New Gamer

Hi .... Im new to this gaming thing. I have this idea but struggling to put on to paper ,Its been close to a year.
First is the a place were you can check games that are already patented in case someone has the same idea?
When its all done where are the platforms that offer funding?
Is it wise to collaborate with someone?

Comments

  • I think you have some misconceptions about how games get made, and I think some of these can be addressed by thinking about it in terms of how an investor (or whoever else might be offering funding, whether it's crowd-funded or angel investment or whatever) would think about it.

    1. Even a simple game easily costs over a million rand to make. (For reference, Angry Birds cost over $100k.)
    2. The market is highly competitive, and the vast majority of games make a loss.
    3. How can you convince me, as an investor, that I'm going to make money investing in your product?

    Practically, it means that if you've never made a game before, you have pretty much no chance of getting any funding in your project, because the chance of failure is simply too high. With no experience behind you, there is no way for you to estimate the cost of developing the game, which makes any type of business plan flimsy and unreliable; no investor would be willing to throw money away like that.

    You could make your project look better by showing that you've got a highly experienced team who've worked on other successful projects... but how would you get a highly experienced team to work on your project? You could pay them, if you already have money. You could promise them money (as many people do), and they would turn you down (because they're also thinking like investors, and see your inexperience as being "high risk"). People joke often about how "getting paid when the Kickstarter is funded" is practically the same thing as not being paid at all.

    So the reality is that to make your game, you either have to be fabulously wealthy (because then you can pay a team to make your game), or you have to learn to make your game yourself. Most people, I think, choose to learn an individual skill (e.g. art, programming, sound design, etc.) hoping to develop that into something valuable enough that it'd attract other people either to want to work with them or to want to pay them to use that skill to improve someone else's project. This helps them gain experience while also earning them an income, both of which could potentially be invested in their own projects in the future.

    --
    Now in terms of actually answering your questions... :P

    1. No. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that patents don't really exist for games pieces of entertainment (which is more of a copyright thing anyway). I believe you can get patents on specific implementations of technology, but the vast majority of game engines work in the same way. Many games are also very similar. Trying to find games that are similar to what you have in mind typically involves looking at any one of the existing store fronts (e.g. Steam, Google Play, App Store) and running searches to see what turns up.

    2. Publishers sometimes invest money in game studios, as have angel investors, but for the most part I think they've become more and more risk-averse, and (as I've said above) it's practically impossible to get investment without already being a highly successful game studio/personality (and even then, they seem to prefer outright buying/taking over studios rather than simply investing in them). Crowd-funding, like using Kickstarter or IndieGogo is a way to find funding too. It's possible there's a way to get government to invest too, though I believe the process would be long, difficult, and likely require you to be making games about education, social change, or other related thing that aims to improve local communities.

    3. It depends.

    If you've been struggling to put your game to paper after over a year, never mind actually trying to make it, maybe you're being too ambitious, and should try practising with making some smaller games first?
  • Hi @Arty, welcome to the forum :D

    Yes, collaborating with other people is a great idea. You get their feedback, creative input and enthusiasm. Having a fresh pair of eyes on something always helps to improve it.

    There are plenty of platforms that offer funding, but they all depend on what type of game you're making, and you would need to show them a proof of concept (usually a playable prototype) before they'd even consider investing.
    Arty said:
    I have this idea but struggling to put on to paper ,Its been close to a year.
    Start here. Get your idea on paper, and then download the engine of your choice (GameMaker, Unity, Unreal) and start putting together a prototype so people can start playing it.

    Good luck!
    Thanked by 1Tuism
  • edited
    If you have no idea where to start, a good place is to try to make something, anything. Because it's the best way to get to making games. Writing things on paper for a year gets you pieces of paper with writing on them. Making small things will get you small things. Small things can be the foundation of making bigger things. Everyone here started there.

    Google for some tutorials, make little bits, get better at making little bits.

    Have questions? Ask here, the community will help you if it's possible, but you'll have to do the work you need to do to make what you want to make.

    Ideas mean really very little, the ability to execute on ideas and refine ideas into things that work and play well goes far, far beyond ideas. If you ask anyone here, they'll have about 20 ideas each of something they want to make themselves. So everyone is working on what they want to make... Themselves. How do you convince someone else to work on what you think is cool? Either 1) By paying them for their time or 2) Showing them what you've got is cooler than what they want to work on for themselves. How do you show them? By building something. Words simply won't do it. Can I convince you to build what I want to build by words? Probably not. The same goes for everyone else.

    Good luck! We're here to help if you have questions :)

    PS. A minor thing - we're "game devs", not "gamers" :) This is "game development", not "gaming" :)
    Thanked by 2pieter mattbenic
Sign In or Register to comment.