Making the Perfect Webgames – Starting Simple

Perhaps I’m a little old fashioned in my online addictions. I attribute my low first year University grades to someone introducing me to MUD’s 10 days before exams. I spent years playing Webgames and now, as my programming language starts to reach acceptable levels I am heeding the stock reply to all my complaints. “If you don’t like it, why don’t you make your own FREE WEB BASED GAME”. So that’s exactly what I am doing.

You see, in every game there was something missing, or something overlooked, or something done the wrong way. In one I played for a long time the administrator just lost interest and touch with his playerbase, and then it happened in another. The problem was that the games weren’t design by players, and they weren’t administer by players. So I decided to change that.

The key to anything big is to prepared to start small. So the first thing I coded was a simple interface. I have huge dreams and hopes of things that can get added in later, but I have to start small. So, step one was to define what I wanted the game to be when I first introduced it to players:

1. Team based(I decided on Kingdoms of 10).

2. Combat based – You can attack anyone else.

3. Multi-layered – You can attack with Military, magic, or Thievery.

4. Close ended – I don’t want players who join to be at an insurmountable disadvantage against those who have played for ever.

So I went ahead and designed a simple game that incorporated all these things. It turns out that these ‘simple’ things are actual very complex when you stop talking about them and start coding them, and there have been some stumbling blocks along the way.

But now, my little web base game is at a point it’s no longer going to hidden from the world. Because the one thing that makes games like this worth playing, is the people you meet playing them. Sure, I have created a world, and a vehicle for people to have fun. But the most important aspect is going to be the players, and managing the players. To give a real world example, I play 3 sports, and the one I have the most fun with is Tennis, which is my least favourite of the three, but which is the most organized of them.