Gamepad design

Hi

I'm going to hire a company to make a game for me. Its a quiz, such as Trivia pursuit. The player will be given a question with 4 optional answers and he has to find the correct one. This game (for windows and Mac) will be not only for single players but also for multiplayers. So I would like it to be played with a gamepad. Although there are many gamepads out there I'd like to have one specifically designed for this game. The gamepad will have 4 numbered keys corresponding to the four optional answers and some other keys to navigate the game and the interface. Do gamepad manufacturers design a gamepad case according to customer's wishes? Of course I need to ask the manufacturer about that but I'd like to know if any of you had a similar experience.

 

I think it's going to be very expensive to have custom gamepads made, unless you're expecting to move millions of units.

Have you considered using a companion smartphone app instead? Almost everybody has a smartphone, and you could link them to the main app playing on Mac or Windows (or even something like AppleTV). Players would use their smartphone to buzz in their answers. This would also let you do things like actually show the answers on the phone screen, rather than just numbers 1-4.

 

If you just need four numbered buttons and a few others for navigation, you may as well just use a standard gamepad.

 

Most PC and console game developers wouldn't have experience with this, because the vast majority of the time games are designed around pre-existing, mass-produced hardware. Cases of custom hardware for games are pretty rare. Guitar Hero would be the big example for controllers, and stuff like Skylanders and Disney Infinity may also be relevant.

As suggested by @JoeStrout, the mobile phone route is semi-common these days. If you look up stuff like Hidden Agenda on PS4 I think that does exactly what you're taking about, but in a murder mystery style game, and using a mobile phone. It's one of a bunch of games which apply the same principle.

I've also seen a bunch of people mod Xbox and Playstation gamepads. That could be an option if you don't need to make your stuff mass-market? Basically you make your own custom shell (I believe this is commonly done with a 3D printer) then take the guts of an existing gamepad and mount them to that shell. The benefit to this is that it's still 100% compatible with the original gamepad, so if you've modded an Xbox gamepad it'll still be 100% plug-and-play in Windows 10. Depending on production numbers required this could be an approach worth investigating.

 

For enough money you certainly can get a manufacturer to design and produce a gamepad to your specifications. If you're not buying in volume, you're very likely to find them prohibitively expensive per unit.