i am a crazy gamer of 'free roaming' games. I am thinking of starting a game development company to make 'free roaming' game. This has been a long time dream! i am very new and dont know much about game industry. where to start? what sort of budget are we talking here? is it possible to hire a software company to do? i did some research about game engines and looking for any advice that would be of great help!
I would start with creating just a gaming site...just to see the type of traffic you will be getting and the maintainace your will be doing on the site before anything else. Then you will see what type of games people like and you can either build or hire someone to build a new game for you. but until then buy a couple databases of games and see what you can make out of it
do you know any programming languages like vbasic, c#, java, c++ all of these you can make pc games out of
Creating a game is challenging. Creating a good game that people will want to play is damn hard, time consuming and expensive. A single player Flash game is something you could potentially hire out but a free roaming game will take a lot of designer talent (models, animations, level design) as well as programming talent for not only the game itself, but the tools to create the game. You should take a look at something like the Torque Engine that provides much of the base stuff for you. There's an RTS Starter Kit addon for getting up and running quickly with an online multiplayer RTS game. But have no illusions it will still be a ton of work to make something remotely fun, but if you really love it, maybe you will be one of the few to be successful.
yeah! i myself come from computer background know but still not experienced enough though! i hardly have any time! Even if i start it would take years to develop such games as a lone person. That is why i am thinking of hiring a game developement company.
there are plenty of people here on dp that know enough to put a game together hire around 4 to 5 coders to work together on a game that you might like ..your self
Okay... I've been in the gaming biz since 2004 - and made few games along the way. I have a blog on game business that's updated daily. For starters I'd suggest checking out sales stats to get a better idea on how much indie games can make. There are games that have made anything from 4 to 6-figure incomes, and the length of development greatly varies. I would also suggest checking out portal sales statistics and lists what bestselling games have in common - these can give you some clue on what's "hot" right now (I'd say there are 3 hit genres at the moment: "restaurant games", "find hidden objects" and upcoming "tower defense" genre - that's not perhaps yet saturated). Technology doesn't matter much (in my opinion) - "best games" and "bestselling games" can be two very different things. Here's an article that got featured at Kotaku (and got dugged by plenty of people) I wrote in the past: How to create your first game. It explains and gives resources about where to go in making games. What to do if you don't have enough time I've noticed that if you really enjoy doing something - you can always find time. If you think you don't have much time, then start prototyping. I produced a free game in just 21 hours. It's very simple, yet I've got some good feedback from people about the game - and overall it was a great experience to finish a mini game in such short timeline. Learned a great deal doing it. More to check out: Besides checking these resources, there are plenty of other places to go: - www.indiegamer.com (casual game development) - www.gamedev.net (programming & development discussion and resources) - www.devmaster.net (check out this for game engines) Good luck with your journey.
Game producer has some good input there. I myself serve as the Creative Director of a well known game company and I've been in the biz for over 7+ years. I can only add that it would be nice to see an indy try something new. Too many damn sequels and rip-offs these days. I believe the larger companies have given up on the idea of risking huge losses on new, unproven ideas... Look at Majesco... heh. Try something that hasn't been done before. When you aren't risking millions of dollars to try a new idea it's much easier to "go outside the norm" and be different.
So true - although shoe-string budgets bring interesting element in production... I'm all for innovation, no problem with that.
I think what you should do is actually go to school for this type of thing. Gaming companies have huge budgets normally, and there is a lot of hard work involved in creating a game. It isn't just a matter of making a game and imagining how a gun should point or feel. It is everything else around it that makes it feel the way it does, and you would need to be able to tweak. Honestly, you should go to work for a larger company first probably, get your foot in the door. Work on understading the project planning and the amount of work it takes before taking such a steep jump into something like this.
Rubbish! (just kidding ) But seriously - it's simply a good idea to get into making the game. No matter how small... just start. There are lots of good tools which you can use (free & inexpensive - check out earlier mentioned www.devmaster.net for example). Schools are fine - but you have to get into the dirty work ... and stop reading & start doing