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Best Way To Sell a Game Concept?
dunng808 writes "If a couple of young, game-crazy guys wanted to get started designing a game with the intention of selling the concept, how should they proceed? In the music industry they would make a demo MP3. In the film industry they would write a script (and I would recommend lyx with the hollywood document class). Should they develop some sample game play with a well-known engine? Is the one in Blender good enough? This somewhat dated list suggests it is. Or should they focus on textual descriptions and static scenes made with Blender and the GIMP? Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?"
Too many ideas too few developers
there's millions of patents granted every year.
The trick is knowing the people to help you get funding, or to help you get grant money, or whatever.
"Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?"
Having worked at two game companies in the past: No. I've never heard of such a thing happening. All the hundreds of people working at a game company are likely bursting with their own game ideas. Ideas are not in short supply.
At best, your analogy for a "demo mp3" is a playable "demo game".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
A demo tape provides a real example of your talent and ability. To be equivalent, this need to be a real example of the game.
Look at the Portal developers. They developed a Portal like predecssor game called "Narbacular Drop". It got Valve's attention, and them a job, and finally the finished product Portal.
In 15 years in the game business, I have never heard of any company being so hard up for ideas that they shell out money to buy one from the outside. Quite the opposite is true--there is always a glut of pet concepts developed internally by members of the full time staff, and very few of those will ever see the light of day. And ultimately, the "concept" itself has no value, only the implementation does.
It is my belief (back by the opinion of several indie game developper friend) that game concept is not the issue in the gaming industry. Companies have harddrives full of good game concept. The main problem is building the actual game. That takes forever and a lot of money.
Moreover, good game concept does not sell games in general. You are sure that Football Game, the 5rd this year, is going to sell. Funky FPS, the 7th this year, is going to sell. Interesting Concept, may not sell. Therefore, you fund Crappy Game That You Know You Will Sell.
If you really belive there is somethingto do with your concept. Pay for its development by yourself. But I think it is a long and difficult road.
Like the AC first post says, Too many ideas, too few developers. In my experience, this is very true. If you truly want to create your game, I suggest working in the industry, and developing contacts, such that at some point down the road, you can bring together the funding and people you need to actually create it.
That's not to say there aren't also smaller scale projects that are successful as well - there are. However, most of them tend to either be of lower quality than many professional games, and/or have a number of people who have worked professionally in the industry.
Ideas are a dime a dozen, they rarely pay for ideas, they pay for prototypes and people who can make the ideas reality. It sounds like you're at least taking this into account in that you want to create a demo. The demo needs to be bang-up. It doesn't need to have every feature or quality graphics, but it needs to show the gameplay mechanic or idea that you want to sell - and it needs to sell it -HARD-. See Nabacular Drop...it became Portal. The idea for portal was there, but it wasn't until a solid implementation came along a game company got interested. So model it on that idea - You need to have something coherent.
Blender game engine probably is a no-no. Use something a bit more high-quality/powerful and customize it to do what you want.
And if you don't have a compelling gameplay mechanic or idea, then don't bother. You're just another nerd with a fantasy, no offense.
I hate to break this to you but the ideas are the easiest part of game development. My group has dozens of ideas on our wiki and we add great ideas all the time. But we've been working on our current project for YEARS now.
Taking a great idea and making a great game is hard and expensive. Taking a great game and making a mediocre game is also hard and expensive.
In this case, make a prototype. If it's good enough and your marketing skills are up to snuff, you might be able to get a publishing deal or self publish on the internet. Retail is still the most important part but some of the indie devs out there have proven you can at least survive if your games are decent.
You won't be able to sell an idea, but a working example of the game might.... even if it's only one level.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Film is structured around production companies which match up scripts with actors and directors. There are not a lot of great scripts, and companies will fight over the best ones.
Game concepts, on the other hand, are a dime a dozen. There at least as many good game ideas as there are studios trying to make games. If you're thinking, "Why are there so many shitty games?", it's not because of a lack of ideas. It's because getting a publisher to pay for a novel (eg, not-an-established-genre) game is damned near impossible, even if you are a development studio with a solid track record.
People with development expertise already struggle to turn good ideas into games. If you don't have the talent, and you don't work for a studio and don't want to start your own, then your ideas are useless.
are a dime a dozen... set it on fire or build it in a good engine like unreal, unity, or crytek. Blender is POS.
Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?
No. Since the '80s, an entire generation of programmers grew up with the initial idea of making their own games. Most of them never actually made a commercial game, but most of them now create other types of software. Those that did go into the industry either have way more ideas for games than their studio could ever implement, or they became slaves in the code mines of Activision.
You'll have to create and market it on your own.
Not a typewriter
It's called the "vertical slice".
You get 1 piece of the game prepared. Get all the core things working just for this single scenario, and show them what the final product looks like in this one scenario.
It's up to you how detailed you want it to be, but the idea is to get it as close as you can to the final product. It's hard to get everything in a working status so pick your scenario carefully to avoid complex problems in implementation (Don't generate tough pathing, excessively detailed environments, game-breaking dilemmas).
Get that working and the investor can imagine what the actual game might be like. The less he has to imagine, the easier it is to invest. Also, and /most importantly/ it shows that you are organized and disciplined enough to produce a working product top to bottom. One of the biggest risks for new games is developers who don't know how to finish something. They get caught up in the big fun ideas and forget about critical details like making it work and meeting a deadline.
Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?
Nope. Quite frankly, the only way its going to get made is if you do it yourself. I'd suggest using an established engine to cut development time/cost to a minimum and going with a digital distribution service like Steam to bring the product to market.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
sorry to burst your bubble
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Lots of concepts that are interesting end up beaten into submission by ones that are tired, boring and easy to reproduce. Big companies are pansies that just want to be safe and boring and comfortable, they have lots of money but they aren't ever actually going to do anything interesting with it other than get their yachts and hair surgery. I would say everyone on the planet who owns a computer has had a brilliant idea or flash of inspiration for a computer game, because they make it so easy when everything is the same.
So what I am saying is, the hard part would be actually making the thing. If you can get a prototype working, thats a million times better than a bunch of figments and ideas on a piece of paper, because then you and they know that it works in practice. So make the rough, backyard welded version of what you have in mind, and then at least you get some fun out of it before sending it to the wolves.
It's $100 for a dev license for the iPhone.
If you want to make money at it, develop the game and sell it yourself. If you can't recoup $100, you'll at least learn a lot in the process.
-Dan
Anyone can come up with an idea. There have probably been people with the same idea you came up with, there are probably already games out there using your idea. There is no way you are going to be able to sell the concept to anyone. You can develop it into a game and sell it to a publisher or on the market yourself. You aren't going to be sell a game concept alone. The idea of it is quite humorous.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
The Escapist: Why Your Game Idea Sucks
Every game developer has thousands of ideas of their own. They could not care less about yours.
Unless your game concept is a one in a million idea that only comes around once a decade (to change the face of the gaming industry and inspire a thousand and one clones), there is no market for it.
Hi 2.49b the game engine of Blender is fairly reasonable. Definitely good enough to prove whether the idea works and to develop the core logic and game play.
You might want to look at Blender after 2.6 which due to the generosity of googles summer of code, will have advanced path finding tools by default and other useful AI related libraries which will make your life a lot easier.
Blender has a good path to some external engines particularly Unity which is now ported to all of the major platforms.
These days no one is interested in a concept though. They want a game basically developed to the point it appears ready to sell - at least one fully polished level that shows all of the things that a publishing house wants to see in a game. They also want a team ready to develop it a complete game.
Depending on the game type you might want to consider just doing smaller versions of it for a cheap to develop platform such as the iphone.
Anybody who thinks it matters what document editor is used for writing a screenplay has no clue.
Just tell them it's like Halo, but in space... oh wait... it's like Halo, but with swords!
I cannot tell you how many people approach me with new game ideas every year. Most if not all want to share their fantastic idea for a cut of course. The only problem is non of these people have any game programming and or graphics, sound experience etc. Why on earth would I want a portion of the profits when I can have all of it since I am the one doing all of the work anyhow?
Got Code?
No. Game ideas are a dime a dozzen.
Your assuming they also have a Mac since one is needed to program for the iPhone. Split Accommodation
The title should really be. What is the best way to *pay* someone to implement your own game concept? And even then, it should really be the person who thought of the idea who should implement it, because he'll be the most motivated to get it done the way he originally thought of it.
Not only, ideas are everywhere, and everyone has ideas, but where it comes to one's creative ego, everyone believes that their own idea is the best in the World (and yes, I do include myself in that category of delusional people).
http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html
From the site:
Professional quality productions are possible, and to a certain degree, easy, to make on a home computer now. This means people in whatever media industry expect that grade of quality when they review demo cds, independant films, etc.
I would imagine the same goes for games, but from my observations, it seems like most people start there own company and just get on with it and find a publisher, rather that being scooped up by a larger development house.
The console and PC gaming market is at the point where it takes $20 million and up to do an "A" title. There's smaller scale stuff being done successfully on Facebook and on phones, though.
Who would have thought Farmville would be a success? Farmville?
When you send a demo tape to a record label, you're not selling a song - you're selling your talent as a musician. Wouldn't make much sense for the label to sign you and only release a single.
Similarly, when you send around a screenplay, you're selling an idea. It will be reworked, changed around, modified - not too seriously, hopefully - but the studio, director, actors, and physical constraints will all modify the script. You're trying to sell a compelling plot and set of characters, not an implementation.
But who ever heard of a videogame selling based on individual talent? Or character development? A truly great video game will have a good plot, but that's not the central point of the game.
A videogame is 'worth' something because it's fun to play. Everything else is secondary. Who cared about the plot of Super Mario Brothers? Who complained about the artwork in Tetris? Why does Asteroids need a catchy score?
The upshot of all of this is that nobody cares about your videogame unless you have something you can play. And it really needs to be quite close to the intended final product, since otherwise a lot of work remains to be done on the gameplay - the core idea - and you have nothing to sell.
Now, let's say you do a lot of work finishing one level of a videogame, with character sketches and plot for the rest of it. You may be able to sell that, but by that point you've done most of the work of putting together the game. If you needed to write a new engine for your awesome and new gameplay, you're done with that. If you were reusing another engine, you've already got it set up the way you want it and can basically start plugging in models, textures, and maps.
So if you've done the work required to get to a marketable object, why not just self-publish? Stick it on Steam, they're very friendly to indie guys and pay quite nicely (ask 2D Boy). If it's any good, it'll do quite well.
Good luck, whatever you end up doing.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I had to read that three times to get the full effect. Thank you! This has to be the best post I've read on this story!
zosxavius photography
The idea of a couple of guys having an idea and selling it to game companies is almost quaint. It doesn't happen.
1) Great ideas (far better than yours) are a dime a dozen.
2) Game companies employ professionals to design games. They are called game designers.
3) The more original your idea is, the less likely it is to sell or get anywhere. Companies don't want original games. They want games that will sell to the lowest common denominator. Free idea that they might have a snowflake's chance in hell of wanting: Marine finds his way onto base infested with alien demons. Now there is a concept with actual legs.
Suggestion: Learn how to program (not easy) and you and your friend program up the game yourself and begin either shopping it to distributors when totally finished, or sell it as an indie demo/game when mostly finished. To do well in the indie market, make it emo. Think "badly drawn boy."
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
The key ingredients that get a game design funded and developed are:
1. A succinct, energizing demonstration of the core concept that can be comprehended within 30 seconds by a group of non-gamers (typically Investors, Directors and Executives). This can be a storyboard, a working demo or a mock demo with cobbled pieces from other games for illustration.
2. Assembling a team that is ready and capable of executing the concept.
Ultimately, what investors and companies invest in are teams of people that can develop a killer concept into reality.
Runesabre
Enspira Online
One tenth of a cent bidden. Any higher bids?
Seriously though, why don't you start by deciding what resources (time and money) you are willing to spend on the game and then make a list of game concepts that you think you can make using 20% of those resources. That way you have a very realistic chance at finishing the project.
If you manage to sell the game in some shape or form, then all the better. But consider it a hobby for now.
> Is there even a market, let alone a convention, for selling game concepts?
Nope.
Read this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_221/6582-Why-Your-Game-Idea-Sucks
I work in the video game industry, in the IT department (thus no real game creation skills, but I do support the artists) and came up with what I thought was a stellar game concept. I spent a huge amount of time writing out the gameplay mechanics, describing the art style, outlining things that will make this game valuable in the eyes of executives, estimating production costs, etc. I have a speech/pitch ready and everything. I found the right people to talk to but never made enough of a connection to actually pitch the idea. It was disappointing but in the end I think I understand that people with money to spend on a game concept don't have the time to hear out people who day dream and not take action to achieve their ambition. It's like saying you want to be an astronaut as a kid but never doing what it would take to achieve that - it's not like a lottery where some random guy is picked. In time I hope to have a better chance at pitching my own idea, but I expect that's still years away.
There's a lot of naysayers in here. They are in a sense correct. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Anyone can come up with a game idea.
So, you just do what hardly anyone does, actually follow through and make the game. That will really make you stand out. Now, maybe you won't get your game published, but at least you will have a better portfolio than most people.
Luckily there are so many great tools at your disposal. Unity, XNA, Blender, GIMP, Audacity can all help you make a kickass game. A word of caution though. Your first attempt will be crap. Making games is an art. Don't get discouraged. Keep trying and all that stuff.
Here's a dime, gimme a dozen.
Submitter - Wanna make a good game? First, slap an ESRB A 18+ on it and get plenty of bad press for your demo to drum up a little controversy. Then add ingredients to taste:
I've heard a couple stories about guys that have made video game pitches, but I never hear about the games that actually get made. Two stories that I vaguely remember hearing are 1 of an old man who made a war card game of some sort (like WWII battleships, or planes). Apparently he started crying about 1/2 way through the presentation. The other was a couple of businessmen well dressed, and smooth talkers. They started throwing up profit expectations, market research, and a ton of great stuff that really impressed the developer. As the developer digs deeper it turns out they didn't actually have a game design at all it was just a hypothetical situation on how much money a game could make. I know I've heard more stories, but never actually hear about a game getting made through an external pitch meeting. Honestly I don't even think it happens like this for film anymore.
Today's game industry isn't lacking for ideas so if you're selling an idea then you're out of luck. If you have marketing experience, and can persuade a publisher that this type of game would make them money it's not a bad path, but I'm sure publishers hear the "I've got a game idea that will make you millions" pitch so often they just ignore it. If you really want to pursue it I suggest visiting GDC, and talking with people. Publishers, developers, gamers, press, indie developers will all give you a perspective of what direction to head w/ your idea. You'll probably get farther asking for advice than you would trying to make a pitch at this point.
Start your own game company...
As a game designer in this industry... There isn't a market for game concepts. Every member of every creative team out there will have 1-5 designs they really, really want to get off the ground. At any given company, that means the founders alone are kicking around 5 - 50 "must do" projects, of which they can do one every 4 years or so.
Publishers, on the other hand, are interested in funding game companies with concepts. If you can build a great concept, and a great demo, and prove that you have the chops to build a company around it, they might finance you. But as I said, that involves proving your ability to build a game and a company.
Good luck!
The ______ Agenda
You simply cannot sell game concepts. In fact, you cannot sell any concepts.
I am somewhat familiar with a movie industry, and while in theory you could pitch a concept, and there are even conventions designed for pitching concepts, in reality chances are you won't be able to. People who have the money to implement concepts usually have plenty of their own pet concepts to worry about. For better or for worse, they don't want your concept. 99.99% of all concepts are old hat in the movie industry, and a very hard sell.
With games, your best bet is to write the whole game, and market it yourself. There is no easy money. You want to avoid doing the heavy lifting and just get rewarded upfront. Ain't gonna happen. Stop being lazy and develop your game.
I'd say tackle it the way you'd tackle anything that's difficult and complex - do it in baby steps.
Don't try to do that grand game on the first try. Do the smaller things first. Try to do a level, or a character, or a model, etc. Don't go for a 3D game first, try doing a 2D one, and mastering 2D physics first, etc.
Apprentice with people who are better than you are.
Don't try to sell it to a company, sell it to other young, game-crazy guys who know how to program and make it yourselves. We need more indie games out there.
With the exception of embarrassingly awful game concepts, it's actually pretty hard to tell just how worthwhile one is until you've played it. You don't know whether your idea will work or not until you've seen it in action.
I guarantee you that all recently released games that could be considered to be both good and original are noticeably different from the concept that spawned them. That is a fact of the medium- it takes lots and lots of iteration to find the good stuff, get rid of the bad, and polish the hell out of it all so that people will play it (it's even harder to get them to pay for it).
Make your game. I highly recommend the Unity3d engine. Extremely easy to use, powerful, well documented, etc. etc. Plus the indie version is completely free!
Oh and like everyone else said, nobody buys just a concept. A concept and a demo, maybe.
"Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
First of all: I know this seems normal to you, but actually it is a completely absurd concept to sell a software game. :)
Why? Because that software is information. And in the bitspace that information exists in, there is no concept of ownership. Asking who owns information, is like asking what happened before time. We being able to ask it, does not mean it makes any sense.
In bitspace, you can pass information on. But when you do that, you also give up any control over it. If you want to keep control, you can only do that by not passing it on. But then how do you even prove it exists at all? (You can’t.)
Which makes it clear that if you want something in return for information, you have to demand it at the first time you pass it on. Because later, it’s already way too late.
Yes, you can demand money for the physical container for that information. Because everyone else would also have to, since producing a equivalent copy is not cheaper to him.
But you can also see it like this:
The information is just the product of a service. And that service is what you can demand money for. Since reproducing it is not going to be available for free elsewhere. In your case you even got a monopoly on your exact game. Which is great!
Now being a game designer myself, working on my first independent project, I did not want to live in the same delusional imaginary world as the old media reproduction and artist extortion industries. (EA would have offered me 10-15 million, but I would have lost everything else. [It would definitely not have been art, or made with love, or given me any respect from players.] Which is not what I do all this for!!)
So I decided to accept the actual physical reality, and build a business model, that acknowledges it.
And what came out, is that you have to see your clients as your investor (which before was the distributor / business angel / venture capitalist). You pitch your ideas to the investor, get him all wooed up. Your investor pays you, IF you deliver what is written in the deal. And if you are done, and you get paid, the game belongs to your investor. Which means: You clients!!
But this rule is KEY: They (the ones who paid) are only ones who will get the game.
And now for the insanely great part of that concept:
You do not need ANY DRM or copy protection. You do not need ANY laws or law changes. Your customers can legally pass your game on, and even demand money for it (since everyone else who has the information, also has paid good money, and will have lost money if he passes it on for free). You can do it in parallel with the current situation. And hence, you can start doing it that way right now.
Of course you can later still offer it for money. But so can everyone else. You all kinda “own” in now. And nobody does.
The market will then decide, what price people are willing to pay to get it from the first buyers (including you), or who of those first buyers will give it away for free anyway (thereby destroying the market, just as much as giving away free great hamburgers may destroy McDonalds).
The only thing that is any problem or hard in this whole concept, and I acknowledge that, is to make people sign that they will pay when what you promised is going to be delivered. But how is that different from a pre-order? And those are not a problem, as far as I know. from your clients’ perspective, it could just as well be the case that they only see the following change:
“If you pre-order the game, you will get the right, to resell it yourself!!”
Now tell me that’s not great!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Ideas worth less than implementations.
Implementations worth less than clients.
A bad implementation, of a bad idea with 100.000 users, worth 40.000 than the best idea ever. Ideas are multiplicators, not additives. A good idea multiply the value of a good implementation and a big userbase.
value = QualityOfIdea * (CoolStuffImplementation / ShitStuffImplementation) * userbase.
Example, a ferrari car:
value = 0.1 (everyone have the 'idea of luxury car', is nothing novel) * (1000 (ferraris are hella coool) / 0.1 (there are very few downsides on a ferrari)) * 60000 (that number is out of my hat, I don't know the userbase of ferraris)
Example, a ford fiesta:
value = 0.01 (a no-luxury car is a even more popular, hence cheap, idea) * ( 8 (the ford fiesta is not very cool) / 4 (the ford fiesta has a few downsides, like is small)) * 16.000.000 (another number from my hat)
-Woof woof woof!
That's merely an incomplete list of products. Give the man a list of 12 game ideas.
www.bonetown.com First Person Screwer....
Hey, I'm an indy game developer here -- Kayin, of I Wanna Be the Guy fame (which probably isn't well known around slashdot but whatever). But let me just say, the problem in the industry has NEVER been "Man, we wanna make a game, but we don't have an idea"! There are too many people knee deep in the industry who ideas they want to get out and even THOSE games aren't getting made. No one wants your idea. Ideas are cheap. If you want ANY possibility of anyone caring about your ideas, implement them your selves. Ideas are cheap, but execution is everything and showing that you can think out an idea and implement it goes a LONG WAY.
And still no one will care. But you might get work -- work designing other ideas -- until, maybe, just maybe, ONE DAY, you might get to make the game you always wanted to make. But then funding will be cut and it will suck dick and gamespot will give it a "6" which is like a -48 by online rating standards. Short of it: If you have an idea you want to see done, do it your self. IF you just want to sell ideas and make easy money, well.. it'll never, ever happen. Honestly too, the type of people with that sort of mentality tend not to actually produce very good ideas anyways. The best ideas tend to come from motivated people.
Everyone in the game industry has a dozen ideas. The ideas are all chasing a very limited pool of money not devoted to sequels. Many of the idea bearers already in the industry have much better credentials than you.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
But if you sign up with a publisher, you usually might as well sell out your soul. Since the only thing you will be left it, will be money. It won’t either be art nor something made with fun and love. Which your clients will definitely notice. (Example: EA.) So you won’t get respect for it. :)
At least for me, I do it for the respect. Not for the money. Which sure is nice too, but I prefer respect without money over money without respect. I’m rather poor in money than in freedom. Currently being rather poor, but doing what I love, should be the best proof for this.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Shelve it. Come up with another idea. A simple one where the development costs are tiny. Set up a company. Hire developers (You'll need at least a couple of programmers and artists). Develop a vertical slice. A single working level. Pitch that to publishers. If one of them likes it, they'll fund much of the rest of the development.
Once you've sold this, finish development on the game, get it published. You'll probably have made a net loss at this point but that's not a huge problem. You have institutional knowledge, and a friendly publisher. Get working on your game concept. Pitch that to publishers. If you last game was a success, the previous publishers are going to be interested. You can potentially make money from this one.
I've been making games professionally for close to 19 years. Much of the advice in previous posts is very important, so I'll summarize all the bad points first.
1. Your game concept is worthless to anyone but you. I've personally got 30 ideas for games that will most likely never see the light of day; some of which I honestly believe are better than the very best games out there right now. Without turning that idea into a playable demonstration, no-one will give you money for it.
2. You might think your idea is brilliant (and you could be right) but chances are once you turn it into an actual playable version, you'll more likely than not find flaws and issues with the design. I've never worked on a single game that plopped fully formed from design to execution, it just doesn't happen. Expect 90% of the effort of designing your game to happen after the first implementation is complete.
3. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of other people want to do exactly what you're suggesting (sell their idea for money). The people with the money to give you are publishers, and the vast majority of those explicitly will not even talk about your game design, just in case it comes close to a product in development. The last thing they want is to open themselves up to being sued because your idea was remotely similar to a game they intend to ship next year.
now the good stuff:
You can make games yourself, right now. Trust me - making (and playing) your own games is infinitely more satisfying than just talking about it or writing down half-baked ideas on a piece of paper. Do what the Narbacular Drop guys did, *make it*. If you don't know how - learn. Everything you need to learn is out there right now.
There's some really good frameworks for making games out there. look for Unreal Development Kit, Blender you already mentioned, and my personal suggestion for your best starting place would be Xbox 360 development using XNA. The benefits of making your game on a platform where it's easy for everyone else to look at the end results in the cold light of day are huge - plus for a small investment you get to play your game on a proper console gaming environment (big telly, etc). There's also mobile platforms - basically, if you care enough to try and are willing to invest your time and maybe a couple of hundred dollars, you can get started on making a product that will be good enough to get attention from people with serious money.
Now subtract the number of ideas with zero creativity.
Slashdot comments are pathetically wrong, again. Not a single comment differentiates game ideas that are just slight variations of known concepts and mind-blowing game ideas that don't look like anything else.
However, if you publish, then you may inspire people with actual marketable skills - coders, artists, QA people - to get on board and develop a demo of it.
Most likely not, and anyone you do attract isn't going to have any sort of proven track record. Your project is 99% likely to fail, regardless of what you do.
But if you don't publish, if your strategy is "Oooh, we have a great idea, but it's so great that we can't tell you what it is you until you sign an NDA", then you're 100% guaranteed to fail.
So make with the idea, and don't blow another opportunity like the one you just pooched by failing to provide a link to your design in a forum populated by people who could have helped you.
Better luck next time. Really, you're going to need it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I think your bubble is the one that needs a little bursting. What needs to be distinguished is the detail involved in the "idea" or "concept" in question. If by idea, you mean making a match-3 game with cars instead of fruit, or some vague, unrealistic concept for a sprawling MMO by a teen who has never implemented any aspect of a real game before...then yeah, those are a dime a dozen. If you're talking about well-developed designs for solid, fun, playable, marketable games, then those have a great deal of value. Just because an idea hasn't been implemented doesn't mean it doesn't have value. There's definitely a continuum from very bad to very good ideas. Of course, ideas from people experienced in generating previously successful ideas that have been turned into successful implementations are likely to be more valuable. As far as the OP, your chances of breaking into the game industry with an idea are incredibly small to nonexistent. Start with a small, simple game project and do what it takes to get it completed. If you have the skills to design a huge, sprawling epic you are should know the core basics of fundamental game design enough to allow you do develop a solid, playable small-scale game. If you can't do that, you're probably not going to go very far in the industry anyway.
Ubisoft will pick you idea up immediately, provided you have a long, cumbersome, and complex DRM scheme. That way, they never have to worry about the customer actually experiencing your game.
I will pay between $1 and $17, depending on the quality of your idea and completeness of vision. Post details in response below and I will send my official game concept courier to your location with a check.
I look forward to doing business with you.
First thing - most publishers / developers cannot accept ideas submitted to them, and have a policy in place to destroy any idea submissions without reading their details. Reason behind this is they don't want to get sued later for making a game that seems similar to one someone submitted without credit - even if the company had been making the game for a few years at that point. So making a game concept or demo and sending it to your favorite publisher isn't the way to go.
The best way to get your game noticed is to make your game (or at least a demo of it) the way you want, and post about it online. Publishers and developers are always looking for talented folks. If you focus on sound design, great! Show it off! Can you do some cool trick with dynamic clouds and shadows in your level? Or have a really neat style of gameplay? All these things can get the attention of the folks with the money. Valve and other publishers have been known to either take an indie developer or team and either hire them to make an upgraded version of the title, or help them publish, just because they like the game.
Yes, there is a chance that someone will steal your idea and make their own game off of it. If you're super worried about that, then wait until your game is nearly complete before you post anything about it. Fact is, if the game or some idea in it is great, it will be copied. Happens all the time in professional games, too. Bullet time, anyone?
Another great venue to get noticed is game competitions, such as the IGF. Submit your game to these, and you can bet that publishers will see you, your ideas, and think about if your game might fit in their lineup.
As for tools and engines, they're secondary, in a sense. There are plenty of free engines, some dedicated to certain gameplay styles (UDK), others more freeform (Ogre). If you're making a full game that you want to sell, make sure that's not prohibited in the terms of the engine you're working in. Otherwise, treating it as a proof-of-concept demo is the way I'd go, and for that, whatever engine lets you do what you want is the ideal engine. It helps to have your game not look terrible, but there are tons of freelance artists, sound designers, and so on out there to help you with that. Unless, of course, you're trying to show off some new procedural animation gameplay system or something, then make sure you have some nice looking models to back it up!
What sucks is that I have 25 odd years worth of plots, plans, dungeons, cities, towns, castle, NPCs and sundry other materials that have managed to keep well over a hundred people entertained and coming back, some for decades, and can't get it into a PC game. All of which would make an excellent MMORPG background and adventure game. But lack of knowledge (ain't a computer programmer or techie) and lack of time (own business, working on MA in Social Work, GF, and internship tied to MA)so I can't do it myself. I hope that maybe by the time I retire, come on 55, the game making may be more streamlined where a non-techie can do it with point/click,little script.
If all you have are ideas, it's going to be very hard to get any publisher to listen to you. In fact, even if you have a finished game, there is a large chance that publishers/developers won't want to publish/produce it. The reason being is that large companies are businesses, and one of their main objectives as a business is to mitigate risk. As you can imagine, some unknown dude with an idea for a game is a pretty big risk.
What I'd recommend? Go indie. Find some investors to get some start up money (this should be a lot easier if you have a good idea), see if you can get government grants for art/new media or whatever, and make your game. You'll be able to do it the way YOU want, rather than spending tons of time and effort pitching an idea to game developers who will make it they way THEY want.
Also I don't know any game that was made based on someone giving an idea to a development studio. And I work in the industry.
#1 become vin diesel
#2 make game
#3 lose money
Uh, the question didnt ask if there were too many concepts. Neither did the reply Too many ideas too few developers". READ next time, doofus.
FWIW... I'm a game industry veteran, working on something you sound like target audience for - AAA engine, MMO over P2P back end, 2 authoring levels - simple (point and click) and pro (API), all free for non commercial use, cross platform. Hopefully done this year - watch vscape.com for updates, site is dead looking placeholder, busy team behind.
Yes. That is important. When you sign up a publisher, it becomes their project. They still want you to be slaving away on it as a labor of love. But you need to make that main character more "kid friendly." And puppies are hot with the target demographic. Have you thought of adding a kart-racing minigame?
On the other hand, you don't self-finance a 20 million dollar budget. When I got in, 5 million was considered a big budget. Now 5 million dollar games come out with no fanfare to the discount rack. Good luck even talking to a console owner without more than 3 million retail, 1 million digital.
Some of the Indie titles sell for 400 Live points now (can't recall the name, the zombie slaying nun one was quite good when I demoed it), that's 5 bucks. The I Mad3 A Game With Z0mbies dude made some decent cash selling for a buck, so really the price is up to you if you believe you have a great idea.
Seriously, I'm an open source guy, writing this on my work linux machine, but XBox Live is about as easy as it gets for tools and platform to get started with making games.
Dude, you can't sell authors ideas, you can't sell game companies game concepts, you need finished products in any industry. Your demo mp3 would only be worthwhile in the music industry if you could actually produce a full album. It's the same thing here.
No, ideas really are the easy part. That's not because ideas are easy, but because creative people, by definition, generate them constantly. However, the number of ideas these people have are much more than they can ever develop.
So while ideas are hard, condensing a set of ideas into something manageable for the size of your team, and then focusing on just that until its done, is much harder. Being able to do that is what separates the millionaire nerds from the basement dwelling variety.
Not a typewriter
The problem is that they will not likely get a developer on board. Anyone that can sit down and write a game doesn't need help to do so.
Except in one case: You have the skill to make a 2D prototype of the design in Construct, The Games Factory, or even WarioWare DIY, but not to polish it as a native game.
So with a BS in computer science, three years of programming experience outside the video game industry, and a few playable open source games, how do I get into the industry's social network without leaving my family's social network behind? I live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and there isn't even an IGDA chapter in my state.
You can develop for all Symbian phones for free.
That doesn't really help gamers in the United States, as I haven't seen a U.S. carrier promote a Symbian phone. Verizon and T-Mobile push Android instead.
Citation needed? Including compared with things like the DS?
We require that companies are working from secure business offices. Home offices are not considered secure locations.
I didn't see anyone talking about mobile development, which seems a way to add greater complication to your game, as you now have to worry about things like limited resolution and power, unless you intend to make a mobile game.
I don't understand your point. A game that runs on a handheld device is by definition a mobile game.
Unless your game concept is a one in a million idea that only comes around once a decade (to change the face of the gaming industry and inspire a thousand and one clones), there is no market for it.
To put it into perspective, the last few genre launches were probably FaceBall 2000, Street Fighter II, Super Mario 64, and Parappa the Rapper. Have there been any genre launches in the past decade?
There is a package called RPGMaker that has been used for games that sell commercially as well as shareware type games. Considering all that, I would assume that it's inexpensive and easy to use and good enough to get a good start with.
More than that, I really can't tell you except that it seems to be updated fairly often so it should be a supported system.
Hope that helps and good luck.
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat." Lily Tomlin
As yet another generic fps hits the market with 5 hours of campaign. Good ideas AND good writing is at a serious premium, maybe your studio is just too typical to get it.