   The Business of Game development
  I will like to share my view of game development as a business for startup.Most games project does not make money and cost of developing games was high. Maybe there are better opportunity else where. Passion and hobby can put you in this industry for short period of time, but at the end of the day without reasonable income from your game project, everything will come to an end. What do you guy think ?   
  I think that with the right combination of ambition, effort, skill and work and a little bit of luck, anyone here could produce a profitable game.You definately need to treat your game like a business if you want to make a good profit from it. But the same goes if you want to make a profit with wood carvings, custom clothes or whatever else you want to sell.Going into a game project, you need a solid plan. And the plan has to be more than "I'm going to write this great <xxxxxx> game." You need to plan the business side of things and if your plan is effective, you will make a profit.There are many games that shouldn't make money but they do. Why, because the business plan was effective. Heck, I wrote a couple little Flash games a few years ago and I made a profit in ad sales off them. I maybe spent 10 hours writing the two games and they were pretty cheesy. I just had a great distribution for the games and my ads sold based solely on the distribution.The trick is to make a game that sells for more than you put into it. That's the basic definition of making a profit. So, if you can keep your costs down, you need to sell fewer copies to make a profit. If you blow tens of thousands of dollars into development, you have a much harder time making a profit. If you can write a game yourself without any additional overhead costs, your only loss is time (which is valuable), but you can turn a profit much quicker.John   ;  I think some of the people making hundreds of thousands of dollars from fairly average scorched earth clones on the iPhone would disagree with both the OPs statements that the cost of development is high and that most projects don't make money.;  Bigeats wrote:>I will like to share my view of game development as a business for startup.I would like to know your background. Are you a hobby developer? A professional developer? A casual reader of this forum? I gather from your nickname, the name of your website, and the ideology stated on your website (Lee Zhong Wu's principle of "Thick and Black") that your reason for posting this question is more to promote your agenda than to help up and coming game developers.  Today is your first appearance on this website, according to your profile. And this is the only post you've made so far.>Most games project does not make money If that was true, the game industry would not exist.>and cost of developing games was high. High-profile games and "AAA" games, yes.>Maybe there are better opportunity else where. So you are suggesting that the people this website is aimed at should move on to something else. Since your whole thing is that we small guys are being eaten up by the big guys, I suppose this makes sense according to your view.> ...without reasonable income from your game project, everything will come to an end. Assuming that someone fails to make reasonable income at it, sure. Pretty bleak world view you've got there.>What do you guy think ?I think you're a rabble-rousing troublemaker, not someone with something useful to offer to those interested in making games.You say on your site: "The purpose of covering some kind of ideologies here is to assist reader in becoming smarter in whatever you do." So you're fishing for apostles or acolytes, for people to whom you can preach your ideology? Your plan is to be sort of a coach to game developers? I don't think that's much of a business plan. Or is it to just sell your eBook? I don't think that's going to fly here.   ;  The business of game development is a business. Those people who treat it like a hobby and don't plan their business properly will most likely fail to make money. Those who do their job properly have a chance or real success.In addition I agree with all the stuff Tom said.   ;  Dear TomI think there are misunderstand. My ebook and my topic posted are totally unrelated. I do not expect someone will go to my Profile and click my website site to start reading from there.It seen that we have different view on this game industry and I respect your views. Please give me about 72hr to prove that I was once an Indie game developer. I will post my game project screen shot to prove my points. One last point before I go, If I wanted to promote anything here I will not place my site only in my profile. I will most likely have something like below for every posts. MyCompanyNameHere VeryGoodProduct Visit www.MywebsiteHere.com;Quote:Original post by BigEatSmallI think there are misunderstand. My ebook and my topic posted are totally unrelated. Then what useful purpose did you hope to accomplish by saying:"Most games project does not make money and cost of developing games was high. Maybe there are better opportunity else where."You said you want to share your "view of game development as a business for startup." This view, if espoused by those reading your words, would result in the dropping of game development startup attempts. Because what you said was "game dev startups lose money -- put your efforts somewhere else." What is your intent? Why are you saying things like that, here of all places? I'm not interested in proof of whether you'd been an indie developer or not. If you say you were, that's enough.;  Hi TomMy purpose was very simple. To share my experience and point of views. I am not god and reader here are not fool. They can judge for themselves and decision what action to take. They do not have to listen to me 100% of the time.This forum is call Bussiness and Law of Game development. I am only talking about Business of making game. Like all business everything was profit and loss. If one industry was diffcult to make profit, then move to other industry with more opportunity. Go google and search "game project break even", you will have negative story like this: http://www.slate.com/id/2210732;  In my view, game development project there are 3 main types of role.1) Owner Role- They own the game, employed programmers, Graphic-artist, music composer, buy machine and software to create game. They will suffer the financial lost if the game project fail.2) Employee Role- They work for the game owner as programmer, artist, Beta-Tester etc... Must likely they will still get their salary every month even the game project fail.3) Supporting Role- They provide service to game developer. E.g. Consultant, those selling research papers, teaching game development, selling software tool like 3DS Max, selling game-dev magazine etc..... These peoples will still get their fee when game project failWhen you are playing different role, you may see thing differently from otherI have manage to locate my vapourware screen shot and artwork. Will post them soon.  ;  I have uploaded screenshot of my vapourWare online. The purpose of me here was to find out the business of making game(currently) and share my past experience.What I said may be wrong and do not sound nice. Please be assured that I am not a trouble maker and was once an Indie GameDeveloper.GamePlay screen shothttp://www.bigeatsmall.com/Gameplay.jpgScrolling Back ground imagehttp://www.bigeatsmall.com/stage3.jpg   