Hi all, It is one thing to start developing a game but it is almost a different thing on how a "company" (I prefer the name "development tema") is set up and how are the practical aspects are. For those who have already started, I am wondering about if you like to answer some of my questions: ~ Do you start only when you are a "know-it-all"? ~ How do you handle the hassle of reality? Rent? Family? Other obiligations? Living from day to day? ~ Is there any difficulty in getting publishers? ~ And the most important question -- where did you get the money from? Thanks for your time.

To answer your questions..
i studied game buisness running game buisness for 3 years, reading books, talking to other game developers, and even taking classes on buisness.

If you plan on making a game on the internet (virtual office) you might as well kiss everything you listed good bye...the only thing you will have time for is your base pay job...which you hope you will be able to quit once your game is made.

Difficulties in getting a publisher isn''t really hard, if you have a kick ass game, they will sponsor it, however, i would get a government buisness loan (around 50k) and sell them yourselves like we are, instead of presenting it to a publisher like EA or God Games.

I saved up money and pulled a government loan, we are also going to sell our game engine to the public which we hope will give us more funding...

you can''t make a game without any money, it is impossible ( you have to pay electricity - money)

I''d say its going to be very hard to convince any of the bigger publishers to back a team if none of the members have ever worked on a commercial game before. Almost certainly make sure that at least the key/lead personnel have a track record!.

When we formed ~3-4 years ago, although we all had between 3 and 7 years _commercial_ development experience we still found it a hard slog to get the major deals...

--
Simon O''''Connor
Creative Asylum Ltd
www.creative-asylum.com

quote: Original post by Peeves
Difficulties in getting a publisher isn''t really hard, if you have a kick ass game, they will sponsor it,

I can think of many people who would disagree with you, for many valid reasons. I''m assuming by this statement you mean that it isn''t difficult to get a publisher interested in a title, because the way you wrote it makes it a bit unclear. As someone else mentioned, if you don''t have any experience and no published titles under your belt, you need a small miracle to get your game even looked at by a publisher.

I''m going to chime in with Tacit. Getting a publisher for a completed or near-completed game is almost impossible. If you get to that point in the development, and you don''t have a publisher yet, you might as well prepare to publish it yourself.

It''s important to get a publisher as close to the beginning of the development cycle as possible. And to do that requires that you have either sufficient experience or sufficient contacts.

DavidRM
Samu Games

what i was saying is first, you make the game, then present the fully made game to them. If you just go up to them with a script they will problably slap you on your forhead with their theigh, lol. Thats what i mean, you already have to have your product made. A lot of dev. teams have done that with ea, etc.

thats when it isn't hard.

one more thing:
your game has to be excellent if you are a 3rd party, they won't accept a java game . I mean, it has to be amazing to be sponsored...its nothing dealing with contacts or anything. The best way to do publisher fishing (as i like to call it) is to make an appoitment with the someone at the company, go in there, and present a demo of your game....however, like i said, your game has to be KICK ASS or you don't stand a chance.

Edited by - Peeves on January 21, 2002 5:47:49 PM

Hey Peeves, how much does it cost to publish a game? From what I heard it''s around $100,000? I mean to manufacture, box, and distribute it to stores. Or is it more than that? Of course even if you could distribute it, you need lots of marketing which costs at least as much money..

there is no "set price" on to publish a game...you just need to konw where to look and what to buy. We are going to start sellling our games off the net in the beginning, non-mass producing them, and when we get enough money we will advertise for stores to buy them in bulk. It really dosnt'' cost us much to get the game to the store, we make more money getting them to the store than we would lose it. marketting is the most expensive thing, yes, thats why we are going to have to hope for game reviews and to use those as most of our advertising, im glad we don''t have to pay the press for basically advertising our game. We are going to also have to result in the, yes, annoying, agonizing, and even thing i hate, bunk mail (bulk mail) and icq messages...i hate to do it, but when you are low on money, you have to get the word out some how...

I see. I''m wondering though, what level of quality do you need to have your game reviewed by a site like gamespot.com? Will they even review your game if it''s not published by a known publisher? If you could get a site like that to review your game you could potentially sell a lot of units.

Most game press don''t care about publishers, however, it is always a big factor on their mind, so you have to be smart...going to somethign like the GDC this march would be an excellent way to get the word out of your game, we have already told PC Gamer about are game and they are interested, also, if you are a 3rd party developer, then you better have something MASSIVE developed, or they will problably ignore it.