Hello, I have a lot of questions and I hope some people here can help. I've been programming and working on my own games for many years. Now I thought I'd like to do it for cash. I'm not sure I'd be able to get hired at a company since I'm self-taught at programming and a bit of a hacker. And I think I'd prefer to stay independent anwyay. So my question is, what are some ways to independently make a video game for money? What I thought I wanted to do was to get a team together and make a mod for Source and sell it on Steam, but I see you'd have to license the Source engine for $100K + to do that. How feasible is it to go the Garry's Mod route and hope Valve picks up your game? Or would it be possible to make a demo and contact a publisher and get them to pay you? Aside from the Source route, are there other game engines you can start with that are free (or maybe much much cheaper) that would be good to use. I'm thinking of making a multiplayer FPS, but maybe something simpler too, I'm not entirely sure. There really isn't a lot of info on this subject it seems. I'm sure I could make a decent sellable game, but the financial side of it is daunting. Any insight you can provide would be appreciated.

Check out this game engines:

C4 Engine
GarageGames
Unity

All of them offer different pricing, none of the 3 is very expensive and they suit well for every game genre.

You get lucky.

Would probably have more luck in the casual game market. Sales are a lot lower but development time is usually less so you can do more games to help offset that. I'm putting the finishing touches on a casual game demo with a bit of a new twist on a exisiting mechanic. Through friends I've got production level art and sound for future profits. Engine/game I wrote myself and I'm using Bullet for physics so my only expense has been the SVN host. We are trying to get a publisher to pick the game up to give us money to finish the levels (have three of 60 completed), sound, and a couple gameplay elements. To be honest I'm not sure if we are going to get a deal or not. The game we have cloned is like a million unit seller so the game style sells. But with the current economic situation competition is fierce. We probably would have a better chance with a finished game then a demo. Hopefully I get lucky and catch a break for once.

Quote: Original post by RaouL
Check out this game engines:

C4 Engine
GarageGames
Unity

All of them offer different pricing, none of the 3 is very expensive and they suit well for every game genre.

This is very helpful, thanks. There's a good chance I'll end up using one of those.

Quote: Original post by jtagge75
Would probably have more luck in the casual game market. Sales are a lot lower but development time is usually less so you can do more games to help offset that.

I probably will be making a casual game for a first game. I am more interested in money right now than trying to make a ground breaking game, especially for the first game.

Have you sold a game before? What is the process of selling a game to a publisher like? What range of money is there to be made from it?

Is it possible (desirable?) to just stick the game on Steam without getting a publisher?

Depends on how low level you want to get.

If you are looking for a game engine that give you full access to the source code, I would recommend the C4 engine.

If you are looking for a game engine that has, in my opinion, the best development environment, then I would highly recommend Unity (the engine me and the team I am working with have decided to use).

Personally I would only buy the C4 engine if you really think Unity does not have the flexibility you need (and I don't think there in not much you can't do with it) since Unity does not provide source code just because their development environment is so damn good.

I would stay away for Torque (or T3D). I have tried to use their Torque and TGEA engines and the source code was horrible and documentation was scattered in a ton of different place which makes it impossible to really use (not to mention a ton of docs had broken links last time I checked). I don't know how much better they have gotten since I left that engine a few years ago, but I don't think I will ever go back to Torque after Unity.

Quote: Original post by Walt
I probably will be making a casual game for a first game. I am more interested in money right now than trying to make a ground breaking game, especially for the first game.

Good idea. 99% of the help wanted posts about wanting to make Super Ultimate FPS/MMO will never go anywhere. Start small and then work your way up.

Quote:
Have you sold a game before? What is the process of selling a game to a publisher like? What range of money is there to be made from it?

This is going to be my first game doing like this so I don't know. If I can get my game to go anywhere I might have to try and do an anonymous article about it. There don't seem to be to many first hand experiences about doing this kind of thing.

Quote:
Is it possible (desirable?) to just stick the game on Steam without getting a publisher?

Ideally a publisher is going to give you some kind of advance (or just buy the game out right) and some small royalties. Whether this is going to happen or not is up in the air. Only thing Steam is going to give you is a place to host your game and take care of payments. Though that is no small thing to have done for you either. Steam probably has a higher potential for making money in the long run though. Steam does have some requirements but I believe as long as your game is complete and operational they will accept it.

No reason to not try both approaches. Get a solid demo done and shop it around to the casual publishers and see if you can get a bite. If you can't and got a job to pay the bills then spend the extra few months to finish it off and approach Steam. This is probably what we might end up doing. For us though this would probably be another six to eight months as the game still requires quite a bit of art to do. One of the goals of us getting an advance is to get enough that the artist can quit his day job to do game art fulltime.

This is all a big gamble though. We think the game is fun but the people who matter may not. Don't quit your day job at this point. There is a fairly good chance your first game goes nowhere.

A sad point of business remains that if you want make money, you need to spend it. :)

How much you spend in both money and time is proportional as to the size of your project.

If you wish to prodice a production quality FPS game it's realistically going to cost you a few hundered thousand and a few years of your life at the minimum. You'll need to find some dedicated and talented artists, designers, producers etc to help make that vision a reality as well. Again the scope of the project matters, you can make a good Xbox live game with 2-3 very dedicated full time staff. A full on shooter with levels and what-not requires a lot of asset creation.

My advice: if you intend to make a profitable game then start small, very small.

>>> causal 2D game small. <<<

Hopefully before you go making a game with the intent of making some money, you first create the following:

Research
Research what expenses will come up through developing, marketing and publishing your game. Are you going to pay people who help to work on your project? What is the cost of software and hardware? [ie: If you want to make a game for the iPhone. How much does a Dev kit cost?]

Also research what's currently on the market with the type of game you're going to make. And how yours can shine amongst the crowd.

Contracts
Legally binding contracts that clearly define the terms and conditions of your employees on when and how they'll be paid for their efforts. And compensation if the project tanks or fails to make a profit.

Pitch document
Also known as a game design overview. Plan what kind of game you're going to make before you go making it. What features does it have? What art style? How long should it take to create with your volunteer team of dedicated awesomeness.

It's really important that you have a vision for what kind of game you want to create and that it's a game you enjoy to play. You don't have the resources of corporate industry [And monthly paychecks] to fuel the ongoing development of your project. So you and your team will need to compensate for that with a desire to make a professional product and a hope of future rewards.

Hope that helps. :)

Speaking of money, if you want to be serious you need to start up at least a LLC. With real money changing hands you need to have some kind of protection for your personal fiances. This isn't like 20 years ago, its just about impossible to get a game out there to sell without spending some money yourself. The advantage is no matter how your first game does it will be easier to get your next game out.

Forgot to say this in my last post. Don't be stupid like me and write the engine from scratch. I did it out of ego and added months to my development time. For a casual game there are enough generic engines out there to find something you can use. Time not spent actually working on your game is money lost. If you want to eat then do whatever you can do to make it faster to get your game out.

making a mod for steam wont sell as mods dont have a price, you are better off starting a engine and new idea from scratch then contact steam, there is alot of third party developers getting there games on there at the moment

Quote: Original post by Anddos
making a mod for steam wont sell as mods dont have a price, you are better off starting a engine and new idea from scratch then contact steam, there is alot of third party developers getting there games on there at the moment

While you can't sell mods you make, I would not not recommend starting a game engine from scratch if you really want to make a game. Making a game engine is probably great for experience and learning the inner workings of game engines however it will be some time before you will be able to build your game. There are a number of low cost game engine solutions out there (C4 and Unity would be my top choices) that allows you to focus more on your game than back-end technology.