I wasn't sure what else to call this; no matter what I put in the subject bar it felt sensationalist to me. Sorry for that.

Anyway, I'm a software engineer professionally and my friends know it. Every so often, one of my friends will approach me with a "Video game" idea. It's a little like when people come on this board and post "I have a game idea! How can I get a program to make it magically for me!?" in which case we invariably link Mr. Tom Sloper's website to them and let them down gently.

But, these are my friends. I don't have the time or energy to make an RPG (by myself) or the art skills to make a viral cutsie iOS game (much less what a terrible market entry it imposes) but...I am unskilled at letting them down easy. In some cases my standard appeal of "I just don't have the time to make a game" works. But sometimes I see the letdown in their eyes and, well, I feel bad. They were really thinking I could make their dream a reality.

Maybe the worst part is that I probably *can* if I am willing to commit literal years of my life to the task, but...haha, well, even then. Hiring artists, design and programming help, a musician...you all know the drill. <3

I'm very interested to know if any of you all have had this experience, i.e. a good friend approaches you, knows you make software, and asks you to "go into the Indie business" with them. How have you handled that? If you have a tried-and-true method of easy let downs, I'd very much like that haha.

If not, commiseration is okay too. I'll be honest: just writing this post was cathartic for me. Maybe I just needed to talk about it. <3

Game ideas, website ideas, you name.

I've taken to quickly estimating how many months or years of work their project would take, which generally preempts the "make it for me over a few weekends please?" question :)

Tell them "I too have ideas. Why do you think I should make yours?"

The success rate of that response depends on how close you are with your friends.

The general rule of thumb is to never team up with people who can't contribute sweat to the development: friends, family, or strangers, unless they can give you money.

If your friends also happen to be an engineer/artist, then you can try.

Game ideas, website ideas, you name.

That number alone should deter them pretty quickly.

You need to compare with the movies industry, everyone knows how the movie industry works at some level.

The problem is, nobody know what it takes to make a game.

Its a good comparison because a single person or a couple of budies cant make an AAA movie, but they do can make a short of varying qualities depending on the number of ppl, their skills and budget.

Tell them that..

I use this comparison even when ppl ask about the economic aspect of being a game developer. Yes, the game industry moves massive amounts of money, but you either need to be really successful with a title (like in getting famous) or work for a major developer company. In Brasil the scene is lots of small companies poping up and out all the time, very few get there. Most aiming mobile, with Unity.