I don't know. Is that actually feasible? When I hear you suggesting that it's possible to get a good, dedicated artist on board, I tend to think I'm being punked. What you say though does make a lot of sense though, and might be worth a try. I just don't know if it's worth it to try. Even if we did put together a shiny, slick demo, a publisher *still* isn't going to give us the time of day. However, we'd at least have the option to self-publish at that point - something on a smaller scale perhaps to help get the ball rolling. Of course, that could be years off. Sigh.

We'll see.

I've had the same artist working unpaid for me for years. I didn't get him from here though. We worked on some projects for a online club and it kind of went from there. Sometimes things do take longer because he has other things to do but for what I pay him he does really good modelling and texturing.

Also remember that just because a few people on the internet say you can't get funding doesn't make it true. And you are going to be hard pressed to find any game with reasonable success that didn't have some out of pocket money involved in it. It might be worth trying to scrape together $500 or something to get some good quality art for a small portion of the game. Using that part to demo the game along with a good design doc might make something happen.

Others on this board are being way to polite, so I am going to get to the point. Give up. Your goal exceeds your stated resources. This is not because you can't make an "awesome" game if you were handed a pile of money. No, it's because the market for FPS games is the hardest nut to crack in the hard core market. The vast majority of FPS players are not interested in retro style shooters (in fact most are not old enough to remember Doom or Quake). As others pointed out publishers are not interested in investing AAA money in a start-up indie with zero published games in a market where you will be compared to Halo, MW2, L4D2 and GOW. They have a bottom line too and a lot of mouths to feed. Each publisher has an army of number crunchers that look at something called a P&L and if you can't show a profit at a low unit sell-thru then the game ain't getting funded. Capiche? Feel free to waste your time contacting publishers, I am sure you will find sympathetic APs and testers who like the concept of your game, but they don't decide where money is invested. That decision gets squashed by finance (when do we make profit?), marketing (is this MW2 plus 1?), and sales (how the hell do you expect me to get Wal-mart to take this?). How much pain and rejection are you willing to endure on such a slim chance of actually landing a deal?

Now does this mean you give up on all your hard work? No, it simply means you have to readjust your goals to suit your stated capabilities. If nothing else, the programming work would get you a look at many developers who need someone familiar with engine programming. Maybe level design and combat design too. If you want to stay strictly indie than you need to look at what is going on in the Indie market with respect to shooters. Most are casual clones of past games with limited visual upgrades.

If you'd rather complain about how you don't have the time, capability or friends to help you finish the game, then please ignore the advice above. Good luck!

What are the features of the engine/demo if I may ask?

Quote: Original post by jtagge75
Also remember that just because a few people on the internet say you can't get funding doesn't make it true. And you are going to be hard pressed to find any game with reasonable success that didn't have some out of pocket money involved in it. It might be worth trying to scrape together $500 or something to get some good quality art for a small portion of the game. Using that part to demo the game along with a good design doc might make something happen.

I probably have several grand that I would be willing to spend (just blew close to $1k on trademarking/copyrighting), but that's nothing near the amount of what it would take to get this finished and to a point where we could self-publish. And, like a publisher, I'm not going to spend that money unless I thought the outcome would be profitable.

@kdog77: I know. All of that is basically what I figured. I was a business major, so I'm perfectly well-aware of how certain investors operate (I've pitched to VCs before), so it's really not all that surprising to hear that video game publishers are no different, which is why I've been pretty quick to throw in the towel.

@hikikomori-san: Cel-shading, dynamic shadowing, dynamic lighting, .x mesh rendering/animating, lightmapping, and then a whole slew of game engine elements (scripting, custom object definitions, etc.).

I am by no means experienced in the game industry, and I have several incomplete projects thrown out. But I'll share with you what I'm doing currently, just as an additional opinion.

At first, I would have to agree with some posters that the FPS market is the most competitive, and it's hard, near impossible, to make a successful FPS. That said, I'm making a third-person shooter myself. I don't really have high hopes of getting it published, but it could be good for my portfolio.

First, I would really advise you to use an existing free engine and,well, these days with UDK you can't really get any better. And now let me tell you I'm not taking my own advice, again. For my third-person shooter I'm making my own engine, merely because I'm weird like that, I am interested in engine programming and in the case that I don't finish an actually publishable game(which is most likely), I could use it as my portfolio for a job having to do with game engines.

Now, what else I do. I try to use whatever little money I've got for purchasing some art. This week for instance,I bought this(I hope it's not considered as advertisement, just to pinpoint my example)

http://www.dexsoft-games.com/models/infiltrator.html

It's far from perfect of course, and it's not custom-made specifically for the game, but it's decent and has a variety of animations, so I get to show quite a bit of gameplay variety.

And here's the thing. I think the most important part is that, whatever you present to a publisher, even if it's just 4 rooms, must *feel* like a real,playable,smooth game. Something you see from the first moment that it's fun and functional, a GAME, an alive world if you must, not something that aspires to be one day. Your video, to me, looks pretty good. Not cutting-edge graphics of course, but I doubt that was your goal, and honestly I don't think it's absolutely necessary for a low-priced FPS to have Crysis-level graphics, because you simply don't compete with Crysis, not directly anyway. I don't really know if there's a niche for FPS that don't have next-gen graphics but good gameplay and a significant lower price. I'd say there's not many chances you could tap a signigicant portion here, but who knows.

The problem with the video is that it doesn't feel like a game, but a decent-looking walkaround demo, where you can do some simple things like shooting spheres and initiate some triggers. From what I saw, the enemies are not animated, they simply move slowly towards you without attacking, and they just disappear when shot. It simply isn't a game.

What you have to do, IMO, and what I'm trying to do with my game, is put lots of gameplay in it, bring it to life. Spend some money to buy animated models. I think it's important. Then make them look and feel like REAL enemies. Today's FPS don't really have much impressive AI, so you have a chance to compete in that, if you can pull it off. Make them attack you in interesting and challenging ways. A publisher won't care that you're able to program an event that shoots spheres and disappears models when they are hit. Your game is an FPS, make it *look* like combat. Pay attention to every little detail.

For example, when your gun is reloading, it's just becomes apparent that it floats in the air. That's a sign this isn't a game-game, but more like a proof of concept. The best thing to do is have some interesting and fresh gameplay idea to mix in, but if you can't do that, then concetrate of making the playing of your demo a full experience. It doesn't matter if it lasts 5 minutes. It must be polished in the maximum capacity you can afford.

With all that said, chances are pretty slim. Don't really expect to get profit from this. But, if you are prepared to spend some money and lots of time, not to get profit, but build your reputation so you put yourself on the map and get some people to notice you, I would say it's not such a bad idea. It all depends on how much you are willing to invest, and if you're willing to take risks :)