We were 3 guys developing a game. Now I'm alone with my game.

We had a brilliant idea, it worked on paper.
A programmer, a 3d modeler (me) and a graphic designer / musician, everyone good in his field.
After a month the programmer disappeared leaving us in great difficulty and making completely re-evaluate the project.
However, the desire to create one's own game was great.
So after resizing the project, turning it into something very simple and basic, we started development again.
After about a month, today, even the graphic designer / musician resigned, leaving me alone with my game.
Now I'm really struggling to find the strength to carry out MY game, so i create this thread. Thanks to all of you, in these weeks without a programmer i have been able to make huge progress with scripting and the game is finally starting to take shape. Unfortunately the work to be done is immense and I don't know how much it will be possible to carry it out alone. I hope to find the strength and motivation to get to publication. Have you ever found yourself in similar situations? Tell me and if possible, console me ahaha

 

No, since I've decided that I would do my first completely alone: programming, sprites drawing, animations etc. and right now, I'm a bit stuck, but I'm not in a hurry.

What do they say in those films? "May the Force be with you?"

 

Yes, I'm in the same situation and probably will be in the future as well, because I enjoy all aspects of game development (except the damn marketing, of course).

 

Drawing / writing / planning on the paper is the easy part.
Anyone can write simple story, and what would like to have in a game.
Making it is another bunch of challenges.

Modeling is much simpler than programming. In programming you need to know whole range of technical aspects.
For example, you could make simple low poly environment models in a month. Optionally polishing later.

I did this in 2 days, while ago. Just 3D modeling.

Spoiler

While halve year you still be programming, how to accommodate these models and mechanics around it. Things go astray, if scope is greater.
Of course things little change balance, when start talking about AA / AAA quality graphics. But that is irrelevant at this stage.

Young people get excited about things. "Yes yes we can all do it". But when comes to do it, only ones with highest determination stays in the field.

On side note, make sure you collab with contract. Or you will almost certainly go into dispute, of who did what and how much.

 

Hello, i'm a programmer in unity, can we talk about your project ?
Somewhere but here possible ?
Thanks

 

Yes and no. We've lost people in the past couple of years but we gained more people as well. That said we have a major motivational factor for people to stay with our project when we recruit them. We have an investor.

 

Why those people leaving the project?

 

Probably lack of patience, lack of interest, lack of skills, or lack of perspectives?

 

I really don't know why the programmer left. The graphic designer / musician considered more important to focus on his private life.

I guess

Wow, so is a real working context. I really believe that as long as you work with "friends" it can't go well.

Sure, feel free to ask me anything!

I've always been active in the modding scene. So I have a general knowledge about every step of the game development process. I'm a good 3d modeler but I also know how to create graphics, music, etc. Unfortunately programming is something I have never studied in depth. I created some cleo3 scripts on GTA SA in 2007 but nothing more. Fortunately Unity is idiot proof and tries in every way to help the programmer. I hope to be able to continue my game.

It's an aspect that I haven't even thought of! xD

I suppose you made the best choice my friend, good luck with your project!

 

How about a link to your portfolio. Maybe you can do some trades for work? Maybe start leaning playmaker. Plenty of good artists have used it to program their games in unity, using visual scripting. If this is something you really want, you will find a way,

 

...were you paying them?

 

OP mentioned 'friends'. So I doubt it. Hence probably motivations dried out

 

It's ok to work with people who also happen to be your friends, but the work must be approached and performed with a working relationship. Make sure there's a contract in place, treat the project like a job rather than a social thing, and so on.

I often find that I make friends with the people I work with. Having all of the work-related expectations spelled out clearly from the get go helps that rather than hindering it. Everyone knows the work/personal boundaries and expectations from the start, which makes it much easier to switch between professional and social contexts.

 

That is probably most likely, rather than vice versa.

 

I avoid collaborative projects where no one is getting paid and everyone's doing it part time and thinking it'll be fun because you can't count on the motivation and contribution to be there, and if by some miracle the project is completed there is the risk of conflicting expectations about ownership and rewards (even on a game that I licensed for a remake, I've had salaried employees from the original version complain to me about their credits and one even say I should pay him royalties instead of the licensor!).

But that said, as long as you're developing skills in an area you enjoy (and sounds like you're learning lots) I'd say it's still time well spent, chalk it up to experience, and don't worry too much about the destination, enjoy the journey!

 

I never find myself in this situation because I treat a gamedev project as a business, and as such I ensure that there are incentives to stick with the project, otherwise they will ofcourse leave when things get tough (and game dev is tough).

Best incentive is getting paid. If you are unable to ensure that, then get a publisher and move towards making attaining funding your top priority.

If its a hobbyist project, still try to ensure there is some sort of incentive.

Even if your a solo developer you need to incentivise things for yourself or you will find motivation dissipates after a while. Rewarding yourself when you do work is important. Even if its just a mental high-five. Or a crisp 10.

 

I mean if you require a constant stream of motivation to do work, that's a personal dilemma you are going to have to overcome if you want to achieve basically anything worthwhile in life. This is why prioritizing finishing what you start is so important for the beginner. It's a habit that if you don't got, just forget it all.

@GameDevCouple_I , where do you "get a publisher"? Especially as a indie/solo dev.

 

The same way anyone gets a publisher, you get a solid prototype together along with a pitch and accompanying documents such as a business plan and then you start contacting publishers and pitching to them. You will have to adjust your business plan and pitch to match each publishers flavour, but there is no magic to it. You pitch and if your product is viable and you pitch well you will get buy in. Its no more difficult for an indie to get a publisher than it is for an AAA , the process is the same. What I find funny is that most people never actually try this, they just make their game. Most of the time publishers want to see it while its still an early prototype rather than fully fleshed out nearing end of development product.

When we did our pitches to sony the process was the same for us as companies 10x as big. Ofcourse the scope was different, but the actual contacting + pitching process is mostly the same. (And yes I realise sony are more of a platform owner rather than publisher but its the only actual company I can mention without going into NDA material. Either way the process and pitch is mostly the same.)

 

Is finding a publisher just as simple as, google search "game publishers?"


does prototype typically include art? Or is it just demonstration of mechanics?

 

Sort of yes and no at the same time. Generally you research for a long time to build up a list that matches your games needs, both in terms of the "flavor" of the publishers catalogue and the services they provide / you need.

But generally just googling wont be enough, you need to network at events like exhibitions etc which is where we find the majority of our contacts.

Best thing to do is start small and find some very small and easy to contact publishers (newer publishers) and then work your way up. each time you pitch and do well or bad at something, use that knowledge to improve the next time around. Eventually you will be getting responses from far bigger publishers than you were able to when you started. (As in they will respond and allow you to pitch to them based on your ever increasing in quality initial contact email / phonecall. I have no idea what the magic formula is to get them to actually say yes to your pitch, and I dont believe there is one, just knowing your target audience well and having a solid pitch, business plan and design).


And they sometimes contain art and sometimes dont. usually itll be a whitebox type prototype but you will also need to show a proper vertical slice of the envisioned final quality graphics even if its just some previs.

The better you are at taking them on a journey with you in the pitch, the easier it is to skate over anything unfinished. If you can really make them understand and see in their mind what the final thing will look like and enjoy playing it in their head, then your on a good path! Still doesnt mean you will necessarily get buy in though!

Note that Ive only been in about 9 pitches to date and only 2 of these went 'good' so I am not the best resource on the info! I can only really regurgitate what we have learnt along the way!

P.S In all but 1 of those pitches, we only recieved a response because we had already networked with someone from the company in question in person. I cannot recommend enough that you try and network with people in person at events, rather than just firing off emails and phonecalls and therefore getting lost in their very very full inboxes of many people asking for the same privilege. Getting in front of someone who has never met you to pitch is super difficult and its an egg we have not yet cracked ourselves!

 

Very interesting information!
Ours was only the project of a group of friends to create a video game
. Nothing more.
I didn't even go out with the idea of doing it.
However it was a long time since I wanted to create a game.
Now, even if it takes months, with calm and the help of this wonderful forum, i'm gonna do this. At the moment I only have a miserable part time job so I can't even afford to pay programmers or artists or whatever. That's why i resized the project
to make it feasible even for a novice like me. Initially it was a pretty big project that we knew would take years of work. Now I have designed a shoot'em "Ikaruga" style with some specific innovative mechanics for the genre. I already have a small working prototype, extremely funny, I don't know how it can be "salable" but that's ok

 

That sounds really interesting! Be sure to create a thread for it in the WIP section of the forums, would love to follow the development!

 

Thanks for your interest! I will certainly do it when I finish the first level!

 

thanks @GameDevCouple_I !

 

You are most welcome!

Honestly @BIGTIMEMASTER the best advice I ever got that started me down this path was "if you dont ask you dont get". The moment I started to actually try and contact publishers, I started to realise that even though in my head I thought they would laugh at me and my ragtag frankenstein team and our semi finished product + pitch, in reality they will 100% have always seen something worse or had a worse pitch than what you are about to deliver to them. After that it was more an excerise in building my own confidence if anything.

That said, a couple of those pitches I mentioned went so bad I genuinely cried like a baby after. So there definately is ups and downs!

 

lol.

yeah its just all totally foreign to me. I never done or heard of this type of stuff so its hard to know where to begin. Thanks for sharing your experience.

 

@GameDevCouple_I would you be able to share a bit more, what went wrong with some publishers? Why it went so bad? lack of experience? Or unprecised scope of requirements? Or anything else?

 

Mostly I wasnt aware of a lot of stuff I would be asked about. One publisher asked me what "the visual language of the game is". I had never even heard of that phrase before, and it wasnt easy to google either. In retrospect those guys were not good for us anyway, and were trying to catch us out.

Another that went really bad was a similar case of not understanding what would be asked of me. We had a business plan but we didnt really know what our audience was, we just had sort of guessed it based on some very high level research. Once there it became very apparent from the looks they gave each other when we were asked about that, that a lot more specific info was needed. I now know about things like getting a focus test user group together and making user profiles, and in general trying to do audience analysis a bit before rather than assuming the players will be of X type. But even still its a weakpoint, we dont have the manpower to really hire an analyst and that would be the perfect thing to have to get that sort of information so you can present it with certainty.

The biggest stickler in both however was not understanding some of the industry expected things that you will get in every pitch, namely:

"What is your x statement"
"Give us your elevator pitch"
"What is your razor statement"
"Why would X user buy this game instead of X competitor game"
"If I take features X and Y away what makes your game fun when left with feature Z?"

All of those are pretty standard, and a reason I ended up taking my MSc which was in Video Game Enterprise and production. Part of the MSc taught me how to really pitch, and I was required to pitch to industry professionals including sony and many sony studios. Which then gave me an in to contact them again outside of academia when I was done studying

All in all though it doesnt come down to a single thing I did, just a combination of everything. The more you practise the better you get.

Surprisingly nerves are not a problem as everyone even the ones that asked annoying questions were not phased by me being a bag of nerves, it seems a lot of people are nervous and they dont really see it as mattering as long as you can get your vision across without breaking down.

The other thing that really got me the first time was just how short it has to be. As in 10 minutes max, after that you will 100% lose their interest. Condensing an entire business plan, game vision, demo etc into a 10 minute affair is more difficult than it sounds!

Note: I should probably mention that even though a couple of pitches went "well", We have yet to recieve an offer that is good enough to take. We got offered something by 2 publishers but both were beyond reasonable in terms of % offered vs services gained. Im talking 50% and above offers, which obviously is a far sight higher than industry accepted 30% which I was led to believe is the more common amount asked for. This was for no offer of funding either, just publishing by a minor publishing firm.

 

Such great response. I would give few thumbs up, if I could

Spears like reasonable questions to ask by publishers.
Probably something similar, when on Jo interview you are asked least expected questions. Like for example what is your weak side, in contrast to what are your bed skills.

50% sounds greedy and from point of view of developers, unacceptable. Well mostly. But I would suspect, such little fish publishers, want also protect them self, from number of project fails. Like compensating for such. Just like loan sharks. Anyone take. But many will not return back. So need compensate in high rate.

I think going along own way, without publisher is feasible. But it may take considerably longer. However gained skill, sure will be immense.

Yeah, selling product to someone is such high skilled challenge. For some however, looks like is natural

 

There's a lot of problems with collaboration, and it's definitely a difficult subject.

As @GameDevCouple_I mentions above, game dev is tough. The actual process itself has a lot of peaks and valleys. There are times in a project where all seems hopeless, and there are moments when 'a great game' seems a lot closer than it actually is.

Although there are a lot of points and reasons for a collaboration to fail, I think the absolute most common, especially for hobby games, is the first 'lack of progress' that happens more or less right after some kind of asset store driven prototype.

In lieu of money, the best way to keep a team together is to have consistent, steady progress. Clear milestones, clear goals, clearly visible progress.

It's very, very hard to figure out how to arrange these kinds of realistic schedules. It may be bordering on impossible if you have never worked on any multi-month project previously (ie: students and others who have not put in at least 500+ hours toward some project).

The key is maintaining motivation, and the more a project seems poorly managed or misguided, the faster individual members will lose motivation. This leads to teams collapsing.

 

It's probably the least easy thing to do.

 

Damn that sucks bud, hope you find the people to replace those fallen brethrens or increase your skillset to the next level!

 

I'm sadly in the same position. My game is being built by a team of 3 friends (although it is technically bigger), but I do 99% of the work. As the programmer the project can continue (and im okay at modeling / music / whatever), but oh boy it's beyond overwhelming. All I can do now is work on it day by day.

I'd say avoid working with friends, and find people who have worked on games before. 99% of people who want to make a game want to because it sounds cool, but have absolutely no idea how much time and effort it takes. It's honestly the most efficient filter I can think of. Also, staying productive is a big skill, especially with no money involved. Always make sure they have a really good handle on being productive, time management, etc. I've found that how much time someone has is almost irrelevant: it's how they use it. Someone with hours and hours of free time a day can easily provide absolutely nothing compared to someone with half an hour of free time and good time management skills.

I wish you the best.

 

@Aerojet
All three left, and you have to make the game, by yourself?
Ahhhhhhh! That sucks dude!

I hope you pull through.

 

I have to wonder if there might be something to learn from this (who am I kidding there's always something you can learn, if you're open to it!).

By that I mean are there any personality quirks or problems that may have contributed to these teammates leaving?

Or perhaps you have not given your partners enough in return for their work. Ie. payment, equity, something of immediate tangible value...

I was banned from a dev team last year for my personality & behavior (even though I was right). Admittedly I was misguided and reckless in my behavior, and that's on me, yet I learned that sometimes you just gotta know when to quit or at least hold your tongue, & pick your battles. The other part is yea I was under a mountain of stress and ill equipped to deal with it.

A stark contrast to this year.

And FYI: revenue share is NOT a business model for serious game devs with real talent.