Re:Why I'm frustrated that I wasn't accepted into Y Combinator.
by vlad on Saturday April 14, 2007 @02:30AM
(#12834)
I'm half asleep right now..
The word on the street is that adventure games are the next big thing in casual games. Not sudoku, or bejeweled. Casual gamers expect more these days. Adventure games are also much harder and take much more time to clone. Finally, you could sell level packs to your customers once your actual product is done, something that you can't do for games with random levels. I think between your web site and the main portals (RealArcade, BigFishGames, Oberon) and your own web site you can start your own niche. Just make sure you can partner with somebody who can create great art, quickly. However, the kind of companies PG wants for YC are ones that can have a reasonable demo after just three months of work, and also those that he knows enough about that he can actually contribute to. In other words, there are millions of things in the digital world one could make money off, but PG (like everybody else) is interested in a subset of them, and no investor who wants to be involved with a project will choose one where you'll be in the corner working on your own thing and he will only play a small role in the fun. (I wouldn't be surprised if helping startups from scratch IS like an adventure game to PG.)
And, actually, Yahoo! could actually buy you considering they are one of the top places for selling casual games. BigFishGames bought a developer in Europe after he came out with 2 or 3 hit games within 1 year, and called it BigFishGames Europe. In other words, the portals are buying developers who can actually create a quality game on a low budget, quickly and repeatedly. When they own the developer, they can put it on the front page and make a lot more profit, such as BigFishGames is doing with their Mystery series of games. But, some people have made a decent living (not millionaires, but livable).
If you want to create adventure games that use the mouse that are easy to get into and want to make about $8-$10 per sale on the portals and about $18 on your web site, go for it. Those are the kinds of games that people want which are also hard to clone, and hard to find a free flash game online to replace. You also have the advantage of creating some IP (character, names, trademarks) to use later, which is hard to do if you're just creating Bejeweled (and for which games will easily find flash games if they don't want to pay for the real versions.)
So, go for it, as long as you are focusing on creating an actual game as soon as possible, and not spending the next 10 months developing a framework for your future game, because that is pointless. Aveyond is not an adventure game but more like an RPG, but it was a good seller (supposedly) and made in Game Maker (which also supports old-school one-screen-at-a-time adventure games.) Just create some kind of an adventure game where you own the IP using Game Maker, then after you are a big success you can port it to XBOX 360 or the Mac. The key is to create a game, not a game framework.
The word on the street is that adventure games are the next big thing in casual games. Not sudoku, or bejeweled. Casual gamers expect more these days. Adventure games are also much harder and take much more time to clone. Finally, you could sell level packs to your customers once your actual product is done, something that you can't do for games with random levels. I think between your web site and the main portals (RealArcade, BigFishGames, Oberon) and your own web site you can start your own niche. Just make sure you can partner with somebody who can create great art, quickly. However, the kind of companies PG wants for YC are ones that can have a reasonable demo after just three months of work, and also those that he knows enough about that he can actually contribute to. In other words, there are millions of things in the digital world one could make money off, but PG (like everybody else) is interested in a subset of them, and no investor who wants to be involved with a project will choose one where you'll be in the corner working on your own thing and he will only play a small role in the fun. (I wouldn't be surprised if helping startups from scratch IS like an adventure game to PG.)
And, actually, Yahoo! could actually buy you considering they are one of the top places for selling casual games. BigFishGames bought a developer in Europe after he came out with 2 or 3 hit games within 1 year, and called it BigFishGames Europe. In other words, the portals are buying developers who can actually create a quality game on a low budget, quickly and repeatedly. When they own the developer, they can put it on the front page and make a lot more profit, such as BigFishGames is doing with their Mystery series of games. But, some people have made a decent living (not millionaires, but livable).
If you want to create adventure games that use the mouse that are easy to get into and want to make about $8-$10 per sale on the portals and about $18 on your web site, go for it. Those are the kinds of games that people want which are also hard to clone, and hard to find a free flash game online to replace. You also have the advantage of creating some IP (character, names, trademarks) to use later, which is hard to do if you're just creating Bejeweled (and for which games will easily find flash games if they don't want to pay for the real versions.)
So, go for it, as long as you are focusing on creating an actual game as soon as possible, and not spending the next 10 months developing a framework for your future game, because that is pointless. Aveyond is not an adventure game but more like an RPG, but it was a good seller (supposedly) and made in Game Maker (which also supports old-school one-screen-at-a-time adventure games.) Just create some kind of an adventure game where you own the IP using Game Maker, then after you are a big success you can port it to XBOX 360 or the Mac. The key is to create a game, not a game framework.