Hello community! Its been awhile since ive roamed through elysiun, but I have a little anouncement of sourts…Ide like to start a new blender game dev. team however this team will be geared towards making real strides at creating and publishing the first professional blender game…Im really starting to think this could be possible, especially because after development on Vertigo halted I’ve realized what makes big blender game projects fail, become halted, and just develop slowly in a general since and I know how to avoid these pitfalls now…also ive researched alot on how games are developed professionally, how the game industry works on a pro level and basic business practices…I now believe im ready and this community is ready for this!
Anyways, heres an article I wrote several weeks ago explaining what I have in mind and it explores the reasons why many people in the community think it would be impossible and confronts these reasons…hopefully it will convince some of you to join me! its kind of long…sorry.
The prospect of making a genuinely professional game with Blenders game engine has always been an alluring one since the engines introduction. Buy a new computer game from your local market, pop it in your disc tray, start watching the intro anims and see a “made with blender” screen fade in…fade out…The sound of this is amazing, what a great dream this is eh? Although…could this be forever simply a dream of the community, or could it be a reality some day? The answer to this is simple…it will forever be a dream…that is, if we don’t at least try and make real strides towards climbing from the underground and into the reality of the dream…today.
For several different reasons most people in the community don’t think this dream could be possible, at least not until blender’s engine catches up with the modern standard. The main issue that is in most people’s heads when pondering this possibility is graphics…plain and simple. Even though you can make an entertaining game with blender, people wouldn’t even pay it much attention at all because it wouldn’t have hyper-realistic graphics which so many gamers are demanding more and more these days. Its true, you wont be making a doom3 remake no matter how much you try but with alot of talent you can still pull off quite stunning visuals…stunning enough to compete with the other games in this wide world. With simply great artwork, textures and problem solving you can make great graphics with the GE and its been proven with several recent blender games. You have to keep in mind that many computer games are still made today without high-end technologies. There’s still alot who doubt blenders abilities to create content that could be marketed, but the graphics issue is simply not an issue! Keep in mind there’s always OGRE and other outside graphics engines that can be used in conjunction with blender and stylized cell-shaded looking games are all the rage in gaming now as well(and those games don’t have any high end technologies outside of cell shading…which can be faked with various techniques using blender).
There is another problem that seems to plague many blender game projects today, this same problem also seems like it would stop the development of a pro blender game in its tracks…and that problem is loss of motivation which leads to teams stopping progress and breaking up. However, you can completely avoid this situation entirely. How? Having enough people to complete the project and each member putting in enough time to complete the project. You see, motivation is lost because members of a team eventually just loose interest with working on the same project for long periods of time, especially when there’s still alot of work to be done. So, the answer to this problem is clear…Have enough people to finish a project in a realistic time frame…Also, if the members treat the project more professionally rather than like a hobby and invest more time in the project(treat it like a real job per say), then the project would get done. Now ofcourse there is absolutely nothing wrong with making games for a hobby at all, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that even though there would be alot of work to produce a professional blender game, if the members put in professional hours, there’s adequate members and the members created great art and programming then there is no way that a professional blender game could not be made.
So…graphics doesn’t have to be an issue, neither does pure man power…then why haven’t any of use made real strides at creating a pro blender game(that is a game made with blender that would either be marketed over the internet or possibly even in stores)? Could we even form a professional game studio using blender? With enough determination and guts anything could be possible. Which leads me to the whole reason I’m writing this article…ive got enough determination and guts to at least try and create a professional quality game which could even be marketed in stores…do any more of you? If so, we can make this happen people! Think about the first paragraph of this article and ask yourself, do you want to see this happen? Do you want to be a part of a team that could help to make this happen? If you do…join me…we can make this happen.
One last important thing to note: Many people would rather wait until blenders engine is up to par with modern technology to even try something like this. I understand this, but time is always ticking away…modern engines are developing faster than blenders, simple as that, so if you plan on waiting until blenders engine is just as good as the modern standard you might be waiting for a long time. Kester is the only thing we have going for the blender game engine right now, but one man alone may not be enough to really elevate blenders game creation technology in a reasonable amount of time. We need more blender game engine developers, and creating a pro blender game now will shine MUCH more interest on blender’s game engine than ever before, which will yield much more help for Kester. If we were to sell a pro blender game, donating a healthy portion to GE development or blender development in general is definitely a possibility…If we just wait, the rest of the game development world will fly right past us making it even harder with each passing day to try and do something like this.
So how could we start something like this? Well, my plans are to organize everyone who’s interested and we can discuss it all. What game we could make, what our team/company name could be, etc., etc. We would develop our first game as a team over the internet using web cams, microphones and as much collaboration as possible…this way, if the project did fail then we would walk away without wasting any of our own money or life that could happen if we were to make the game face-to-face in a studio…we would walk away with experience and no hard feelings. But if we were to succed…the possibilities for us and the whole blender community are nearly endless. We could even continue making pro blender games in a studio-based environment since the first game would yield us enough start up money.
Lets try this people…we could really pave the future for the Blender game engine. If your interested: [email protected]
author: Corey Rice(aka, TomorrowMan)
Keep in mind after reading this, that I wont neccasarly be the leader of the group, and im only looking for people who feel they can geniually create top-of-the-line content in whatever they do and would be fine with working atleast around 30 hours per week on a project…Designers, Programers, Musicians, Managers, ANYONE who is interested in doing something like this PLEASE contact me either through this thread, PM, or email. Ive also set up a temporary forum which anyone who is interested can use to talk specifically about this little project/experiment…it can be found at: http://www.bhpgames.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=8&sid=d5f62803a81e76d5d01b1e98fafceff7
even if you dont feel like joining any comments on this would be much appreciated!
EDIT/SIDENOTE: You MUST be 18 years of age or be turning 18 very soon to be on the team…