Best Way To Sell a Game Concept? 250
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?"
No. (Score:5, Informative)
"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".
A demo tape isn't a song concept (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Make it yourself, or don't bother (Score:5, Informative)
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 [valvesoftware.com] to bring the product to market.
Re:Vertical slice (Score:5, Informative)
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.
ob Why Your Game Idea Sucks link (Score:5, Informative)
The Escapist: Why Your Game Idea Sucks [escapistmagazine.com]
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.
Sorry there isn't a market for conepts (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Just Self Publish (Score:3, Informative)
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
Your assuming they also have a Mac since one is needed to program for the iPhone. A better option would be to use Steam [steampowered.com] since it's free (if I remember right they charge a percentage of the sales, but no other fee's) and can be for both WIndows or Mac.
Re:No way (Score:3, Informative)
Harsh, but true - every gamedev forum I'm aware of is constantly flooded with "I've got this great idea, and need developers to help" posts.
Your best bet, IMHO, is to go indie. Develop the game as fully as you can, then sell it as shareware. You probably won't get rich, but you *certainly* won't get caught up in EA or Activision's shenanigans.
Re:Just Self Publish (Score:2, Informative)
Steam is NOT an open platform. In fact, it is more closed than Apple's app store. You need to be approved by the powers that be to be placed on Steam, and getting their attention alone is not as easy as submitting your app to Apple's app store. Plus, unlike the app store, there's also a pretty high bar for quality.
Short answer, no. Long answer, self-finance. (Score:4, Informative)
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!