian bulletguns. Spacedwarves have a 25% natural resistance to lasers, are short, and have a poor sense of humor. Never the less, Spacedwarves have a habit of causing comedic misunderstandings, and can often be found dashing back an forth between two different bars after they accidentally schedule two different dates on the same night.