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Help Wanted > Our GBA is ready... but now?

#56025 - 7Raven - Wed Oct 05, 2005 3:29 pm

First of all, hi guys, i'm new and my name is Elvis Morelli, the game designer of 7ravenstudios www.7ravenstudios.com.
Sorry if my english is not so good... i'm italian, anyway.

Me and my team, after 2 years of hard work... have made a GBA game (you can see on my site)

We have need a hint, we must find a company disposed to see it, and to decide if to sell it or not.
A serious company...
Some companies that we have contacted, have only made us to lose time... vital time given the situation of the GBA.
Now our situation and our plan are in seriuos risk!
If someone can help us...
Thanks, you are our last hope...

Some Picture:
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#56195 - Big Blue Bubble - Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:36 pm

Honestly, I don't believe you have a chance to release this game on GBA. I saw much better (I can't judge anything except art and style though) looking non branded GBA titles that didn't have chance to get a publisher behind. Even on low budget GBA market, almost everything is branded. With DS and PSP out, GBA was left with 1/3 of the previous shelf space in stores :(

#56268 - Abscissa - Fri Oct 07, 2005 3:33 pm

Big Blue Bubble is right, the mainstream industry can go fuck itself. It's gotten so screwed up, that if it's not a piece of shit liscensed-IP game, then the mainstream publishers (ie. the only ones who can actually get liscenced by the conceited console manufactures) won't touch it. If you want to make money doing games, the only real option is to go indie and hope for the best. Short of that, it's best to just let all the mainstream companies rot to hell.
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#56277 - tepples - Fri Oct 07, 2005 3:52 pm

Abscissa wrote:
If you want to make money doing games, the only real option is to go indie

Doesn't that mean that you have to develop directly for a PC or PDA platform instead of for the GBA if you want to sell games independently?
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#56292 - Abscissa - Fri Oct 07, 2005 6:37 pm

tepples wrote:
Abscissa wrote:
If you want to make money doing games, the only real option is to go indie

Doesn't that mean that you have to develop directly for a PC or PDA platform instead of for the GBA if you want to sell games independently?

Unfortunately :(. I really wish somebody would make an open-platform game console (that's not totally niche, which rules out GP32).

Although I wouldn't recommend PDA. As promising as it seemed at first, it turned out to be a nearly non-existant market.
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#57942 - blackthirteen - Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:53 pm

hey 7raven!

Awesome RPG!

I dropped a word about your game in my journal, we receive a lot of visitors so maybe you'll get noticed by someone important, who knows :)

www.westernlords.com/journal

#58125 - paradime - Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:03 am

Hey guys,

Just my two cents but I have a couple of friends who work for large game publishers and we've talked about this issue a number of times. I've actually though about developing my own game based on these conversation but I've never really gotten around to it. Anyway, their position on the matter is this:

1) One big problem is that, generally speaking, many indie games aren't that deep or have sufficient character, story or plot development. That's one of the big reasons why movie licenses seem to be so popular...they have an entire backstory and characters that are well definite and usually well know.

Games based on existing licenses don't really have to compete that hard and don't do the character or plot development in the game because it's already been done in the movie. Also fans of a particular movie franchise will likely buy the game just because.

After all, how is your RPG going to stand up against Final Fantasy? How is your FPS going to stand up against Metroid Prime: Hunters? How is your title going to compete against the latest Star Wars, Harry Potter or Spiderman game?

Games that provide rich character and story development will be noticed, both by publishers and by the market. A great example of this is Bungie's Halo. The "Halo Bible" that Bungie created is reported to be quite massive in size and extremely detailed. Many indie developers just don't do enough work in this area.

Speaking of which, another area that seems to be lacking is concept of ambiance, mood and atmosphere. This points right back to character and plot development. The unfortunate consequence is that many games aren't really that immersive.

2) Generally speaking, although a lot of indie games are well done, the problem is that they don't really provide anything new or exciting to the table. Sure, many games might have great graphics and sound and well polished but they don't really introduce new concepts, game play or uniqueness. How is it going to stand above everything else in the marketplace? How different is one RPG vs. everything else out there? Most games seem to be rehashes of everything else. The characters and the locations are different but the game play is usually the same. There isn't really a lot of thinking outside the box.

Look at Nintendogs. It's quite innovative and fairly unique and its been quite a hit for Nintendo.

I think if indie developers are truly interested in having their games even noticed by publishers, it is possible but you need to address these big issues.

I could say more but I'd be interesting in hearing other people's comments and experiences.

Mike

#58285 - MrD - Sat Oct 22, 2005 7:55 am

Fairly unique compared to the Dogz series?
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#58315 - Linkiboy - Sat Oct 22, 2005 3:30 pm

Umm, it looks like a good game, and I know a lot of peopkle who are dying to play new PRG's...

#64863 - badname - Tue Dec 27, 2005 10:09 pm

Ohh man I wish you all the luck, i realy love the style of your game and hope to see it. If all fails look for alternatives (like devs on steam did) release it downloadable for a amount or something or let some company in china print the cart and sell them from your site.

#64900 - sgeos - Wed Dec 28, 2005 9:36 am

paradime wrote:
How is it going to stand above everything else in the marketplace? How different is one RPG vs. everything else out there?

I'm currently doing dubug work for a Japanese game company. My goal is to do game design. The most important part of any idea document I present is the sales point. How is this different from everything else on the market? Nintendo (of Japan) doesn't go for rehashes- they want to see something that sets this game apart from everything else on the market. They also want you to come up with ways to use their custom hardware features.

If you don't publish with Nintendo you'll surely have a slightly different set of design requirements.

-Brendan