We have a large archive of tutorials covering everything from advanced graphics topics to basic engine tutorials. Maybe one day you will contribute your own tutorial for other game developers? Did you make a game or start a project? Share your project and get feedback from other developers. Also don't forget to check out what other developers are doing in the developer blogs.
Maybe even share your own progress? Our forums, tutorials, developer blogs, projects showcase, and more have helped game developers bring their games, interactive media, and technologies to the world.
Log In. Sign Up. Remember me. Forgot password? Don't have a GameDev. Sign up. Email Address. Careers Careers. Learn about game development. Follow Us. Chat in the GameDev. Get Started in Game Development Game development can be one of the most satisfying creative pursuits.
Reality Check Game development is difficult. This means you can look through Steam to find games that share some points in common with yours , and browse through the community discussions to view feedback quite early on in the development process. Most online forums harbor discussions surrounding games that have already been released.
This is what sets apart the Community Hub on Steam. There are plenty of free tools available, like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. Surveys can provide you with both qualitative and quantitative data to help you analyze your market. Gaming conventions and other industry gatherings are the largest live gatherings of the gaming community. No doubt many of your target players will be found hanging out at such meeting places.
Spend some time at these conventions and try to meet potential fans of your game. Take this opportunity not just to spread awareness about your company, but also to ask questions and find out the needs of your target players.
To gain a fuller understanding of what your ideal player looks like, spend some time building buyer personas. Source: Indie Game Girl. Buyer personas are detailed representations of who your target player is as a person - they detail age, occupation, playing habits, the types of games they purchase, what influences their purchasing decisions, their common frustrations with games, and so on. Nonetheless, it does provide a good starting point for player stats!
For instance, you can get their Year in Review or sign up for a free live webinar. She also has downloadable resources, like her buyer persona template and a bunch of other buyer persona-related blog posts. Their blog provides free and up-to-date trends about the games market. But their free info goes way beyond blog posts - they also have white papers, trend reports, rankings infographics, key numbers for market estimates and forecasts, and videos.
For indie game devs who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get digging, there are plenty of free resources available to save you loads of time for your research. And seeing as appropriate market research can make the difference between a successful game and a flop, you should definitely take advantage of these resources!
Figured out which localization options you need for your game? Get in touch and tell us about your game! Level Up Translation offers specialized video game localization services. Website Twitter. Note: This article was originally posted on the Level Up Translation blog , and is republished here with the kind permission of the author. Log In. Sign Up. Remember me. Forgot password? Don't have a GameDev. Should you self-publish or try to find a publisher? To help with that core interrogation, Limpach put together a list of questions for developers, to see if they are a good candidate for external publishing and are ready to embark on that adventure.
It covers everything from making sure you have the right team to whether you'll be able to maintain clear documentation on the project. You're always into your daily business, you're growing unto the next milestone, but sometimes it's good to take a step back and have a look at the long term. It's nice to have a guide, to ask yourself a few questions so that, in the end, you find out where you want to go. Among the 27 questions covered in the book, Limpach identifies two axes that are particularly crucial to figuring out your needs.
Reflect [on] yourself: where do I want to go? Do I want to be always independent, and not have any partners that might influence my decisions or my future? Do I want to stay small? Do I want to grow very big? Do I want to switch between different genres? Or I don't want to have a partner because I want to be independent and learn all these different subjects.
What do you want to reach with your company as it grows? Thatgamecompany is a good example of a studio that turned to self-publishing after a few titles, for Sky: Children of Light. Limpach says she very often sees that dichotomy in aspiring developers: they either want to learn about the overall business of releasing a game, or just want to focus on their corner of the industry.
So, I think this is really the most important question. The second most important element is to look at external publishing as a commitment.
Signing up with a publisher is usually not a short-term partnership, so if you're afraid of that commitment, self-publishing may fit you better.
This is something the GamesIndustry. When you go work with somebody, are you ready to go into a relationship? Because there's always good times and bad times in a relationship, and hopefully the good times are the most [common], but there will be always one point where you're not very happy about what your partner is going to do, and then you have to have the will to [stay] in this partnership.
These preliminary questions about yourself and your project should help to shape the direction you're going, but you may still have interrogations about the advantages of each strategy. While Limpach addresses both self-publishing and external publishing in her book, she focuses mainly on the intricacies of working with a publisher and how to best prepare for it as an indie studio. You need very sharp marketing nowadays, you really need to define exactly what [makes] your game better than the other ones, how to position it and to communicate it, and a publisher will definitely bring this.
And even if they don't give you much money upfront, having a financial partner that is there and that is paying for big parts of the marketing [budget] is very positive. You can have more visibility and also more contacts with [platform holders] Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. Without a publisher, it's so difficult to get hold of these people and to be positioned in their stores.
Limpach believes self-publishing is a legitimate route to market, but it may be more painful to go it alone if it's your first game. In the long term, it can be a good idea to mix both approaches depending on the project, as some games may need more support than others.
0コメント