Mini Game Platform for PC - similar to Warcraft III Custom Games

Question

I think it would be fun to make a game for pc that has an online community like Warcraft III (the RTS, not the MMORPG), aka there's lobbies and chat rooms and users can host games to play with eachother. And there's no seriousness, just fun mini games that last on average 30-60 minutes, more or less depending on the game.

I searched google but it's really hard to find anything. Is there anything similar to this idea that's already out there? Or is this a first?

Also, in making this, any recommendations, flaming, or random comments? (yes I know it is hard to make an online game and such, especially since I have no experience with networking. I do have 2-3 years of programming experience, however).

Some more info on what I want to create.

I want it to be easy for users to create games and play with friends. All of us game creators have ideas, and we probably draw them out on paper (graph paper for me). Wouldn't it be amazing if it was a matter of a couple hours to transfer that idea to a fully working game, even if it is in 3d?

Answer 1

If you just want to kludge a couple of quick game ideas together for online play, have you already looked at Starcraft 2's Galaxy Editor? It's the first thing that came to mind, since you already seem familiar with Warcraft III Custom Games. You can whip up a basic Starcraft 2 Melee map together in a few minutes, and that's a great way to learn the tool and have fun with friends at the same time. Then drill down into Blizzard's scripting tools and create custom games. It'll still all look like Starcraft, but you can at least try out new game ideas fairly quickly.

If you're not specifically interested in multiplayer and just want to use chat rooms for socializing, I'd suggest looking at Kongregate's API. You'll get pretty robust chat and community functionality for very little code, and you can focus your programming experience on making small Actionscript games.