The % of making it

Would you undertake surgery with a 1% survival rate? I know I wouldn't.

If just 1% of the games make it, consider the amount of manhours and money wasted on products that never see the day light. Imagine spending 4 years of your life building a game and then see it fail miserably. I know I would spend my time in a better fashion than that.

1% is kind of optimistic. Also it's not about the idea as is probably mentioned in that article already, it's mostly about the implementation. For a look at why 1% is optimistic look at the Help Wanted forum on this site. You'll notice there's this trend of idea men without actual skills.

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Original post by FrankDanJohansen without only focusing on the: ''You have to be in the business part'' which is a barrier that should and can be penetrated with enough quality and determination.

quality and determination? I'd say skill and motivation. I say this since quality won't stop someone from releasing a game and determination is nothing without motivation. (Unless you're determination is fueled by something else).

Why are you asking this? Do you want someone to give you hope about an idea you have? Honestly you shouldn't cling to statistics for your own probability.

This topic wasn't made for personal hope's reason, I just find the stats interesting, and that 1% can mean a lot, if you look at X number of movie scripts being written, and then look at how many of those are made into movies, the % is equally low, but a lot of talented scripts make it to the screen. 1 out of 100 games can make it, it's a damn good chance compared to the amount of crap going on around the web wouldn't you think?

The numbers on that page aren't scientific fact...

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It is hoped that you get the general idea ... the numbers are just to illustrate a point. There is no way to actually calculate hard numbers, so I made these up

Here's another way to look at it:
Take an average professional salary - $80,000pa
Take a decent sized team - 50 people
Take a decent development schedule - 2 years
Multiply them together - $8 Million
Now double it to consider marketing/advertising/administration...

If you're a publisher, looking to gamble $16,000,000, are you going to bet it on a proven winner or some guy with a nice idea?
Even if it's a brilliant idea, you need experience, you need talent, and you need to prove that you can actually take the idea through to completion. Even the big boys have to spend hundreds of thousands of their own dollars paying their staff to create enough plans/schedules/art/tech to "prove" that they are capable, before a publisher will give them a dime.

Again, once you've got a publisher to listen by showcasing your company's experience, and then once you've got them slightly interested with a decent pitch, you've got to give them proof. To build your "prove" package so that the publisher might actually sign on to your idea:
Take an average professional salary - $80,000pa
Take a small sized team - 10 people
Take a rushed development schedule - 6 months
Multiply them together - $400,000

In other words, in order to get a publisher to bet money on you, you've first got to bet money on yourself. You can't just give them an idea and expect them to sign on, they'll want proof, and you can't give them that unless you've got a full production team.

In the 80's or early 90's some publishers would sign cheques for ideas... Times have changed; now they want schedules, they want business plans.

I agree with you, I personally believe that people outside of the business can't afford a lot though, so the most realistic and possible way to show true skill and serious effort is by doing a demo. Ideas are far from enough obviously. In order to make a demo, you need all the documents ranging from the scenario, game-play system, details of everything that will be visually present equally to a game-design document.

And to get the game funded by showcasing plans and a demo you'll need the full game-design document for the whole game ready as well.

The package needs to look industry professional and needs to shine an undeniable quality equal to block-buster games. (Now I am talking console games).

I don't think making a full-length next-gen game for representation is very logical unless one of the hobbyists are filthy stinking rich haha. I guess Xbox Arcade and PSN store games can be completed prior to presentation, but not full 3D games with 'everything' so to speak.

Do publishers even fund unsolicited game projects from external people/studios these days?

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Original post by Andrew Russell Do publishers even fund unsolicited game projects from external people/studios these days?

Yes, I'm working on one :) (although the studio is fairly well established)

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Original post by Drazgal Quote: Original post by Andrew Russell Do publishers even fund unsolicited game projects from external people/studios these days? Yes, I'm working on one :) (although the studio is fairly well established)

How much of a game did you make before you approached funding solutions? What were your goals? Did you start making a complete game, or did make a demo ready for presentation?

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Original post by FrankDanJohansen The package needs to look industry professional and needs to shine an undeniable quality equal to block-buster games. (Now I am talking console games).

Wrong - they don't have to look industry professional they have to be industry professional. Having a demo simply isn't enough. You (and your team) have to have proven industry experience. No publisher will will sign an inexperienced team to the tune of $16 Million+, because publishers know something that inexperienced teams don't. They know that making a demo is easy, and as such is no indication of your ability to finish a high quality, triple A game.

Making a demo uses only a fraction of a machine's available resources. It's easy to get a demo running because you have vastly more system resources than you actually need and can be as sloppy as you want. Developing a full game is very different because every feature you add uses resources (memory, processor time etc) and so it becomes harder and harder to add in the subsequent features, more difficult to ensure it all works together, and more challenging to debug. The publishers also know that inexperienced people make mistakes. Those mistakes pile up throughout development; each one making the game less efficient or reducing the quality. Until, in the end, the game no longer reaches the quality levels necessary for a Triple A game.

Publishers know all this because they have been repeatedly burned over the past 20 years. Back when games cost a fraction of what they do today a failure was painful but not terminal. Now, when games cost upwards of $16 million to make they simply won't take the risk.

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Original post by Andrew Russell Do publishers even fund unsolicited game projects from external people/studios these days?

If by "external" you mean an independent (3rd party) studio staffed with proven industry professionals - yes. If you mean a team of people from outside the industry with no proven game development experience then no.

A demo team is merely a fraction of people necessary to handle the task of making a full next-gen game.

So, if a company sees a sparkling diamond shown in a demo, with great potential and documents of a business plan, full game design, music and scenario. They would never put together a team using man-power from their available internal employee list?

If the problem is security, using available 'reliable men' together with the small team of 'obvious' anti-industry mistake-doers for the project would make it as stable as any other game being made. As most new games always have newbies/new recruits. Why can't the demo team be considered as the 'new' employees since skills are obviously shown in a demo?

A lot of industry professionals tend to forget where they started themselves and how they came into the business, I don't believe every programmer in every released game knew every corner of the 'newest' engine when they started working on the game that later got released.

Also I'd like to mention the fact that having the experience of making an actual working quality product with a team is probably in many ways more experience than a proof of education can say in many ways.

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Original post by FrankDanJohansen How much of a game did you make before you approached funding solutions? What were your goals? Did you start making a complete game, or did make a demo ready for presentation?

We wrote several prototypes of key gameplay or graphical features over the course of a year (an established team of 15 from a previously finished title + 5 new graduates) then moved over to full production after being signed.

Should note that figure is really for AAA console type games where there is millions of dollars invested in getting one out. Even Xbox Live budgets are getting in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Consisdering that a developer has to invest quite a bit of their own money to turn out a demo, 1% really isn't worth throwing the money away.

Casual games like Match 3 are a bit different though. Those can easily be done by a couple of people for little to no money and have a higher chance of being accepted because there is very little risk in taking up digital shelf space. But you still have all the troubles of a AAA game if you are wanting to get funding for an idea.

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Original post by FrankDanJohansen ....So, if a company sees a sparkling diamond shown in a demo, with great potential and documents of a business plan, full game design, music and scenario. They would never put together a team using man-power from their available internal employee list?

No.

I posted a link in your previous thread which explained why. Here it is again http://www.obscure.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/selling-game-design-ideas/. Development studios either focus on doing licensed games (sports, film, TV or comic based games) or original games. They already have in-house people who are working on idea for their latest game and also future games. They have many many ideas... far more than they will ever be able to actually make; so they don't need ideas - especially ideas from people who don't actually understand the game development process and what is/isn't actually possible.

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If the problem is security, using available 'reliable men' together with the small team of 'obvious' anti-industry mistake-doers for the project would make it as stable as any other game being made. As most new games always have newbies/new recruits. Why can't the demo team be considered as the 'new' employees since skills are obviously shown in a demo?

Because they don't need to. As above they don't need or want external ideas. The people who work at the studios have spent time and effort learning how to make games. They did this because they had a game idea (or several) that they wanted to make. They worked hard and eventually got to a position where they can decide which game gets made next. They can choose between the idea they have been dreaming of for 5 years or your idea - which do you think they will pick?

In fact "pick" isn't the right word because there won't even be a choice. Your idea wont make it onto the table where the ideas get chosen. The vast majority of publishers/developers will either return external submissions unopened or trash them (for legal reasons).

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A lot of industry professionals tend to forget where they started themselves and how they came into the business,....

No they don't.

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...I don't believe every programmer in every released game knew every corner of the 'newest' engine when they started working on the game that later got released.

No of course they didn't - neither did they start their very first job in the industry working on their own game idea funded by a publisher. They first learned a useful development skill (programming, art, level design, music etc), then got an entry level job, then spent time honing their skills and working their way up to a point where they could influence the choice of what game to make.

The only alternative is to start out as an indie - developing your own game idea without any publisher funding. If you are good then it may turn out to be a great indie game like Braid.... but it won't be a GTA V sizes triple A title with a multi-million $ development budget.

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Original post by Obscure No of course they didn't - neither did they start their very first job in the industry working on their own game idea funded by a publisher. They first learned a useful development skill (programming, art, level design, music etc), then got an entry level job, then spent time honing their skills and working their way up to a point where they could influence the choice of what game to make. The only alternative is to start out as an indie - developing your own game idea without any publisher funding. If you are good then it may turn out to be a great indie game like Braid.... but it won't be a GTA V sizes triple A title with a multi-million $ development budget.

There are some exceptions, although in that case they had a completed game, and were hired to basically rework their idea.

At any rate, there's more to a game being fun than simply having a good idea, and a lot of that involves hard work. I don't see why hobby or new developers should be more worthy of having their ideas explored than people who have invested effort into their profession and proven themselves.

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Original post by Rycross Quote: Original post by Obscure The only alternative is to start out as an indie - developing your own game idea without any publisher funding. If you are good then it may turn out to be a great indie game like Braid.... but it won't be a GTA V sizes triple A title with a multi-million $ development budget. There are some exceptions, although in that case they had a completed game, and were hired to basically rework their idea.

Portal's hardly a "GTA V size triple A title with a multi-million $ development budget." It's bigger than your average indie game, yes, but it was still a very low-risk project for Valve, especially considering that they were building most of the tech for HL2 anyway.

It's true that a lot of the ideas Frank is proposing are things that publishers could do - mixing inexperienced people into teams of experienced ones, etc - but they don't, because it's just not worth it. Ideas are a dime a dozen; good ideas are rarer, but are much rarer outside the industry than inside it, because a good idea needs to be not just fun but also technically feasible, marketable, cohesive, monetizable, and so on.

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Original post by Obscure Quote: Original post by FrankDanJohansen ....So, if a company sees a sparkling diamond shown in a demo, with great potential and documents of a business plan, full game design, music and scenario. They would never put together a team using man-power from their available internal employee list? No. I posted a link in your previous thread which explained why. Here it is again http://www.obscure.co.uk/frequently-asked-questions/selling-game-design-ideas/. Development studios either focus on doing licensed games (sports, film, TV or comic based games) or original games. They already have in-house people who are working on idea for their latest game and also future games. They have many many ideas... far more than they will ever be able to actually make; so they don't need ideas - especially ideas from people who don't actually understand the game development process and what is/isn't actually possible.

Eh...don't be so absolute. Narbacular Drop/Portal? Narbacular Drop couldn't even be said to be a polished demo, more like a proof of concept, nothing at all special technically and only 6 puzzles in the whole thing. Furthermore, it didn't use the Source engine; Valve had no way of knowing if the devs, fresh graduates from DigiPen, would know how to go from making a simple demo into a full game using one of the industry's most complex engines. They had no way of knowing if they could 'scale' their idea; sure the concept was fun and they did make 5-6 puzzles with it, but was it a real gameplay mechanic able to produce hundreds of puzzles without getting boring, or a gimmick? Yet they hired them all. Of course that doesn't happen every day, we all know that. Yet it did happen. And not only they got noticed by a large studio, not only they got hired, not only they got to work on *their* idea, but in the end the game was actually very successful. Imagine that.

And I don't understand why are we even talking about 'AAA games costing 16 million'. Not every game has to be freaking Modern Warfare. That's crazy. In fact, 99,99% of the myriad of games out there are *not*. Hell, not every game has to be Braid or Darwinia either. We're focusing too much on discussing the success probablity of making a 20 milion game, or a low-cost indie game which becomes a huge commercial and critical success. Well those are sure great places to be, but, you know, seeing your little game being sold and making some money, even if it doesn't turn into a franchise and the cash cow to fund your empire, is still something. Not to say that it's not very hard to get any publisher to notice you, but studios are known to show interest even in successful mods.

[Edited by - mikeman on February 4, 2010 10:27:14 PM]

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Original post by superpig Portal's hardly a "GTA V size triple A title with a multi-million $ development budget." It's bigger than your average indie game, yes, but it was still a very low-risk project for Valve, especially considering that they were building most of the tech for HL2 anyway.

We'd been using AAA games as examples for effect, but nothing previously in the thread explicitly excluded smaller games. In that context, Portal shows that its possible (for a smaller game). But as others have noted, Portal was sort of the perfect storm of having a very unique idea, a game proving both the concept and the ability of the team, and a publisher with the appropriate engine and development plan to keep it low-risk. In other words, you'd probably have to have a very, very strong business case for your game (speculating here).

Well, I don't like No's haha.

Speculating: I think this area is put out as so chance-less, that the game companies and the industry in general has us JUST where they want us indie game developers. They want to water out the quality this way. And they do this so we can save time making our average crap, BUT.. as I said earlier, a true effort, I believe wouldn't go unnoticed.

Sure a lot of companies have tons of in-house ideas, more than will ever be made and there's a reason some are made and some don't.

As most of us know, the entertainment business is unfair, Stanley Kubrick's work on Napoleon never got made, despite his reputation and skill, because it was too great a risk, but other high budget movies were later made, by new people.

Companies want to earn money, if they see a chance to do that outside of their walls, I think they would want it.

There are also other ways to get attention from companies, if a demo goes hand in hand with a playable online mode where people can explore the game-play mechanics against each other, it could spark a wave of fans and active players that could show interest in a full game being made.