I've been thinking a lot about a long-term game development goal of mine.

My dream project would be a realistic first-person multiplayer game that combines elements I love from different genres. I'm a big fan of survival games, extraction shooters, and tactical team-based games, so I've been wondering whether it's possible to build something that evolves over time rather than trying to do everything at once.

My idea would be to start with an extraction-shooter foundation and focus on making that experience solid first. Then, if the project grows and I can build a larger team and secure more funding, I'd expand it with additional modes such as a tactical 5v5 experience and eventually a persistent open-world survival mode.

What I'm unsure about is whether this approach is technically realistic. Would building multiple game modes around the same project create too much technical debt over time? Could very different gameplay loops end up making development significantly harder?

I'm also curious about the player side of things. If a game offers several distinct modes, does that risk splitting the community too much and creating matchmaking or population issues, especially for a smaller or growing player base?

I'm still fairly new to game development and currently planning to work in Unreal Engine using Blueprints, so I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone with experience in multiplayer games, live-service projects, or large-scale game development.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Coming from the business side of gaming - this Valve Linux VRAM fix story is genuinely interesting to me, but not for the technical reason. A Valve engineer quietly drops a kernel patch, and suddenly a 4GB GPU that was practically unusable in modern games goes from 14 to 41 FPS in Alan Wake II. No press release. No marketing. Just a fix that triples performance for budget GPU users. From a growth perspective, that's a massive retained audience - people who were about to give up on PC gaming because their hardware couldn't keep up. Question for the devs here: how much do you think about low-VRAM users when optimizing your games? Is it even feasible at an indie level, or is that something only studios with Valve-level resources can realistically address?