Successful people often have an irrational concept of what is possible and people telling them otherwise only strengthens their conviction.

If somebody is put off "starting a company" by reading a few message board threads then would you expect them to be able to run that company, given they avoided the message board?

There is so much more than "making a game" to running a company. I would say, like others have on this thread, that you can forget about making EB-sellable games. Do your best to make shareware quality games, look at MonkeyStone for inspiration (Romero''s outfit).

Selling your game will be difficult, very difficult. Getting it in the public eye is something you will like have to pawn off to people who know that side of things (like Dexterity Software).

I can think of one example of a group of friends starting a successful gamedev house: Surreal Software, makers of Drakan and one of the LoTR games. They started in university but bear in mind they studied the type of technology they''d be using to make Drakan while at university for a long time.

And please believe me when I say, moving state to get development experience is far far less drastic than trying to start a company

Use those 3 months to make a simple, addictive, shareware game. Find somebody to sell it for you, and who knows? You might well make enough to fund yourself for another 6 months to make a better game. And just keep going...

It''s definetly plausible but don''t jump in at the deep end!

Making the next Quake 7 would be near impossible even for many established developers so start on something small!

Make one of those puzzle game packs, make a mission pack, write some amazing demos, there is a whole lot of things you could do which will advance you on your way.

Oh and in terms of marketting there is no such thing as bad publicity! So you want to pimp the hell out of your work to get attention.

My two cents

Thank you very much for your advice.

I actually meant 3 months training, and we were thinking 2 years development.

What we''ll most likely do is begin with a small shareware puzzle game, it''s a popular game that I used to play on paper (not telling you what it is though ), but there doesn''t seem to be any electronic equivalent of it, and it''ll most probably have a lobby service, so it''ll even train the network aspect of making games (and give you a reason to pay 5-10$ to download a small game ) and will be cross-platform, due to the Crystal Space engine and such...

We were thinking of making a AAA title, but we''ll hold on that dream for the future, when we''re better experienced, better funded and we''re all certain we''re ready for it.

Thank you.

We haven''t checked what''s available to us yet, CaptainJester.
I agree with what you say, things need to be ordered (well, not TOO ordered, but generally ordered), and there needs to be a deadline, for something to at least work for! We can pass them by a few days, but we should try to use the deadlines as, well, guidelines. O.o Also to track our progress, see if something is wrong somewhere...

Oryon: From the Bathurst region. Hehe, I keep bumping into people from NB on the internet in funky places... NB is such a small province, but we''ve got nothing to do, so I guess we all hang out online?
If we''d be getting an office, we''ll either make it in Bathurst, or if we can find a cheap place and some cash, we''ll do it in Moncton.
Oh, and the government funds a game design course, yeah, at NBCC/CCNB Miramichi, there''s a game design course. And NBCC/CCNB is part of the government.
I''m studying at CCNB Bathurst, obviously...
Thanks. We''ll start small, and cautiously move towards a bigger goal, personally, I don''t think we''re enough, right now, to make the game we''re dreaming of, so we''ll see what can be done now.