Original Post
I am a professional game designer, but lack the coding skills needed to develop a computer game. I am an independent designer that has worked with Battlefront for the past couple years to bring the Down In Flames game to market. Before this project, I have had over 30 different games published by several companies in the tabletop gaming world. If you’d like, you can check out our website to get a feel for our previous game designs at: http://www.dvg.com From what I have seen in terms of games, Battlefront produces some of the best-respected games in the strategy gaming market. In terms of business, they are very careful to minimize risks and maximize profits. This is very wise on their part because more than one developer/publisher in the past has seen success, only to lose it by not being careful when it came to making good business decisions. One method that companies use to safeguard their success is that they do not pay upfront development fees. Many companies have gone out of business by funding projects that never see the light of day. On the good side however, companies do pay generous royalties once the product is brought to market. The royalty usually comes out to be 60% of the net profit of each sale. For example, if a game sells for $35 and it costs $3 for packaging, there is a net profit of $32. Of the $32, they get $12.80 and the development team gets $19.20. This royalty system also applies to the revenues gained from any retail sale agreements they make for the game. I have a design that Battlefront is interested in. From a coding point of view, the design is decent sized without being a huge project. What I need is a person who can code the game. This is an excellent chance to break into the computer gaming industry, and receive a sizable percentage of the profits. I will be responsible for the game design and documentation. While I do not have the coding skills needed for this level of project, I have taken many programming classes when I was in college. I was able to program in Basic, QuickBasic, and C++. Because of this, I have an understanding of how coding works and will structure the design to make it as code-friendly as possible. Your role is to create the coding to bring all this together. If we go forward with this, Battlefront will supply us with guidance in some of the more technical areas of how the game should be coded based on their past experience. For example, multiplayer games will need to use a peer-to-peer setup, not a central server. I have found that a “team” environment works best for creating a project. By this I mean that each person has their own area of directly responsibility, but all people on the team feel free to comment and suggest ideas to everyone on the team. If this sounds like some thing that is interesting to you, please let me know. Thank you, -Dan Verssen Dan Verssen Games (DVG) www.dvg.com