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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
"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.
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!
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
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
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.
Nobody is going to give you money though unless you have a tangible business plan or documented examples of your ideas. i.e. concept art, playable demo or mod of an existing engine, extensive design documents. Plenty of people can come up with good game ideas, the trick is to mold that into an actual workable idea and that that all down on paper or in a playable state. Having something that people can actually play, even just a simple demo, can go a long way in convincing people you can make a FUN game.
http://www.sloperama.com/advice.html
From the site:
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.
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
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
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.
No, I think you're clueless on this particular issue.
Screenplays are absolutely required to follow a strict set of conventions in order to even get a hope in hell of being glanced at, let alone read. If you spend so much time learning and implementing those conventions manually in Word or another naive editor instead of spending your time honing your craft then you're an idiot. Automatic assistance to format your intent into following these conventions is invaluable. Which is why custom software which assists you in doing this is a damn good idea.
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.
It's nothing to do with being 'boring', it's that after several decades of game development, they've settled on a set of genres that most people enjoy playing. People still eat bread after thousands of years, is that unoriginal and boring? Four-wheeled cars enjoy popularity over more innovative exciting designs etc.
Most of these new original gaming ideas aren't actually fun to play, so players and developers will fall back on proven formulae such as the FPS, sports games, MMOs etc.
Just because something's new, it doesn't mean it's better.