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Making a wiiware game.
Spectral Swallow
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey, I know this may seem kinda stupid, or like something that'll never happen, but I was wondering what it would take to make a wiiware game. I'm not an idiot, I know I can't do it by myself(the fact I have no programming experience myself for starters) BUT I do have a rather large amount of money saved up ($30,000) I was thinking about investing in houses, but then the market took a dive, so this was always my big dream, to make a game. Any help would be appreciated, about the only knowledge I could find online was about how it costs $2000-$10,000 for the developers kit.
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If you start learning how to program now, maybe give it a shot in 5-10 years.
edit: and if that's not enough to convince you, Nintendo won't sell the devkits to "unknowns". Basically, you have to have an office and a bunch of employees before you can get your hands on their hardware, and maybe not even then.
Another route to go would be a flash game for use on facebook. A friend of mine is involved with developing one of those which either just launched or will be within a couple days. That, too, has a comparatively low cost of entry and has good and fairly easy to use resources to get started.
edit: to go with your follow up post saying you don't really plan to do any of the technical stuff/development yourself.
How much are you intending to spend on this? All $30k? Just like $5-$10k? I'm just curious as I'm kind of thinking about what the chances are of getting a game developed within your budget that has a decent chance of earning that money or more back.
I think they did understand you, and people advise you not to do it. It's seriously throwing your money away. And especially by aiming at Nintendo, who tends to be A) the most protective of their stuff, and
I guess if you really wanted to help create a game, I'm sure there's a lot of talented folks and companies that could use 30,000 dollars. Just don't expect to see that money back.
I did misunderstand. My apologies.
Thirty grand'll get you one artist and one programmer for maybe 60 days. Venture cap loans for very small studios (<25 people) run in the millions.
$30,000 can't even buy you a good fully featured Flash game.
Well, the second line depends on what you're shooting for, but a non-amateur job with good graphics could easily pass 30k unless it's just an Asteroids/Tetris/Pong rip.
Look at it this way, you aren't going to invest in houses because the market is bad so instead you're going to invest in a video game? That is sort of liking betting all your money on which plane will crash on any given day.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
But, I don't think it's a good investment. I don't think you'd necessarily run the development team either, with only $30,000. You'd probably get a bit of money back, but creative rights probably go the producer, director, lead programmer, lead designer. And as for hiring, probably hired by the CEO of the company that you're partially funding.
I think you'd need a bit more money if you were to start a team as a producer.
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My friends became WiiWare developers, but only because they had four or five REALLY good ideas for games that they pitched very well with some detailed design documents directly to Nintendo when the WiiWare platform was first being pondered as a possibility by Nintendo.
So you can definitely do it, but come to them with a good and well thought out idea first. Indeed, it's a risky venture as well... my friends have found the process slow due to the fact that they need to keep their day jobs in order to survive, so they only can really work on their ideas part time. But with patience, you can get there.
You need three things, just to start this whole process
-Team, you will need the right group of people to deliver this project (not just tech people, but also sales/marketing which is something most tech companies forget about); if you can get them to work for equity then you have fewer worries about salary bills, but you personally will get far less of a financial return should your product become successful. If you actually have to hire someone, then expect to struggle to find the right person, and struggle even further to meet their wage demands.
-Idea, you have to have a very well thought out product that is innovative, cost effective, and addresses an easily identifiable market (this not only helps your product to be successful, but is pivotal when making a pitch to partners, investors and financiers)
-Ignition, to get the company up and running, you need the right level of investment, staffing and industry/media exposure to happen at the right time and to grow at a rate that's commensurate to your company's lifespan.
That's the generic advice.
If you want to use that money to further the games industry, and you want to get a return on that investment, then I recommend that you invest in shares in an established games company.
If you want to use that money to further the games industry, and you don't care about financial returns, then I recommend that you invest in an existing startup games company.
If you want to use that money to play at being a Director and can afford to lose all the money, then I recommend that you start up your own games company.
Realistically, you'll probably need closer to $100k to bring a WiiWare game to market. You need to factor in not only the pure development cost, but other things such as extensive QA, content ratings, localization, legals etc.
If you want to set up a company rather than just have a one off project after which the team disbands, you will also need to have enough funding to carry the team on an ongoing basis. Revenues for a single download title on WiiWare are unlikely to be able to cover the team on their own unless you have a very, very successful game (the key to the download business is having a portfolio of product).
If you do all the groundwork to pull everything together, with $30k up front to invest, and working without a salary for at least the first year, you might be able to leverage that to pull in the additional funding you would need from external investors.
Some have suggested investing $30k in download projects at other developers or investing in developers directly. Outside of buying publically traded shares, that isn't likely to even be possible as its not enough money to fund anything outright and the legal overhead of taking on that small amount of investment would make it not worth bothering.
If you really have your heart set on making games, then that amount of money might be enough to do a couple of ad supported Flash games if you can manage to do it "on the cheap". That might be a good option to build up some experience, build some limited revenue streams, and build a little IP while you court larger investment partners to help you move across to console. Be prepared to lose all that money though.
Hope that helps.