A while back I posted an article on How to Get Your Game Idea Made into a Game. Since that article appeared I’ve received hundreds of emails telling me about ideas that you’d like to see made into a game.
I appreciate your openness in talking about your ideas with me. I applaud your drive in moving forward and trying to get your ideas made.
But your questions have made me realize that I wasn’t clear enough in my first post. So let me be clear.
Never in a hundred million years will you ever sell your game idea to a company.
Game developers never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy game ideas. Game publishers never, ever, ever, ever, ever buy game ideas.
They never accept free game ideas. They will not even listen to your ideas.
You have no chance—Zero Percent—of ever selling any game idea to a game company. If you want to get your game idea made into a game, talking to game companies about it is a total waste of time and energy.
The brilliance of your idea has nothing to do with your chances of getting a company to make the idea. If your idea is mediocre you have a 0% chance of getting a company to make it. If your idea is the greatest game idea that mankind has ever seen, you still have a 0% chance of getting a company to make it.
Game companies do not buy ideas. They do not accept free ideas. You will never get a company to make your idea.
Okay, is that clear now?
You know, I don’t enjoy crushing people’s hopes. I know what a powerful, passionate feeling it is to have a game idea that you can see and hear and smell and taste. You know just how it would look and play. You can see the awesome boss monsters, the wrenching camera angles, the astounding visual effects. It seems so real. The vision in your mind feels so close to the games you play on your screen.
The only thing standing between you and making your game a reality is $20 million. If you only had eighty or so highly-trained, experienced game programmers, artists, and designers working 60 hours a week for three years, your game could get made and become a hit! If only a game company would fall in love with your idea as you and your friends have, you could see your vision become reality.
I know how that hope feels. It feels something like lovesickness. You can’t stand the thought of your awesome idea wasting away in the obscurity of a few shabby pencil drawings. It deserves better!
I know what that feels like. Like I said, I don’t enjoy crushing your hopes.
But false hopes will get you nowhere. And I’m here to tell you, as someone who has worked in the game industry for 15 years, that you will never, ever get a company to make your idea. That’s a false hope. Don’t waste your time on it.
But there is a way to get your game idea made into a game. Two ways, in fact.
- Make it yourself.
- Build a career in game development.
Making it yourself either means spending a ton of money (millions!) to hire other people to make it. Or it means gathering a group of friends to work on the game on an amateur basis. That will probably mean scaling down the quality and scope of your vision, but you can still make the essence of your idea.
Building a career in game development means spending 10-15 years working on other peoples’ games until you’ve gained enough power and respect to call the shots. If you can win that kind of respect you might be able to make your own game. But 10-15 years is a long, hard road to walk. And even if you walk it, you may never win the chance to call your own shots. I’ve made dozens of games since I started in 1995, yet it’s rare that I get to choose which game to make. The people with the money decide what gets made. That’s just the reality of the business.
So you can get your idea made. But it’s not going to be easy. And it’s not going to happen through talking to a company.
You can read more about your options for getting a game idea made in my previous post on this topic.
6 Comments
Hey Jeff, great post — spot on! I stumbled here via Reddit and it’s too bad the conversation over there isn’t taking place here in the comments section of this post. Anyway, I spent 10+ years in the industry making other people’s games. Now I’m making my own. Realistically, it’s the only way to go. In fact, looking back I can honestly say I wouldn’t have it any other way. There was a time very early on when I wanted so badly to do my own thing, but (looking back) I didn’t have a clue. In fact, I was so naive that I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.
Hello, Jeff! These were a great pair of articles. Thanks for writing them.
I’m hoping you can answer a question for me. I have an idea for a videogame and would like to create it. However, I’m unsure if my game idea is too complex to be programmed using the basic programming software geared towards lay people (such as myself). In other words, programming software that uses a high level programming language such as Javascript.
My game idea is for an RPG of about the level of complexity of Final Fantasy III (originally Final Fantasy VI in Japan), the 16-bit game for Super Nintendo. However, perhaps it would be somewhat more complex, because I would like there to be a few different plots that could unfold depending on which choices the player makes (similar to a “choose your own adventure” novel).
Is a game like this too complex to be programmed using amateur game making software such as RPG maker XP?
If it is too complex for amateur game making software, how advanced do I need to go? Would it require a mid-level programming language such as C++?
Thank you for your help!
Hi Helen. The cost and complexity of building a game depends on a lot of different factors. The game design itself can be simple or complex. RPGs tend to be the most complex kind of games because they have tons of game rules, tons of locations, complicated characters, plot events that change the state of the world, lots of UI elements for controlling inventory… tons of elements that have to be designed, illustrated, programmed, and refined.
But the game design itself is not the only factor. The rendering technology can also add a great deal to the cost and complexity of a game. Likewise, networking features such as multiplayer adds complexity. Physics. So the technological sophistication of the game drives the cost to a large extent.
Really, you can make any game on any platform (even Javascript in a browser) if you’re willing to simplify your technology needs and have a very clear idea of how the game rules should work. If you base your game design fairly closely on an existing game, you can build the UI elements and game rules with any programming language.
I would not recommend building a game with Javascript, though, because of its poor debugging capabilities and slow performance. You might consider starting with Actionscript (with Adobe Flash or Flex) if you’re aiming for a relatively simple development environment.
Best wishes!
Hey Jeff,
What if you’re going to college and making your own game company? Couldn’t you just make your game then without making other peoples games? I mean yeah you would need to hire people to help make the game but then you wouldnt have to make anybody elses game right?
Hi iiStorm. Even new companies have a slim chance of making their own games at first. There’s nothing special about a company versus an individual. A company, after all, is just a group of people. If those people have the reputation, financing, and connections to make their own game, then they can. But that’s no different from an individual.
Most companies start out by making other people’s games. Consider Gearbox Software, who I worked with for several years. Gearbox started out making an add-on for Half-Life—working on someone else’s game. (Albeit a very cool game.) Since then they’ve made a couple of games of their own design (Brothers in Arms and Borderlands), but probably fifteen games based on others’ designs. So even an old, established developer like Gearbox still pays the bills by making other peoples’ games. It’s a very rare developer (indeed, Rare is one of the few) that can keep trying new ideas and get someone else to pay them for it.
You’ll have to excuse me, I’m not really up to speed on programming jargon, so your response was a bit unclear to me. But I think I get the essence of what you’re saying, which is that (1) RPGs tend to be some of the most complex and costly games, and (2) the level of complexity and cost depends on multiple factors, so many that you wouldn’t be able to give me an estimate on how much my game would cost to finance unless I gave you a long and detailed description of every aspect of it.
Clearly, you don’t have time to look over the various minute details of my game idea in order to give me such an estimate. But I’m assuming if I got in touch with, say, a professor who teaches a videogame programming course in my city (Toronto) s/he could give me such an estimate if I paid him/her to do this for me? Is that correct? If not, who can I turn to for answers about this?
Thanks.