At the end of July I purchased a Hero Engine license: http://www.heroengine.com/. The Hero Engine is arguably the best video game engine on the market for making online games. Does that mean there's a Messengers game coming? I'll get to that in a minute. :)
The first thing this lets me do is create real book covers that the series badly needs. Part of that will involve bringing certain locations in the books to life. The cover art is already conceptualized and includes Wolfing Woods, the Holy Temple in Selah and the Hall of Light in the Royal Palace in Selah. To make the covers I'll need to create landscapes and models of things like buildings, horses and characters. It's possible I could buy certain models such as character models. The 3D game models I've looked at haven't been too expensive, but they're not Hero models. Buildings should be fairly easy but not too easy to do myself. The Hero people just announced an asset store that's coming soon that will offer Hero models for sale. I'll have to wait and see what the pricing is like.
Will there be a Messengers game? It would require some funding. Based on salary figures available online, I'm estimating it would take a minimum of $720k for 2 years of development with a small, full-time team of programmers and artists. Ideally, it would take more like $2mil over one and a half years. This would be for an MMORPG.
In the Meantime
Everything I build for the covers should work as game assets and will be created with that in mind. All the learning I have to do to make the covers will be things I would need to know to be able to help with game development. For the past three weeks I've been trying to get up to speed on how the Hero engine works. Tonight I finished converting evaluation game files into Messengers game files. I now have a programming environment where I can begin to do real things.
This is all going to be a bit of a process. I can make landscapes but not trees yet because the tree creator that Hero provides is being updated and won't be available until at least next month. I can't import models into the game world yet because the Hero engine only works with 3DS Max or Maya both of which cost $3,495. Blender support is coming, but there's no firm date. I'm guessing at least Q1 2013 and probably farther out. But that's okay. It takes at least 6 months to learn Heroscript, the programming language the Hero engine uses, and several months to learn Blender.
I have a small programming background, so I won't be starting from scratch. Unfortunately, it's procedural programming while I would need to do object-oriented things, so in some ways it is starting from scratch. However, I'm on the way. Converting the files required object-oriented concepts I had to learn.
Demo
I'm going to learn Heroscript by programming some game systems while I wait for Blender support or some extra cash for 3DS Max. By the time I get the covers done, I should be well on the way to having a bare-bones, playable demo that could be used to attract funding, if needed.
MMO
When would a Messengers MMORPG be set?
About 200-300 years in the future of the current series during a time of war and uncertainty.
What features would it have? Player housing, player cities, player crafting, a flexible, skill-based(or hybrid) profession system, instant travel, questing, pets and more. It would be a sandbox game with a theme-park quest track also.
http://www.messengersofyesh.com/
