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 way (Score:5, Insightful)
Too many ideas too few developers
It doesn't work like that (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Don't even try... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Dime a dozen (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:No way (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting ideas is the easy part.
Just Self Publish (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Re:No way (Score:4, Insightful)
Too many ideas too few developers
Absolutely. If they find a developer willing to get on-board with the project, then they might be on to something.
Then they should work on the concept and developing material to demo with an artist and the developer.
A lot also depends on what kind of a game they want to develop and who they're targeting.
Basically, they need to ask themselves some tough questions about their game and what they're developing. Then move on to the next step.
Re:SOL (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No way (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it. Most business software costs a magnitude of millions to produce, test etc. But seriously look at the level of functionality that business software has compared to games.
Games have such wondrous things such as fully fledged physics engines, statistics systems, and a whole plethora of other goodies as standard,that business software stakeholders can only drool over, and definitely never want to/have to pay for. Finally, the most important thing for a successful game is a truly slick UI/UX. If it's not a pleasure to use, it kind of defeats the purpose for a game. In most business software the main driver is making money for the company, not enjoying use.
So what does that mean for everyone involved in producing? You're building a $500m project for a $100m budget, (if you're even getting that), so you have to product 5x as much value as your friend who's building a business system, whereas you will never get the return from it like in a business application of the same calibur.
So what do you think your boss will say to you in a games company when you want to be paid as much as your friend who produces the same value? Either ramp up your production to 5x your friends, or be happy to be paid 1/5 of his wage. If he gives it to you, he doesn't understand the business, and you're all probably going to be looking for work shortly.
It's grim, but reality. You really have to have games in your blood to survive in the industry, and do it for the love of it rather than making money.
Re:Vertical slice (Score:3, Insightful)
This is probably good advice... for someone. I don't think it's what the OP is wondering about. I don't think they want to make the game, they just want to write it, so to speak.
There is no market for this because there is no market for well-vetted game ideas. There's no need. People will be whatever garbage rolls off the truck that day as long as it vaguely resembles something familiar. There are maybe 10 visionaries in terms of overall game design in the industry at any one time and that's enough to consume all available major investments that are based on an idea, rather than an iteration.
That said, if someone really wants to make their game idea come to fruition, a solid business plan and the intention that you will make it yourself, or at least, hire people and produce the game, is probably the best bet. This is especially true if your idea can target the booming iPad audience as multiple VC firms have capital just waiting to be spent specifically on iPad development. Any similar market situation would do as well.
What you won't see is a company like Valve or EA taking nothing more than a mockup and making a game. Even in the case of Portal, the game existed, playably, before Valve got involved.
Fundamentally different. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Design, Demo, Team (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're not contradicting his experience, you're validating it.
"At best, your analogy for a "demo mp3" is a playable "demo game"."
Which is exactly what Narbacular drop is. Read more better, k.
Re:No way (Score:5, Insightful)
Artists are important for modern games. So are developers. "Idea guys", not so much.
Re:No way (Score:4, Insightful)
Your entire thesis is flawed. Business software is complex. Business UIs have to be precise. Game developers do not make 1/5 the amount of business software developers.
I have worked in both areas. Pay is pretty standard for qualifications. None of it is glamorous. It's a job.
If you want money and recognition you put in the extra hours, do a better job than the guy to your left, have actual intelligent insight, and have a plan for your career which includes your own personal motivation to achieve.
Baby Steps (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:No way (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Clueless (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
If it's that good, here's what you do... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:No way (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet all we get are generic first person shooters. COD, Halo, Gears of War, Killzone. All the same. None of these ideas seem to be getting anywhere.
I can honestly say the most original game I've played YTD is Tropico 3 and that's only because it's the first game I've played with a Latin jazz soundtrack. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripryat is up there but kind of samey being the third S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in as many years, but it was nice to see GSC get out one incredibly polished S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game.
If the ideas are there then the implementation is horribly, horribly flawed. I'm not really looking forward to Halo:Reach and the inevitable successor Halo:Around or the next COD/Modern Warfare game. Can I at least have an original story with some decent in-depth game play mechanic, like Deus Ex or System Shock 2. Those games forced me to make choices I could do differently each time I replayed, now days COD leads me through a linear corridor, gives me all the weapons and ammo I could want and then tells me which one to use. Worse yet I always seem to be fighting Nazi's or Terrorists, can you invent some enemy that is not so stereotypical. Maybe even go as far to make the hero/villain lines blurred enough that I question what I am doing and why?
I'm going to go off on a bit of a rant, the really important bit was above but...
Why do games, especially FPS's and most RPG's need to fit into the standard character moulds so religiously. In every game, even ones where I can be evil like Fallout 3 I always seem to be the hero. If not the hero then the anti-hero. There's no ambiguous moral choices, it's too black and white. Then again with the enemies, they always have to be nameless, faceless certain evil like Nazi's, Zombie's and Terrorists. Why cant I encounter say, a personal letter from one of the guards I've dispatched back to his wife and kids. Especially with the Vietnam games, designers had a great opportunity to use the infamous VietCong/North Vietnamese propaganda and do some really abstract war games al a Apocolypse Now rather then the tired old red meat eating, flag waving, built like a brick shitter, Rambo style all American war hero. Even the British ones in COD are so bloody American that I can't stomach them (so I'm kind of glad we Australians have not really been depicted, they'd never get the Aussie at war right) I'm sorry but you cant put a cockney accent on a yank and call it a pom.
System Shock 2 was good, it made me both hate and associate with Shodan, be seduced by the aims of the Many, absolutely brilliant storytelling. Deus Ex made you question everything, right and wrong, good and evil, is it possible to be neutral, what would most people give to play that game again for the first time. I know not every game can be an impressive work of art like Deus Ex and System Shock 2 but I've been waiting 10 years since the last one. In that time we've had massive sequel factories produced and overhyped (Halo, Battlefield, COD).
Re:Just Self Publish (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple reason is because people who have iPhones/iPads/iWhatevers actually buy apps. Apple owns something like 95% of the portable app market right now, so yes, they are in fact the BIGGEST market for mobile games.
Re:Ideas (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit.
Blender game engine is one of the most advanced engines in open-source software.
Re:No way (Score:3, Insightful)
The people who get to be the "idea people" have toiled years (if not decades) among the various disciplines in the industry. You need to prove that you can get something completed. And then you have to prove that you can get something good completed. And then... maybe... someone will buy into some idea that you have.
But really, most of the creative types in the industry are working their asses off so that one day they can make their "one great game idea." I don't see them giving that up to others who are trying to take a short cut and/or don't know anything about development.
Re:No way (Score:4, Insightful)
So have I, I worked for a small studio, but one that was hired by a major publisher, and the studio head, designer, and lead programmer made quite a bit of money (but worked their tails off, as well). As a person pulled in at the tail end of the project to write GLIDE hardware acceleration (yes, it was that long ago, 1996ish) , I was also the first to go when the project ended (I was a contractor anyway), but that studio is still in business, mainly focusing on iPhone stuff these days. It paid OK - actually more than my business job, but without benefits (which is huge).
The real issue is volume, price, and shelf life. A game that stays in stores 90 days and sells 100k copies may be a minor hit, but business software can sit on that same shelf for 2 years to sell its 100k, and charge 5x the price. Since that business software made 5x the money, they can afford to pay their employees twice as much (and the extra 3x goes in the CEO's pocket... actually it's more like 1000x... or more - I've seen 2000x myself, and I'm sure some people are 6000x or more).
Interestingly enough, despite the privacy issues, I think content systems like Steam are good in that they can extend the shelf life of games, which ultimately benefit the studios creating them. Whereas a store will stop selling when a title only sells 1-2 copies a month, Steam can keep selling those 1-2 copies until buyer interest dries up entirely, and may be able to respark interest with discounts (like UT3, which sold dismally in stores and quite well when discounted on Steam). Profit margins are also much higher with digital distribution and even the business world is moving to digital distribution for that very reason.