We were contacted 6 times by varius companies, inside and outside of USA, regarding licensing our game to them. Turns out that they didn't even PLAY the god damn game (Eternal Lands), so they didn't know if our engine supports/can support all the features they want. We asked only 10K USD for a license (client/server only, no art/maps/quests), but I guess it was too much for them.
Anyway, the only license we gave was to the first company that contacted us last year, when the game was not even playable. They offered us a professional server, plus all the bandiwdth we needed, plus tech support, in exchange for a French license of our game, when it's completed (or when it is playable).
So, the bottom line is, don't get discouraged, keep working, and try to sell it for yourself, online.

:-) ahh I was discouraged.

because I am an optimist and always start to daydream - oh soon, I'll be able to move out of parents house - I'll be able to buy a new PC, etc, etc.

and then back down to earth. well it was fun whilst it lasted.

The positiveness around this tended to make me program harder - hope is a good thing and it can be as good as payment nearly :-)

because I'm basically the only programmer and the art people are way ahead - its all down to me - which is how I like it. The problem with a lot of projects such as ours is that the people spread the work out, then get lost when somebody quits.

I've been considered mad by the non programmers in my lack of enthusiasm for recruiting other coders. I think though in comparison to other projects that have already died during out time of working on jet thunder, I have been proven correct.

assuming that we are succesful my advice to others like us would be - to do everything yourself and resist making the team large:
the fewer the better.

then theres non of this: oh i cant do that, because im waiting for ciril to finish that sections. because without any money I dont think you can really order people to finish something to a deadline.

Open source your code, under a license that allows you to use any contributions under whatever license you want, as long as the original license remains available.
That's what I did, and got two other programmers that did a LOT of stuff, and I would have been months behind without them.
Anyway, don't get discouraged, it's not like the distributors want to help you. All they want is for them to make money, and they try to rape you as much as they can. I wouldn't accept a distributor no matter what they'd offer us.

If you wont expand your team and don't have the money to pay for professionals then you need to reduce the scope of the project (I say that without actually knowing the scale of project you are attempting).

Development is a resource/feature/time triangle. If you don't have the resources (big team/funding) then you need a long development cycle or a reduced feature set. Unfortunately code and graphics don't age well. Even well staffed and funded games that aim too high (Galleon, Heart of Darkness) suffered because their lengthy development cycle rendered the technology out of date. So the time element is actually limited (if you want to be competative when the title comes out) meaning you have to limit scale or apply large resources. Your project does not have large resources so reducing the feature set/scale of the title will let you get a first version finished sooner - you can always go on to do V2,3,4 etc after that.

How about the idea that if a publisher does sign you, you take on more staff? In real game dev studios they'll typically make a prototype to show publishers with maybe 5 people (including artists) then once they're getting paid bulk up to 20-50. Would anyone care to advise on this as a pitch to publishers?

Quote: Original post by d000hg
How about the idea that if a publisher does sign you, you take on more staff?

Wont work because a publisher wont sign them UNLESS they already have the staff and also because they don't have a proven track record finishing a game.

Quote: In real game dev studios they'll typically make a prototype to show publishers with maybe 5 people (including artists) then once they're getting paid bulk up to 20-50. Would anyone care to advise on this as a pitch to publishers?

In a real dev studio they already have the full team busy finishing their previous game.

Even if you have industry experience it can take over a year to get a publisher even close to signing you.

If your team is small, then your burn rate is low, in which case you should be able to finish most of your game using your own financing. This is really the only way to land a publishing deal. Of course taking two years to do this means your graphics may look old and you stand no chance of landing a deal.

If you only have a prototype, chances you get funded are near zero. Like Obscure mentions no publisher wants to pay you to start putting together a team. The most that will happen is they allow you to expand an already existing team (say from 15 people to 18 or 20, etc.), but even then they'll go through due diligence first (meaning you need to convince them you can do the milestones and on schedule, visit your development studio, etc.).

Also, the only way to avoid lengthy sign-up delays is to finish your game as much as possible before going to a publisher. A near finished game can be signed within months, whereas if there are milestones, it can take 6 months to a year, or longer.
You need to factor this into your survival budget.

Last thing, 'publishers' is very generic. EA is a publisher and so is an on-line puzzle publisher. 10K as mentioned above is peanuts for any publisher, in fact any deal under 1 million is a bargain base deal for mainstream publishers. I'm mentioning this since I don't know why a publisher would think 10K is too much (it's only two months of pay for one game artist).

Mark

one of my drives is the notion, it cant be done.

that you do need a huge team to do a good game otherwise its hopeless.

truelly the feature list is large and tricky to do all. the most ambitious thing that I long to do - the genetically programmed neural net combat routines - well I've been quite silent about this for some months, i must admit.

Could you get some interns on staff? Then if the deal works out, hire them? Or get some temporary staff? Also, could you meet somewhere else? Small teams might be better off using a pre-made engine then try and make one themselves.

A publisher is looking for reasons not too give you guys money. Now even if you get the contract they could dump you if your not showing enough progress. They might not care if you have tons of artwork.

Believe me I share your pain.