Hi. You may have heard about the game, myself and my team are working on. It has no set name right now, but the basic overview is that you a United States Special Forces sniper, working for the government. You must go out on missions, and do various things. You will have lots of freedom in this game on how you want to complete the mission. We are in the early development phase, and we are writing the story and doing character design and stuff. We could use someone to sponsor us. They would do stuff like help us with ideas, provide public relations stuff - Ex. posting news articles about it, getting people interested, providing help and support if we need it, and stuff like that. In terms of a budget we are in need of $250,000 U.S. Dollars. With that money we can purchase the license for our game engine, buy a domain name for our website, get some local support from the location we are based in, and hire a programmer that we have been talking with. Please contact me - avterrell@aol.com if you are interested in either sponsoring us, or funding us. Thanks a bunch.

Won''t happen. No one is going to give you a quarter million dollars. You''d be extremely lucky to get any funding at all even with a full working demo. For your own good find some other way to proceed until such a time as you can prove yourself and your team.

He is right, finding that much money from a sponsor is very diffcult, you would usually need some sort of capital to prove that you are worth that much money (in case you cannot pay back the debt), and you would most definately need prior recognition.

This is your best bet:

Hire your developers on a share basis, they own shares to the project, and they make their income relative to the net income of the project itself according to their shares.

If they have 20 shares of 100 (20%), and after expensis the game makes $100, you give them $20.

Do not worry about offering support until the ganme is published and out in the public... even if it means only by email for the first little while, besides, with email you never get a busy signal and you do not need as many people to offer the support.

Once you have the game going, start looking at publishing, do not worry if you do not find anything at first, you will probably find something when you have finished the first demo (pending it is good material).

I am part of a company that does offer publishing, and some project management... if you would like to contact the person responsable for that, you can email me at kurifu@aura-games.com.

Clifford Roche

250000 dollars and you mention "buy a domain name" which costs $35 or less... you say "sponsoring us, or funding us" like if sponsoring with $250000 wouldn''t be for anything but a high porcentage of the sales and a strict control from the one who funds you...
Your only option is what kurifu said. You mentioned hiring a programmer you have talked with, try to find a way of having a programmer (him or someone else) working in the game only for a porcentage of the final money and that meanwhile he/she and you and the others would get money to live from another source, like just having a job not related to this . And when you need to contact publishers do it yourself instead of posting a message waiting for publishers to contact you, and if you ask $250000 don''t say that it''s to buy a domain name

i curious, looking for funding myself, i wonder why ppl need like $250,000 a time. if you need it to lisence, and engine, then, so be it, but no company will fund a "game idea" if your not putting anything to ards it, without writing your own engine you dont have the expierence or garutnee you can do anything.

not to metion the fact this doesnt leave any money for yourself. i assume, you dont aim to make any money yourself, instaed look for profits *after* the game.

__________________
graham "red" reeves.

red@deadpenguin.org
www.deadpenguin.org

$250,000 is a very low budget game these days. But if you are still serious about doing your game and need that much money you really need to tell an investor what you need it for. As someone mentioned before, if you buy a domain name you still have $249,965 left.

To get funding you really need to specify what the money is for. How much money are you going to use for personal expenses? I assume you still need to eat/pay rent while developing the game.

Although i do not think its a good way to attract funding by posting a message on this forum you would increase your chances by saying something like "We are a team of X persons working on game Y. We have completed Z % of the game. We need $250,000 to finish this game in x months and expect a revenue of $xxx,xxx. Complete budget and financial analysis is available."

Just my $0.02.

quote:
you mention "buy a domain name" which costs $35 or less

quote:
if you buy a domain name you still have $249,965 left

Maybe Avery wants a good domain name, one that someone already owns.

As someone who has been rejected close to 100 times for game ideas, design docs, company, etc; here is my advice:

1)if you don''t have a company, go get a business license.

2) draw up a business plan with data projecting how you plan to make money with said product(s). make it for 2-3 years. do research and more research.

3)do #2 if you plan to get funding for your company/project.

4)set up royalty agreements with all members that will work on said product.

5)create and have a good overview of your game, create a design document and a tech document.

6)realize you will get smacked down ALOT before success hits you. don''t get discouraged.

7)you have to have something to show before most people will give you the time of day.

8)buy your own domain, even a poor guy like me with 2 kids can afford a domain (just barely) and don''t worry about a domain starting out, grab a sub on a free host. its better than nothing!

9)form a network of people. some from pro companies for consultation, programmers, artists, anyone whos skills can be related to games. form relationships with people and establish a repor. find people on the net and email ''em. the worst they can say is no. most will answer your questions and help you here and there, because most game industry people have a good heart. just don''t pass it around.

10)don''t give up

11)don''t ask for money up front. most of the time you have to have money to make money. if you act like you don''t need money (hard to do) your chances increase a little, and it makes you seem like you''re not so desperate for $$$$$! which all of us newbie and indie developers are always desperate for $$$$.

12)professionalism - read it, learn it, live it. i admit upfront i''m not most of the time, but you need to be professional in all you say and do. trust me, it counts.

13)trust - (this comment will get some flames , i''m sure) TRUST NO ONE. period. your ideas may not be that original, and/or someone will steal them. always have more ideas on the reserve. if you don''t you''ll be devastated when you see a game exactly or similiar to yours. it sucks. NDAs aren''t always binding in the ethics of our industry. so be careful who you team with, especially on the net with telecommuter work, which CAN be beneficial.

i guess thats all for now, but feel free to ask questions, how else can you learn?

Thanks for all your helpful ideas everyone. Yea, I guess you were right about what I was asking for. In case anyone ver wanted to know the majoraty of the $250,000 was to pay for the game engine. The rest would be used for the minor stuff like certain people, website, rent, just the basic stuff I''ll be needing for this project. Thanks a bunch though.

I can see reason behind $250K... as a consultant I make a hefty amount of money... With the other members in the development team, our yearly salary could be about 250K. Maybe a little more or less (I don''t know everyone''s salary). We all work full-time jobs (except one guy that we hired just recently) which takes time away from developing the product. The reasoning behind $250K would basically be along the lines of a year''s salary... but that''s just my opinion....

The development team I am a part of is constantly on the lookout for a potential investor but we don''t really have our hopes up. Best of luck to you.

E.D.