My gf got a job with Activision and told me to pitch my gameplay to the company. I think its cool, but what are the costs for equipment? Assuming I find the people to work contingent on jobs if the publisher likes the demo, and I can use my house for work because everyone can login from their own, do I buy a separate computer for each person? Or purchase a nice workstation? I already have an awesome artist, so besides programmer sound engineer level designer animator and UI designer, am I missing something? I guess I'm just wondering for costs and what staff besides the ones listed. Any advice would be seriously helpful thanks.

it depends on what kind of demo you want. What do you want to DEMOnstrate?

If you want a "demo" like in "commercial demo" (think XBoxLive) then you basically have to make the whole game and then carve a demo out of it. Then your question becomes how much dos it cost to set up a video game development studio.

If you just want to prove a concept (which sounds way more realistic), then you may get away with a 2 or 3 persons team (programmer, artist, designer). Of course that depends on you concept. For a musical game, you may need a sound guy, and so on. Getting more persons on board than you actually need will just make your project more likely to fail, start small.

To create your demo, you should not involve any money directly (unless you're already a professional with a serious track record, which apparently you are not otherwise you would not be asking here). I assume your programmer, artist and you already own a computer. What you need now is free tools (modeling software, source control, perhaps set up one of your computers as a file server, etc.) and a lot of time and efforts and perseverance.

In other words if you are what you appear to be (to me: an individual with no experience and a game idea that you think is great), money will not be the limiting factor here.

Last, what makes you think ATVI is the right publisher to present your project to? They mostly exploit license based games, plus a few original IPs. They're not big risk takers these days, I don't see them funding an indie developer with no experience. And I don't see your girlfriend helping much here (unless she's got a very high level of influence at ATVI but I'm guessing she doesn't) There are other companies out there that might fund you though, if you can convince them that your idea is actually worth it

Sorry if I went a bit off topic, I hope I helped a bit.
Best of luck...

Sorry I was vague on the demo. And yes I like your response because I like reality. I animate but have very little experience in programming. Activision would just be first since my gf works there and can possibly get me a meeting, not banking on it though.

It's an action adventure. The demo would be of a single level displaying all the gameplay of the story. There'd be a minute or so worth of cutscene in the beginning and end of the level. I have my own computer, but I don't have a rendering workstation, and I'd like to buy the computers for the people who would help me get the demo done.

I know computers would be around 3K each, any other costs I'm missing?

I hope that's more clear. Thanks!

Quote:Original post by Cheeseitsnot
I know computers would be around 3K each, any other costs I'm missing?

You can get computers that can probably do just about anything you would want with a decent amount of speed for around $1000 (us), unless your working on a concept that is way past "current gen" hardware

Also unless your adding non free tools to the computer IE: photoshop, 3dsmax, although there are plenty of free alternatives.