I am exploring the possibility of creating my own business: developing (and possibly publishing) my own shooting game. Of course, I will try to find people who do this for a living. But in the meantime, I would like a preview of the brutal realities I will face in making and finding a way to publish such a game.
I have two questions:
What skills and knowledge do you think are necessary to developing and publishing a shooting game successfully?
What pitfalls or obstacles have you ran into when you started developing and publishing your own shooting game?
I'll use the responses from the first question to discover the skills and knowledge I don't have. If someone already mentioned some of the skills and knowledge than you wanted to mention, go ahead and repeat them anyway, so I know which of them are important. Also, I would like to know whether you make shooting games for a living or as a hobby (or whether you are just speculating or whatever). That way, I can evaluate the accuracy of your information.
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By the way, the following are some more details about the kind of business I am toying with. If you would like more details, please let me know and I might give them to you.
I am thinking about developing and publishing my own shooting game over the Internet. Now, let's assume that I have all the required knowledge and skills to do this successfully. I can think of three major steps to making a successful game: identifying my target market, experimenting with ideas, and implementing the best ideas into a profitable shooting game.
First, I would like to identify my target market. I guess it will take me two years to ultimately make my first game, and I would like to make at least $70,000 in profits over this period of time in return. I like to make my game to players who like to explore deep into a shooting game, but of course, they won't help me earn enough profits. So I would evaluate how large of a market do I want to satisfy in order to earn a decent profit. Any larger, and I bet the quality of my game will suffer as it tries to satisfy everyone.
Second, I would like to experiment with ideas on creating an excellent shooting game. Since I have yet to make a shooting game and I learn best from examples, I would to recreate Dodonpachi's Area 3 (or 2-3). This will be my "base" game. Then I would ask a few players to test the base game to check whether my technical knowledge and skills are sharp enough for me to start developing an original shooting game. If so, then I would discuss with a few players about how I can use one TRIZ principle to improve the base game. Then I would make the modifications, and the players would check whether they improved the gaming experience. I would use this process for all forty TRIZ principles.
At this point, I would have some innovative ideas to create my own game. Finally, I can make my own game! Maybe I would release a beta version whenever I'm concerned about the quality of the game (like a location test for an arcade game). And then when I think the game's completed, I would publish it (dlsite.com is one avenue, I guess). We'll see if I would want to make another game from here.
for a shmup to sell and in enough quantity to become profitable it would have to play well, look good and on several points offer something above the growing quality of freeware shmups, like those of ABA games for instance. more and more people are expecting shmups for PC to be free, and would thus have a hard time warming to the thought of paying.
a thought would be to maximize profit by aiming on multi-format. PC, MAC, LINUX, Handhelds?
knowledge: a sense for art, design and packaging. making it look and feel desirable.
pitfalls i've ran into while developing my shmup (still undergoing development): not keeping things simple enough, can't stop adding ideas, not sorting my to-do/design document, not keeping to my priority list, working on more than one project simultaneously, trying to do everything myself, not stealing ready solutions.
most of these pitfalls also have a positive side to them, that's why giving the right advice is tricky.
You'll never make that kind of money publishing games on the net. Most indie games make a pittance. The problem is mainly marketing.
You need to get your title on a really big portal like Yahoo Games. But their audience is all puzzle playing middle aged people, twitch gaming isn't what they're looking for.
You can set up a webpage but the conversion rate of hits to sales or demo downloads to sales is going to be poor.
Myself, I would set myself a target like Kento Cho. New game every 6 months. Keep it really simple. You don't want to adopt something like Dodonpachi as you're model. That game was made by 10 people. You need to think of something you can knock out quickly. Get a couple of simple games under your belt in your part time, see how the response is, and then maybe consider something more ambitious.
The shooter I'm making at the moment is just with ripped 8-bit sprites. I love the look of late 80's arcade games. I think if your game is polished and cleanly presented, people are happy. Most people aren't that snobby about graphics. I just want a certain amount of enemy variety and nice chunky, satisfying explosions.
Last Thursday, I talked to two game development companies in the Cal Career Fair: Digital Chocolate, which makes wireless games and applications, and PlayFirst, Inc., which makes computer games that casual gamers can learn within minutes. I asked both companies about the ways I can get my foot in the door into the software gaming industry. All I can remember from Digital Chocolate's Engineering Manager is that I should brush up on my Java programming skills and that they might contact me for an interview soon. Meanwhile, PlayFirst's employees told me I should work on the following (in order of decreasing importance):
Programming skills
Knowledge of algorithms (They said more about this, but I forgot what it was.)
Knowledge of graphics design
I wonder if you guys agree with this.
The PlayFirst employees also mentioned that the best way to develop these skills and knowledge is to program a game. I am thinking about developing a program that will help me play Arika's Tetris: The Game Master games better. (I think that developing a shmup would be too difficult for me right now.) But obviously, Tetris is not a shmup. Is there an Internet forum for independent game developers who are friendly toward someone who has never developed a game? If so, what is it?
BER wrote:Is there an Internet forum for independent game developers who are friendly toward someone who has never developed a game? If so, what is it?
BER wrote:Is there an Internet forum for independent game developers who are friendly toward someone who has never developed a game? If so, what is it?
Thanks for the link, Thunder Force. I have lurked in that forum for a few minutes and it seems like a friendly place to post.
I just thought of something, though. Right now, I am interested in getting a job in an established video game company, so that might not make me an independent game developer. (I find it less realistic for me to be an indie right away.) I will ask the moderators in the Indie Gamer Forums about my intentions. But in the meantime, I am wondering if you or anyone else know a friendly forum for game developers that are not necessarily independent.
BER wrote:Right now, I am interested in getting a job in an established video game company, so that might not make me an independent game developer. (I find it less realistic for me to be an indie right away.) I will ask the moderators in the Indie Gamer Forums about my intentions. But in the meantime, I am wondering if you or anyone else know a friendly forum for game developers that are not necessarily independent.
Thunder Force wrote:The IGDA Forums might be what you're looking for.
Thanks again for the link, Thunder Force. I will be busy preparing for some job interviews until October 4th, though, so I might not be able to follow up on your leads until then.
