So, what do I do to get a game made?

[Kitsune]

I've got game concepts.  I think they're good.  So the only thing standing between me and fame and fortune are minor details like the need for programmers, artists, modelers, animators, musicians, sound effect techs, voice actors, and big piles of money.  Well, maybe not fame and fortune, but I'll take a rewarding career in a creative role instead and be happy with it.  This begs the question of where wannabe game producers go to get the funding and staff they need to go from concept to finished game.  After all, if those Phantom jackasses can get millions of dollars in investor funding, I think I deserve the resources to make a game or two.

[Samwise]

[schild]

Go go Sinfest.

[Kitsune]

What about someone else's soul?

[Sairon]

One option could be to go public with it, then it would be open for review by everyone and if it really is good it would most likely get noticed.

[Yoru]

Game shops are pretty much like any other small enterprise at the entrepreneurial stage. Think hard. Start reading the stuff here. Maybe go take a class or buy some books on business management, or ask any entrepreneurial friends for pointers. Be prepared to risk and lose a lot of your own money, time and tears.

[Viin]

I think the best way for an indie dev to get into the non-indie industry is by making a popular mod for one of the popular engines out there (most notably, half-life).

Or just make it and sell it on your website. If it sells well enough, then a publisher might be interested in taking over.

[Stephen Zepp]

Not trying to directly insult you or anything, don't take it that way...but in game dev, and especially indie game dev, ideas are worthless--it's execution that counts.

I'm not talking all the bells and whistles, and dozens of levels, hundreds of production quality models, and a sound track to win an MTV award, but programmer art and just enough visuals to demonstrate your concepts in a playable demo works wonders in getting attention from people.

There are also tons of indie game dev sites with lots of advice. Check out places like:

GameDev.net
DevMaster.net

GameProducer.net also has a small collection of links that could be useful.

I can't stress my first point enough however--get your ideas into a prototype that can demonstrate playability and fun factor, and you'll get a lot more attention than you can imagine!

[Kitsune]

Oh, I'm well aware of the worth of ideas, having dealt now and then with people who had 'a great idea for a book/movie/series...'.  One percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

[Soln]

Stephen has some good advice. 

Likewise, I'd make sure you record your ideas well.  Sounds dumb, but taking the time to analytically write out your thoughts frequently helps me in my non-gaming software job.  It also provides a valuable history -- what you thought 6 months ago may change, or you might be repeating a problem you defined already.  Also, it's good personal encouragement to see your own catalog of ideas grow.  Finally, when you want to approach someone you trust for development or art design or eventually seed funding, you'll need to convince them that part of the assets you can bring (presuming you can put in some cash, equipment, sweat and experience/skill) is a well documented design.  It may not be worth anything market wise, but having something semi-polished and tangible is better than ideas in just your head.  Shows you at least took the time to design as well as you could.

If you're not a developer your best route is to get job experience in those other aspects of the business that are also important (Product Management, Art, Project Management, etc.).  Also, it's very worthwhile to get a good sense of the business environment, not just current game design trends or issues.  I started a thread on market data that might help.  Good luck.

[Yegolev]

1. Code it in text
3. Patch in graphics
5. Profit

[Heresiarch]

Not trying to directly insult you or anything, don't take it that way...but in game dev, and especially indie game dev, ideas are worthless--it's execution that counts.

It's not really that ideas are worthless, it's that an awesome idea and $1.07 gets you a double cheeseburger. Without execution, ideas are worthless, and the execution is 99% of a project. Generally us programmer-types are wannabe designers as well, so it's grossly difficult for someone with nothing to offer other than a few good ideas to even get volunteer programmers to help him out. I think ideas can be extremely valuable, making the difference between an unplayable game and a big hit -- once all the sound, music, modelling, texturing, level building, script writing, quest creation, production, and facilities people have been paid.

I'll also suggest the mod route to aspiring designers. Your other option is to learn a useful skill, so that you can contribute your game ideas and art or programming to an indie project.

[Venkman]

The execution part is critical because it shows you know what's required to deliver your vision. That's why so much of the game industry was built on the sweat of programmers and asset creators. It's why so many other creation-based industries were as well.

We learn by doing.

The mod route is great advice. Even if you can't get the "perfect" whatever (graphics, sounds, etc.), you can still develop a proof-of-concept piece, throw it at a few people, and pull down the critiques that follow.

After you get a good feel for that, I'd recommend getting Flash. Unless you're looking to dive right into a $20mil MMOG, you can executed basic ideas fairly effectively in Flash. It's not just about the programming ActionScript though, but about the pacing and of course, the assets and content.

Beyond, it depends on what your first two steps produced. But most importantly, as it sounds like you already know, this isn't about one guy in a garage building a game. Unless your Carmack, Jobs, and Leonardo all in one, you're going to need to work with other people at some point :). Games are ideas, execution, project management, and vision management all in one.

[Soln]

After you get a good feel for that, I'd recommend getting Flash.

Flash is much more than a prototyping or marketing tool now, exactly.  Great advice.  There are some wonderful games with it (check out Experimental Gameplay Project).  Rag Doll Kung Fu is my favorite indie commercial one.

[Stephen Zepp]

After you get a good feel for that, I'd recommend getting Flash.

Flash is much more than a prototyping or marketing tool now, exactly.  Great advice.  There are some wonderful games with it (check out Experimental Gameplay Project).  Rag Doll Kung Fu is my favorite indie commercial one.

Personally, I'd recommend Torque Game Builder /duck

[Samwise]

[Evangolis]

My initial, flip response was, "First make 20 million dollars."  Except that it isn't just flip, it is also wrong.  Even if you had enough money to wrap your ideas in, to do the gaming version of a vanity publication, you still wouldn't get 'your' game.  And from what I see, even the heads of successful studios have trouble getting 'their' game made.

Take something Alex Seropian said at a Stubbs the Zombie postmortem a few months back.  In Stubbs, you play a zombie, eating brains and killing people to save the girl.  While shopping the idea, he went to EA, who listened to his pitch, and then came back a little while later with a suggestion.  How about this, they said.  How about, instead of being a zombie that kills people, you be a guy who kills zombies.

Eventually, he got Stubbs made, to moderate acclaim and mild controversy.  All it took was a wildly successful career in game design, tens of millions of dollars, and years of his life.  Even around here, many folks have never heard of Stubbs the Zombie, never mind played it.  There is what it takes to get your game made.  And what you get for it.

So you are probably not going to get your game made.  You can, through modding, get a setting or scenario made.  Even that isn't easy.  The creators of Lazarus spent years working in their spare time to create something that earned them a certain amount of production credit.  The lead got an industry job, which I presume was at least partly a consequence of producing Lazarus.

You can probably get a job in the industry, although you will need actual skills, and, as said above, having an actual portfolio of game-related work will be of immense help.  Also, most of the folks I know who got into the industry did grunt work first, and developed useful skills, and worked hard.  Two out of three wasn't enough, and luck mattered too.

So if you want to make a specific game, then the mod/indie route is probably your best bet.  And if you want a job in the industry, that is probably still your best bet.

So the answer to your question, in the end, is really just an advertising tag line.  Just do it.  And expect nothing for your labors but the joy those labors give you.

[HaemishM]

Take something Alex Seropian said at a Stubbs the Zombie postmortem a few months back.  In Stubbs, you play a zombie, eating brains and killing people to save the girl.  While shopping the idea, he went to EA, who listened to his pitch, and then came back a little while later with a suggestion.  How about this, they said.  How about, instead of being a zombie that kills people, you be a guy who kills zombies.

GODDAMN, THEY ARE BRILLIANT! THEY'LL MAKE A MINT!

[Cheddar]

http://www.theworserside.com/gamedesign101.avi

[Krakrok]

I recommend BYOND (see thread). I prototyped an persistant multiplayer clone of Wasteland w/ user buildable "base" areas in a few hours.

[koboshi]

The execution part is critical because it shows you know what's required to deliver your vision. That's why so much of the game industry was built on the sweat of programmers and asset creators. It's why so many other creation-based industries were as well.

{...}

After you get a good feel for that, I'd recommend getting Flash. Unless you're looking to dive right into a $20mil MMOG, you can executed basic ideas fairly effectively in Flash. It's not just about the programming ActionScript though, but about the pacing and of course, the assets and content.

 [I have taken the above quote as a quotable version of the consensus of this thread, and attack it as such. When I refer to it I refer not to Darniaq's opinion specifically but to the viewpoint which he presents]


 I would say that you have just outlined a pet peeve of mine, but that would be like a southern black man calling Jim Crow laws a pet peeve. I’ll begin the tirade with the first point.

 You can’t get a job as a chef until you first show that you have grown vegetables, raised cattle, pigs, and chickens, distilled spirits, and made your own salt.

 I hope that the statement above causes you to pause and say I didn’t mean to say that. The truth is that specialization is a good thing, the ability to take the work of others and add value to it is the basis of civilizations growth since the agricultural revolution. It isn't feasible for a chemist to be required, in all there endeavors, to locate sources of, extract, and refine all compounds and elements they wish to operate with. In the more creative (and applicable) endeavors, screenwriters are not routinely asked to supply with their scripts a number of short films they have created on their own, but rather are asked for their script, or in some cases only their treatment. Why don’t we ask screenwriters to prove they have the ability to direct, act, run light and sound, etc.? Because that’s what actors, directors, and crew are for. Sure the screenwriter who can produce such a thing is an interesting candidate and more power to them in their endeavors, but it isn’t required by studios and the best scriptwriters are rarely so well prepared.

 So why the hell do we demand that those who wish to play comparable roles in the game industry be able to code, debug, illustrate, render, and sell a full game when all they claim to be skilled at is the more conceptual design aspects.  The answer is a mix between the frat mentality of, ‘they made me do it to get in so you should have to too’, and the old fart mentality of, ‘in my day I did everything, in machine code, on a computer I made from scratch, uphill, both ways, through the snow!’ The truth is, no-budget-one-man games are a niche market, and an incredibly saturated one. Besides what does my ability to create a flash stick figure boxing game have to do with my ability to write a cohesive nonlinear storyline, or an effective and stable MMO economy? Didily Shit! This brings me to the second point...

  If you think you can make a better 20 million dollar MMOG lets see it!

  The real problem with this mentality is the idea: if a guy comes to you with an idea for a game, he would be a better candidate if he had implemented those game concepts into a game he had produced on his own. Not only isn’t this necessarily true, it may be that the opposite is true. Development of a game (especially in one's spare time) can take years. That’s time not spent on designing. Moreover there is the study of such technical nuances as learning a proprietary language, etc. which take time and effort to learn and master. More time misspent on tangential or non-applicable skills. To put it another way who is the better chef, the student of a four year culinary academy, or a student of a four year agriculture school? The latter may know how to select the best ingredients but the former knows how to select the best ingredients and knows how to prepare them.

  Now to set the record straight I thought that the original post was so naive in tone that it had to be a joke, or just flame bait, but general question posed, ‘how does one break into game design?’ is a vexing one, if a poorly represented one. Here’s another one, ‘why in a forum where posters routinely rage against the dearth of new ideas and concepts in video games always spout the business as usual approach to game design, and either laugh, deride, or infantilize those who wish nothing more than to fix that flaw?’

[Heresiarch]

Summary: It works that way cuz, chances are, you suck.

Why don’t we ask screenwriters to prove they have the ability to direct, act, run light and sound, etc.?

1) I think the quality of a film can more easily be discerned from a treatment or screenplay than it can from a game design doc. Even then, not really. Studio execs saying "this zombie thing is great, but instead of the protagonist being a zombie, what if he fought zombies?" prolly happens in the film industry as much as it does in the games industry. From what I've seen of screenwriting, sometimes the theme of the first screenplay is a casualty of the production process. Which brings me to:

2) Except for a handful of directors (I'm thinking Cameron specifically), films are held fairly close to a budget, and a director needs to know how expensive stunts, actors, setbuilding, and equipment costs, as well as have a general idea of how everyone else does their job. I don't think it's similar to asking a pharmacist to know where to collect his own herbs, but instead asking a doctor to have an idea of how much a prescription will cost before he writes it. Designers often write scripts or build 3D worlds, both similar to the tasks of programmers and artists. A designer can say "and lo, let there be good AI," and hurrah for him, but that's just fantasy. The heart of a game like Oblivion isn't something that can be thrown down on a 100-page screenplay; a huge portion of that game is complex systems designed and developed by teams. Same for WoW -- there's no way that one person could put together a 100-page document that describes that game in adequate detail that everything else is just execution.

Games are an interactive medium, not one-way like film and TV. There's far more back-n-forth in the design of a game, and the success of the product isn't just good execution of the design, but the compromises that happen along the way, and what happens to the design when you put real code, real assets, and real people into it. I really think a good game is far harder to design than a movie. I think a lot of the success is dumb luck (I put id's success here). That which isn't dumb luck is the product of a huge amount of effort (Blizzard tries and retries and retries).

Summary: it takes a team. "It's like Warcraft, but in space!" isn't worth the pixels it's printed on.

3) I'll stand by my previous post: if you want to break into the games industry as a designer, the reality is that you're gonna hafta be able to do something other than write the phrase "it's like Warcraft, but in space". I'd guess that there's maybe two people in the games industry, with money, that could read a game proposal doc and have a good idea if the game would be worth the investment -- but I have no idea who those two people are. There are enough stupid angel investors out there willing to throw $5M at dumb ideas, but, even those people usually want to see a proof-of-concept or some kind of portfolio that suggests that you're not Ed Wood. Usually. But hoping to find one of those idiots that's just gonna hand you $5M without any previous work, proof of conpect, or portfolio? That's what the lottery is for.

The answer is a mix between the frat mentality of, ‘they made me do it to get in so you should have to too’, and the old fart mentality of, ‘in my day I did everything, in machine code, on a computer I made from scratch, uphill, both ways, through the snow!’

One reason for this frat mentality is that once you've been in the real world (you know, doing something well enough that someone's actually willing to pay for it) you realize how hopelessly clueless recent college graduates are. You are not going to land a job as a lead designer, major film director, head architect, lead biomedical researcher, head surgeon, lead defense lawyer, shop foreman, lead buyer, CEO, or other senior position the day after you graduate from college. You start in the mailroom, or washing dishes. It works that way cuz, chances are, you suck. I don't care how often some high-school teacher told you you were special, they were wrong. You're not unique. You don't have great ideas. The process of making a real product and convincing hundreds of thousands of people to drop $50 on it is beyond the ability of the vast, vast majority of kids who want to get their game made.

It sucks for the handful of people who could do something with the opportunity, but that's life.

The truth is, no-budget-one-man games are a niche market, and an incredibly saturated one. Besides what does my ability to create a flash stick figure boxing game have to do with my ability to write a cohesive nonlinear storyline, or an effective and stable MMO economy?

OK, I'll bite, what are your qualifications for creating an effective and stable MMO economy? Why should I give you $20M? Or even just the $50,000 or so to do the prototyping and research to figure out if I should invest the remaning $19.95M?

No, heck with that, why would I even care about an effective and stable MMO economy? WoW seems to be doing just fine with Mudflation. And grinding.

[Kail]

(stuff)

I think you might have accidentally deleted your suggestion for Kitsune; I'm having trouble finding it.

[koboshi]

"It's like Warcraft, but in space!" isn't worth the pixels it's printed on.

In an industry where intellectual property is all a designer has to offer and companies like Microsoft often file for broad reaching and poorly defined copy writes in an attempt to catch or block poorly documented IPs it’s difficult for a designer to truly express the full range and depth of their ideas in forums such as these.  To post an idea is to say essentially either I don’t value this idea, I haven’t the resources to implement this idea (i.e. I don’t make games), or I wish so desperately for this solution to be implemented that I will forfeit my ownership of it. Other than those rare elaborations on ideas the best your likely to get out of a good designer is an overly simplified slightly distorted version of their ideas. Unfortunately this can be very similar in form to naive pontifications like I would make ATITD but better or the previously cited statements

Summary: It works that way cuz, chances are, you suck.

We, collectively, attempt to keep our investments out of the hands of the truly foolish. That said, game design is not exclusive in their demand for those who DON'T suck. So why should game devs beyond all others require such a gauntlet of pre-reqs.

You are not going to land a job as a lead designer, major film director, head architect, lead biomedical researcher, head surgeon, lead defense lawyer, shop foreman, lead buyer, CEO, or other senior position the day after you graduate from college.

 But in all but the first career it is commonplace to be hired out of college (or postgraduate institution) as a indie film director, architect's apprentice, researcher, intern, associate of a law firm, mechanic, buyer, or manager. All of which are closer in skill sets and responsibilities to their respective senior position than is code monkey to lead game designer.

 Perhaps you think that a comparison can be made between the medical intern and the previous experience requirements of most game design jobs. True both require that the applicant for a position be well equipped with the real world experience of their profession, but the analogy breaks down after that. To make the experiences truly analogous one would have to make the act of failing to implement code analogues to killing one or more humans. Furthermore the position of intern is a paid position in a heretofore operating facility. To be analogous to the requirements on game designer hopefuls the doctors would have to wander the streets hopping to pass an emergency appendectomy on their way to work at their McJob.

 Having standards and prerequisites is not the problem, it's not having them. Instead most companies just demand that their game designers spring fully qualified from the thigh of Zeus. The old "I need skills to get the job, I need a job to get the skills" isn’t a chicken and egg problem it’s a sterile chicken problem, or more accurately a mule problem. The problem is that instead of to selecting from a pool of qualified applicants producers attempt to genetically modify coders and managers leaving designers who can’t reproduce. Another analogy would be hiring construction workers or business managers as architects. why cant we just have architects?

OK, I'll bite, what are your qualifications for creating an effective and stable MMO economy? Why should I give you $20M?

I don’t have any qualifications... no one does. There are no such qualifiers in the field, graduates of game design programs are less employable then generic comp-sci college grads, and there is a stigma associated with such “qualified” programs that doesn’t appear to be lifting anytime in the near future. There is no standard of competence testing in the field of game design, no Bar, no Boards, no qualifications. Finally if I had a stable economic model how could I prove that I could implement it other than by creating it, of course if I could do that I wouldn’t need you would I.

 So how do I prove that I am qualified to design games or parts thereof? That’s the question. And the answer is not to prove that I can code, or market an indie game, or beat the sword master, or find the lost treasure of Melee Island, or any other Jungian hero quest to prove my self. So unless your answer doesn’t involve learning non applicable skills and producing flashy but ultimately useless demo reels then SHUT THE FUCK UP!

 here's where we get to the real heart of the matter, if you think that a programmer is better qualified to tell stories, that an artist is better qualified to create logically sound social interactivity structures (ie economies), or that a money manager is better qualified to make good gameplay, than a designer specifically trained in such tasks then FUCK OFF. Stop this charade of being in touch with the gamers, slumming it in the rant forums as it were. If you honestly believe that then it’s going to take me approximately eight to ten years before I can get an entry level position with your company (assuming you even have the clout to order pencils much less the responsibility of hiring applicants) then what the fuck do I care what you have to say? Fuck, I can figure out a way to get a job within that time period. While you’re suggesting that I learn Qbasic and Pascal why not tell me to learn air conditioning repair or high finance so I can earn the money to make the game my damn self.

 To state the same point more scientifically I'll quote Occam's razor, one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything. If your theory is that to be a game designer I must first qualify as a coder, artist, producer, and salesman I say that your theory is not likely to be the most efficient and is so convoluted as to be analogous to a gerrymandering of your data into a proof. i.e. this is how you did it so that’s how it’s done. You have not qualified yourself only stated that you happen to be a proven data point. By that logic bill gates could say that you must be white to program operating systems, or Wilt Chamberlin could say that to be good at basketball you must have lots and lots of sex.

I think you might have accidentally deleted your suggestion for Kitsune; I'm having trouble finding it.

I am not making a suggestion I am re-phrasing and re-emphasizing the question because in over fifteen "suggestions" I have seen nothing of value and I want this question answered.

[Sairon]

During a course I had at uni we were supposed to create a gdd and try to pitch to a jury consisting of execs from the industry, all in groups and in the period of 3 months. 1 team devoted a truckload of time on their gdd, and even if I didn't find the game they presented all that impressive, their gdd obviously were. After everybody had pitched their game to the jury the CEO of Massive Entertainment offered the guy who wrote the gdd a job as a game designer on the spot. Okay, so it wasn't normal circumstances, but they had nothing playable to show whatsoever, no prototyping.

[schild]

That's what's known as beating the odds.

[Heresiarch]

Let my back up a bit, cuz Kitsune's question isn't what we're answering here. I'm answering "what is the most likely path by which a strong candidate can get to the position of lead designer on a signifigant project?" I'm ignoring the corporate-vs-indie issues about having to sell your soul to get a $20M budget.

The just-enough-programming to write a Flash game is, I think, on par with the skill level needed to write in-game scripts, and I don't think it's too far out of line to ask an aspiring designer to learn that. Combined with the fact that the best way to demonstrate skill is to use that skill, and since producing a game requires a minimal amount of art and scripting, and since getting others to create original material for free is hard -- it follows that learning a bit about one or the other will accelerate getting that first demo built. Among other things, learning these disciplines shows a work ethic and determination that is very attractive to (some) employers.

I'm not saying get a Full Sail degree. I'm saying, if you want someone to give you $20M to make a game, you're going to have to justify it to them. That's a long road, and I think the easiest first step is a mod, Flash game, or the like.

If your theory is that to be a game designer I must first qualify as a coder, artist, producer, and salesman I say that your theory is not likely to be the most efficient and is so convoluted as to be analogous to a gerrymandering of your data into a proof.

Note added emphasis. This is a good point, and I'm glad that you brought it up so that no-one thinks that is what I was trying to say.

We, collectively, attempt to keep our investments out of the hands of the truly foolish. That said, game design is not exclusive in their demand for those who DON'T suck. So why should game devs beyond all others require such a gauntlet of pre-reqs.

Game designers (not devs) aren't alone here. An aspiring coder needs a 4-year degree or an extremely good demo to get hired, even into entry-level positions. Since demos take less than four years and the attendant tuition, it's more in line to what is asked of aspiring designers. That coder is gonna need to steal some art and do a bit of game design to get his demo done. I see this all the time. It's even got a name ("programmer art"). Artists probably have the cleanest application process, but they're also generally viewed as the most expendable of employees at a game company.

Another analogy would be hiring construction workers or business managers as architects. why cant we just have architects?

But we do. They have grueling 5-year degrees. The equivalent for game designers is a Full Sail degree and then four more years crunching as a junior design "apprentice." But I thought we were talking about Joe Gamer, off the street, with a day job or McJob, that wants to get his game made without spending five years.

So how do I prove that I am qualified to design games or parts thereof? That’s the question. And the answer is not to prove that I can code, or market an indie game, or beat the sword master, or find the lost treasure of Melee Island, or any other Jungian hero quest to prove my self. So unless your answer doesn’t involve learning non applicable skills and producing flashy but ultimately useless demo reels then SHUT THE FUCK UP!

1) I think the amount of scripting and stolen-art-manipulation that goes into making a Flash demo game isn't as signifigant as you're making it seem. It can be that signifigant, and the more skills that you bring to a multi-person demo project, the larger and more complex it can be. It depends on whether your goal is to score some VC or angel funding, or if you're willing (as a first step) to take a job as a junior level designer. Even for that junior level designer position, tho, there's thousands of rabid fanbois that you have to somehow beat out in order to land the job, and we're back to demonstrating that you're not just a rabid fanboi yourself.

2) Fun, working systems demonstrate skill orders of magnitude more effectively than documents. It's grossly difficult to determine the worth of a game design idea on paper alone. If you really want to get a job as a designer, then learning an "irrelevant" skill is going to do a lot for you. Your choice. You can rail about the injustices of the world all you want, but if everyone knew how to demonstrate good game ideas without all this other work, we'd have a lot more awesome games out there. The fact that schlock still gets produced says that it's not common knowledge. I definitely don't know how to do it. Until these mysteries are solved, either enroll at DigiPen or lern2skript.

Cuz the only other option is having artist and coder friends willing to implement your game idea for you, and as I said previously in this thread, I think that's harder than doing it yourself.

if you think that a programmer is better qualified to tell stories

I expect that you're addressing others here, but maybe I wasn't clear. My point was that you can make a game demo sooner, cheaper, or with more complexity by doing some non-design tasks yourself. Implicit in that is my belief that making a game demo is the most effective way to communicate your game design skills.

Stop this charade of being in touch with the gamers, slumming it in the rant forums as it were.

But you little people are so much fun in your naivete! Plus my colleagues at the club so love it when I titilate them by recounting my escapades in this backwater.

Just so we're clear here, no, I don't have $20M to offer you. Or $273k, either. Those questions were hypothetical.

P.S. using green text is cheating and kills the joke, so I didn't use it.

[Heresiarch]

I am not making a suggestion I am re-phrasing and re-emphasizing the question because in over fifteen "suggestions" I have seen nothing of value and I want this question answered.

So back to Kitsune's post:

I've got game concepts. Swell, so does everyone else.

I think they're good. Meh, I had a rant here. Short form: getting money is all about convincing someone with money that you are a worthwhile risk to them. Just saying those words should make it self-evident how to go about doing that.

1) Find someone with money. Go to conferences. Meet people with capital to spend. Go to fund-raising seminars. Hang out with rich people in your spare time.

2) Learn how to demostrate that your ideas are worthwhile through success and influence.

3) Profit.

So the only thing standing between me and fame and fortune are minor details like the need for programmers, artists, modelers, animators, musicians, sound effect techs, voice actors, and big piles of money. So obviously this isn't a serious question.

Well, maybe not fame and fortune, but I'll take a rewarding career in a creative role instead and be happy with it. See some of the links off of this thread for comments on how "rewarding" careers in the games industry are. It seems to me that Matt Mihaly has the most rewarding job among all of the commentators in those threads.

This begs the question of where wannabe game producers go to get the funding and staff they need to go from concept to finished game. They don't. Mark Jacobs sold his soul (kinda) to make DAOC so that he could make Romans in Space, but then that got cancelled. And that would otherwise be the best example of how to go from wannabe to making your dream game. So unless your dream game is a text MUD, you're gonna need to win the lottery or become very good at something other than game design. Even R*ph, Praised Be His Name, complains about the limitations imposed on him at SOE.

After all, if those Phantom jackasses can get millions of dollars in investor funding, I think I deserve the resources to make a game or two. I think it's generally regarded that it was Marketing, not Technology, that got them millions in funding.

So to answer Kitsune's question, all you need to do is meet rich people and convince them that you know what you're doing. This is so blindingly simple that I'm not sure why we're belaboring the point.

[Krakrok]

{jack of all trades} {old boys club} {niche games}

Very few people have the will to make shit happen on their own. ATITD, Mount & Blade, and Eternal Lands come to mind of people who had the will to see it through (and in all three cases the art was outsourced.. or at least insourced). If you're not making the indie game for yourself then you're making it for the wrong reasons. If you luck out and your shit gets wildly popular then you win.

The real problem with the game industry and breaking into it is that the tools that are available are geared towards creating static content which is a dead end. Every new static game is it's own little dead end old boys club.

‘why in a forum where posters routinely rage against the dearth of new ideas and concepts in video games always spout the business as usual approach to game design, and either laugh, deride, or infantilize those who wish nothing more than to fix that flaw?’

The monkeysphere doesn't like it when one of the monkeys tries to move up a rank (loser club). The rank above you doesn't want you to move up into their own rank either (old boys club). This is evident in many "communities" throughout history.

[Margalis]

Find someone who can help you realize your dreams and convince *them* that it is worth putting some time into. I don't mean bigwigs or large corporations, I mean some friends of friends with some art and/or programming skills.