Category Archives: Career Advice
Why Game Publishers Aren’t Interested In Your Game Idea
Back in the early 1980’s, a friend introduced me to her father, a television cameraman, telling him that I worked in the video game industry. “Oh, really?”, he said. “You know, I have an idea for a game.”
“Oh?”, I replied cautiously.
He stopped for a moment to consider whether he should reveal his idea. After a few seconds thought, he said, “Well, I’ll probably never do anything with it.” He then glanced quickly around the room, as if to make sure there weren’t any spies listening in. “You fly around in an airplane, and land at different airports!”
Now, actually, that wasn’t a bad idea, but I had to give him the bad news that his idea was already the basis of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
That wasn’t the last time I’ve had to tell people that they had vastly overestimated the value of their “million dollar game idea.” Over the past three decades, many people have told me that they had an idea for a game and wanted to know if a publisher would be interested in it, and each time I’ve had to give them an unwelcome dose of reality.
Most ideas are not unique, which is one reason why publishers will not accept unsolicited game proposals — the idea may coincidentally be similar to a game the publisher is already be developing. When I had my own company, I opened up a bulky piece of mail to discover that it was an unsolicited game proposal, along with a letter from the author saying that he sent another copy of the proposal to his lawyer — an implied warning that he’d sue me if I stole the idea he had sent me. It so happened that his proposal was very similar to a game my partners had discussed developing, but fortunately we decided not to proceed with it.
Even original game ideas are not that valuable. It’s not all that hard to come up with an idea for a game. One assignment I give my game design students is to come up with 100 game ideas in an hour, and none of them have ever failed to come up with the required number of concepts. The fact is that every game developer has ideas, far more than they can ever hope to make. I have some ideas that I’ve been carrying around in the back of my head for as long as thirty years, waiting for the right opportunity and spare time to develop.
It’s true that some ideas are better than others, but even great ideas have their time and place. When I was a producer at The Walt Disney Company, I pitched an idea based on Walk’s Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. The player, I explained, gathered resources to develop new technologies, and depending on the type of technologies developed, the citizens of the city would become happier and more prosperous. “No one would be interested in a game like that!” was the verdict of my superiors. The next year, Sid Meier came out with Civilization. His idea came at the right time and place, mine did not.
Sid’s implementation of that idea was also much better than what mine would have been. Implementation is everything in business. As this chart from CD Baby founder Derek Silvers indicates, ideas — even brilliant ideas — have very little value by themselves. It’s the execution of ideas that matters, and ideas are just a multiplier for the worth of that execution. Poor or mediocre execution of even the most brilliant idea is worth very little.
Game publishers put such a high value on value on execution that a professional-looking PowerPoint and a business plan (you have done some marketing research to determine the real business potential and value of your concept, haven’t you?) isn’t going to get you a deal in today’s competitive game market. An established game studio can have a hard time getting a deal even with a 300-page Game Design Document, a 100-page Technical Design Document, an Art Bible, and complete schedule and budget. These days, a game publisher wants to see a proof of your ability to execute in the form of a technical and gameplay demo before agreeing to fund a game AAA with an eight-figure budget.
While a cynical person might (rightfully) say that the publisher wants to put all the risk on the developer by having them develop a substantial portion of the game on their own dime, there is another way to look at it: “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”, as Mary Kay Cosmetics founder Mary Kay Ash famously said.
Game publishers aren’t interested in your ideas — they’re interested in your ability to implement them. And that’s why a game industry novice is not going to sell his or her idea to the game industry. If you really want to see your idea get implemented, you are either going to have to fund the development or develop the ability to implement it yourself.
There’s also a third option — the one that most of us in the game industry take. Develop your skills by executing other people’s idea, and maybe, one decade, you’ll get an opportunity convince a publisher to fund its development.
What To Consider Before Getting A Game Degree
Recently I was approached by a local community college looking for instructors to teach students earning an Associates Degree in Game Development, and just last week my wife, a high school teacher, told me that her school was very interested in starting up a game design. In fact, my son took a game development class at his own school. I, of course, teach game production at The Los Angeles Film School, and many of my game industry colleagues now teach game design and development at various colleges and universities throughout the country. Games are increasingly becoming a recognized field of study.
Does that mean that the only way to learn how to make games is by taking a class or pursuing a game degree? No, of course not. There are many ways you can learn game design and development on your own: you can read books such as The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses and Game Coding Complete, visiting websites such as Gamasutra and GameDev.net, watching Extra Credits YouTube videos, download the Unity game engine and going through the tutorials, and/or attend a local game development hobbyist club. All of these resources can give you the knowledge you need to make games.
More so than most other fields, the game development industry is a meritocracy; that is, people are valued according to their skill. Hiring managers at game companies are far more interested in how much skill you have than on how your acquired that skill. They determine a candidate’s skill level in part by taking with them and may also give them a test or assignment to perform, but they mainly do so by looking at their portfolio of past work.
However, many of the large game studios and employers do require candidates have a Bachelors Degree in a relevant field of study. For programmer candidates, a degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering is most helpful. Artists should go for art or animation degrees, while audio specialists should pursue degrees that will teach them music composition or sound design. As for game designers, I’ve known game designers whose degrees were in Computer Science, Film, Literature, Physics and even Philosophy.
Still, it helps — and for game designers and programmers it’s necessary — to learn about game development in addition to what you learned through your degree program. So, a successful game programmer candidate will have learned game programming on his or her own outside of schoolwork. Artists should be making game characters and environments on their own time if their school assignments don’t result in the necessary portfolio pieces. Those interested in game design should be making their own game levels or writing game design documents.
Where does that leave schools that teach game design and development, if that’s something many people can learn by reading books and taking online tutorials? There are actually many reasons why someone might consider getting a game degree:
- Some people learn much more effectively in a school environment than on their own. (I’m one of those people — I need the structure of a classroom to focus my attention).
- When doing school assignments in a game program, you are building up a portfolio of work to eventually demonstrate your skills to potential employers.
- Your classmates, instructors and career counsellors may be able to provide you with opportunities to get your foot into the game industry’s door. This is something that cannot be overestimated. The game industry is very competitive, and so most people do not get game jobs by answering a want ad or submitting a resume to a company website. Almost every job I’ve gotten in the game industry was because someone either told me about a job opening or recommended me for the position. So, if you want to get similar opportunities, it helps to have a network of contacts who are connected with the game industry.
There are now many trade schools, community colleges, and universities offering degrees in game design and development. Here are some factors to consider when deciding which one to attend:
- A Bachelors Degree is much more useful than an Associates degree.
- Find out the backgrounds of the faculty to see if they have actual game industry experience and have shipped game titles.
- Find out of the school has connections with game companies and have successfully placed students in the game industry. It helps if the school is located in a city that is in a game development center such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, Seattle, Vancouver, Toronto, Boston, New York, or Chicago.
- While most studios want to hire specialists (e.g., an AI programmer, an environmental artist, a puzzle game designer), and if you know an discipline in which you want to specialize, find out if your school allows you to focus your studies on an area. However, if you don’t know what you want to specialize in, or are interested in being an indie developer who is more of a generalist, find out if your school teaches you some skills in all the disciplines of game development.
So, do you homework — before you decided to enroll in a game program.
David Mullich 