Big Games are Big Projects
some of you like me probably started down the road your on because you came up with an idea, maybe you picked up a simple kit some years ago reporting to let you make good game quick and believed it
Many people starting on this road seem to underestimate how big a big game really is, much of this post is to them, but you'll want this little rant handy later
If you think that making a battle system is as simple as just adding some monsters or that with a wave of your hand you can program a gun that shoots balls of lightning and then the balls of lightning shoot lightning at people, then you are sorely mistaken and probably not very far with your course
But even as you start to understand how simple-minded computers are and the depth at which you have to do things yourself, you're only just at the tip of the ice berg of the sheer scale of work involved in a big game
The most popular "Wow I can make a game, oh look then I fail" projects are 2D Final Fantasy clones, people go into these games with high ideals like "All my characters are going to be awesome" or "I'm not going to have palette swapped monsters"
Do you have any sodding idea how much pixel art is involved in a 2D Final Fantasy style game? Every single character has to have a full sprite sheet, all of your NPCs have to have partially finished ones, every spell effect needs several images to animate with, every monster and background tile, every object needs to be drawn pixel by pixel
If Squaresoft cannot afford to have their pixel artist spend the time to not have palette swapped monsters than neither can you, and you can come back with the same lofty ideals "Oh well I don't have to work to a deadline so I can afford the time" but your pixel artist might have very different ideas
There is no way that one person can produce a Big Game on their own, there are too many skills for one person to master, and too much work for one person to do
When looking for help, your first thought might be to rely on your friends
Do not recruit your friends because they are friends, if they don't have a skill thats valuable to you then you need to turn them away. Trying to keep them involved to make them feel included will harm your chances of recruiting more talented individuals
You can't rely on people's good will to keep them working, your friends will quickly stop doing things when they realise the sheer magnitude of work involved in whatever task you assign them, and from experience they will never tell you they don't want to work on the project any more, they'll keep telling you "oh I'll work on at X point" and lead you along, stopping you from recruiting people to replace them
Your friends are probably in it to please you, they are not good sources of feedback because they will say whatever you want to hear rather than what you need to hear
If you're thinking of getting a friend to help then theres a simple test to see if they might be any good, propose an idea that can only be a horrifically bad idea or write something that really isn't funny, approach them all enthusiastically and ask for their opinion, if they like it then don't use them
When going after skilled strangers, there are really only 2 ways to make it work, either you pick someone like a student who will follow you for good work to add to a portfolio, or you pay people
Don't delude yourself into thinking that people will work for you because they like your idea, or that anyone is going to follow you to the end without some sort of material incentive for doing so
If you're making a Big Game in your free time, then the £5k that you're paying for your course is only the beginning of the funds you'll have to invest. You will need a full time job that gives you both enough free time to work on your game, and pays enough that you can incentivise people to put their talents towards your project
We're not talking about giving people a proper wage here, we're talking about maybe throwing an artist £25 to draw something for you one off and then going back when you can afford it for other work
The more you sacrifice, the more you'll gain in both time and money to be able to finish your game, be prepared not to go out spending money on booze, to drop other hobbys and if you're really serious, to give up spending time and money on your love life
You can also use Charity to help get things done, when you're game has reached a playable stage and you're just adding content to it, then perhaps you can open a forum where people can donate images or dialog or whatnot to your game, people may even give money if they think you'll finish a really good concept
If you're starting up your own studio, then you have to consider where the funds are coming in from while you're developing your first game, big publishers aren't going to be willing to take on new, unproven studios with just a good idea and nothing else to show for it
Picking a good genre to start in will get you through this initial hurdle that much quicker, and developing some "casual" style games on your own before starting your studio will help you build credibility
Either way, you'll probably want to start in 2D, as talented 3D modellers are a lot harder to come across than 2D artists, 3D is in much higher demand by the gaming industry right now and so there are fewer 3D modellers available for lower end projects like yours
Always remember that it is far better to come up with a simple concept (or take a simple but underexplored concept from another game) and explore it fully, as this leads to a simple and cleanly designed game, rather than a complex hybrid of old ideas masquerading as something unique
VVVVVV is a fantastic example of where a simple idea can lead
Lets take a quick look at gaming genres and the investment needed in each, as well as some success stories from the independent community
As stated, RPGs are the most popular failed independent games, the scale of work required just for art/modelling is staggering and its very easy to get carried away adding locations, and quests and things, so concepts can quickly spiral beyond anything thats actually practical
Perhaps simply due to the sheer number of RPG projects that are started, there are plenty of successful independent RPGs around, a simple google search for "Free MMO" will reveal a large tide of them
Strategy games have much the same resource problem as RPGs, every unit must look unique so that the player can quickly identify what he/she is up against and so palette swaps usually aren't acceptable
You also have the problem here of balance, strategy games tend to be very competitive in multiplayer and if one race/faction comes out too strong there will be rage
Proper balance testing requires a large base of players who know how balance in such games really work, right from the casual level to the professional
I've not seen all that many successful independent strategy games, and those I have seen aren't worth mentioning
Edit: I can't believe I actually forgot about Dwarf Fortress
Fighting Games are relatively resource light, you need a sprite sheet (or model+animations) for each character and a few stages, with optionally 1 piece of music per stage or character, provided you don't get carried away with adding hordes of characters, you won't have to invest as heavily in hiring in talent
Testing is even more of an issue with Fighters however, the sorts of people who play them have an uncanny knack for forcing engines to do things they were never meant to do and balancing a Fighting Game with a variety of characters takes a huge amount of effort to do properly
Little Fighter is a popular independent Fighting Game due to its addictive gameplay and 4-player co-op option
Platformers (especially pure ones) are mostly a dead genre in the professional world, with only a few series (notably Mario and Megaman) exploring them, this means that players who love these games are increasingly turning to independent titles, and theres still plenty of space here to come up with new ideas
Platformers can be rather resource hungry, despite the need to only have a few (usually one) playable characters, players generally expect each level to have its own visual theme, with its own music and mostly its own enemies
I've already mentioned VVVVVV however I'll do so again because it deserves it
First Person Shooters can be a difficult genre to get into because they require 3D modellers as a rule, however this can be offset by the availability of some very flexible and expandable engines
Nexuiz for instance is great fun and its based on the original Quake engine for added appeal to retro gamers
I consider myself an expert on the gameplay mechanics of each of the genres above, and as well as posting articles of a similar length to this on each of them, I'll also go on to talk about how to design tools that are useful to your dev team, how not to pitch your ideas to people, and how to hold your dev team together through the build of your game
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But I agree totally with what you said. There's nothing worse than doing something and somebody else is doing the same thing. Especially when you could be working on something else. What a waste of time!
