Let's create a game together!

Ok, so I know this forum has been inundated with requests to partner up and create a game together, particularly by those who have no programming skills.

BUT, I do have a skill… an uncontrollable level of creativity with the rare combination of true business sense. I also have an MBA. My identical twin brother, who shares my passion in gaming, has a PhD in Psychology with an emphasis is creating virtual communities. His thesis revolved around the game Neverwinter Nights.

Right now, I own a rather large business but I’m getting bored. The other day, while sitting down at an Australian Pink Floyd concert, I came up with a marvelous game concept that could generate a lot of interest. However, I need some help with both Flash, Art, sound and scripting. I imagine this project to take a solid 2 months of development unless there are a few of you unemployed and willing to work full time on it.

What do you get out of it? Well, first you get to work on an exciting strategy game concept. It could certainly boost your portfolio at the very least. Secondly, I’d pay you. If the game is delivered as I see it in my head, you’d get paid up to $1,000, depending on what you contributed. And third, you’d retain a percentage of future profits. We can negotiate what this percentage is, but I figure this is fair as the pay would certainly not compensate you enough for the time that you’ll spend on developing it.

The game itself is a cross between Magic the Gathering and the card game that Kongregate is developing. You must have interest in this genre… passion can result in amazing things.

Interested? I hope so. Think I’m crazy… perhaps. :) But, one thing I’ve learned in life is that you never get ahead if you’re not willing to take the risk. So let the game begin… ;) talonxz@yahoo.com

So… How does buisness sense help video gaming exactly? Flash games make VERY little money. If yours was a hit, it might make 20 bucks on kong + the 250 from being on the weekly or monthly top 10 or 9(can’t remember). Also, psychology is hardly useful, even in making a strategy card game. Anybody with a reasonably high amount of intelligence can see the options and what a player might do. For example, a n00b might use a high powered card with very low energy and quickly have no ability to use any skills, whereas a smarter player would tactically play weaker cards to get rid of the strong cards energy while sacraficing nothing, while an even smarter player could simply figure out a way to use card effects to make the card useless from the start.

But anyway, this is, unfortunatly, just another topic that involves a non programmer asking for help with a sketchy game idea.

If you had 2 artists, you, and 2 programmers, you would get 4 dollars each, even, for a great non contest winning kong game, or split about 150 dollars for prizes if you win any. If you pay out 1000 dollars each AND split the minimal cash you will make, you will be in the red around 4000 dollars. Not to mention 2 months of even 3 hours a day programming would mean around 180 buisness hours, which for a programmer would be, at the least for paid programming by a decent(could create a game which is questionably badge worthy) 30~40 dollars an hour, or over 8000 dollars. Of course your estimate could be entirely wrong, but from the looks of it:

No profit for you
Not as much as a prgrammer could get working for a less dubious gaming company that makes money off of ads to profit
A longer term project than most games
And a dev who got an idea at a rock concert for a game involving a mix of 1 known card game and 1 card game with some details on the basic play, which would likely infringe on the copyright laws of one or the other.

Not that I wouldn’t mind getting paid, but it all seems a bit… off somehow.

This isn’t really a “money making” thing for me. My primary interest in doing it is because I think it’s a great idea that I myself would love to play. Also, my brother and I are opening another business in the Spring that is also in the gaming industry and we’d love to have this as part of our portfolios. I think the business sense plays a part in video gaming because I understand the challenges that independent developers face and I believe they can be overcome. Difficult? Yes. Impossible? Absolutely not!

I think you may have missed the point of my brother’s PhD. Games are normally not successful on their own merit, but rather on the community built around them. This is what he has studied. How to create a virtual community and turn it into a commodity.

Drawing a comparison with Magic does not mean that the gameplay simulates it to the point of copyright infringement. This game is 100% unique. And yes, a gamer could end up making more money programming for a “less dubious” gaming company. But he COULD also make a lot more money developing this concept. The entire term “could” is subjective, right?

At the very least, one might ask more details about the project rather than trash it as a “sketchy game idea”.

Well, the game idea was kinda sketchy… Card games also shouldn’t be too hard to program unless you throw in tons of variables, so why not. Shout me with some details, at least you seem more into it than most developers. Although I still am a little skeptical on you throwing a few thousand away, but whatever floats your boat. We are talking US dollars, right? Not yen or anything?

I suppose using psychology to find something humans would like is a good experiment(the one game that actually was made into a full blown 360 online game was a study on what kept people busy actually).

I am not really a good programmer or artist, but I could at least offer feedback and I do know some basic programming tricks(most of the time it is “sketchy” where I know what to do, just not how to code it due to mostly working in blitz basic).

Ideas and a sense well sorry but that would earn you 5% of the pay you have to be able to do something in flash.And where are the thousand of dollars coming from Ads?Sponsors? you see the fact that one game is sucessfull dosnt mean it a clon of it will.You think that the chinese guy who made Yu-Gi-Oh said omg you guys i invenyed a childerns card game now make the cards and rule and make me rich no he does the art for himself.I dont know what you mean by business sence but i dont think it will in any way reflect on the game.Now if you dont want to learn programming then art is the next thing then we have animation and dont forget sound.Infact since there is a real small percentage of people making game sounds if you learn it well you might get popular.

One: Yu gi oh cards were made in japan, by the same company as magic the gathering. Two, right now that is basically all he does. Delegate the new card series, get concept sketces, and determine what works best.

And once again nqkoi, you post without reading ALL of the topic so your opinions hardlly matter anyway.

Flash games make VERY little money. If yours was a hit, it might make 20 bucks on kong + the 250 from being on the weekly or monthly top 10 or 9(can’t remember)

Wrong. They make nicely into the 4 digits, and the money is made from sponserships and your own website ads, not from contests. It’s what I’m living off right now, from making games. Instead of working 9-5 mon-fri like my friends. I make slightly less, but hell I’m doing what i love and getting paid for it, its great. On average I’m making about 250 a week, I haven’t moved out yet to my own house so this is small money technically, but then again I don’t work on my flash for many hours yet, so if i doubled my work, I could make more.

Anyways to the topic maker, good luck. If you think you have a good idea that a community would love, you should go for it. Passion and crazy ideas is what creates new things, not practicality and looking at the money lost, however just be careful and have a plan B.

I just want to wish you luck with this. I’d be very tempted to get on board (I’ve worked on this sort of thing before: http://kongregate.com/games/Moonkey/monster-master), but I’m working on another collaborative effort at the moment.

While $1000 would be relatively low for the sort of coder you’ll need to pull it off, the percentage sounds like it could be well worthwhile if you can successfully build a community.

Milskid I did read his whole post and i dont think your the judge of wether opinion matters.My point is that people try to get big before even knowing how to use flash and thats not how it works.

it would be a good idea that you scout around looking at games, and when you see something you like , approach the developer directly

just my 2 cents

Nqkoi1 – learning flash is not a recipe for getting “big”.

Have you ever seen Dragon’s Den? It’s people with the business sense and the finance to back up good ideas that make things happen.

OK, again that wouldn’t guarantee making it “big” and I’m sure some flash devs working on there own do quite well.

But the fact remains that companies with money that can sponsor games have the muscle and business sense to make a good idea “big”.

Maybe a flash dev with a good game that has been sponsored can then ride of this popularity later on and self-publish a second/third game and make lots of money.

NQkoi1, on the other hand comes across as having no sense.

Anyway, back to the topic – good luck with it, TalonXZ

Under do you know what you just said you said that you dont have to know flash to make a flash game.A sence isnt anything and no one will work with you just because you say you have a sense the important things are Programming,Graphics and Sounds you have to be able to do atleast one to even post a job offer unless you own a Co. and sponsor games.

@Nqkoi1

Of course, you have a small point there, the last bit.

Most good games are produced by teams of individuals. I didn’t say you can make a flash game with no knowledge of flash – of course, that’s absurd.

What I did say is that if you have $$$ and a good idea, then sombody somewhere will help you make that idea in to a reality. Especially if you have a proven track record of marketing this kind of stuff and some business sense.

People who play games, but have no idea at all about how to program still have ability to come up with good game ideas.

Part of what I do is build flash apps/games/web sites on a freelance basis for people who have no idea how it’s done, but have a good idea of what they want.

You strike me as being quite young and inexperienced at all this stuff and fail to see the big picture. You also need to bear in mind that what people think is a good idea is totally subjective.

Personally, I’m not interested in the offer at this time. I’ve got loads of other stuff to do.

How do you actually create a game it is real complicated that you know…

Swat Guns And People killing bad people

It was my understanding that the top games make +$200 K

I wouldn’t really know but that figure seems awful high. Try taking one of the zeros off.

Very interesting indeed. I wrote this post more than two years ago. In fact, I actually completely forgot about it. It seems as if someone bumped it and now, suddenly out of the blue, I’m getting email on it.

The ironic thing is I sold my business a few months back and am now focusing full time on developing a Flash based CCG. Back in 2007 when I originally wrote the post, I had planned on posting the game on Kongregate to see what would materialize. Since then, I have made some pretty senior contacts at companies like hi5 and Zynga, and a game, if done correctly (and a bit of luck) can make a wild amount of money. Free-to-play has been the driving force behind revenue generation (by selling virtual goods).

Our concept is nearly complete and we plan to start engineering soon. Of course the $1,000 estimate that I gave is quite ridiculous. ;) It’ll cost much more than that, but I’m willing to take the risk. If you truly believe in something, then you shouldn’t let anything stand in the way. Like my wife tells me, “Balls out Baby!”. :)

If you want to hear more about the project, drop me your email and I’ll put you on the list. Cheers!

Josh

Originally posted by MainFrame_Games:

It was my understanding that the top games make +$200 K

Haha, no. Desktop Tower Defense MAY have
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000872.html

…..and that was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity where it was there at the right time in history to take advantage of a craze. That’s not a good example at all. That’s like saying “You can make lots of money in eCommerce as long as you’re eBay in the late 90s”

Old topic is old.

email me at darkgamemaker@gmail.com (my game artist email) I can do like 256-512 pixel art pieces with good accuracy and i could do more if there was an incentetive (possability of 1k) i can also do some cheap sound recording and screenplay writing if there is a little more $ involved. be sure to email me with your answer, thanks!

_{he asked you to email him, I don’t think he’s coming back here}

kk sent email

Originally posted by SuperMarioJump:

_{he asked you to email him, I don’t think he’s coming back here}

Yeah, two years ago.