I've read your concept, and I like it. Once upon a time, I wanted to create a time traveling game as well. But as you've noted, the idea is very art intensive. Not only do you have to find an artist you like but one that also creates everything you need in a timely manner at a price range that doesn't drain your pockets.
Thanks
@SingSong for the words of wisdom. I've been programming this for a few years, and over the time have acquired bits and pieces of art from here and there. As far as opening, I'm planning for a bare-bones approach to going public, with a plan to continuously develop new content as time progresses.
I've actually contact artists I've worked with in the past, who are usually quite quick to turn around requests.
What amount of pets, places, NPCs, and other art do you plan on beginning with? Even if you had someone devoted to this project full time, it may be hard to reach that deadline, to be honest. That's five months to build a world from scratch. And not just a world but a world with an entire history. In addition to the art, there's also writing, and for a project like this, writing will be especially important, because poor writing, typos, and inconsistencies will take away from the believability of the world. Plus, if you want to do the "time traveling" theme well, you'll want to include a build up in your writing, foreshadowing the tragedies that are to come, and you'll also want to make little connections between the present and the past, referencing things that have happened before. Tying it all together well—that's the work of an experienced writer.
To start with, I'm only going to have a basic world with a number of things to interact with, with an approach to adding more as time goes on. I've been building the world for a very long time, detailing how the past and the present interact with each other is intensive but also amazing. I have some writer friends who helped me put the initial idea together as far as storylines go, and closer to the time I'll hire someone to help me implement it, and flesh out speech or interactions. For now I'll be happy to open with just 1 or 2 stories available. The way I have developed it means we can "change" lore using additional stories.
One example of this:
To the north of the world are cliffs and a single passage blocked by a boulder. At the moment I dont have anything beyond that boulder planned in detail. Once I decide to expand the world beyond the boulder, a new story can be made available that will send the user back X years where their actions in that time period allows the NPCs to move the boulder. This in turn means when the user returns to the present day, that boulder isnt there any more, and the user can then travel past it.
I've got many different things like this which all link together to make the story actually unique to each user depending on your actions in the past, or the order in which you complete the stories (but ultimately keeping the world somewhat similar to each other).
The other thing you should deeply consider is how you plan on monetizing this game. It may not seem like a big deal to pay out of your pocket initially for an idea you really connect with, but after months or years of doing that (or having to pay in hard times financially), it may be more than you bargained for.
For a startup, I have a friend who has been involved in successful kickstarters/indiegogo projects in the past. At the moment I dont think that would be neccessary, however he is putting together a Case Study to demonstrate the pros and cons of this approach.
For continuous monetization, once the site is up and open, and there is enough content on there, eventually I would like to offer 3 different methods for users to support the game running costs:
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Weekly/Monthly subscription/"premium account".
Which provide perks and benefits with additional features and content. The difference however will be that a user will only pay for what they use. If they purchase a week subscription, they get 7 days of usage. Days a user is not active are not counted towards these days used. This means if you have 5 days of premium left and you visit today, and then you dont login for 2 weeks, when you come back, you would still have 4 days remaining. I'm currently deciding what counts as "active" - most likely if you do anything that changes your gold balance/item count/forum posts. This reason for this is: you might have the game set as your homepage and it opens when you open your browser, but then you navigate away to do something else -- this would not count as being active, and therefore wouldnt reduce your days left.
The user then actually gets what they pay for.
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Pre-free early access content
I'll likely also have items/beasts created which are available for purchase with real money using a premium currency. I'll have the game set so that these items eventually drop into the free pool and are then available to everyone. It just means those that are able to support the website will be able to get the special content earlier, while those that arent able to support will still eventually get access to the same content.
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Content Packs
Content packs are an idea I had from the early days of developing my game which have evolved over time. First I need to give an explanation on how they work:
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The below isnt how it sounds. This unlocks content, not awards it.
How a content pack works:
Let's take Christmas for example.
I could have 5 items and 2 beasts created for Christmas, which are allocated to "Christmas 2017 Content Pack".
These 5 items are then placed to restock in the "General Store" and the 2 beasts are set to appear in the Wildlands of the game for battle/capture.
If a user visits the store before activating the Content Pack, they would
not see those items restock, and they would
not be able to find the 2 beasts in the wild.
The Content Pack is a physical item within the game, and during December 2017, perhaps every user is given one, or the user has to jump through a few hoops to get multiples of them etc.
Once a user has it, and they "activate" it via their Backpack (inventory), this CP is then
permanently unlocked on that user's account. Activating does
NOT give the user any of the items/beasts etc. It just means that now they are capable of seeing them in the shops/wilderness etc.
The user would then be able to turn this content pack on or off whenever they like - the christmas items would stock in the shop forever.
This opens a brand new reason to go back in time - we could have exclusive content packs that the user can only get by changing their world to be a certain configuration.
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With that in mind, on the topic of monetization, I think it would be good to provide content packs that can be purchased to add additional items to the game. They would likely be purchasable using real money or in game currency. This allows people who arent able to support the game the opportunity to still get their hands on the content pack.
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As for overall development and management of the game, I used to own IcePets.com, so I know that 5 months for a release is a bold statement - one that will be tough but is realistic enough to achieve.
Ultimately, even if we open in September into an open Beta status and just having some of the main features available, I would be happy
