The struggle of starting up

[fr0zenblade]

I'm carefully planning my next moves for my business and could use some advice. Here's where I'm at:

I have two games in the works and they should be done by next spring. Both contain a few scripts that need licenses for commercial use but I cannot afford any of them (one guy wanted $500?).. I'll worry about that later. I've already purchased a domain for my business and I'm also working on the website and forums. I always plan ahead for the future so I might be getting ahead of myself here but it's just the way I work. I've designed my own logo and I will do my own cover art for the games.

Basically the problem is I need to pay for script licenses, pay people to compose music for my game, and maybe hire an artist to draw custom tiles for me. And with my small college student budget I'm unable to do so. 

I was thinking I could just finish the games enough to make a demo, record gameplay of parts of the demo, create a really professional and convincing kickstarter fund, and just go from there. 

Other than that I don't know what I could do.. maybe see if the government has any small business grants?

Have any of you experienced similar problems?

 

[Dream3r]

Hello frozenblade, Dakota of Living Dream Entertainment here.  I've been in the same boat as you for the most part and I'm going to go ahead and break down a few things.

1) Protect yourself: Domain and everything is great but you need to register your business and go through the process of getting a buisness license. Depending on what type of business you go for the cost could vary but you need to do this if you don't want someone taking everything from you down the road (say your game looks like it's going to make big money so I go through the license process myself and say I'm the owner of YOUR company. I could steal everything from you and that's not good)

2) Go big or go home: I've spent over $4,000 on my game and have little to show for it, this is mostly due to the learning experience you will gain by running you're own business.  There will people you trust that aren't trustworthy.  There will be people who are trustworthy that still end up failing you in the end even if they didn't mean to.  If you're running a business you're going to get burned a lot.  Eventually you'll build up good relationships but it takes time.  Running a business is costly so you need to decide now if that is the path you want to take.  It gives you many advantages, you have a team at your side who all bring in their own skills and talents but this will cost money to pull off.  If you can't afford to do this, consider staying small and just solo it.  Your game might not be as good, if you're not an artist you'll have to deal with what art you can use legally and for cheap, if you're not a coder/scripter your mechanics will be borrowed and not too unique.  But if you are determined and you continue at it, one day people will notice you.

3) Make friends:  Though this may not seem like business advice, trust me getting to know other indie devs and how they work could really help you in the end.  You might even end up working with one or two of them on a project together.  Freelancers are great but costly so if you can find someone who is good and willing to work with you on a low budget, that's going to be very helpful.

4) Build an audience:  Your idea of a Kickstarter is reasonable but don't do it before you have a following.  Trust me there have been many (including myself) who have went to Kickstarter with a good idea and some screenshots (maybe even a demo if they're lucky) hoping to make it and failed miserably because no one knew they existed.

5) Never trust a Mosquito Hawk:  A mosquito hawk is a bug that looks just like a mosquito but bigger, they attract mosquitoes to them who think they're going to get laid only to get eaten.  How does that relate to game development?  There are studios and people out there who do just that.  They seem like they're your best shot at success and you throw $500 or more at them only to find you paid way too much for something not that great.  I believe that scripter is doing the same thing to you as a Art Studio did to me.  Take my advice and look around to see how much other scripters would charge for that kind of work.  Unless most people agree that's a reasonable charge, it probably isn't.

Hope that helps and if you ever want to talk more you can find me on Twitter: @LivingDreamEnt

or email me at, livingdreamentertainment@gmail.com

Hope you have a good day and good luck on your adventure!

 

[fr0zenblade]

@Dream3r

Thank you for your reply!

I plan on staying solo for awhile and maybe teaming up with somebody. But thanks for your advice I will definitely look into getting a business license once I produce a game

 

[Andar]

Both contain a few scripts that need licenses for commercial use but I cannot afford any of them (one guy wanted $500?).. I'll worry about that later.

Wrong decision.
If you do not know how to pay someone for their licences, then don't use their scripts. There are more than enough alternatives available, but if you are not able to pay for that script's licence by the time your first demo goes public, then you will have to remove that script anyway.


And all work you had done with it before the removal (including playtesting and balancing) will just be wasted time.


As the poster above said, you need money to start a business - not only for making the game, you'll need quite an amount for copyright and trademark fees and your business licence before someone even can look at your game. And if you don't know how to pay for that yet, then don't add more costs by using resources you have to pay for before you can sell anything.

 

[Julien Brightside]

Is the script essential to the game?

 

[Andar]

Is the script essential to the game?

That doesn't matter in a commercial case - if he wants to use it commercially, then he has to pay the licence.
If he cannot pay the licence, then he can't use the script commercially, no matter if its essential to the game or not.

 

[Dream3r]

That doesn't matter in a commercial case - if he wants to use it commercially, then he has to pay the licence.

If he cannot pay the licence, then he can't use the script commercially, no matter if its essential to the game or not.

I'm sure he meant, "If it's not essential take it out"

 

[Stridah]

Dreamer gave some great advice!

Here are some tidbits from me.

1) Spread out the commission's! Not everything needs to be done at once.  Over the last few months i had my artist make 2-3 character portraits per month while i was busy working on mapping.  This cost me maybe 60-100$ a month which does not really affect my bank account much, where if it was a hit of 1,000 dollars i would definately feel it more!  Now that my character portraits are done i have been sending them to a spriter which is actually pretty cheap as i continue to map for my july 1st deadline.

2) You do not need everything all at once! For instance i have tons of mac sprites (probably everyone free to use commercially ever released) I can use them as place holders while i continue to have my spriter work and make progress on my game.  There is always something you can be working on do not feel like you are at the mercy of others.

3) Build some following! I have yet to announce my game however i have build a bit of a following on deviant art & am starting to become known a bit around here for my mapping.  Through people following me & me reaching out to others whose work i like i have done some small trades & exchanged advice and work with a small group of people.

4) Use deviant art! I am serious i have found much better prices on deviant art for equal quality work as i have on rpgmaker websites, search around and ask a few people.  

 

[Dream3r]

Dreamer gave some great advice!

Here are some tidbits from me.

1) Spread out the commission's! Not everything needs to be done at once.  Over the last few months i had my artist make 2-3 character portraits per month while i was busy working on mapping.  This cost me maybe 60-100$ a month which does not really affect my bank account much, where if it was a hit of 1,000 dollars i would definately feel it more!  Now that my character portraits are done i have been sending them to a spriter which is actually pretty cheap as i continue to map for my july 1st deadline.

2) You do not need everything all at once! For instance i have tons of mac sprites (probably everyone free to use commercially ever released) I can use them as place holders while i continue to have my spriter work and make progress on my game.  There is always something you can be working on do not feel like you are at the mercy of others.

3) Build some following! I have yet to announce my game however i have build a bit of a following on deviant art & am starting to become known a bit around here for my mapping.  Through people following me & me reaching out to others whose work i like i have done some small trades & exchanged advice and work with a small group of people.

4) Use deviant art! I am serious i have found much better prices on deviant art for equal quality work as i have on rpgmaker websites, search around and ask a few people.  

This, like everything about this is true.  I hired all my artist (so far) through DeviantArt outside of a few odd jobs here and there.  Good place for the most part.

I can not say how bad I am about #2.  I used to do all the work myself but as I expanded the team to about 6 or so people over the last year I've become too reliant on them.  I can't do what they can of course but I could use placeholders far more often than I do but I tend to wait for the final piece, which is a bad idea.

Good advice Stridah I'll be sure to check out your DA

edit: Thought you would have had a link, turns out you don't (or at least I didn't see it) mind pm'ing it to me so I can look?

 

[Stridah]

http://champgaming.deviantart.com/

whoops lol i should really add it to my sig.

and #2 is hard it bothers me to be running around as a sprite that i know does not exactly resemble the character, but you sometimes have to look past things like that.

 

[Matseb2611]

I'd recommend at the very start decide on your budget. How much money do you think you'll be able to afford to pay over the course of the game development. From there on decide on how you'll split that budget between art, music, scripts, and other stuff. Figure out which of those are the essentials, because those will have to take priority. If any of them are too expensive, see if there are cheaper alternatives. That $500 for a script license is insane. A lot of the time it would be even cheaper than that to have a brand new script made from scratch. So in this particular case I'd say best to just find a replacement and to abandon this script. As Andar suggested, it's best to have this sorted out as early as possible, because having to change scripts later on in development could become a huge pain and will add a tonne of extra unneeded work.

Another thing, see what's a realistic goal to aim for with your game. If you've got a small budget for example, is it really realistic to go for say a 30 hour epic? Or would it be better to say make a 5-hour game that you can actually afford to pay for over the course of development.

Also, I'd say it's best to aim for a shorter term goal first. Make a demo of the first hour or two of the game. Give it your best shot and see what comes of it. Once you got that out of the way, you could then begin working on the next bit, and so on. It makes it less overwhelming when you've got lots of shorter term goals rather than one huge.