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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?

#31

Post by Roritharr »

bilbo0s wrote: post #20

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. B…

I've closely followed the development and rise of Unity3D for the last four years and now i'm planning to do ALL my future 3D related projects with it, because it streamlines and simplifies the whole cross platform(PC, MAC, iOS, Android...) development process. There are of course drawbacks.

It is not that convenient to work with larger teams on the same project and documentation on how to do that is sparse.

It has been done however, even EA has adopted the engine for a few projects (Tiger Woods Online) and there are whole MMOs built with it.

As more and more larger companys start to use it, the focus of the developers behind Unity will shift to all those Team issues.

The pricing and license agreement is VERY competitive and they are having sales every few month.

Qualcomm even released their Augmented Reality Platform as a Unity Package which I currently use to do some projects with.

Overall i think its the best middleware package for indies and mid-size companys today.

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

#32

Post by Roritharr »

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…

I'd like to contact you to talk about business, could you send me some contact info via the info in my profile?

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

#33

Post by vilya »

I haven't started a videogame company, but I did look into it seriously at one point. What stopped me was the financials: it looked like I would have needed a fairly sizable hit (by the standards of the time: before the iPhone and AppStore) in order to cover my costs. The picture has changed quite a bit since then but my advice would still be to have a good think about the money before you take any irrevocable decisions.

In particular, figure out how many sales you'd need to cover your costs; then do some market size estimates to figure out whether it's realistic to hope for that many sales. Don't forget about cash-flow either because it may take a while for your game to start selling, sales may tail off quicker than you anticipate, etc. Use that info to help decide whether it's a risk you should take.

Good luck!

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

#34

Post by agavin »

I and my partner started Naught Dog, Inc. from scratch (some various articles I've written on this here http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/). We went from 2 (us) to well over 100 employees. Building from bigger and bigger game one at a time. But we started in a much easier era (the 80s).

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

#35

Post by jmjerlecki »

agavin wrote: post #34

I and my partner started Naught Dog, Inc. from scratch (some various articles I've written on this here http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/ ). We went from 2 (us) to well over 100 employees. Building from bigger and bigger game one at a time. But we started in a much easier era (the 80s).

I loved Crash Bandicoot when I was younger. Thank you for making something that I will remember and relate to my youth.

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

#36

Post by kstenerud »

pawn wrote: post #30
kstenerud wrote: post #6

The biggest hurdle is awareness. You need to market the shit out of your product or else no amount of spit & polish will save you from obscurity and dismal sales. Most devs and artists hate marketing, but it's actually THE most important part of your business. If people don't know about you, they can't buy from you.

Have you successfully marketed a game? If so, what were some things that you did to market it? I see games in magazines and websites, and usually it's the AAA companies that get easy marketing no matter what they do, but often times when a small guy gets popular, I'm left wondering how he was discovered when a million others weren't.

I've failed at marketing 2 games, and then formed a company with other people, one of whom knows a few things about marketing.

The key is to do something that makes you stand out. For the big players, it's easy enough to do by throwing your weight around. For the small players, you have to look for a hack; something that nobody else is doing. Something crazy that makes people look up from their humdrum lives and take notice and say "hey, cool!".

Marketing is a continual task that never ends. Unless you manage to capture the mythical "virality" (which 99.9% of products don't), your sales will always be tied to your continued marketing effort.

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

#37

Post by zwp »

dgallagher wrote: post #18

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 partic…

I apologize for the slightly tangential response but your post merits more than a POU (Plain Old Upvote).

30 years ago a C64 was My First Computer, a birthday present. Llamasoft's Attack of the Mutant Camels was my first game, swiftly followed by the insanely fast Gridrunner.

I cut my teeth on Commodore v2 BASIC and 6502 assembler. I turned down an early teens New Year's party (girls and everything...) to hack on an assembler monitor from Y64 magazine.

And I don't regret it.

Recognizing by chance something better in a local computer store I bought a copy of the Zeus assembler. The proprietor warned me "You know this isn't a game, right?".

I welded dodgy hardware into the underpowered expansion port, using telco engineer Dad's overpowered soldering gear. Despite the cost of the thing, nobody questioned that I might break it. A gift truly given.

I still have my copy of the C64 Programmer's Reference Guide (on the shelf behind me, next to Dad's copy of the KDF9 Algol Reference). I still have the 6502 opcodes in my head (LDA $A9). I'm saddened by the fact that I stupidly gave away my C64 many years ago. I'd love to see again the awful software that I wrote (transliterated from "Numerical Recipes") to help me with my high school physics homework :)

And I'd really like to see some pro code from that time.

> Sign up at www.yakyak.org

Done! Hard to quantify how much effect these guys' work has had on my life but it's certainly non-negligible. Hack on :)

/now playing: Rat's Monty Mole theme tune

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

#38

Post by _delirium »

pawn wrote: post #30
kstenerud wrote: post #6

The biggest hurdle is awareness. You need to market the shit out of your product or else no amount of spit & polish will save you from obscurity and dismal sales. Most devs and artists hate marketing, but it's actually THE most important part of your business. If people don't know about you, they can't buy from you.

Have you successfully marketed a game? If so, what were some things that you did to market it? I see games in magazines and websites, and usually it's the AAA companies that get easy marketing no matter what they do, but often times when a small guy gets popular, I'm left wondering how he was discovered when a million others weren't.

In the indie scene, doing well in a competition like Indiecade can provide a pretty big boost. That's mainly for a certain kind of game, though, more or less "one that other indie developers will find interesting". Some sort of innovative mechanic or new take on a genre is probably the most common route on that. If you do have that style of game, any other way of meeting other devs (forums, game jams, etc.) can also help spread the word; there are few things devs like more than talking about other cool games they recently heard about, and the more people who know about it, the more likely it is to get reviews / blogged about / etc.

That's another angle to go for directly, though; try to find some blogs covering areas where your game seems relevant, and see if they're interested in reviewing it.

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

#39

Post by chaostheory »

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…

I remember seeing your app either featured in the Apple App Store or being in a Top 100 list on it.
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