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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?"
"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.
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
FYI, this is exactly how Dead Space came to exist. They made 1 level, pitched it, and they came back and told them to make the rest of the game.
Force Unleashed developers did something similar, they animated conceptual scenes for Lucas to look at that demonstrated how the resulting game should feel. It wasn't interactive, but the idea is the same, try to get them to see what the final game will look like by using one complete picture.
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.