Not just that. He also spent years before that, developing much smaller games. He didn’t start with Minecraft. He started with something much smaller, and worked his way up from there.
I think everyone’s being a bit down on this. We should be encouraging other devs to work on anything they want to. 90% of my projects never come to fruition, but it’s much more fun working on something big and exciting rather than another Pong clone. We’re not at school, we do this for fun, and writing any code is a learning experience. If the project stops becoming fun, then abandon it, but not before (and certainly not before it’s even started).
I think you should only encourage on achievable projects. Because that is the deeper sense of giving advices and encouragement to me. Otherwise it leads to even more frustration.
If OP wants to work on a huge project that will never be finished, nobody is going to stop them. Everybody should work on whatever they want.
But they should also understand the reality of the situation. A common misconception that novices have is the amount of time stuff like this takes. I think it’s part of our “job” as more experienced devs to let them know what they’re getting themselves into. If they still want to spend their time on a huge project, then that’s up to them.
But I’ll just say that if your end goal is to make a big MMO game, then the best way to get there is by starting smaller. Work on smaller projects to learn the individual pieces that you need to incorporate into your large project. Don’t know networking? Make a very basic chat app that tests out networking code. Not sure how to animate sprites? Create a little video of a character walking around a world. Then bring those ideas into your big project when you understand them better.
As you work, put those little projects up on your portfolio page. Now you have proof that you understand these topics, which is great for your own personal morale and any job interviews you might have in the future. IMHO this is much better than just having a huge project that you work on, never finish, and have nothing to show for your efforts.
If you’re satisfied by that, then more power to you. But I like to actually get things done that I can point to and say “look what I made!” If I don’t have that, I get pretty demotivated. Maybe you just work differently. But I will say that not everything is a Pong clone. It’s a reasonable first project to familiarize yourself with the basics, but nobody here is saying that you should just make Pong over and over again. We’re saying that you should work on small projects that you can actually finish.
One Answer - NO)
If you have at least 1 question about MMORPG – then you’re not Ready for it =)
p.s:Nice Blog about Games Programming (Java)