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How To Sell a Video Game Idea?
fobsta writes "Do any Slashdotters have experience of selling video game ideas? I'm an artist who has programmed a rough-as-nails demo and animated a trailer to explain my concept. Obviously I think it's fun, it shows promise, and my friends think it's cool. Who should I pitch the idea to? Existing video games companies, venture capitalists, or what about those dentists who financed the Amiga? Are they still around? I've had a previous idea hijacked, and received no reward for it whatsoever; how can I prevent this happening again?"
Really ideas are a dime a dozen. Get a good bit demo code done. Shop it around to some venture capitalists and see what happens.
As to protection. NDAs are about it but if you are not prepared to sue then they are just paper.
The old saying is "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door"
Have an idea about better mousetrap well that is nice.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Isn't there some sort of process where the people you show your idea to Agree to Non-Disclosure of it?
I've got this great idea for a movie. It's called "Vampirates 2: Vampirates in Space!" With the tag line "In space, everything sucks!" and it would be a continuation of the Vampirates vs Ninja Mutants saga that started in Vampirates 1. So if ya find anyone with resources to throw around, point them over my way when you're done with 'em, I want to see some hot Vampirate vs cat-man ninja action on the big screen!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Put a talking point in it for McCaine, and at the very least you might win a toaster
--- What?
You have no chance of making it big. Bring the idea as far as you can on your own and just use it for resume fodder.
You need something innovative on the business side to catch anyone's attention. Yet another "innovative" game concept is not going to attract any investment. You're about 10 years too late for that.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In this industry, you will NOT be able to sell an idea with what you have.
Time, money, resources, staff, all of these are in short supply...but ideas are in abundance in the industry. Everyone in the industry has an idea, but only a rare few will get the opportunities to make their ideas into products.
If you want your idea to come to life, make a prototype and a proof of concept like you've already done, and then polish it to a shine. Make what is called a "vertical slice."
Once you have the vertical slice, create NDA's to cover your idea and work from there.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
Four ways to turn your concept into a video game:
4. Create a polished game and approach (or be approached by) an established studio. Also known as the Portal approach. Also the flOw approach. "Sony Computer Entertainment approached some future members of thatgamecompany after seeing Cloud and asked them to form a company and signed them on to make three downloadable games for the PlayStation 3. Cloud ended up being a game that wouldn't be possible for a company as small as thatgamecompany to make, so they made flOw instead. thatgamecompany was created on May 15th, 2006."
3. Work your way up in one or more established studios towards the role of game designer. The American McGee approach. "McGee began his career at id Software. He worked on such games as DOOM, Doom II, Quake, and Quake II in the areas of level design, music production, sound effects development, and program coding. In 1998, he moved to Electronic Arts, where he worked as a consultant on many projects and also created his own game, American McGee's Alice." Mind you, that can be the long route, assuming you're even successful.
2. Work with an independent group of hobbyists and promise to split the profits once you make money. This is difficult to pull off, because contributors lose interest when things become difficult. This is enough of a problem that I'd rather have one paid contractor with modest abilities than a dozen unpaid contributors with spectacular abilities. Blech.
1. Establish your own company and finance development as a third party. Many small developers bootstrap with smaller projects in niche or new markets, eventually working their way up towards larger ones. The iPhone is potentially an awesome way to get your title out there. Start by developing a finished game that's small in scope, and demonstrates the very core concepts of your idea. Rinse. Repeat.
My favorite is, of course, to take #1 and run with it. Tighten your belt, and pay a contractor with good references to help you bring your idea to light on the platform where the competition is still pretty weak, and the barrier to entry is low. That was the Palm Pilot during late '90s, and is probably something like WiiWare or the iPhone now.
Good luck!
We're indie. We're working on our 14th game.
It was back in the 80's. And I was pitching a "mat," that you use to "Jump" to "conclusions." Nintendo blew me off. A few months later, they released the power pad, and I still haven't seen a dime.
Ideas are crap, everybody has ideas.
In this case, it sounds like you've gone beyond an idea and prototyped the game. Now what?
Non-Disclosure Agreements are your friend.
Got some money? Hire a programmer (or two) to write it.
Write it yourself.
Promote the demo to everybody and get the game re-written as open source. Everybody gets to play to game, you get some street cred, and you have a better chance of finding someone to listen for the next game idea.
Thats terrible advice, I'd think you would want to be first when selling an idea, what with the whole copyright thing.
As a veteran of the game industry I can tell you - you need to complete the game first. Ideas are a dime a dozen. No one will give you money for development. You need to show them the finished product and ask for them to fund the publishing of it. That's the only way you will be able to acquire money from a publisher, unless you self-publish online or through various indie-channels (XBox Live, Wii Ware, Greenhouse, etc), but of course those still require a completed product as well.
I'm not speaking from any real experience or anything, but it might be a good idea to leave room in your pitch for flexibilities and possibilities. Or at least imply that you're willing to accept suggestions or criticisms. Producer-types like to feel like they've made some sort of impact on a project other than funding it. The main thing is getting them to actively think about the possibilities, which will force them to take it a little more seriously.
The tricky part is to not let them get too involved, because then they might start to suggest some silly ideas.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
If they see your demo, and anything they are already working on is similar or has similar elements, they're opening themselves up to a suit (from you) when they release their product.
About the only way anybody I know in the industry will look at anyone else's concepts is if:
A) The concept is being given away, for free, to be used in any way, without any limitations
and
B) The originator of said concept signs legal papers stating the material is theirs to give away and A) applies.
Even then, most companies still won't touch it and will refuse to see it, as the person providing it may be wrong in stating the material isn't already encumbered (whether the originator knew it or not).
Some examples of how material (like a trailer) can be encumbered without the originator really being aware:
- trailer was made using originator's employer's software/hardware/time
- trailer was made by somebody with a strict employer agreement on original works (anything I author that isn't "for the company" I need to register the material with my employer ... or my employer owns it)
- trailer includes characters based on somebody else's trademarked images
- trailer was made using pirated software (believe it or not - this can cause very weird legal problems)
So, sorry, but you'll have a very tough time getting anybody to view it, even just to say "that's neat, but we aren't interested."
Instead it'll be, "I'm sorry, but we can't look at it."
"Flame away, I wear asbestos underwear"
Disclaimer: I am not a developer, but I've read a lot of horror stories. If you try to pitch it to an established publisher or developer, the legitimate ones will turn you away because it leaves them wide open to a messy lawsuit if they do anything remotely similar in the future, even by coincidence. The unscrupulous ones will just rip you off. You really need to turn it into a legally-protectable game, or a total conversion mod, or something, and then get it published small-scale to demonstrate popularity. If you don't have the know-how, try to get together a team of amateurs, friends, sufficiently motivated guys online, whatever. Give it away, shareware, however you distribute it make sure that it gets out there and people know it's yours. Enter it in indie game contests. Whatever you can.
Then when you have an actual game to speak of, and some indication that it could sell, see about getting a publisher interested in buying the idea from you. What happens next will depend on the type of game we're talking about.
What I've read about game development in the past suggests that your project may well vanish into development hell at this stage, or be pushed out as a diabolical mess which means nobody will ever want to touch your game ever again. And you'll be unable to make amends because you've sold away the "big version" rights. You may make some money back for your time and effort though. The alternative would be to keep it small-scale, on mobile phones or whatever. This would suit many kinds of games. Only if you can manage to turn that small game into your own personal development empire, could you crank out a large-scale game like Halo or whatever.
Moral: the odds are against you ever being able to produce a Halo-style blockbuster, unless you want to get into career game design or are willing to give the idea to someone who is. And even if you're just trying to create one fun little puzzler, it's going to take a lot of time, effort, and cooperation.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Unfortunately, video game ideas are about as rare as fiction plotlines. Every major series on TV is deluged by hundreds of story ideas that they are not allowed to read because they fear that if they read them, they'll be sued for using an idea that they already had on their own.
Writers of all types suffer from this on a continual basis. The writers themselves usually have far more ideas than they have writing time. The desire to turn those ideas into reality is usually what pushed them to learn the skill in the first place. As a result, recommendations by other people that the writer should develop THEIR idea usually just winds up being annoying.
Video game ideas are the same. People with the resources to develop video games are perpetually surrounded by people who say "wouldn't it be cool if...". Unless you have the development skill (or can find a friend with such) to actually create the game yourself and put it out on the internet, it'll never happen.
Sorry, but that's the harsh reality of things.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I'd hunt down a programmer, or hit the books, put something playable together, TEST IT, and try to pitch it to be published on Steam, XBLA, or the like. There are a couple of un-boxed distribution channels these days, and it couldn't hurt to look into them.
In the meantime ... ideas are a dime a dozen, we keep hearing, and it's when everything gets put together and runs that you have a sellable product with value.
Sadly, Ideas are cheap - although ironically they are truly the most precious things we can posses.
I have zero experience in the game industry and I have no success in getting any idea of mine going big-time. Still, I have had ideas which later have been implemented by someone else (often because they were obvious due to some recent event).
I have come to the conclusion that the best ideas are the ones which you don't actually mind if someone else creates, because it means you get to use the creation.
My idea is for a video game called "Freeway Crash" or "Freeway Pileup" or something.
The game starts up with you getting on a freeway in random traffic. There is a countdown timer and at some random time in the countdown there will be an accident and you have to avoid it somehow - or avoid being caught-up in it.
The game would hinge on two things - one, it would need to be freely downloadable. two, it would need to have very good car models and crash physics.
The freeness would allow for mass download and play and the great graphics and physics would push for the pay (cheap 10$) version which would have the ability to playback the crash in slow motion and to create youtube-like vids a'la spore style and perhaps some other features like different cars and freeways or even an online component.
There. Free idea for the world.
Anybody want me as a game designer? I have 10 more concepts.
Read my Very Short "Stories"
Honestly, the best and most practical path forward in today's game market is to create and market the game yourself. Though the indie space is constantly changing (for instance, the casual-game portal market that thrived as little as two years ago has now turned stagnant), there are still many opportunities for independent creative thinkers.
Indie designer Jonathan Blow, whose inventive puzzle platformer Braid just launched on Xbox Live Arcade, speaks eloquently about the indie viewpoint in his keynote speech at the Free Play 2007 conference in Melbourne. The video of his speech is compelling and inspirational. Look up his many interviews and then go on from there to learn about other indie designers. It's a tricky path but exciting and potentially rewarding.
Every well known writer has had someone come to them and tell them about their idea. "It's about this guy called Bob. He builds a spaceship and visits lots of planets where exciting adventures happen. Can you write this story for me? I'll split the profits 50/50".
The same applies to studios. Everyone has an idea for a game. Here's an example. It just doesn't work like that.
What actually happens is that someone in the company comes up with a game concept, and producers and designers talk about it. In many cases (especially party games), there's some discussion about whether it's technically possible. It's possible that the technology isn't up to it, so some development effort is spent in making a tech demo to check that the concept works. If that works then the developer will submit a pitch to a publisher. The pitch is, at the very least, a detailed description of the game and how it will work. Ideally the developer will have some idea of the market for this as well.
It's possible that none of the publishers will be interested. In this case, unless the developer is sure enough about it to develop a demo, they just come up with a new idea.
Ideas are cheap. Developed polished realised ideas are wherethe difficulty is.
I give no guarantees this will work.
1. Make a demo of the game extremely violent, sexual, or something that would really offend Jack.
2. Send him a copy of the demo.
3. Profit as he advertises it to the whole of the US.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
I'm a programmer. I have experience writing games for several different platforms.
A good friend of mine is a 3d artist. He came to me a few months ago with an idea for a game. We pooled our cash, bought the necessary equipment and are making a go of it.
I can tell you that it's not an easy road, but, if you really want to see your game get built, and potentially make some money from it, you'll have to build it yourself.
On the bright side though, there are many opportunities once you have a viable product. We're still a while from release, but our playable proof of concept was good enough to negotiate a publishing contract. Once we had that, raising money was easy.
What is that supposed to demonstrate? That's why they're called *friends*, doh! Friends are the people who tell you you're not fat, you're not ugly, you're not stupid, and that your ideas are cool. Come back when your enemies are worried because your idea is cool.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Required reading for everybody (and their brother) who has a great idea for a game:
"I have a Great Idea for a video game... how do I sell it and get rich and famous?"
Fnord.
Game ideas are ten a penny. When I worked at a game company we got three of four "ideas" sent to us every day of the week. We threw all of them in the bin, fancy artwork and all.
If you want to design games you need to start applying for jobs as a game tester. If your feedback/ideas are good you'll work your way up.
Beware though ... if there's one thing which outnumbers game ideas it's people who want to be game testers. There's millions of people who think getting paid for playing video games would be the coolest job ever, though the reality is that testing games is nothing like playing them.
No sig today...
Much like Hollywood, If you can get a basic concept together and get in front of the right eyes, you're in. Brush off your social skills, practice hobnobbing, chatting people up, and getting into networks. Go to GDC at very least, if not other industry events. Find the companies most likely to publish a game like yours, find out who the producers, CEOs, art directors, etc etc are and ... uh ... stalk them. Not really, but know what they look like and make and effort to meet them. Avoid the big names like Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, John Carmack, etc. They have tons of groupies to fight through. But there are plenty of influential people at game companies who are anonymous and would be happy to talk shop for a bit at an open bar at a convention, especially of they are flattered by being recognized.
Subscribe to Game Developer magazine and become visible on their forums. I'm only peripherally involved with game development these days, but I still read it cover to cover. It's one of the few industry mags that has useful insightful information from the front lines.
Though it's still a one in a million chance. Frankly, self publish or forget it. There are lots of venues right now (competitions and the like) for a self published game to get exposure. And put the effort into the art and sound. There are tons and tons of shitty looking games in this space, so do everything you can to stand out. You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and the first impression is visuals and sound, not gameplay. Not everyone who could help you out is going to have a chance to play it, so a compelling screen shot goes a long way. I've seen a games sold on a video mocked up in Premiere and on concept art alone without having a line of code.
Yes, I have given some contradictory advice. But it is a crowded business, getting more crowded every day. There is no one path to success. You need to shotgun it, turn yourself into a blunderbuss loaded with your game. Make it your daily passion and put yourself out there to get noticed. If you don't believe in your idea enough to do that, then file it under "dreams" and move on.
Disclosure: For several years I had the job title "Game Designer" for a small company of industry veterans.
Won't work, never has.
The only way is to give a copy to a lawyer, get them to sign/date every page and keep a copy in their office. You can do the NDA thing as well if you want but in both cases you still won't have much because the company could claim they were already working on something very similar and you won't be able to prove otherwise.
Even better, just trust people. They're most likely not interested in your ideas but if you impress them enough with your enthusiasm and/or artwork you might get a job as a games tester/artist.
No sig today...
I'm a game developer with 19 years in the business. I second what everyone else has said about the fact that the industry doesn't buy ideas. Let me also add that you can't protect an idea.
You can copyright a specific expression of the idea, such as a design document, but only that particular text is protected, not the idea itself.
You could try to patent the idea, if it meets the standards for being a patent, but that would make you an evil scumbag. Game ideas should not be patentable.
The one thing you CAN do is treat the idea like a trade secret. Then you can sue your employees if they reveal the idea, and you can sue your competitors if you can prove that they spied on you to get hold of it. But for this to count, you have to actually act as if it IS a secret, i.e., don't tell anyone about it, and keep anything written down in a safe!
Bottom line: if you don't want to be "ripped off," keep your mouth shut. But that won't prevent independent invention. Chances are very good that someone else has had a similar idea, and there's not a thing in the world you can do to prevent them exploiting it... nor should there be.
I piss off bigots.
a) industry connections
b) a totally kickass prototype
My friend is in cahoots with a former developer that worked for one of Nintendo's American studios, who used his connections to schedule a presentation to some Ninty higher-ups in the hopes of scoring a dev license. They spent a good two months building a PC prototype for the pitch. It was basically a finished game (the pitch was for a puzzler, so making a fully functional game is pretty feasible compared to an RPG), and it worked with the Wiimote to show how the control would work as well. The guys at NOA said it was the most polished prototype they'd seen, and that went a long way in convincing them it would work.
So my advice would be to do the same: if you're new and unproven, show them not just the core concept, but a prototype so clean that they can't help but be impressed with your skills along with your ideas. This is especially true if you don't have the personal connections to get you a little starting cred... Good luck to you!
A few years back, one company I worked at had developed a playable demo of a game. We had an engine that worked very well, and was even being shown at the Nvidia booth at E3 (it showcased their latest tech very well). When other companies saw it, they asked how we had managed to license the Doom 3 engine (this is before Doom 3 had shipped, mind you) - it looked that good.
We had the playable engine you could walk around a sample level and interact with, a story with storyboards, and plenty of concept art. We had an established company, founded by a well known game developer (who went back quite a ways in the industry), and all of our people had experience on at least one previous big budget commercial title. We had self funded a lot of the development to this point. All we needed was a company to pick it up and give us funding to go wide with development.
We showed the game to a variety of publishers, and only a few were interested. But even then there was a catch. Those few who were interested, wanted to see a lot more before they bit. It became quickly apparent that the only way we'd ship the title was if we self funded most of the game's development. That was the nail in the coffin - we didn't have that money lying around, and our attempts at venture capital funding failed miserably.
Another example - an independent developer not too far from us had developed their own game to completion, and went to a publisher. The publisher looked at it, liked what they saw, and then said "Well... can you turn it into a Star Trek game?" So they did, and the Star Trek game got published. However, I believe they ended up having to self-publish their original game.
Publishers don't want to publish your game. They want to publish their game. They don't want to fund you to develop your game, but they will gladly fund you to develop their game.
Your best bet - develop it up on your own, and try to sell it on Steam or the like.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
and nobody has reminded the OP about the importance of booth babes?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
You do NOT need to work your way up from game tester to game designer. Forget the "game industry" and the folklore about career paths in that mythology.
If you think you have a good idea, find a programmer to be an early partner, and develop a prototype.
Ideally, don't deal with any established companies, and try to publish the game yourself. People buy games online now, and the concept of a publisher is laughable. Marketing and advance money are the only possible benefits of dealing with a publisher, but if you believe in your game idea, and you are confident that you can implement the game well, then do it yourself.
If you enter the game industry, you're likely to become a mere employee, and you won't get any financial benefit from your innovative ideas. Moreover, your ideas are likely to be modified or distorted by many different pressures within the management of your employer's company or by pressures imposed by the publishers.
Now maybe the advice that some people are giving here applies to most people, because most people might start with more ambition than talent, and most people might not have a good enough view of the overall picture to realize all of the elements that go in to making a successful game. But I think that people with talent should reject the "paying dues" concept. If a game company won't hire you as an entry game designer, and you think you are already a game designer, then say "no" to the "game industry", and figure out some other path to getting your game created.
If you can't find a programmer who likes your game idea enough to join you, as a partner with equity in the project, then your idea isn't any good. You need to develop a prototype, and determine if it is as fun as you both think it will be.
Bottom line: Do whatever you can to avoid the "game industry". The "game industry" is largely a cult of managers, where imagination dies and talent is unrewarded. Really all you want is money to finance development and marketing -- and I think you should probably just work at a non-gaming job to pay your bills while you continue developing your game. It's an unconventional path, but what you create will be your property and under your full creative control, and you will benefit fully from the success of the game. If you fail, you failed while doing exactly what you wanted, and you can learn from the experience. If you can't tolerate the uncertainty or the possibility of failure, then, yeah, maybe the "paying your dues" idea is the safe path...
I worked on a few commercial video games, and I learned a lot about all aspects of developing video games. It can be a fun profession. However, if you divide your salary by the number of hours worked each week, you might determine that you're making money at the same hourly rate as someone working a normal work week at 60% of the salary! That's a big premium for the "privilege" of working in the "video game industry". Also, a video game of any scale is subjected to the creative input of lots of managers -- who think only of maximizing profit. Managers will set parameters on the game according to what *they believe* will maximize profit, but, in fact, their imposed parameters and constraints will, more likely than not, *reduce* the perceived value of the game in the market. I'm sure, as a consumer of video games, you will agree that most video games are the products of the risk-averse instinct to copy the success of others. How many games in the store aren't based on franchises (movies, cartoon characters, professional sporting leagues, television shows, popular books, popular music, etc)? Any innovative game that becomes successful becomes a franchise of its own, like "Tomb Raider", "Duke Nukem", "Half-Life", "Quake", "Doom", "GTA", "*Craft", "Sims", "Civilization", etc. Some of those game franchises have turned out well -- not lazily exploiting customer loyalty to continue making money on each successive release, but actually offering new value. But, the fact is, most franchise games make gam
The sad thing is 4, 3, and 1 will leave you burned out before you ever start anything and 2 is off the whims of someones free time, which means it will more then likely never manifest itself.
Most people on here are saying ideas are a dime a dozen and while true, good ideas are worth a heck of a lot more then that and they are out there. Such is the reason why Call of Duty 52 is one of the best sellers as is age old games like World of Warcraft.
The industry is starving due to a lack of original content and at the same time they're smothering the very people who can help revitalize it, which are the gamers. Heck, if you want evidence that gamers are starved, the $10 purchasable version of the Spore Creature Creator topped US game sales. http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53387 (sorry for a lack of a embeded link)
I have a few very good ideas as well and a decent amount of time playing any game and I come up with revisements and changes for various parts of the game ranging from gameplay mechanics, to restructuring the GUI, to a TC. I'm sure most hardcore gamers are like this, yet there is no way to actually get these ideas to the developers or to a big company. You can post in a suggestion forum, but that almost always fails completely as they're usually just there as a ornament to make the gamers feel like they have some sort of power over what they're playing. Occasionally game developers listen, but it's only to whoever screams the loudest and the longest - reads majority rule.
This is sad in my opinion. People with great ideas shouldn't need to make tech demos, draw up fancy concept art, and then dance infront of people in order for big companies to profit off of them. Ideally speaking good ideas are very easy to recognize just by discussing the concept, no dressing up is needed. Companies should be paying you for your ideas, especially those from the people they're selling the product to! That's why customer feedback is so important for developing new products, looking at sales is only part of the bigger picture.
I'm suprised big companies like EA or Blizzard haven't introduced some sort of pitch your idea to the big whigs, where you submit your ideas to them in whatever form it takes on, with the oportunity to help co-develop a title with a experienced lead designer. Of course this gives them all the rights to the IP and there would have to be all sorts of legal work in the background, but the general idea is there.
Employing a small force of people to screen through all the crap in the drop box is a small sum compared to almost all the rights on a brand new IP. It isn't that hard to turn a ear to the people buying your products, other parts of the industry (automotive?) have been doing it for decades now.
Chances are if one gamer likes it, if his friends, who are also gamers like it, a good majority of other gamers will also like it.
Who best to know what they want besides the people who are buyng the product?
This guy is right. If you want to make video games, you can either work for someone else and make their video games, (boring!) or you can make your own. Problem is, it's not easy to go out and make your own game and try to make money from it. In fact, it's very hard. I would know; I'm doing it right now. When I say it's very hard, this is really an understatement, because there's no way to accurately verbalize how hard it really is. The above post makes it sound straightforward, but it's not. So, when reading advice like what is given above, take it with a grain of salt, because this kind of advice is not for the overwhelming majority of people.