Making a PC game / starting a game company?

[Zeldor]

Not my favourite at least I have some short speech why most games fail, but I don't feel like writing it now.

[Tyrant]

That looks extremely cool, looking forward to seeing it in action!

[HoneyBadger]

Dominions would make a fun boardgame.

[Zeldor]

Many people try open-source games and have great and really nice plans. But there come obstacles. They are divided into 2 groups:

1. Money

You NEED money. You need at least some of them. There is no way to finish even small game without investing some $. Of course assuming you want it released. You need to spend them for domains, hosting, creating company, doing all registrations, paying for artists [as you may get a programmer that will do it for free or % of profits, don't count on artis in that matter, they are also really lazy]. Most projects go down because people cannot scale project to what they can afford. If you want to start a 3D MMORPG from scratch without winning lottery first, you are really wasting your time. I have been in one open-source project like that

2. Management

Even smallest project requires a project leader that can do the job. And that is not an easy task. And it becomes almost impossible task when you do not pay your people, there is almost no way to really motivate them or get them to work on schedule. You need here skills that you won't learn anyway. Not on some useless Management degree on university [you can be Mc Donald's manager after that in best case]. You need to know about wikis, technical documentation, copygight issues, business law, etc etc. Most game projects are led by people that think that making game will be as fun as playing them. But there is not much fun in it, at least not until things are working, which is really the end.

Skills are not a problem - you can learn if you really want. Time too - you will need 10x more than any professionals and you won't be able to keep any schedules anyway. I made some mistakes already Started with being lead world designer for 3d MMORPG - it was like 8 years ago or more and if it was finished it would be 10x bigger and more complicated than WoW [which did not exist]. We of course were naive enough to not spot problems like that Later I tried few more things, but really learned that I should scale down my plans. Working on browser-based game now and even here I know I complicated my life way too much.

If you really want smth you should either start with minor role in medium-project [like browser-baser game] or make your own board-game/flash game [like tower defence]. And indie game makings looks more fun than all those corporations anyway. I bet no one here would like to work for EA

[Endoperez]

sector24 said:
I've designed about a dozen games, and gotten 3 of them programmed with a friend of mine. The hardest thing for us is finding an artist. We have been through at least 20 artists/graphic designers, and not a single one of them had a scrap of discipline. They'll do one 3d model and then quit, or a handful of pictures and then you'll never hear from them again. No amount of money seems to overcome laziness/lack of motivation in this regard.

This is very true. Just look at Djinnibad, and how the "artist" in there left the whole project without really saying anything, with no real explanations... That's just rude. I still wish he'd come back and finish what he started.


Personally, I've been drawing for a short time, few years, and I haven't managed to force myself to produce anything in an orderly fashion. I can see the results, as well - or rather, NOT see them. I didn't get to study animation, as I wanted. I get to go to a "3d modelling/animation for games" school/course, but that's not something I want to do. Creating games for work is very different from playing games for fun.

[Wrana]

Agreed, Endo. But I hope that something will be done about that. Actually, I hope that I will decide on LA commanders and mages soon & so it will appear - at least, with borrowed-graphics version. It's even possible that I will adopt some of the said graphics so that they'll look authentic enough.. Dreams, dreams...

[Gandalf Parker]

HoneyBadger said:
Dominions would make a fun boardgame.

I was thinking card game, like Magic.
But boardgame would be kewl. Particularly since its an area that Shrapnel has shown interest in expanding into.

[Sombre]

This community could use one of the various card engines out there like Workstation for example to make an online Dom3 card game no problem.

[Agrajag]

Foodstamp said:
http://wildfiregames.com/0ad/

Hehe, your site looks pretty pathetic with adblock turned on.
It might be because adblock sees "0ad" in all of the urls for all of the images and thinks "0ad! ad! IT MUST BE AN AD! DESTROY IT!".

And yeah, programming computer games is hard to do successfully. I know, I've programmed like 10 of them (and by 10, I mean 100 tenths of games )

[HoneyBadger]

Actually, Gandalf, my initial idea was for a boardgame "world" or "map" (worldmap?) with all the fun props boardgames have, but including in the process a set of expandable cards akin to Magic: The Gathering. So that you could have (purchase) sets of miniature figures for each Nation, and then modify their abilities, cast spell effects, have events, etc. with the cards. Maps, miniatures, and cards, would all be collectable, expandable, hopefully profitable