Selling? Sold? Projects? Team Projects?

[Andy Gilbert]

Hi, i just thought ide post some queries towards a thought that keeps cropping up in my mind.

 

Firstly is anyone currently succefully selling or making money (apart from josh) from leadwerks? Or has anyone ever sold any games / apps developed using leadwerks?

 

I have started many different projects and even though i am quite capable of creating good media, models, animations level design and programming experience and getting excellent result BECAUSE of leadwerks, i still find it very hard if not impossible to develop somthing that would be of a interest to sell due to time and actual work involved to create such title yourself as apposed to a team of a few 100.

 

I feel its more a shame that leadwerks is so so good but it cant be exploited and i bet if there was a good team that had the time and skills could easily develop a AAA title using leadwerks and possibly make / start good money and successful career in game design. But on your own i personally think it would be such a struggle, even if somehow you manage to develop somthing that gauges big interest and could be a hit the testing for bugs that AAA titles go threw before sale is huge and done with a large team.

 

So, my question is do you think it is actually possible on your own or small team to create a selling title?

 

Not that it changes my use with leadwerks as i enjoy using it for hobby reasons but its allways my dream to developed a selling title.

 

Just wondered what your thoughts were towards this.

 

Also, have none of you ever thought about teaming up on here as a forum to try and mass create a selling title?

 

Thanks

Andy

[MrIslomaniac]

Hey Andy!

I am currently working on a solo project and I will do that in the future as well ...

Working in a small or maybe large team would but great but not necessary in my point of view. It might take much longer and you will sometimes feel helpless, but the more struggle you go through, the more familiar you get with the engine and your programming language. I also got many people and groups that are interested in playing my game, even if i charge for it (don't ask what kind of game, i won't answer ). A friend of mine is also programming a game, alone, and he is making much progress in the last time.

Considering the bug testing I do not think that small groups are disadvantaged because they still got a great chance for testing. I have 3 friends, one of them is the programmer i mentioned before) and we hang out in a VOIP program and test each others game. This way we will detect many bugs before we go to actual testing. In that time, I will have about 50 people testing the game for the first time (hopefully not the last). And if there are any bugs left in the Beta or even after the first release, people can still report bugs, it is just the same with any other game. So I DO think that solo programmer or small groups have a chance of succeeding with a commercial game that actually does sale.

 

Greetz and nice afternoon

Dustin

 

P.S. I have never written that much on a forum oO

[Andy Gilbert]

P.S. I have never written that much on a forum oO

 

lol well good reply too!

 

On a serious note good advice and i do also agree with the testing it is possible by releasing it for beta testing. And i do envy anyone who manages solo to create a good selling title.

 

 

Andy

[AggrorJorn]

I think that every one is kinda busy with implementing or building up his own ideas. Most of the people have their own idea of how their awesome game should look like. But a community created game would be kinda awesome. Not to mention the fact that the game scripts would be opensource, which improves the learning quality of the community.I think teaming up is not a bad idea, but it requires leadership and managing skills.

For instance, I work with Dreamhead together on a project as we both like the story line-setting. We both don't know how to code so progress in that area is slow. Ofcourse we could team up with other people but the problem with that is, that other people have their own idea of a game.

 

Like everyone else (I think), I want to create an entire game (doesn't have 2 be warfare 2 or crysis) and put it up on steam. It doesn't have to make some good money either.

[dreamhead]

i am now working on a game with a friend( Aggror),and we have our ups and downs but it's all worth it because every step you take will give a great feeling of wat you have reached in your game.

[Rick]

Aggror, you have to ask for stuff from us programmers. I think artists and designers have to stop being shy about asking for things. With thingoids now, it should be easy to ask for a specific thingoid from the programmers.

 

I tried a community project once. I got some good help from a few artists but 0 help from any programmers. It could have been my fault but very few programmers seemed interested in helping.

 

If some artists/designers want to make a project, I'm interested in hearing it. If it's lua based I'm more than interested in helping program some objects.

[VicToMeyeZR]

Not to start a flame or anything, but I think most of the problem is most programmers want to keep their (code) a secret. They don't want anyone else to see their coding ideas (probably for fear of someone stealing it), but its very hard to get a community involved with something like that..

 

I personally think there is way more than enough knowledge here to make a great title with LE, but you have to get over that obstacle...

 

I think if someone wanted to start a project like that, it would work. I think you would need to get a legal document with NDA's involved (Unless you made it an open source project), as well as the agreement of who gets what with the selling of it, and what the percent of profit involved would be (if there was any)..

 

Personally I think maybe even a non-profit Leadwerks Community, ORG would be a good start.

[macklebee]

So, my question is do you think it is actually possible on your own or small team to create a selling title?

 

Naughty Alien has an impressive game made with LE that should be released in a couple of months... just from talking to him about what he has been able to accomplish, it should be a very nice flagship game for LE to promote.

[Josh]

I think conditions have never been better for independent developers. People routinely post screenshots that look as good as AAA games, there's a large amount of good quality media available to buy from various sites, and we have Steam for publishing. That wasn't always the case. Remember, until recently independent developers were always a generation behind the technology the big game studios were using. When they had Quake 3, we were still struggling with basic lighting. When they had Doom 3, stencil shadows were a cutting edge feature no one had access to. Since the pace of technological advancements has slowed, we've been able to catch up, and in some cases, overtake the large developers, who are constrained to working with console hardware.

 

Lightmapping and visibility processing use to be a huge time-consuming task, taking hours or even days to process a scene. Now it's all done in real-time. We no longer have to use separate materials for lightmapped or vertex-lit surfaces. You can model a scene in any modeling program, instead of being forced to use a special BSP editor. Of course our Lua implementation allows a sort of real-time programming that has never before been possible. We used to have to launch the game and wait for a map to load if we wanted to test a script, in Quake or Half-Life or something. That would take at least a minute. Now, we just save the script and it is updated instantly.

 

Some people might not want to make a game at all, and that's okay. Many people only want to tinker around with technology as a hobby, and that's fine. To make a game, you still have to do the hard work of deciding what you want, and sticking to that as you execute the plan. You may find that by the time you get halfway through the execution, you no longer have any interest in the game. At that point you either keep going and finish it, or you abandon the project in favor of something new. Ultimately, that is what determines whether you finish a game or not.

 

The mistake developers often make is that they would rather dream of new and ever more impossible features than to live with limitations of their plan. I have seen hobbyists obsess over details AAA games don't even worry about. How many times do we see a beginner come on the forum and announce their plan for a game "like World of Warcraft, but ten times bigger". I think it is more fun to make grand announcements of groundbreaking new features than it is to develop a game using a decided set of features. With the former, you can get positive feedback without doing any work. With the latter, you are stuck doing the boring work of figuring out why a gun isn't shooting in the right direction, or something like that. You spend your time solving problems no one will ever know of or thank you for fixing, and you don't get any positive feedback from that, only complaints when it doesn't work right.

 

Penumbra is the best example of a successful independent game. You can see decisions they made, like using an intercom system for communication with the player. This meant they only needed voice acting, and no animated speaking characters. Although speaking characters are technically possible, it would be a big consumption of art production resources. When you play the game, you realize all the hours they must have spent testing the game and making sure the gameplay worked correctly. A lot of the development was probably very boring work. It might have been easy to get sidetracked and say "this is boring work, let's add a sidekick who fights with you, or let's add a third-person view like the game _________ has." Instead, they worked on the game steadily using the rules they decided on, until it was done. It's not that new features kill projects. Refusal to do the boring work of production is what kills projects, and this often happens when the developer runs away from the hard work so they can go play with new ideas. When you are undecided on the feature set, it's fun because the possibilities are infinite and you can imagine anything. Deciding on the feature set and game design can be boring, because then there are no new surprises. And creating something out of nothing can be draining work. All you see before you is what you have decided on and created yourself. Even professional companies can fall prey to this problem, as in the case of Duke Nukem Forever:

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/

 

A small team can produce a game that looks as good or better than major commercial games. This was an impossibility a few years ago. If you want to make a game, the time has never been better than now.

[Rick]

People routinely post screenshots that look as good as AAA games

 

The problem is that these are just screenshots. To take a screenshot to a functioning game is completely different. Don't get me wrong the screenshots look amazing but that's only 1 piece of the puzzle that needs to happen to make a game. A AAA game can easily have a few hundred thousand lines of code. That takes time and people to pull off on the coding side of things.

 

A small team can produce a game that looks as good or better than major commercial games.

 

That's the issue. It takes more than just good looks. That more than good looks just so happens to be the hard part about games. That's what makes a game a game instead of a screenshot.

[Josh]

That's what I am saying. You still have to do the hard work of making a game. But if you are willing to do that work, your results now and opportunities for publishing are much better than they were a few years ago.

[VicToMeyeZR]

ESP, since you created an AWESOME engine.

[Mumbles]

On the note 'Team Projects' Are there any real commercial companies that have licenced the engine yet, or are they still wasting man-hours and money on developing their own engines just for console support? Not asking for names of any companies, but just curious. I suspect at this stage though, that it will basically be indie developers only.

[Rick]

There is a reason why AAA games have a designer job. I think we need more designers around here. That's a full time job in itself. If designers came to this forum with all their ducks in a row, more game projects would be in progress or complete. Programmers and even artists don't make good game designers. All you end up with is great looking screenshots and a ton of cool random features. Designers create the vision. As a programmer I would be more willing to work on a project if the designer had their vision all documented on paper.

[Josh]

On the note 'Team Projects' Are there any real commercial companies that have licenced the engine yet, or are they still wasting man-hours and money on developing their own engines just for console support?

I think most major companies have to focus on the XBox. The problem is you have to already have at least one successful published game to even get the development kit for the XBox. There are also lots of successful games that are only published on Windows, like STALKER and a lot of MMORPGs. Hopefully we'll have support for Mac and Linux relatively soon, too.

 

There is a reason why AAA games have a designer job. I think we need more designers around here. That's a full time job in itself. If designers came to this forum with all their ducks in a row, more game projects would be in progress or complete

I agree with that.

[Pixel Perfect]

I find myself nodding and agreeing with everything that Josh stated in his first post. To put everything in place that is needed, even given the huge helping hand we have been given by Josh and all the technology behind LE, is a big undertaking and I believe that is very hard for individuals on their own to achieve. Having said that there will always be exceptions and Naughty Alien appears to be probably the furthest down the line at this point and the best of luck to him!

 

My strategy from the beginning has been to aim towards producing a playable demo of my FPS game idea consisting hopefully of about 1 hours game play with less than AAA quality but hopefully to demonstrate the potential for it to be ... should artists, modellers etc feel inspired enough to join up and form a team. I don't honestly believe with my limited time, resources and skills that I could do much more than this on my own.

 

In answer to Andy's original post I do believe generally that teams are necessary and the members need to be highly motivated individuals working to a well defined development schedule and time scales. I do not believe your average forum type open projects ever really achieve anything much as fun as they might be initially. People lose interest and drift off and inevitably the projects fall apart.

[VicToMeyeZR]

I guess I better get busy on my design document then.