Making a video game company

donfarrell

Hi,

Was thinking of making a video game company in the near future (couple of years)

I was just wondering if anyone had any experience in this area and would like to know if there are any special requirements I would need to do so

Retr0gamer

1.Hire the devil, I mean Bobby Kotick to run your company.

2. ???

3. Profit.

donfarrell

Oh god noooooo, :P

gizmo

It completely depends on the type of games you want to work on. If it's a small studio targeting mobile/online platforms then you'll just need some funding and some good staff.

If you're thinking XBLA/PSN games then you'll need increased funding, more experienced staff and a publishing deal. Finding all of those in the right quantities in Ireland at the moment will be a challenge.

If you're thinking about AAA development then just forget about it for now.

donfarrell

Ah,

K well I wasn't so much thinking of making anything in the way of uncharted or gears or GOW more along the lines of small games for like steam or psn.

I just feel that making my own game from scratch would be easier than trying to get a job a designer or programming in an existing company because they require insane amounts of experience to become one even for a junior position

Dytalus

Making a game to get on Steam or PSN is gonna cost a lot of money. The Playstation doesn't even have a cheap method for indie developers to make games for the console. Your best bet is to start small and refine your ability to make games. Some simple Java or C# stuff. I'd recommend using Microsoft's XNA, as it's free and lets you get to grasp with the coding language and the engine

As you get better, then look for artists to create better 3d models or 2d sprites. Once all of that is in place, buy your way into the creators club and if a game gets accepted, it goes up on the Xbox Live Marketplace. That's probably the simplest method to get to grips with the whole complicated world of game dev.

donfarrell

C#?? Thought pretty much all games were writin in C++ or C?

Sierra Oscar

You could always try to get into a games development company to skill up, get experience and get hopefully a good reputation before you start out alone.:)

gizmo

You can use C# to develop games using the XNA framework. This would be the easiest way to start making your own games as the learning curve for C++ is quite a bit steeper.

As a matter of interest, do you have any programming background/knowledge at all?

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

You could always try to get into a games development company to skill up, get experience and get hopefully a good reputation before you start out alone.:)

Not going to happen until he has some solid portfolio work under his belt and, in most cases, a computer science degree of some sort.

donfarrell

Ye im a 1st year Computer Science Student and have been doin java for a year but I'm self teaching myself C++

I have made a couple of little text based adventure games in java :P

Might not be much but im pretty quick ay learning new things

Mindkiller

Bobby Kotick here. Ask me anything.

gizmo

donfarrell wrote: »

Ye im a 1st year Computer Science Student and have been doin java for a year but I'm self teaching myself C++

I have made a couple of little text based adventure games in java :P

Might not be much but im pretty quick ay learning new things

The fact that you're already learning C++ in your spare time and making little games is definitely a good sign. Bit of advice though, take it easy with the talk of setting up your own company. The first step will be learning the foundations of programming and making sure you're comfortable with them.

From here you have two options if you're serious about things.

a) Focus on C++, pick up Direct X and start making demos. Start with small tech demos and work your way up to some small games.

b) Learn C# and, with XNA, do the same thing.

Personally I'd go with A as it will benefit you most when trying to get into the games industry itself. If you want great book to get started with Direct X then I'd highly recommend Introduction to 3D Game Programming with Direct X 9.0c: A Shader Approach but for now, keep going with the programming and make sure you pay attention in your maths classes too.

donfarrell

Thanks dude :P

Ye maths and programming are the only classes i really go to in college ha.

Ill defo take a look at that book during the summer.

To use the XNA do you need to have an X-box? I only have a PS3 (dont particulaly like the 360)

gizmo

donfarrell wrote: »

Thanks dude :P

Ye maths and programming are the only classes i really go to in college ha.

Ill defo take a look at that book during the summer.

To use the XNA do you need to have an X-box? I only have a PS3 (dont particulaly like the 360)

Nope, all you need to do is have Visual Studio (C# Express or Professional), XNA Studio and a PC and you're good to go. The games themselves can be played on the PC or, if you join the XNA Creators Club, on a 360.

donfarrell

Awesome

Is it just for coding or has it got a graphics interface?

RedXIV

Hi, just to throw my experience in here. I did a degree in computer game development in IT Carlow, and when i graduated last year, I set up a company with some other students. The first thing i'll point out to you is that setting up a company is LOADS of work and the business side of things is a huge distraction if you're not business-minded. There was 4 of us and between us, we hadn't even the basics of business sense. Also, if you're setting up a company, you need to be making money as well

My advice to you at the moment is similar to gizmo. Start putting together small pieces of work or even simple games. One of my collegues actually set up a website simply to display his portfolio and it's pretty impressive. If you can show that off in an interview with a games developement company, you'll be alot stronger than your average candidate. Also, I should point out that games programming is very tough. Its constantly evolving and you'll have to spend the rest of your life learning about new techniques to keep your games up to scratch.

Try and get an internship while in college too. Work experience is worth so much more than you may realise. I know i underestimated it when i was in college

If you want to ask any more questions or anything, just shout

donfarrell

Thanks fo the insight really appreciated

ye I understand that the business side of things can be a pian in the hold :L
I have friends who are studying business and accounting and hope they would help me out when I eventually try

I would LOVE some sort of internship or experience in the industry, even as a tester. But its hard enough to find any work at all so its kind of disheartining Dont suppose ya have any tips on how to gain any sort of professional exp?

thanks again

gizmo

In Ireland your choices are somewhat limited but hop over to gamedevelopers.ie in the run up to your work experience period and see are there any positions going.

RedXIV

I'd say sooner rather than later. Don't wait about a week before work exp time to get in, push your luck. If you can afford it, ask for unpaid internships. I know thats a horrible prospect but it might be necessary. But once you get in once, you'll have a foot in the door for any other jobs. Look at keywords international, popcap, activision, vivendi (if you have a foreign language), all places that i know have hired testers with little or no experience in the games industry. Even beta testing online games would be good to have on your CV.

If you know anyone, and i mean ANYONE who works in a games company, start asking them for a good word. Alot of these places don't bother advertising for jobs because they just get loads of applications anyway so don't be afraid to email them and ask, even if they aren't hiring at the minute. Also, if you have family, friends or similar in the UK you can stay with, their testing scene is huge there.

Hope this helps!

Edit: Forgot to mention Blizzard in Cork, try them too

SeantheMan

Regardless of one's programming skills etc, to setup /run a company properly, enough so to market it and its products and be profitable would require a lot of Business knowledge as opposed to amazing computer skills.

donfarrell

Thanks, have e-mailed a couple of places Fingers Crossed :P

quarryman

RedXIV wrote: »

Hi, just to throw my experience in here. I did a degree in computer game development in IT Carlow, and when i graduated last year, I set up a company with some other students. The first thing i'll point out to you is that setting up a company is LOADS of work and the business side of things is a huge distraction if you're not business-minded. There was 4 of us and between us, we hadn't even the basics of business sense. Also, if you're setting up a company, you need to be making money as well

My advice to you at the moment is similar to gizmo. Start putting together small pieces of work or even simple games. One of my collegues actually set up a website simply to display his portfolio and it's pretty impressive. If you can show that off in an interview with a games developement company, you'll be alot stronger than your average candidate. Also, I should point out that games programming is very tough. Its constantly evolving and you'll have to spend the rest of your life learning about new techniques to keep your games up to scratch.

Try and get an internship while in college too. Work experience is worth so much more than you may realise. I know i underestimated it when i was in college

If you want to ask any more questions or anything, just shout

And how's it going now? Great to see people starting out from scratch.

jimi_t2

Bit OT, but is anyone familiar with the process of being a writer with a videogame company?

OctavarIan

jimi_t2 wrote: »

Bit OT, but is anyone familiar with the process of being a writer with a videogame company?

In what respect?

jimi_t2

OctavarIan wrote: »

In what respect?

In the respect that when you've things like 'Fight Choreographer' and 'Menu Design Team Leader' listed in the credits of a game for their own respective talents, surely you've got someone specialised doing the writing - everything from original Plot and backstory to localised naming conventions to item descriptions to subtitles to NPC Dialogue.

satchmo

Listen to RedXIV - starting a business is a huge amount of work. If you're also going to try and figure out how to make a game while starting a business, you'll likely find yourself in over your head. If you do want to try your hands at making games, start small with something manageable in your spare time.

I just feel that making my own game from scratch would be easier than trying to get a job a designer or programming in an existing company because they require insane amounts of experience to become one even for a junior position

You won't realise how little you know until you get some experience in the games industry, and don't underestimate how much you can learn from working with people who have more experience than you do. Getting into a junior position doesn't require 'insane amounts of experience' - some grad positions don't require any experience. What they do require is that you work your ass off during college, do lots of extra programming on your own, and have a decent portfolio of small games that you wrote yourself to showcase what you can do. Admittedly there are relatively few grad positions, and to get one you'll more than likely have to go to the UK if not further. But a lot of CS grads will also have the same idea, so you'll need to go above and beyond in order to be noticed and even considered for an interview.

But even if that does sound like a lot of work (and it is!), it's not half as much work as making a commercial game from scratch! And if you do still want to start a game company after getting some experience, you'll be in a much better position to actually have a chance of succeeding.

satchmo

jimi_t2 wrote:

Bit OT, but is anyone familiar with the process of being a writer with a videogame company?

Not many studios have a dedicated writer (sometimes fairly obviously so given the lackluster stories in most games). The job is usually done by one or more designers, a staff writer that works for the publisher, or a writer brought in on contract. For the latter two you'll need experience from film or TV (or books - the writer for Gears of War 3 is a well-known sci-fi novelist) if not other games. And for the former, well you need to be a game designer that also has an interest in writing.

jimi_t2

satchmo wrote: »

Not many studios have a dedicated writer (sometimes fairly obviously so given the lackluster stories in most games). The job is usually done by one or more designers, a staff writer that works for the publisher, or a writer brought in on contract. For the latter two you'll need experience from film or TV (or books - the writer for Gears of War 3 is a well-known sci-fi novelist) if not other games. And for the former, well you need to be a game designer that also has an interest in writing.

A depressing concept, especially considering how popular the RPG genre is and how lacklustre the effort at even the localisation of such games is in the Western market.

Oh well, off to Abrakebabra with my BA in English...

seraphimvc

start to build up your social connections, if you are lucky you will get some ambitous people share the same interest like you and you guys can cook up a plan to work it out. you need to be the leader to look for what people you can cooperate with, and among these people you will need both the technical and business proscpect people.and eventually you guys can get some big loan/capital venture to setup the company.

in reality tho, try your best to get working experience,know many people and try to get out the country to get a job in big cities like UK/US, best would be work in a big game studio and work your way up.eventually you feel like you can go independent(you have your connections,management/leader experience,you know what you want and what are you doing), say lets go back to my home country ireland and cook up my own game company.

in short,making our own game is every gamer's dream :pac: just like who wouldnt wanna make their own movies?? dreams need strong determination and hard (hard hard hard)works ,keep the dream alive young man!

Quilly

a startup gaming company in Ireland would have alot of issues, especially when u see the funding needed to even try and compete with the larger companies. You'd proably be better off focusing on a certain part of gaming creation rather than a whole game, and just hope the company gets bought out by EA or someone. See Peter Molyneux. He started with a small company in Bullfrog, which eventually got bought out by the publishing company EA. With the money made from that he made Lionhead Studios which eventually got bought out by Microsoft. i think he's the Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios now. But starting small does kinda pay off in the end

Seifer

Quilly wrote: »

You'd proably be better off focusing on a certain part of gaming creation rather than a whole game, and just hope the company gets bought out by EA or someone. See Peter Molyneux. He started with a small company in Bullfrog, which eventually got bought out by the publishing company EA. With the money made from that he made Lionhead Studios which eventually got bought out by Microsoft. i think he's the Creative Director of Microsoft Game Studios now. But starting small does kinda pay off in the end

Are you serious?
Bullfrog started off in a time when it was still possible for a small group of people to make a commercial game; this is not possible any more.
And they were bought out because they made a string of really good games, not because they were "small". Starting small didn't pay off, working like a dog and producing high quality, fun games did.

Quilly

Seifer wrote: »

Are you serious?
Bullfrog started off in a time when it was still possible for a small group of people to make a commercial game; this is not possible any more.
And they were bought out because they made a string of really good games, not because they were "small". Starting small didn't pay off, working like a dog and producing high quality, fun games did.

well thats why i was saying you need a load of funding nowadays to even keep up ! and aiming toward a certain part of the game creation rather than a full game was probably the way to go. Bullfrog may have been a bad example for what i meant :P, but i liked what Bullfrog produced thus why i used them !

satchmo

Seifer wrote: »

Are you serious?
Bullfrog started off in a time when it was still possible for a small group of people to make a commercial game; this is not possible any more.

Rubbish - of course that's still possible, and Bullfrog was a very good example. You just have to pick a different market these days; iPhone/iPad games, Flash browser games, even small games on Steam can all be made by one or a few people without the barrier to entry that console games have. Hell, it's still even possible to make standalone PC game with a few dedicated people - Introversion have proved as much, and now they've moved on to making console games too.

Trevor451

Are there any game development studios in Ireland anyway?

Seifer

satchmo wrote: »

Rubbish - of course that's still possible, and Bullfrog was a very good example. You just have to pick a different market these days; iPhone/iPad games, Flash browser games, even small games on Steam can all be made by one or a few people without the barrier to entry that console games have. Hell, it's still even possible to make standalone PC game with a few dedicated people - Introversion have proved as much, and now they've moved on to making console games too.

Bullfrog are not a good example because when they started making games the industry was completely different. And they were developing for the state of the art technology at the time, none of which your offerings are.

dreamers75

Trevor451 wrote: »

Are there any game development studios in Ireland anyway?

Nope, last game development related studio was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_%28software%29


Which was sold recently.


to the OP unlikely you will start a video game company with no experience. if your serious make a game for Ipad/Iphone and work from there. There are a few courses in ireland that may help.

Seifer

dreamers75 wrote: »

Nope, last game development related studio was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havok_%28software%29

That's not true. I know Popcap have offices here as well as GOA. There are probably a few other obscure ones too. Blizzard have an operation here but I don't think there's any development. Activision used to do testing here too but not sure of the state of that either.

Kersmash

Blizzard have an office down here in Cork, but that's just customer support AFAIK.

satchmo

Seifer wrote: »

Bullfrog are not a good example because when they started making games the industry was completely different. And they were developing for the state of the art technology at the time, none of which your offerings are.

I'm sure there are many iPad developers out there who would disagree with you. They would probably argue that the iPad is much more state of the art than the five-year-old Xbox360.

But why does the platform make a difference? Regardless of what state the industry is compared to when Bullfrog started, the core process is still the same - start with a small group of talented people making a good product that people want to play, and build from there. Which they did, and very successfully so. Any startup game company today is most likely to succeed if they follow the same plan. Hence, they're a good example.

Trevor451 wrote:

Are there any game development studios in Ireland anyway?

There are some developers in Ireland - see here for a list, although it's definitely incomplete - missing Dark Water, Gala Networks, and probably others. However there is an absence of big-budget console developers in Ireland because the experienced talent isn't here. And the experienced talent isn't here because of a lack of big-budget developers.

Seifer

satchmo wrote: »

I'm sure there are many iPad developers out there who would disagree with you. They would probably argue that the iPad is much more state of the art than the five-year-old Xbox360.

They could argue that but they would be wrong. It may be a state of the art tablet but it is not a state of the art games platform.
It doesn't have the specs to play any proper games nor does it have a relevant input method.

satchmo

You're kind of missing the point here. Nobody said anything about making a full console game with a small team. You said it was impossible for a small group of people to make a commercial game. I'm saying many people all over the world are, right at this minute, proving you wrong.

Gizmo put it best, so I'm just going to quote him and leave it at that.

Gizmo wrote:

It completely depends on the type of games you want to work on. If it's a small studio targeting mobile/online platforms then you'll just need some funding and some good staff.

If you're thinking XBLA/PSN games then you'll need increased funding, more experienced staff and a publishing deal. Finding all of those in the right quantities in Ireland at the moment will be a challenge.

If you're thinking about AAA development then just forget about it for now.

Seifer

satchmo wrote: »

You're kind of missing the point here. Nobody said anything about making a full console game with a small team. You said it was impossible for a small group of people to make a commercial game. I'm saying many people all over the world are, right at this minute, proving you wrong.

Gizmo put it best, so I'm just going to quote him and leave it at that.

I'm not missing any point. I quoted a poster who said the OP should copy Bullfrog's model. I said that it was not possible to do that anymore as you cannot make games (proper games, not casual dross or flash time killers) with a small team like Bullfrog in this day and age.

BostonB

Seifer wrote: »

I'm not missing any point. I quoted a poster who said the OP should copy Bullfrog's model. I said that it was not possible to do that anymore as you cannot make games (proper games, not casual dross or flash time killers) with a small team like Bullfrog in this day and age.

I think that depends on how you define a "proper game".

Personally theres lot of big budget games I wouldn't consider a "proper game" either.

gizmo

Seifer wrote: »

I'm not missing any point. I quoted a poster who said the OP should copy Bullfrog's model. I said that it was not possible to do that anymore as you cannot make games (proper games, not casual dross or flash time killers) with a small team like Bullfrog in this day and age.

While they are certainly a minority, the creation of full commercial games is far from impossible with a small team. One need only look at the likes of Introversion, 2D Boy and Frozenbyte as proof of this.

The counter argument is, of course, that while the games released by these companies have been both critically and commerically well received, they are not technically speaking AAA games. That being said they are all far from being "casual dross".

RedXIV

Sorry for dragging up an old thread but was checking something

quarryman wrote: »

And how's it going now? Great to see people starting out from scratch.

We're still struggling. I'm not going to lie to you, it's far more difficult than we thought and we've totally rehashed our business plan but it's still there. We're making progress, albeit slow progress

jimi_t2 wrote: »

Bit OT, but is anyone familiar with the process of being a writer with a videogame company?

Just so you know, when peter molyneux was here for a talk a few months ago, he said how keen he was to get people in purely as writers, so send an email off to Lionhead and see what you can come up with

JayMul

How do you mean Peter Molyneux was here, did he call over to your house for tea? I'm feeling a bit jealous right now

Bulktohulk

JayMul wrote: »

How do you mean Peter Molyneux was here, did he call over to your house for tea? I'm feeling a bit jealous right now

He held some talks in a few different colleges as far I know.

JayMul

Aye I asked Red, he mentioned it was at the Jameson film festival I got to keep my ear to ground a little more. Would have been interesting I'd say.