Spectre wrote:Simply astonishing, you call me judgmental...
Who? What? When?
Spectre wrote:...but here you are giving me such grief because of........what? help me understand what I did to deserve to be talked to so harshly. I asked a simple question from people who had already successfully published a few games because I had hit a wall. So, here I am asking questions and all I get is snide contempt with a few people actually answering.
It's not snide contempt; if you perceive this as an attack then you're failing to realise that we are really trying to give advice. I'm being frank, not combative. Look at how Introversion got started: they made a game, they got together some money, and they started selling it. They didn't do market research or accrue hundreds of underdeveloped ideas, they just went ahead and made it. That's not to say it's the best approach, but game development as much as anything falls prey to
procrastination.
Spectre wrote:Yes Im inexperienced in the fact that I have not successfully published yet. But how does the fact that I havent completed a project YET, mean I know nothing of the industry? How can you immediately dismiss my ideas without a moments consideration, then complain that Im too harsh in my statements?
Who dismissed your ideas? We don't even know what they are. We're discussing your approach to developing your ideas, which looks lopsided from our perspective. But we've only got what you've said to go on.
Spectre wrote:Im NOT saying that ALL good ideas come from outside, I AM trying to convey the level of difficulty i have reached IN THE PAST. You cant tell me that the market or the companies arent like that because its exactly how it happened. All I wanted to do was to avoid some speed bumps in the future but, gee I guess Im a total imbecile for planning ahead.
You're still viewing it from the 'we submit ideas, then they come to us' angle, which is not going to work, however much market research you do. Good ideas can come from outside -- look at Narbacular Drop -- but not in that fashion.
Spectre wrote:And yes we do have many projects, we also dismiss hundreds more. out of nearly200 ideas only 75 made it to market research, after that 60 proved viable, seven were cut because they had no story, or the demos we passed out were completely rejected by all demographics. See, we do pass out demos and get feed back as apart of PRIMARY developement. And yes at this point alot of them are basically done, however, maybe I dont feel that graphics from 1993 do them justice. Or that possibly the code could use some tweeking. And hell, burn me at the stake because I think having a name like EA or Capcom might actually improve the sales.
Good, great, you've got some things to show for yourself, you want to develop them further, sure. No-one's criticised associating yourself with EA or Capcom here; in fact, the only thing people have done is the opposite. If you want to market your prototypes, a better approach would be to try getting a higher profile for them. Submit them to competitions like the IGF, hope they become finalists or even win a prize. Games which've gained recognition are more likely to be visible and gain interest if you're still intent on getting some other company to support it, and raises public awareness of it if you want to release it yourself, as many other independent developers have done -- Introversion with Darwinia (on Steam), 2DBoy with World of Goo (on WiiWare and Steam), Jon Mak with Everyday Shooter (on Steam and the PlayStation store), Jon Blow with Braid (on Xbox Live Arcade), some DigiPen students with Narbacular Drop (now part of Valve having created the highly successful Portal), Dylan Fitterer with Audiosurf (on Steam), etc.
Spectre wrote:the reason I chose this forum out of god knows how many, is that introversion started very similarly to my own group, from the ground up. I thought I could get some sound advice from developers that were in my shoes at one point. But hey, I guess I had it wrong. When you guys woke up one morning you were magically implanted with the information on starting your own company and never had any doubts about anything.
There's no magic solution, no-one knows the 'right approach', but some approaches are just much more viable than others. You say you learn by asking, but it seems like whenever someone gives you advice which you don't like, you reject it.
Well, whatever. Good luck!