#57833 - blaow - Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:56 pm
How is this posible for someone that develops in the homebrew community utilizing well homebrew tools and libraries. What benefits may this bring to a company? and why should it have interest in such technologies that dont utilize official standard SDKs that otherwise could be easilly integrated as a technology into the company?s developing workforce for future use in projects or refinement. In other words im just curious of how people have succeeded in gaining these publishers interest when all these limitations are present, specially in the DS field that is still a bit immature in the homebrew community.
I just develop small stuff for my own amusement as a hobbie but these questions have always crossed my mind, in case anyone has any comments on this. :)
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#57846 - tepples - Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:39 pm
The official way is and has always been to get at least one commercially successful game designed to run on the latest version of Microsoft Windows operating systems for desktop PCs on your resume before you are allowed to develop for handheld video game systems.
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#57854 - blaow - Tue Oct 18, 2005 10:02 pm
Yes I can see that being a reasonable requirement for publishing a tittle.
Howerver my question goes around more in ?lets say a team of homebrew developers already has a finished product made using nothing but homebrew developing ?. Since it uses non-official SDKs, I assume the code itself wont be that attractive (in terms of aquirying new technology that could be used for future releases) to an already established approved game company that develops games utilizing official tools and libraries. Or not?
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#57859 - mike260 - Tue Oct 18, 2005 10:28 pm
| blaow wrote: |
Yes I can see that being a reasonable requirement for publishing a tittle.
Howerver my question goes around more in ?lets say a team of homebrew developers already has a finished product made using nothing but homebrew developing ?. Since it uses non-official SDKs, I assume the code itself wont be that attractive (in terms of aquirying new technology that could be used for future releases) to an already established approved game company that develops games utilizing official tools and libraries. Or not? |
Publishers want to see demos/prototypes running on the target hardware. Generally, they're not too bothered about how they got there (unless they're Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft, in which case they might take issue).
Libnds is a pretty thin layer over the hardware, so I don't imagine it'd be a huge job moving over to the Nintendo SDK. I guess most of the work would be switching your filesystem over to the official one, and moving over to the official ARM7 binaries.
From the point of view of making something publishable, the main issue would be meeting the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft TRC (technical requirements checklist), which is a usually a collosal pain in the arse.
#57868 - blaow - Tue Oct 18, 2005 11:40 pm
| mike260 wrote: |
From the point of view of making something publishable, the main issue would be meeting the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft TRC (technical requirements checklist), which is a usually a collosal pain in the arse. |
So basicly a homebrew product could get published by a licensed publisher if it(the game) meets the Nintendo TRC requirements for certification, even though the homebrew dev team is not an Nintendo DS authorized developer?
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#57877 - poslundc - Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:04 am
In theory, yes. In practice, most publishers are extremely gunshy and unwilling to even glance at unsolicited homebrew titles. I've heard of success stories - a couple have floated around this board before - but they are few and far-between, and unfortunately will only become fewer and further-betweener as the market continues to recede.
It is not adviseable to make a homebrew game with the expectation that you'll be able to get it published, any more than it's adviseable to take singing lessons with the expectation that you'll make it on Broadway.
Dan.
Last edited by poslundc on Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:06 am; edited 1 time in total
#57878 - mike260 - Wed Oct 19, 2005 1:05 am
| blaow wrote: |
| mike260 wrote: |
From the point of view of making something publishable, the main issue would be meeting the Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft TRC (technical requirements checklist), which is a usually a collosal pain in the arse. |
So basicly a homebrew product could get published by a licensed publisher if it(the game) meets the Nintendo TRC requirements for certification, even though the homebrew dev team is not an Nintendo DS authorized developer? |
I meant that once a publisher shows interest and gets you official developer status, there probably won't be any major obstacles to adapting your game to use the official SDK. But you *have* to be a licensed developer to ship an official game.
#57883 - tepples - Wed Oct 19, 2005 2:30 am
So other than by entering the overcrowded world of selling games for Windows, how does one make a finished or nearly finished product attractive to console or handheld publishers?
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#57901 - mike260 - Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:10 am
| tepples wrote: |
| So other than by entering the overcrowded world of selling games for Windows, how does one make a finished or nearly finished product attractive to console or handheld publishers? |
Ooh, my favourite subject! I feel a lengthy rant coming on.
1) Getting a publisher to even take a look is quite hard. If they don't know you, they won't return phone calls, reply to emails or bother looking at anything you send them.
Let's assume you actually get them to take a look at your game. Unless it is immediately mindblowing fun to play (eg the original Tetris), it'll get sent to marketting who care NOT AT ALL about how good your game is. No exaggeration, it just doesn't enter into the equation.
2) The first thing marketting will look for is what license they can hang on it. Some genres are better suited to this than others, eg sports=ok, puzzle=bad, rpg=bad and so on.
3) The next thing they'll look for is a marketting hook. They basically want ways to sell it to people who have zero interest in videogames. 'High concept' is their term for it (look it up in wikipedia).
4) Then they'll look at some similar games in the same genre, and see how well they sell generally. If you're in an unpopular genre, forget it. So basically, sports, fighting or driving.
5) Got this far? You must be in a profitable genre. Which means EA is too. They will compare your game with EAs latest squillion-dollar craptacular, and your game will lose. They will then compare EAs marketing budget with what they would be willing to spend, and you will lose again.
6) Say they're interested. You have meetings! They express enthusiasm! You haggle over the contract, which completely screws you, but you eventually give in to everything they want. Oh, wait, they changed their minds, sorry.
Maybe you're the 10% they didn't change their minds for. Congratulations! They buy you a devkit, give you an advance to fund the rest of development, promise you a 20% royalty, and tell you to finish the game.
You finish the game. They publish it. It sells respectably. You never get any money. They're making a healthy profit, but you have to pay off your advance out of your 20% royalty before you see any cash. You did remember to pad that advance, didn't you? Enough to fund development of another game? Lucky you. Start again.
Of course, some developers get past all this, and actually make an independant living selling games to publishers. Not too many though, and they're folding faster than they're being created.
Believe me, a little overcrowding in the PC space is nothing compared with dealing with the average publisher. They are complete and utter scum. Even if you manage to form a decent relationship with one, that just means they'll try to extort you into handing over your company.
Phew, rant over. I feel so much better!
(edit) It occurred to me I should've put *something* positive in here, so...there are some good docs on pitching and contract negotiation on www.igda.org
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#57906 - blaow - Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:42 am
| Quote: |
| I meant that once a publisher shows interest and gets you official developer status, there probably won't be any major obstacles to adapting your game to use the official SDK. But you *have* to be a licensed developer to ship an official game. |
Oh i see the "developer status" can be acquired through the publisher itself.
| Quote: |
| It is not adviseable to make a homebrew game with the expectation that you'll be able to get it published, any more than it's adviseable to take singing lessons with the expectation that you'll make it on Broadway. |
nice analogy 8)
| Quote: |
| It occurred to me I should've put *something* positive in here, so...there are some good docs on pitching and contract negotiation on www.igda.org |
thanks
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#57919 - blindraccoon - Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:02 am
mike260 summed it up pretty well.
One thing I would add is, from a publisher's point of view, they just cannot accept unsolicited submissions. Think about it. Somebody sends them a little concept demo that just happens to match something they have in production and they could end up with in lawsuit for 'ripping off' your idea. The big publishers are probably out of reach, but aren't there some smaller publishers that one could approach?
I've been in and out of the gaming business for 22 years (Atari 2600 baby, 4K ROM and 128 BYTES of RAM) and I've been screwed by the best and, yes, the worst of them. But here I am again. Why? I just love making games. From what I've seen so far the GBA homebrew scene is awsome! It's a fun platform to work on, robust tools are available and there are great places, [this one comes to mind :)], to go to for support and sharing.
Don't do games for fame or for money. Both are nearly impossible to get. Do it for the love of it, that's all we 'little people' have.
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#57922 - gladius - Wed Oct 19, 2005 7:54 am
I'd like to concur with Mike's post. Adding a bit of my own spin: "Licenses are god" seems to be the mantra of most publishers. The sad thing is only really great games can break this mold, otherwise franchise sequel #5501324 will sell better than your game that is actually fun.
The thing that drives this home for me is Christmas quite a few years ago. There were few games out for the SNES at that time (just after release) and my father had the choice between Home Alone or The Legend of Zelda at the same price. Guess which one won? (Hint, not the game I love even to this day :)
And that is why licenses are so important.
#57993 - tepples - Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:19 pm
So does that mean that in order to sell an original idea, you have to pitch it to the television networks before you pitch it to video game publishers, so that you can build up a "franchise"?
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#57998 - poslundc - Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:38 pm
| tepples wrote: |
| So does that mean that in order to sell an original idea, you have to pitch it to the television networks before you pitch it to video game publishers, so that you can build up a "franchise"? |
Couldn't hurt.
Dan.
#58267 - mike260 - Sat Oct 22, 2005 1:45 am
| tepples wrote: |
| So does that mean that in order to sell an original idea, you have to pitch it to the television networks before you pitch it to video game publishers, so that you can build up a "franchise"? |
Or make a game with a license in mind - old movie licenses have been doing well recently. Find a favourite-X-movies-of-all-time list somewhere (where X is as large a number as possible), and work through the list. But hands off Mad Max 2 please.
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#58570 - thegamefreak0134 - Mon Oct 24, 2005 5:36 pm
OK, say I don't have a game in mind, but want to actually start off myu career as a programmer. I plan to actually go to college, major in video game development, and hopefully start a career there. What fun little horror shows will I have to got through to get handheld/console companies to even consider hiring me?
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#58587 - Miked0801 - Mon Oct 24, 2005 7:24 pm
New topic, but I'll give some advice :)
Here is how I would go about trying to get a job as a game programmer:
1. Get your chops up on C/C++ programming. I don't mean just being able to hack together some tutorial pices from here and there, but being able to code an entire "thought" into existance. You'll know you're there when you can code an entire simple game (say minesweeper) retire the code for 6 months, then pick it up and be able to completely read and understand what you wrote. Comments as sooo important in professional level coding.
2. Get a job as a game tester/scripter/whatever at a game company close to you. Even an intern (free) position will give you extremely valuable experience. I cannot emphasis how much one will learn doing this sort of thing for even a few months over summer break. You'll also have a "in" at the company where you worked.
3. For education, I recommend not getting a game programming degree. This is too specialized and may cause you problems later in your career. Go get a bachelors in software engineering. This is a much more rounded education and also opens doors for you outside of game programming. Even if you were to take a job outside of game development for a couple years to gain experience, you could always come back and be a very strong hire.
4. Back to #1, write a completed, fully functional game and make it part of your portfolio. Rarely do we see completed games from potential development canidates, and when we do, we generally hire :)
Hope this helps. Good luck in the career you choose!
#58599 - SevenString - Mon Oct 24, 2005 8:17 pm
I'll second what Miked0801 said, especially about coding your own game.
I got my first job in the games industry working as a graphics tool programmer, and doing some work on the actual game coding, all because I walked in with a kickass demo. I really had no other pre-existing qualifications, so it was the demo alone that sold the company on my abilities.
From there, it has only been onward and upward, but I'll be the first to loudly trumpet the idea that you can get in ABOVE the ground floor if you have something real to show that you know what you're doing.
And Miked0801 is right about re-hashed demo code. Don't do it. Create your work from scratch so that you know the work from the inside out. Because it's yours.
True Story:
I was the technical director and and software tools manager for a major games company, and a guy came in to interview to work for me. He presented some of "his" work, along with source code, not realizing that the work he was presenting was work that I had done as a consultant for his previous employer. I let him go on for a while about the 3D Engine and tools that "he" had written, but finally pointed to some places in the header files where he had forgotten to replace my name with his own.
Needless to say, he didn't get the job.
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#58600 - poslundc - Mon Oct 24, 2005 8:25 pm
| Miked0801 wrote: |
| 3. For education, I recommend not getting a game programming degree. This is too specialized and may cause you problems later in your career. Go get a bachelors in software engineering. This is a much more rounded education and also opens doors for you outside of game programming. Even if you were to take a job outside of game development for a couple years to gain experience, you could always come back and be a very strong hire. |
I have mixed feelings on this one... although my engineering degree has done me some political good and opened doors that a more game-programming focussed diploma couldn't have done (especially as a Canadian who requires a permit to work in the US), I certainly didn't learn most of the game-programming skills I possess from it... I had to go learn those on my own.
On the other hand, it has given me a solid foundation in theory and practice that many other programmers lack... however, these are things that are more useful in keeping your job than they are getting your foot in the door. Many diploma programmes help you out with internships, job-placement and the like, whereas my university pretty much cast us out on the street after we had paid our dues and graduated with our shiny engineering degrees.
It would be adviseable to do some research on whatever institute you are considering attending, and see both how strong the programme is and how well the graduates fare.
It's a tremendous oversimplification, but if I wanted to lump-sum things I'd probably say: diploma in game development == better for getting a job; bachelor's degree in engineering == better for building a career. The diploma helps you hit the ground running but will lose steam quickly if you aren't good at furthering your own growth as a professional. The degree will require that you do a lot of independent study and practical work in order to be competetive early on, but will serve you better over the long term.
Dan.
#58604 - tepples - Mon Oct 24, 2005 9:29 pm
| Miked0801 wrote: |
| 4. Back to #1, write a completed, fully functional game and make it part of your portfolio. Rarely do we see completed games from potential development canidates, and when we do, we generally hire :) |
You didn't in my case, despite Tetanus On Drugs :( Or should I have made games in multiple genres before applying?
Besides, what happens when a particular game system becomes obsolete, and its successor isn't cracked for homebrew? Once the Game Boy Evolution comes out, will HR care that a candidate has developed games for GBA and NES?
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#58628 - Touchstone - Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:10 pm
| tepples wrote: |
| Besides, what happens when a particular game system becomes obsolete, and its successor isn't cracked for homebrew? Once the Game Boy Evolution comes out, will HR care that a candidate has developed games for GBA and NES? |
I would think so, yes. As long as you can prove that you can program games I think you're fine, and supplying a complete GBA game in five years from now will probably do that. Besides, it's not likely that you will stop programming entirely so you'll probably have some new demos to show for yourself.
I'm not sure what it's like in the US but in the UK where I work it's really hard to find decent programmers to hire. Decent meaning a combination of being a good programmer and a nice guy. If you're gonna spend 8 hours a day with someone you'd want that someone to be fairly easy going and as a ead programmer you have to be able to make him do what you want to in one way or another.
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#58631 - SevenString - Mon Oct 24, 2005 11:19 pm
Hey, Touchstone... can I work at your company? 8 hrs a day! Cool! That's like a vacation. :D
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#58663 - gladius - Tue Oct 25, 2005 4:44 am
Once again Miked0801 has excellent advice. I'd only like to emphasize the importance of a great demo and (if possible) a positive presence in the homebrew scene related to the system you want to be in.
You'd be surprised to see how many companies look at these types of forums for good candidates and that will give you a great leg up. Getting noticed is 95% of the battle once your technical skills are up to scratch. That is how I first got my leg in the door, with a small mode7 demo in the early days of the gba scene. Good luck!
#58814 - sgeos - Wed Oct 26, 2005 11:27 am
| tepples wrote: |
| Miked0801 wrote: | | 4. Back to #1, write a completed, fully functional game and make it part of your portfolio. Rarely do we see completed games from potential development canidates, and when we do, we generally hire :) |
You didn't in my case, despite Tetanus On Drugs :( Or should I have made games in multiple genres before applying? |
They passed me up too. I'm in Japan now, and I have a Korean friend who is a few years older than I am. He gave me some really good advice, something that I should have realized on my own, but I didn't.
The more you interview, the better you get at it. Every time you interview, pass or fail, you get better at it. You are most certainly going to fail your first few interviews, so don't worry about the companies that passed you up for now. Pick up and move on until you are good enough at interviewing to get hired. If you really want to work there, apply a year or three later.
So far I've failed 3 interviews at Japanese games companies. While mildly discouraging, that is to be expected. I figure that if I fail ~17 more interviews in Japanese I should be able to get hired. If not, I'll know why I can't get hired. (Aside: I really need the highest level of Japanese Proficiency Certification, and I need to improve my Japanese in general.)
Funny thing is, before I came to Japan, I got hired a Pizza Hut. Silly part time job. That is the ONLY time I interviewed when I felt I asked all the right questions and generally did superbly. I really wish I had that interview on tape. (Especially after majorly botching two interviews in a row. =)
Keep trying and you'll get something eventually.
Good luck!
-Brendan
#58836 - thegamefreak0134 - Wed Oct 26, 2005 5:20 pm
Wow. The first couple of posts were confusing, but I think I have it. Basically, you have to, in some way or another, prove to the company that you are perfectly capable of doing the things they will ask you to do programming wise? I also appreciate the advise on degree choice. I seriously was going to go for the game development. A thought on that:
I already have a good knowledge of programming skills in general. I understand programming logic, but have a hard time (well, until I found this site) with registers and memory locations and such. My biggest learning curve is actually programming games more than programming in general. I started out programming on a TI-82 graphing calculator where you drew actual lines and pixels to make images. (man i had fun with that.) I dunno, I'll talk to some people here on that matter.
Thing is, if i'm going to spend all of this time working on my programming skills, I might as well try to make a career out of it, cause it's clearly what I enjoy doing.
Thanks!
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