How To Sell a Video Game Idea? 351
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?"
give up now (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Ideas are crap... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
flexibility? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Abandon all hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I don't know, but... (Score:1, Insightful)
I've got an idea for a book (Score:3, Insightful)
The same applies to studios. Everyone has an idea for a game. Here's an example [freelists.org]. 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.
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Portal group were students at DigiPen, where you make a game as a project every semester. There's a big difference between being a college student and seeing your final thesis become a commercial product [as happens in many different industries and fields] and trying to support yourself while coding and creating assets for a garage game.
Re:Four ways to turn your concept into a video gam (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
"my friends think it's cool" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, really. The blog post you linked doesn't claim that good ideas are worth money, just that great execution can't fix a terrible idea. But that's really just common sense.
Execution is IMHO worth more than a good idea, but only because fewer people can pull off great execution than people who can come up with great ideas. We've all had that "OMG GENIUS!" idea hit us at some point. Some of us get more of them than others, but in the end anyone who's reasonably observant and has good judgment can come up with good ideas.
Being able to pull it off is another story altogether. People who can do it are few and far between. Goes doubly if the idea requires a team. Good *team leaders* who can pull together the right people and execute the idea are truly one in ten thousand.
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually his post proves my point.
"Imagine that products are mountains. To build a product, you will need to climb that mountain. Some mountains have a big pot of gold at the top, and some do not. In order to make money, you will need to pick the right mountain and then successfully climb to the top and gather up the gold."
At best this person thinks they see a mountain. Now they need to do the hard work and start climbing it.
So that blog supports what I have to say.
I said ideas are cheap not worthless. But you need a lot more than just an idea.
Re:Amateurs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting article, but I think when people say "ideas are a dime a dozen" they really just mean those initial one-liner-ideas. In this case maybe something like: My idea is a third person RPG set in fictional colonial times with steampunk-technology like in the movie Wild Wild West with Mass-Effect-like gameplay. ;)
As you see, it's completly worthless, or does someone want to buy it? It's yours for a 1/12 dime
Then again, if this were a well tought-out concept with a storyline, characters, weapons, sidequests and a production cost and manhour schedule you might have something but I still doubt you could sell it. You would at least need a (licensed or selfmade) game engine and a working demo of the main game mechanics. Even better would be lots of concept art, the completely modeled, skinned, rigged and animated main character, some finished leveldesign and a team that already gets paid.
And if you have that, you don't go to a VC but to a publisher unless you want to publish it yourself.
Re:The "mail it to yourself" idea is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
A public notary is no doubt cheaper than a lawyer, and can verify a dated document just as well.
Honestly? Nobody... and here's why (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Execution is IMHO worth more than a good idea"
The idea that one is worth more then the other is a bit nonsensical, it's not an either-or proposition since whenever you're doing something you're executing ideas! This whole false dichotomy between execution and ideas is nonsensical. Take for instance all the ideas that go into making a modern CPU, or GPU for that matter. IDEA's MATTER, bigtime. Someone had the ideas public education was a good idea!
What is mathematics if not one big mass of ideas? Don't think ideas matter? Someone somewhere along the line had the IDEA of inventing money as a medium of exchange. Someone along the line had the IDEA of markets (Adam smith). Idea's matter, and anyone who says they don't isn'y really be aware of history. The whole of human history is driven by ideas usually tempered by pragmatism.
Idea's are equally as important as being able to implement then, since if you get right down to it since everything within a business usually encompasses information in some form (i.e. ideas).
NO! Advice given above is WRONG! (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:4, Insightful)
All of the ideas you mentioned changed the course of history. However, the reason those ideas changed the course of history, is that they were executed very well. There are thousands of other ideas out there that could have changed history just as much or more. However, they didn't because of poor/non-execution.
You are right... ideas are very important. But the worst idea executed brilliantly will beat the greatest idea executed poorly any day. You have to have an idea, but the quality of the execution is way more important than the quality of the idea, and that's what the GP was talking about.
Re:Ideas are cheap. (Score:3, Insightful)