That's another good point. As many already said, these kind of community developed games rarely lead to anything. People usually give up halfway. If you're actually serious about doing a community developed game, you should probably start small. Something simple that'll get the ball rolling. If the small project is successful, then you have a team that has already worked together, you have something to show to attract new people, you may have some reusable engine for your next game, etc. If you can't even finish the small project, then the bigger one was doomed to fail from the start.

So start with a small platformer or a puzzle game or whatever. You can get a pretty deep and powerful game without it being overly complicated (see Limbo, Braids, etc.)

Have you played Dark Souls? If you have then you'll know that it is extremely difficult and relies on a combination of having the right stats, equipment, and reaction times. Its also extremely unforgiving and frustrating, yet it got critical acclaim and 88-89% out of 100% on aggregate reviews such as GameRankings, Metacritic, and Gamestats. The reason was that when you overcome a challenge in the game you get a much more powerful sense of accomplishment.

This game that I'm wanting to create would work in a similar vein. When you get that management position at the fast food restaurant after playing for 40 hours or whatever, you will get a huge sense of accomplishment.

Also we could implement a kind of 'play while you are away' system where your character does all the boring stuff while you are not playing and then when you get back on gives you the interesting story parts. Maybe use some kind of game clock where every 6 hours in real time is a day and it tracks that whether you play or not. So you can close the game after showing up at your in game 'job' with your character and open the game back up in game 8-10 hours later (about 2-2.5 hours real time) and see what happened during that time, or you could open the game at any time during that time period and try to improve your performance or deal with issues coming up like girlfriends/boyfriends calling during work and irate customers or whatever.

Also I'm open to other game ideas...

Ok, we could do something different. How about posting your idea?

I did play dark souls extensively. There's a difference between challenging and boring. My criticism had nothing to do with the challenging aspect of your game.



It's true that some people just look for the sense of accomplishment and don't really care how boring the road to get there is, but Dark Souls wasn't boring. It was difficult and when you succeeded, it was rewarding, but the road to get to the accomplishment was also fun.



Doubt that would really solve the issue. I don't think people would enjoy having to close the game for x hours every time a boring part comes up.



Well, I don't really have any right now, but as I suggested, I think you should go with a much simpler game to start things. You can come back to your bigger idea once you had some experience with game design and development.

We should make something fantasy-y, since that's what most of us have experience with. I tend to do mechanically based games and figure out a story that makes sense with however it plays.

well let's start by listing the systems that we like from other games:

the open world aspect of GTA and Dark Souls. You can do whatever you want.
The difficulty and not being able to go back to a previous save of Dark Souls.
final fantasy VII materia and weapon attachment system. the materia is an inventory item that attached and detaches from armor and weapons. the materia itself levels up and cab be linked to support materia for interspersing effects.
the macro system of FFXII. A spell creation system based on this would be awesome.
... I'll add more later...

Copying systems from other games is why I hate all triple A games from the last 8 years
And a slew of other reasons.

We don't have to copy them just make something similar. Also there are no new ideas under the sun. Everything has already been tried. It's just a matter of rearranging things till you find something that works...

So I take it no one is actually interested in creating a video game?

Your idea is too ambitious (the whole open world thing in particular) and will fail halfway through, so I see no reason to invest time in a project that is doomed to fail.

Like I said, if you want to have any hope to finish your first project, better make it real simple.

Furthermore, I don't have too much time to put on something like this. I could provide some input and do a little coding, but I'm not in a position right now to be a pillar in such a project.

My idea of creating a video game on a public forum? Because I've set aside the original idea and asked for other ideas with zero responses...

I like the original idea. The bottom has fallen out on the Buck Fush market a long time ago, but people still resonate with that era. I think it could sell.

OK. Sounds good then. Of course this game is about a post apocalyptic world, not some past or present world. Anyone that doesn't think the economy has recovered and thinks Obamacare is bad is insane right?

So where should we start?

I am also a developer and the only way to get started making video games is to get everyone together that is going to be working on the game and make one. A very, very small one. That is nothing like the game you want to make one day. Pick an engine...starting from scratch is not a good idea at this point. Do something silly that everyone has a part to play in. Once you are having fun with the people you want to develop with, you've taken the first step. Now, put that game away and make another one. A little bigger this time. I would repeat this process X times where X is the number of times you had to do it before everyone is producing and pleased.

Huge initiatives that cost millions collapse all the time. The only way your going to get a game made with little to no money involved is if they love it.