How To Start A Gaming Business

[Unknown_99 0]

Well from what I know the best way to gather people to help among game design is actually being apart of an institute that specializes within the gaming industry. It's hard to find programmers, especially since most of them want a guaranteed pay every week. Still starting a gaming company is expensive you probably will need some funds on your hands to commence the operation.

[Picc84 0]

There was a place near my house that opened up not to long ago. Where a guy bought maybe 20 Alienware computers and set them up with headsets and Battlefield games and such. Where he hosted games and we all played on a LAN network and it was real fun because we used to go after school and just have massive wars. You can maybe look into something of this sort?

[OneMinute 0]

Eh, i wished there was a special kind of bus with alienware computers in it, along with headsets and games (stacked on shelves as well) and the bus'd go around, and remain where it is if there is anyone playing inside. The best way to earn money lol as you would have to just pay for the vehicle and computers (road tax included)

[Caius 0]

I kind wrote this in another group first, but...Well, here goes. (I am not doing this just for points, this may be helpful to you if you mean to start a game making business, a shoppe is different).As an avid gamer loosely familiar with the industry, don't expect to develop games of any graphical level aproaching HALO or COD4, Spore, Legend of Zelda, or Final Fantasy from scratch. High-profile games currently require companies of hundreds in varied areas, especially software encoding (so C++ is a very important start) and legions of debuggers and some testers. A company of this type is valued in the millions of of USD or Euro and takes a long while to grow.Naturally I don't assume you to get to a point like that from nothing but dreams, skill, and startup without due time. I reccomend you definitely begin working on smaller titles for PC, but so many of those are of terrible quaility so you will have to distinguish yourselves by story, gameplay, or, here something only come to fruition and complexity recently and a huge draw on the world: complexity or variety in customization. You could also make a name by starting up an online MMO with more of these feature, though I caution against it.Well, here is my advice to you: You MUST know mathematics to the point of advanced algebra at least and keep a good work ethic for it, but here is the best shot for game makers today: college. Even though colleges like MIT would be the best you should go for a recognized game design school; two examples of which are Digipen in Seatle, Washington and Full Sail in... Orlando? I think its Orlando, Florida. Both are in the US, but that is no big deal. Note: It also helps your games if you have an art department for texture/character and a physics group.From a college like this you likely would want to be hired by a major or minor gaming company, like say, EA, or even one smaller (and less restrictive of unproven designers). Gain experience and work on ideas. If you're good enough you would one day have the experience needed to join a company you admire or gain a group to do your own Director bidding. Even as a non-director in a company you can be an idea guy for story or gameplay. With experience some of your group and others can break away and form a new company or a newly named subcontractor or department of a larger one. Yes, this takes time. But from this experience you can break off at any point. This is just the safe route and is more likely to get you fed.With just C++, an artist with 2 and 3d image editing and creation skill, some more language (another important one is slipping my mind because I am not familiar) and some more debugging time you can make a decent, or even exceptional PC game with a small budget and company small to the point of non-existance. You will need talent, but some games began as online products.Well, if you do this, don't make more "adult" PC games unless it really is important to you, because stuff like that has largely clouded out other PC-Online distributed games of, well, a different calibur.I sincerly hope you know, or will know what you are doing, there are quite enough bad games in the world, thank you.Good luck, Sincerely Caius This post has been edited by Caius: Today, 09:40 PMThis was sort of copied but Caius thought you should read it.

Edited January 11, 2008 by Caius (see edit history)

[hitmanblood 0]

I think that you have problem with your data because the data that you are calling on is not in fact connected to the gaming centeres but ather to the production and development of the games for all consoles and of course computer then mobile phones pdas and so on and so on.But for your job that is buisness you are about to start you would need really good connection to the internet then you would need good computers and be ready to update them regularly since you want the latest games be able to run on the comps. Then you would need good spot in the city also permission to sell some drinks and so on would be good to have because you might earn really a lot of money in that way. And other ideas might make your club better then others. Then you might want to make club cards these guys would recieve better prices and so on and so on.

[abhisekjana 0]

Hi All,I was reading the replies and decided to add some of my ideas about making money in game industry.First thing, the game industry in not very big as we think, but there are plenty of opportunities with many constrains. Well, lets talk about the constrains. All the popular games are written in VC++ using Microsoft DirectX components. If you look at the releases, Microsoft is releasing a new IDE almost every year, starting from VS6 - VS.Net 08 and the Microsoft VC++ supported by the IDEs is not always backward compatible and not open source. Side by side they have .Net 1.1 - .Net 3.0 including DirectX 7.X - 10.X.Its very difficult for the developers to learn and implement all the new technologies. If you want to open a Game Company you need to provide a lot of extra effort to train your developers.The GDLC (Game development life cycle) is different than our normal SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle). It has divided into many import parts like 1. Story 2. Feature Creation (Artists) 3.AI 4.Game Engine 5. Core 3D Development(Graphics) 6. Network. Your game might be a flop if any of these does not meet users expectation. I was quite a bit involved in Game Programming using DirectX 9.0c and I believe Game Programming is one of the toughest job in the programming world and you have to highly imaginative to please the gamers. If you have confident you can really do something great but its difficult to stay long in Game industry unless you have a high budget.But, if you can do something that nobody has done before .. you have a great future.Couple of games in mid 90's became very popular just for the innovative ideas .. like Prince of Persia, Doom, wolfenstein Snake etc

[Thingcubed 0]

Well, what I've gathered is that you want to start a business that offers online/LAN games to be played at an hourly rate. There may be some legal issues that you would have to deal with. First off, you would have to ensure that the company that created the game doesn't restrict people from doing this in their EULA. Some companies do (Microsoft/Bungie's Halo is one of them I think). With regards to World of Warcraft which was mentioned earlier, I'm fairly certain that an account is to be used by one person only, not a group of people. Before attempting to start something like this it's very important to do research into the legal restrictions that might apply.

[vikram 0]

hey if you are talking about starting an internet gaming portal than you should have some knowledge of that field may be basic but you should have such knowledge to tackle the day to day affairs of the site.first you need good hosting and a domain of course and than you need some gaming scripts which would make your work far more easier and if you could afford a good advertising before its lunch is a must.

[Amiel 0]

Hah, if it is just gaming industry, why dont you create a gaming networking site where all game updates are there. For example: GameSpotGameSpot has subscription service where money is involved there....

[mahesh2k 0]

Maybe first you should take knowledge of how network games work then try learning how arcade games network like gamespy and other online game servers work.Try learning the network game working and creating mod that let you connect to diff server,this is the palce you want to digg in right.the secret is if you want to be someone find someone who is already done what you did."Mistyped quote apologize" but take it sense you want.

[bredin 0]

im trying to get into the same bussinessit takes many hrs of devotion Good Luck!

[indrazam 0]

hmmm... There are lots of gaming websites on the net today. And it will be hard to compete with them. But if you are an enthusiast (not just in gaming but also in business), then you can start a free games portal. The word "FREE"; because you dont charge people to play any games but you may want to put ads on the pages... But as I said there are too many websites with the same concept already. But there are other things you could do like put forums on your site and maybe chat as you play system or something. (This again requires that you pay a lot of money for the hosting anyway). Good luck!

[Chromazone 0]

hey all im actually starting a game company there are five of us right now and we r working on some stuff to show at gdc

[cayhan 0]

or start your own legal server ! for world of warcraft or gunz online etc.you could gain much $$ if you get many ppl to your own privat server! so you could sell Premium Points , Items etc

[joeblogg 0]

good idea mabhishekjhawar but the amount of money you make out of this is really just the amount of money you are able to put in. the more you put in the more you get out. so you have to make this gaming place a place where people won't just walk by but want to go in. and then a place where they want to go back again. so the prices you charge will have to be resonable because otherwise they won't be coming back.