Hi all,

I'm new to the forums and hope this is the correct place to ask this.

I've lately been going over some ideas on how to develop a (hopefully) profitable game from beginning to end. I do have a small amount of money to invest on this, and professional experience in programming and project management, although not in programming games. This would be fine for a hobby project, I suppose, but if I want to make a product, I'd say a team and some more funds are required. The way I think, it's either try to find a publisher or go for crowdfunding. Here are some of my thoughts about this and I hope I can get some input from you also:

A) The most important point I see at the moment is to prove that giving me money to finish the game is a good idea. The most obvious way I thought was to build a demo of what I intend to build. Not a proof-of-concept, mind you, but really something you could play for a couple to few hours. Then I'd use this demo as a pitch of sorts. 

B) The publisher path - I don't think publishers would waste so much time evaluating something. I expect then to go with a kind of 'professional gut feeling', to know what to look for very quickly. In this sense, I think investing less in assets and more in, say, video editing and concept art a wiser course. Gameplay length could even be abbreviated for this purpose. (Possibly interesting link relating to this https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/309088/Video_30_things_to_avoid_when_pitching_your_game_to_a_publisher.php)

C) Crowdfunding path -  I think people are a bit weary of game crowdfunding at the moment. It is very tricky to stand out and it's very important to give confidence that the project will be finished. Here I believe it's very important to give a more or less polished advanced Alpha type of build that would entice people to pledge.

I neither plan on making anything near AAA games nor RpgMaker type of game. I'm thinking thinking about a Diablo-like game, with some twists to mechanics and setting. 

So, what would be your take on this? Feasible?

The first thing you need to do is recognize that it's probably not going to be profitable. You'll make more money working at McDonald's or Burger King for far less work.

The second thing you need to do is push through anyway, because you're developing the game because you want to despite the financial suicide.

What I usually do is just work on the stuff I can do when I can, and use money I make from my day job to pay contractors for art. I only develop libre games, so it also helps to use some stuff in OpenGameArt.org, Freesound.org, or in other libre games (see: https://libregamewiki.org ). In moderation, of course, when it comes to graphics.

With one game, Hexoshi, I managed to raise enough money from crowdfunding to pay for most of the new graphics I needed. I just sunk in a couple hundred dollars to put together a working prototype, then presented that and said what I could do if I raised the funding goal. It was a close call, but it worked.

Of course, you mentioned that you have no game development experience, so I'd suggest doing some smaller scale work before the big one you want to do. You mentioned that you wanted to create a Diablo-like game, so you might find it worthwhile to tinker around with or contribute to Freedroid RPG as a learning experience:

http://www.freedroid.org/

38 minutes ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

 ...
With one game, Hexoshi, I managed to raise enough money from crowdfunding to pay for most of the new graphics I needed. I just sunk in a couple hundred dollars to put together a working prototype, then presented that and said what I could do if I raised the funding goal. It was a close call, but it worked.

...

This is what I had mind to do. If it's not much bother, could you expand on experience? Things like, how much of the game was in the prototype (or how much of it actually made to the full game) and how did you present that.

41 minutes ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

Of course, you mentioned that you have no game development experience, so I'd suggest doing some smaller scale work before the big one you want to do. You mentioned that you wanted to create a Diablo-like game, so you might find it worthwhile to tinker around with or contribute to Freedroid RPG as a learning experience:

http://www.freedroid.org/

I've thought about this multiple times. I think this is a good strategy to build a profile,  CV or skill set. However, I think I'm at a point that I can handle most of the gameplay side of things at least, and what I cannot handle, smaller scale projects wouldn't help much. I could be dead wrong, of course, in which case thanks for the link, it might be something to go back to.

Thanks for the answer 

If it's not much bother, could you expand on experience? Things like, how much of the game was in the prototype (or how much of it actually made to the full game) and how did you present that.

You can see it here:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/onpon4/hexoshi

I've thought about this multiple times. I think this is a good strategy to build a profile, CV or skill set. However, I think I'm at a point that I can handle most of the gameplay side of things at least, and what I cannot handle, smaller scale projects wouldn't help much. I could be dead wrong, of course, in which case thanks for the link, it might be something to go back to.

It helps to get experience in game development specifically. Trust me on this: everyone's first game is a pile of garbage. You don't want to dive straight into making a new RPG from the ground up.

The nice thing about contributing to or even just messing around with an existing game is that you don't have to do everything from the ground up, so you'll get more design experience more quickly. Freedroid RPG is even quite similar to what you described wanting to do (a Diablo-like game with some design twists), so that's a nice bonus.

You might be interested in this recent article discussing a very successful Kickstarter, which the author largely attributes to their demo.

That's very nice, thanks!