Revolutionary doesn't mean that the game has to be about something that never happened before. A game about a common subject such as WW1&2 can be revolutionary if the gameplay is totally new and never done before (and good, of course).

But I am curious if you have any sources regarding how much money the indie developers make from WW1&2 related games..

[Edited by - Raduprv on January 10, 2006 5:39:34 PM]

I am not really a gamer, so I didn't play it or heard of it. Do you have any link?

I'm assuming it's this game

I had a friend who financed his small business using credit cards and bank loans. He worked very hard and perfected his credit until he was able to get somewhere around 50,000 dollars worth of credit. It was quite surprising. He also said he could have gotten a lot more. It is something to look into. I read several articles on the subject. If you are interested I could probably find some.

QzarBaron - that's all well and good but, if your project goes down the tubes, that's a helluva lot of debt to pay back (with interest for however long it takes to pay back) for nothing.

Hi,

You could try to work as a freelancer for websites such as "Rentacoder.com"
or "Guru.com", if you have a strong enough stomach for website programming and such.

You do catch game development related projects on those websites, but not as many as those that are web related. I've got this year a MMORPG sprite editor and a 3D color gamut space visualisation software using DirectX, but that's about it. Those 2 did help me with funding my firm through the dry months of starting to develop games (it's mobile game oriented), but they also ate very much of our time. The result was just a couple of mobile games ready to be shipped this month and a better place in the Rentacoder's top coder contest. (The initial funds for my firm came from my friends.)

For you, since your daily living costs should be lower as an individual, freelancing can prove to be a deep enough pocket to allow you to further develop the engine, perhaps to the demo stage. It did look promissing, so I do wish you best of luck with your enterprise. I assume here that you get a couple of friends toghether and form a team, accepting to work for free.

The other valid track is to get hired by Ubisoft or by Funlabs or by the newer firm that has appeared on our territory (and whose name I don't know) that has an ex-Microsoft exec in the person of a capable woman (whose name I also don't know) (they seemed serious enough, were implementing an artist-oriented visual shader builder that impressed me very much). This way you can get enough experience to evaluate your financial costs correctly. Trust me, 50K will only take you so far in 3D PC games.

As for getting real financing for a game, you need to have a really well thought of business plan. Unfortunatelly, Romania doesn't seem to have a Business Angels' network (correct me if I'm wrong!), and people who can afford to lose 500K usd/year are rather rare too, so I fear you might have to look for a foreign partner. That is both tricky and dangerous, so I can only suggest you the first 2 ideas with peace of mind.

If you have any questions related to the local game dev. or just want to talk, feel free to ask me directly.

Mult succes!

Tudor Tihan
[edit - typo]