Game development company start-up

debslee

Hi guys

I work for a company that designs really complex board-based business games for the corporate market. I'm branching off to start focusing on gamification in much broader context. What will I need to start a company that designs custom online gaming apps for customers? Best software to develop kick-ass games? Servers needed? Developer skills to look for?

Any input would be really helpful.

edg3

Developer skills:
Whatever best fulfils your needs
- Web games in HTML5?
- Middleware such as Game Maker/Unity?
- Building a custom engine?

Servers needed:
- This is going to be a money sink if you don't have customers earning you enough to pay for monthly hosting costs
--- Note that this is taking into consideration of the fact that
a) you might be considering real-time networking for a game
b) you might need high-volume hosting to have game data/executables
c) you will need some kind of web presence
- You could get away with a small R50/month package within reasonable limits (hosting small game packages of 1 to 10mb, having "online" be through a SQL database) and then scale anywhere up to needing beefy VPS instances (or dedicated servers) for hosting large real-time games

Best software:
- Something you are good at already
- Something you can target many platforms with in a money friendly way fast
- Something other people are good at already
* Unity3D and Game Maker are easily the two major comprehensive "we are on as many platforms as possible" suites and there are tons of resources to learn from and developers already using these technologies

Starting the company:
Technically you can do it as just you, but have you considered:
- It is difficult to break into the market
- It will be difficult to start earning money consistently
- Game development is time consuming, and like all development is prone to setbacks at time
I am not trying to discourage you, but rather make sure you consider the difficulties you face. Ideally you want a product people are already wanting to pay for before you start your company and commit to a project. You dont want to spend all your starting capital building something that will not give you returns on your investment(s).

If you have more specific questions I can try help with more specific answers where I can offer them.

(Oh, and don't make an MMO as your first game)

hermantulleken

I think you should really start by getting a senior technical person on board that can share your vision, understand the technical implications thereof, and answer your questions (and help you ask the right ones in the first place).

dislekcia

debslee said:

What will I need to start a company that designs custom online gaming apps for customers?

Hordes of prototypes and hours of feedback. If you can't make stuff right now, that's your biggest problem - fix that until you can make stuff: Either hire someone with a track record of making stuff like the stuff you want, or investigate how other people made stuff like the stuff you want to make.

I'd argue that you probably need to give more information on what stuff you want to make (give examples!) if you're hoping for meaningful answers from the community.

dammit

debslee said:

Hi guys

I work for a company that designs really complex board-based business games for the corporate market. I'm branching off to start focusing on gamification in much broader context. What will I need to start a company that designs custom online gaming apps for customers? Best software to develop kick-ass games? Servers needed? Developer skills to look for?

Any input would be really helpful.

I'm personally just confused about some terminology you're using here. You want to focus on gamification in a broader context. Do you just mean making games that are not complex board based business games? Or do you mean taking systems, software, processes, marketing campaigns, etc and adding game elements to them?