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Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#11

Post by tmountain »

bennywild wrote: post #7

I'm a video game producer that has published on basically every modern platform. The best advice I can give is to laser-focus on your core mechanic, always asking yourself "Does this add to the fun?" Everything else follows from that. Different platforms have different customers, demand different games, and have different challenges. For a small project, I highly suggest using a sophisticated and cheap multiplatform…

Amen to that. From the Minecraft about page:

I've got a few plans and visions, but my only true design decision is to keep it fun and accessible. There's no design doc, but there are two lists; one for bugs, and one for features I want to add but think I might forget.

I make sure to play the game a lot, and I've built my share of towers, and flooded my share of caves. If something ever doesn't feel fun, I'll remove it. I believe that I can combine enough fun, accessibility and building blocks for this game to be a huge melting pot of emergent gameplay.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#12

Post by Joeboy »

I'm surprised by the "30 or younger" criterion. When I started programming in the '80s I found writing games a much more accessible, profitable and rockstarish idea than I do now (although I never actually wrote anything marketable). Maybe that's about me rather than the market though.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#13

Post by alex3t »

Yes, there are many opportunities for you as indie developer. first is app store ofcource, but please read first stories from iphonedevsdk.com/forum business section about 6 months development and more then $5000 spending and $100 profit at end. Second is flash games market, you can get up to $20k per game from sponsors if you are experienced game developer or about $500 if you are unknown. Third is android market, same as ios market but less money(successful game apps more ads oriented then apps in apple marketplace)

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#14

Post by davidsiems »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #3

What is success? Game companies are easy to start and frequent to close down. Recommendation: Contract iPhone development or Android development. Get a decent but minimal app in the App Store using Unity or Cocos2d, and recruiters / devs will be falling over themselves to hire you. Consoles are a really crappy market. The CEO of the console company I used to work for really wanted to get into mobile. That was before…

Yeah consoles are rough, high cost of development, and high chance to get overlooked.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#15

Post by davidsiems »

I've worked for a few video game 'startups' that tanked or are in the process of tanking. Here are some pitfalls to avoid:

* Make sure you focus on the company aspect of things. Why are you making games? If the answer isn't 'to make money' you're doing it wrong - make them as a hobby instead. Starting a video game company because you have great game ideas, or because making games is something you love to do is a bad, bad idea. The reason for this is that at the end of the day, if you don't focus on the financial aspect of things, your company.will.fail. Most game companies fail because they're living month to month off of publisher's paychecks without trying to establish revenue streams of their own (other than royalties).

* Speaking of royalties. If you're getting funding through a video game publisher, make sure you understand how the payout will happen, how your advance is being payed off, etc. You probably won't have much negotiating power here, and this isn't really a route I'd recommend unless you _really_ need the funding.

* Start small, don't try to make a game engine right out of the gate. Put something simple together and iterate on it. If it turns out you're making a lot of the same type of game over and over, then think about abstracting an engine out of it.

* Reconcile the awesome game that's in your head, with the awesome game you can make given the time and resources available. Don't overcommit, you'll just end up implicitly cutting features instead of explicitly cutting them, and the game will suffer.

* Don't forget about the importance of marketing and timing. Great games fail _all the time_ because they weren't marketed well, or because they released and then got buried by the latest AAA or hyped up title.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#16

Post by alex3t »

alex3t wrote: post #13

Yes, there are many opportunities for you as indie developer. first is app store ofcource, but please read first stories from iphonedevsdk.com/forum business section about 6 months development and more then $5000 spending and $100 profit at end. Second is flash games market, you can get up to $20k per game from sponsors if you are experienced game developer or about $500 if you are unknown. Third is android market, s…

Forget about desktop. Its really hard make money if you are novice. Start from from mobile(cocos2d as already suggested is good helper in your way)

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#17

Post by bazookaBen »

what I do when exploring any game concept is to quickly prototype a playable version, and try to "find the fun" in the game. Once a certain fun level is reached, iterate, and build the game around that.

to see if people actually want to play the game, you need to test the waters. Ghetto-like testing (Zynga's much publicized way of using FB game ads to gauge user interest ) is one option.

Fun = addicting game mechanic.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#18

Post by dgallagher »

I've been a fan of Llamasoft for years. They're an indie shop of two coders, releasing games since the early-1980's. More recently they created Neon, the music light-synth on the Xbox 360, Space Giraffe on XBLA, Gridrunner Revolution on Windows, and are currently making iOS games (GoatUp, Deflex, Minotron: 2112, and Minotaur Rescue).

They were not pleased with XBLA. Their game, Space Giraffe, got hammered by a particularly bad reviewer (employed at the official Xbox Mag, no less). The game is actually quite good, albeit extremely hard, and has been praised by the creator of Braid. Microsoft did't seem to care about them at all (at least that's what I think happened), so they went elsewhere.

What they've done is focused on a niche. Most of Llamasoft's games are mash-ups of games from the 1980's, usually with lots of crazy graphical effects, and lots of goats, sheep, llama's, oxen, and various other beasties. Gameplay design is among the best I've ever experienced in twitch-based games. There's a loyal following of customers who love their games and support them, helping Llamasoft sustain themselves.

They're not super-rich, but have been chugging along for a while. I think they're excited about iOS because they're indie, and it's very easy for them to release games on it. Marketing and getting the word out is definitely their biggest challenge. Currently, it seems their goal is to release a new iOS game every 2-3 months, and build up a catalog of games. Once one of them is a hit, it'll bring in more customers, who will be interested in their back-catelog.

GoatUp, which just released to great reviews, might be that ticket (check it out: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/goatup/id462286820?mt=8).

You can always ask them directly about their experiences. They've been on XBLA, Steam, iTunes, and a lot of other platforms in the past. Sign up at www.yakyak.org, and ask Yak or gilesgoat a question.

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#19

Post by danmaz74 »

eabandit wrote: post #2

A friend and I quit our jobs to start a mobile game company. The toughest things are we have to work like crazy to meet self-imposed deadlines and deal with a bunch of non-programming related issues like marketing and distribution. Mobile games are the easiest to get into (since you can rely on the app distribution models from Apple, Google, and Microsoft) and you don't need to think too much about cramming your soft…

1 million Android downloads - but how are you doing financially?

Re: Ask HN: Has anybody here ever successfully started a videogame company?

#20

Post by bilbo0s »

This is a bit off-topic, but only because some of the comments made here are making me wonder about Unity3D.

A while ago, I kept hearing a lot about Unity3D while talking with teams around the DC-NY area. So I looked into it, and made a small game mayself, just research - non-commercial, to see if it was as useful as everyone claimed. Everything they said was true, I was able to get a simple game done in a weekend. BUT, that was without leaderboards, or even scoring, or social tie-ins or ANYTHING other than the simple mechanic and even simpler graphics.

Haven't touched it since...

I would be curious to know, from anyone who uses Unity to make real games, how long does it take you to put out a game with Unity? And once you are using it...isn't it a little difficult to switch to something else if you want to produce a larger project? Or does it work fine for larger projects as well?

Basically just wondering what are people's impressions of using Unity?

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