Bedroom Games Developers

#3

Very intresting response Gooberius and thanks for the insight. I visited the website and downloaded the demo and I must say very well done there is a huge amount of work in there and its been very proffesionally executed. The demo was great fun to play. I hope you do very well with it.

#4

What you’re describing are known as ‘indie’ game developers. While they’re not mainstream enough to get widely noticed, there is some cool stuff that comes from them - have a look at the entries to the IGF (Independant Games Festival) each year for some examples.

#5

I think your references to mainstream both identify problems with software marketing from small independent projects, unlike in the past where games developers were a little more thin on the ground and there was a hunger for peoples work, now small developers really need to push to get their material noticed ( and bought :slight_smile: )

Developers and Artists rarely also make good salesmen, perhaps independent developers just need to accept this more and partner professional salesmen or, as Gooberius has hopefully done, get a very nice quality product out there with a powerful demo feature that spreads itself. Using community and networking features would go a long way to assisting registered sales and word of mouth distribution too (probably still the most powerful mechanism available :slight_smile: )

#6

I think this may be an option that most people are taking.
Produce a game from home and sell it off through these guys.

http://www.garagegames.com/

#7

This is something I’d like to do as well.

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy VI( SNES RPG with FMV cutscenes ) on the PSOne, lately. I would love to use my 2D game skills to create a similar-themed SNES-style game…

I know I could make it by myself - but the distribution is alittle puzzeling…not to mention that after all that effort, I would like to make a little pocket money from the whole venture…

I could put the game on a CD-ROM, but that rules out an Internet distribution because of FMV file size…

And the other problem is that I’ve never worked in the games industry - surely this is a great disadvantage?:shrug:

#8

IIRC Uplink was only sold on CD originally, but they had a downloadable demo. They seemed to do ok out of it. You could do a demo which was just in game stuff (i.e. sprites) and therefore smaller, then have all the flashy whizzy stuff on the CD.

As for not working in the games industry, that’s probably a good thing. It means you’re not burnt out, jaded, cynical, and generally sick of it all ;). Ok, you might pick up the odd trick or two from your peers when you join a games company, but hanging out on www.flipcode.com and www.gamedev.net are probably just as good (actually, they’re probably better). As long as you know your chosen language inside out, you have a good grasp of data structures, and you have the ability to actually finish something your start, then you’re sorted.

Go for it, if you have the spare time then it’s a great idea, but I wouldn’t encourage anyone to give up their paying job to do something like this, just in case it doesn’t work out. Unless you’re like me and you just think “ah, what the hell” and do exactly that :slight_smile:

#9

Re: Gooberius.

I see.

You know, you seem to be an “old-timer” as it were. I don’t mean your age as such, but that you have been playing and making games from the begining. Am I correct? Your website was impressive and inspiring!

I used to hear of games being made by a single person back in the days of the Specturm & C64 - and I have the impression that developers today are in a way lazy. They always say - “you can never make a game by yourself - you always need a team” to any kind of game you mention to them…

I’m glad this thread was set-up!:beer:

#10

heh, 27 years old and I’m an “old timer” ;). I guess it’s probably enough to say that I got a Spectrum and started programming (basic at first, then asm) when I was 6, so yeah, I guess I am an old timer then ;).

Glad you liked the website and found it inspiring :slight_smile:

I certainly don’t think programmers today are lazy (well, ok, some are, but I’ve worked with a lot that aren’t, especially during beta testing phases). It’s just a matter of economics. Publishers and management want game X finished in a 2 to 3 year period. One programmer could probably do the entire thing in, say, 10 years. Ok then, throw some more people at it to get the time down and make sure it’s out for Christmas in a couple of years. To some degree this does work, until you get teams that are way too big and most of their time is spent coordinating everything instead of getting stuff done (I’ve seen it, it’s not pretty ;))

#11

What I’m basically getting at is that a single programmer can make a game, even now. But they have to ensure the scope of the project doesn’t get out of hand for them. Something like FFV or VI would probably be a decent size project for a single programmer. Not too simplistic like Tetris or Space Invaders (although those are definitely good training for newbie programmers), but not too overambitious, like the aforementioned Quake3 or Doom3 :slight_smile:

I feel honour bound (seeing as this is a graphics forum and all) to mention that one thing has changed since the Speccy/C64 era. People now expect games to not look like total ass (my programmer art is quite shockingly pathetic, I have to admit). So if you are a lone programmer, try to hook up with an artist, apparently there are message boards where they hang out. Apparently ;). It’ll definitely help the final product a long ways, and if you intend selling what you do it’ll definitely help convince people to part with money. You could have the same game, one version with programmer art and another with “real” art ;), and most people in the world would pick the one with proper art over the MS Paint programmer art version.

#12

I’ve just read some of the other replies in the thread, and so I’ll impart some more of my wisdom to you (p’ah, wisdom, yeah right).

  1. When you have a finished product you will need to advertise it. And I don’t just mean “announce it on a forum somewhere”. If this is your primary source of income then you need to make sure you can pay your bills each month (damn mortgage, life was so much easier when I could sponge off my parents). Advertising, however, costs money and time. You’ll need to deal with people, you’ll need to be comfortable negotiating with people. It’s not easy (well, it is for me, I just write code and leave business stuff to the other two guys :))

  2. For the love of God/Allah/Buddha/<insert preferred deity or spiritual leader here> get some sort of backup system going. When your hard drive poops out you have 2 possible trains of thought. Either “damn, I need to buy a new drive and reinstall everything” or “HOLY SH@*, I’VE JUST LOST 6 MONTHS OF WORK”. The former is better than the latter.

  3. Get an antivirus program. As soon as your email address becomes public (i.e. you do any kind of customer support) you will start to receive every known virus under the sun. (standard common sense is good here though, not running exes from emails titled “a gift for you”, that sort of thing).

  4. Following on from (3), get a spam filter. As soon as your email address becomes public (i.e. it’s on a web page anywhere) you will start to receive offers of herbal viagra, make $$$'s now, get a bigger <insert random bodypart here>. sigh :annoyed:

Yikes! I’ve rambled for long enough. Hope some of this is of use to you. Good luck with starting your project! :beer: (in fact, good luck to everyone starting their projects! :beer: )

#13

oh yeah, and there’s 3 posts because I wittered and rambled and smilied on too much, according to the board. :rolleyes:

#14

Re: Gooberius.

Crikey!:eek:

Hold that for a second while I get a pen & paper…:surprised

Cheers, mate!:beer:

#15

Hey Gooberius…

I downloaded your game yesterday and was enjoying the demo a fair bit, i can see that theres a lot of depth to the game etc… nice one… i thought the in game graphics were sensational and although the cutscene stuff was good it didnt seem to have quite the same polish. I hope being an independant developer works out well for you, looks like i may be making a purchase from you shortly :slight_smile:

DaveMcD

#16

Thanks for the reminder PixelPuppet. I have visited GarageGames before to checkout ‘Torque’ while making an initial assessment of Games Engines. It appears to take what I would consider a very fair share of the purchase price (35%) to take on the duties of a point of sale and doesn’t tie you to them exclusively. If they can also sell the numbers they are a big plus, however they do promote a product range, so there is still a great responsibility for the developer to make their product stand out from the crowd.

Gooberius makes very good points and I would stand by them all. I would agree with you too Boone although not to the extent to say today’s developers are lazy rather I think they are just under pressure from the fact that the stakes in quality and quantity have been raised considerably and, building on some points that have already been raised, to compete we need to: -

(1) If new to modern games development assemble or confirm your fundamental skills in programming and utilising a selected game engine by producing one or two very simple games or demos.
(2) Be careful in selecting a concept for your game, it must be achievable and appealing to many games players.
(3) Observe a design and development path, like the one illustrated below, that clearly describes what you plan to do and gives you clear objectives to target.
(4) Produce a requirements document describing your game idea in great detail so that you have a clear and complete idea of everything that your game does and contains.
(5) Select your preferred tools to complete the job this will hopefully be the Engine you selected for point 1 though.
(6) Produce a software design that details the operational components and interfaces of your software and progressively breaks them down into smaller and more manageable chunks until you can pick up those chunks and comfortably implement them.
(7) Engage in a design and development cycle to produce the source and resultant application that combined with media files result in your game.
(8) Sit around scratching your head wondering how your going to sell it (or refer to the above posts :slight_smile: )

#17

Hey Gooberius,

A friend of mine has just told me that your games been mentioned in an article in EDGE magazine… good stuff if this is the case :slight_smile:

DaveMcD

#18

Boone: hope that helps some :slight_smile:

DaveMcD: glad you like the game :). Yeah, the Edge thing was cool, although it only brings in kudos and not moolah, sadly :wink:

Frank Dodd: All good points there, and that development flowchart is a good indication of the major chunks of work involved. One thing though, if you’re selling on the web yourself and not using a site like Garage Games there’s another big chunk of work dedicated to the website development. It’s easily forgotten about, but it really is an integral part of the game & company, especially if it’s your first title (as we at Moonpod discovered). So, maybe a couple more boxes, one with “website functionality” (e.g. PHP to interact with PayPal/Share*It/RegNow!/any other payment systems) and another “website graphics/html”. Or just go with Garage Games and let them worry about it all :wink:

#19

Re: Gooberius.

Oh, yeah! That was mighty helpful…:beer:

Just a question I’d like to ask, though…

Say I had just completed making a full game and it was ready to be published. I then decided to get it copyrighted by means of the local “copyright office”( or whatever they are called! ). Then I took the game to a publisher. Would it be realistic to keep the copyright for the game or do I have to give it to them in order for it to be published?

#20

Firstly, I am not a lawyer so you really should get proper legal advice before signing any contracts!

With that out of the way, I’ve written two answers for you, the first one here is long and slightly rambling, the second (below, just skip to the next post) is the short answer to it all. HTH.

There are a couple of issues to deal with. Copyright is automatically (i.e. you don’t have to do anything) granted on any original works. Yep, that’s right, you don’t do anything. AFAIK all western countries have a deal where they’ll happily allow any copyright. Notable exceptions are (or perhaps were) China and Russia. Although Russia are now getting their copyright laws sorted out, not sure about China (or in fact a lot of other countries).

Separate from that is the issue of patents (which you do have to apply for) and trademarks (again, you have to apply for them). Patents apply to a particular process to achieve some result (but IMO software patents are teh suxx0r). Trademarks are when you register some sort of phrase or image or something as your own, I can’t think of any off the top of my head, but there’s also something in law that says once a trademark becomes a general part of everyday language then it’s no longer a trademark. But you’re better off Googling to find out more. (see what I did there :))

Now, back on topic, when you go to a publisher with your game (at least in our experience of indie game development) the publisher licenses the right to publish your game in the territories they specify, and also by what means they specify. E.g. if the contract says EA (for example) can publish your title in the USA via the retail chain only, then they can’t sell online, they can’t sell to outside the US, etc etc. You could get another contract with (e.g.) Snowball for the Russian territories which runs simultaneously to the EA one, but that’s ok because they’ve only licensed it for a specific territory. Some publishers will open with offers that basically say they get the license for the world, via any media, for an unlimited time, which are generally bad deals unless you’re getting a shed-load of cash. Remember, publishers will try to screw you, they will want to give you almost nothing and expect to get everything.

We’ve recently spoken to some publishers that have wanted to take our game for no up front fee and a pathetic royalty, and frankly it was insultingly bad. Specifying an up front fee is good if you can get it, at least it means you get some cash straight away, and it indicates some sort of motivation on the part of the publisher. We’ve heard of publishers signing deals for games based on royalties only, but then they’ve not bothered doing anything with the game for ages, or they’ve not put any marketing effort into selling the game. At least if the publisher is forced to pay out money up front then they’ll want to get that money back (at least), so might put some effort in (well, that’s what we assumed anyway, who knows what they’re thinking ;))

One issue that’s linked to copyright is that of intellectual property. For example, if you make a game featuring a ninja teddy bear called Akira (work with me here), then the game itself can be licensed to publishers and so on, but you still own the character of Akira the teddy bear, and no other companies or individuals are legally allowed to profit from that character. This is all good when you come up with a popular character that you can then merchandise the hell out of (Lara who?). But watch out for publishers that try to sneak contracts past you that include them getting all rights to the IP associated with the game. I’ve heard of it happening (all too often), and the developer of the game just gets screwed over at the end of it.

That’s certainly not everything, and, as I said at the start, you really should consult a proper legal person for the definitive answer, but this is how I believe everything works (I’d rather be playing with my rendering code than doing law stuff, so please understand if I’ve missed anything ;)).

Ultimately it’s your decision as to whether you’re willing to sell your rights and IP to the publisher. If a publisher was willing to give me a couple of million quid up front then I’d probably sell out in a nano-second ;), but it’s worth remembering that you don’t have to give them everything to get a deal regardless of what they’ll try to tell you.

HTH.

#21

Short answer, no you don’t have to give up your rights and IP to get a game published. The publisher may try to get all the rights to all your characters, scenarios etc, but it’s not required for a deal. To publish a game they just have to license it from you, they don’t need to get any more rights than that. They might try to get everything, but that’s another matter :wink:

HTH.

#22

I would very strongly recommend reading all of the articles in the developer section of dexterity.com (http://www.dexterity.com/articles/).

If you only have time to read one of them, read this one

None of these are about programming, they are about everything else that we programmers tend to ignore.

I found a lot of good info in these articles.

Cheers - Steve