amihohu - are you around?

Hello!

I am indeed ? What's up?

Hello!

Thanks for replying. I have a couple of questions about developing a game that are going to be really random and massively naive but I don't know where to start. So I remembered you!

I am not remotely techy, BTW. I'm not even sure that "developing a game" covers what I am thinking of!

I have an idea for a game. It would be in the "city builder" genre, done in conjunction with an institute as part of an educational project.

I have the imagination to conceive of the buildings, the currency/rewards/etc, the gameplay, the story. I have no capacity to make ANY of it happen. I don't even know what "making it happen" involves. I can basically write ideas down in a notebook.

Nor can I conceive of the cost. Literally no idea, could be £100, could be £1m (I am guessing not the former....).

Are you familiar with city building games? Can you tell me the basic processes involved/workflow/what kind of people do each bit?

There are various indie game development companies in my hometown but they each seem to specialise in certain aspects (basic mechanics, artwork, promotion, etc). Thus, I'd feel like an idiot asking this stuff in an enquiry email.

Anything you can tell me would be excellent, thanks.

Hello! Just a quick message to say I will reply to this, I haven't forgotten ? We are renovation our house at the moment so spending 4 days knee deep in 80s wallpaper ha!

Hello!

Right, I have some free time, so can reply to you now! So, I'm guessing this may be a mobile/tablet game you are thinking of? I would strongly suggest this is the best route anyway. Mobile games do vary an awful lot in cost, you get the one man band Flappy Bird types, which technically could be free, given it's just one dude in his study making it for himself, right up to ones like Infinity Blade which are £1 million+. This may give a bit of a better idea of costs: http://teamcooper.co.uk/blog/how-much-does-a-mobile-game-cost-to-develop/

If it's to be a purely educational game, for a specific institute and used only by them or promoted by them and not actually really intended for mass market & money making, then it looks like some sort of funding could be your best bet or by speaking to uni/colleges that do game dev courses. There are however a lot of ways to get funding for mobile games these days.

Creative England ( http://www.creativeengland.co.uk/games)

Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games/mobile%20games?ref=category_modal&sort=magic)

Local council funding, I know our local council helped fund a games developer uni course to set up a student studio.

Investors, (http://www.daedalus-partners.com/) I know these guys have found funding for Indie Developer friends.

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/BurakTezateser/20150512/242814/Funding_your_game_startup.php

If it is to be a mass market game with the intention of making a profit, your main hurdle is going to be user acquisition. Regardless of whether you get funding, if you can't get paying users, therein lies your problem. For cases like this, once you have got the product made, working with an external publisher like Chillingo can work wonders. My husband developed a game with 2 friends and had Chillingo publish it. It did mean they took a cut (along with Apples cut) however the benefits far outweighed this, as it meant they got a decent amount of downloads and revenue. I think they got around 100k downloads, which for a indie 3 man developed game is pretty damn good, comparing this to another friend who decided to go the self publishing route... got just under 1k downloads, quite a significant difference I'm sure you'll agree!

As for the actual developing of the game, I think your best bet may actually be to work with Universities/Colleges/Institutes. The problem with approaching existing indie studios, is that you will most likely need the funding in place for them to sign up and more often than not, they are working on getting funding for their own ideas, rather than other peoples. We often work on the funding ourselves and taking a cut of the profits once the game is out option, but only for well established IP, so our finance risk assessors know that we will make the minimum amount back to cover development costs. As an example, our last game released has I believe currently over 15 million downloads, which has funded our studio to make a game based on it's own IP, which currently has 100k downloads. The 15 million game is a well established IP, we knew it would make money, so we knew we'd have some to siphon off for our own game development. Essentially 'work for hire' studios, whether they be one man band types or 100+ people, tend to only work on new/non-established IP if they are paid up front. Established IP has a promise of being successful, so studios are much more likely to take a risk and be paid on profits made from downloads/in-app purchases.

If you were to approach Unis/Colleges etc (Train2Game also perhaps http://train2game.com/ ) with an idea, you may find them much more accommodating for making it. Game dev students often have projects in their final year to basically form a mini studio and create a game. Otherwise it really would be about securing funding and then finding an available developer & publisher.

The minimum you'd really need for a citybuilder (or any mobile game really) is a coder, as you can make a game with coders art, but not with an artists code generally, (well, not with my code skills certainly!) Having an artist and designer is definitely a bonus if it's a design heavy game, and if you want something a bit more fancy art wise, but often indie developers can do a bit of everything. Especially with tools like Unity and Game Maker making it easier to develop games. 3D is generally more time intensive and expensive than 2D.

I hope this helps a bit, I feel like I've just done a massive brain dump and it may not all make sense ha!

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I'll have a read through.

Footlong.