Pitching Ideas At Gen Con Indy 26
teknoviking writes "Gen Con Indy is coming up on August 13-16th, and if you are planning on attending, especially if you have an idea you want to pitch to one (or many) of the vendors, artists, or developers at the Con, you should check out this great series of articles by writer and game designer Jess Hartley. She covers the basics of proper planning and making a good impression, and she has some practical tips about how to promote your idea, and what you should do to follow up afterward."
Re:Ideas are Cheap but Development Costs Money (Score:2, Interesting)
This is the exact reason why I started making my own game. Ive spent so much of my life playing games and wishing that they had such and such features, and so much of my life wishing that a such and such type game existed, I figured I might as well try and make it happen. Considering the near-impenetrability of the big games market and the scope of my own vision (Which probably wouldnt mesh well when having to deal with deadlines and marketers and such anyway) combined with my close to zero start up capital, ive come to the conclusion that it is the only way.
Luckily, there has actually been alot of progress made in the area of tools available to expedite the game making process and to lighten the scope of the workload to a level manageable by a single person. Gamemaker, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Maker) for instance. Which saves you enough work, while still being flexible enough, to far outweigh its limits as middleware, combine it with a nice community of helpful people and i'd say its the best bet for anyone with dreams of making a high quality near zero budget game in any reasonable timeframe.
The only hurdle ive found with my own game is in the area of art content. Which is saying alot considering im an artist by trade. Its still a struggling point in my own game, so it may be even more so for people without an art background. However, there are alot of tools to expedite that as well. 3d models prerenderd to 2d sprites using open source materials, for example.