Andy's right, Flash is a good place to start. A game can be done for $10k, but honestly not the one being discussed in this situation (at least it'd be very tricky). Passion is a pre-requisite but passion alone doesn't get results. You need experience and/or intelligence, common sense, good core skills, etc. In reference to Andy's "Why Programmer" - because it's the bit that is potentially most risk and/or most costly. It isn't a requirement, but I'm presuming that if the guy could do the art he'd have said so, and that leaves programming or management essentially. I'm not convinced by his posts (sorry mate) that the guy knows what he should about game production to do the management at this point. Flash is a great way to start, either yourself or with a programmer/artist. The more you can do yourself, the better. Anyway, we all know that programmers make the world go around <-flame bait
Is it OK if I'll mark this as "BullShit!!!" or everyone will not get a humor and start complain again? Programmers make the world reload every minute...
I want to thank TimS for this: So your game ideas could have saved Sega. NOW we're getting into a different set of issues... primarily delusions of grandeur, a.k.a. Megalomania. I'm a bit of a sufferer myself, though I keep my dreams of being a space pirate mostly to myself. most excellent. Andys sometimes comprehensible ranting aside... great artwork and music require a connection to the muse that not all of us are born with. But if you want to suck it up and make it happen then usable code is something most of us can grind out with enough intestinal fortitude. If you make the beast work yourself, do all of the iterations "for free" then you can prove to yourself whether the thing is cool or not. At that point you can stretch 10K a long way if you are willing to treat that cash as advance against royalties based upon fixed asset lists and a playable demo that is for real.
Tsk, AND? People should have more patience. Mind you, a certain PSP game had load times of several minutes. My old BBC could put it to shame. Err, back on topic, mrkwang - let us know what you to decide to do, and good luck to you. But please, no more "I could have saved Sega" stuff!
10K USD ? A more realistic option would be to use the fund to develop a few med-high quality casual/flash games rather than a Gunz like hard core MOG that often takes massive amount of resources and time.
www.ijji.com is run by NHN, one of the largest online game companies in the world. the run the #1 online game portal in Korea (Hangames), the #1 online game portal in Japan (hangames.jp), the #2 online game portal in china (ourgames), and now they are trying to bring their business model (free to play, pay for items) to the US. So far they have had relatively limited success (the # of players on ijji.com are nothing compared to their success in other markets) but I would not bet against NHN. Earlier posters are right -- simply building an online free-to-play game is just the starting point. Unlike traditional games where all you need to do is make the game fun, with a free-to-play game you face two challenges: make it fun AND monetize it successfully. NHN literally has dozens of economists analyzing their games continually to figure out how to improve their monetization. with item-buy games it is very difficult to monetize them successfully, and very easy to screw up. Just introducing the wrong item at the wrong price can ruin the game's economy. I'm not goign to tell you what to do, but I would say that I personally would not try to build an online item-buy game without a budget of at least a few hundred thousand dollars, and much more importantly partners lined up to host and operate the game when done. Unless I was also trying to host and operate the game myself, in which case I wouldn't do it without a budget of at least a million dollars because then you're not just building a game -- you're launching an entire game service. Furthermore, I would also make sure I knew exactly what the competition looked like for my game -- I'd take a hard look at K2 systems, a company here in the US which is committed to importing games like Gunz from Korea to the US market. I'd also take a hard look at the other korean companies, as well as chinese companies like The9, Tencentm and others who are bulding simliar games for the Chinese market and must be also looking at the US market. Finally I'd look around at all the large US companies who are committed to this model themselves -- like Vivendi which is usuing its WoW stash to aggressively position themselves in the free-to-play space. If someone pointed a gun to my head and said "you have only $10K to start a company buidling online item-buy games" then I'd use $100 of it to print professional looking business cards, $2000 of it to fly to Korea, live in a fleabag hotel, and spend a few weeks trying to meet with Korean developers to convince them that I'd be a good partner, and then the rest supporting myself while I created a great business plan and shopped it around to investors. Online games ARE very hot right now in the investment community, but I probably see a half dozen business plans a week or so, so it's not like this is an original idea or there's no competition. The one thing I WOULDN'T do with the money would be to try and fund development myself. There's nothing wrong at all with outsourcing, but $10K is nothing when you're talking about trying to build a game that can actually compete in the market. Good luck!
I personally think there is a niche market though for online pay to play (item buy and other business models) that has a lot of potential for smaller developers. There isn't any reason you can't take a simple game idea, make quality content with depth, and create an online environment for it. And of course the advantage to online games where you sell content is you can get more money from each customer...meaning you don't need as many customers. Isn't that ideal for smaller (independent) developers?
It's not that simple. The biggest problem is retaining player-base. Your game needs to have momentum to attract players and keep attracting players else you will simply have no one. If people join an online game and theres no-one around, naturally you leave. Online games are extremely hard to retain a good sized player-base. you may spend 3 years creating your ultimate game to find people might check it out once or twice and never come back.
No, its not that simple. You're right. You have to really have something people feel strongly about. And it has to be done extremely well. It is more of a gamble then doing one game where you can finish it and move on but I think the rewards are there. To me if you really have a great idea and you are a smaller developer then online is a great way to go. You don't have to rely on publishers or portals because you can survive with a smaller customer base. I think originality is expecially key here though.