Professional Blender Games...Mission Impossible?

Game Engine Game Engine Support and Discussion
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Hello community! :slight_smile: 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! :slight_smile:

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. :expressionless:

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! :slight_smile:

EDIT/SIDENOTE: You MUST be 18 years of age or be turning 18 very soon to be on the team…

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Wow…Pretty ambitious… :o

I admire this kind of ambition, but for a successful project of the scope you’re talking about, you need a LOT of these 4 things:

Talent
Motivation
Organization
Inspiration

Talent - That one’s obvious. The contributors to the game need to be extremely talented, or the game will not even get published.

Motivation - Another obvious one. People need a LOT of motivation, internal or external, to finish a project like this. And most people don’t have the internal motivation to do so. For most game developing companies, their main sources of motivation are:
a) creative motivation
b) deadlines
The first one everyone has. It’s what makes people want to work in the first place. The second one is the one that makes people finish a game. Creative motivation is fine, but is not sufficient(from my experience) to finish a game.

Organization - This is a really good one. Take a look at the muffin project, they started off, ambitious, and willing to “go the distance”. Unfortunately, none of them knew what “the distance” was, and so they never finished, mostly due to poor organization. The person in charge needs to assign VERY specific jobs for EVERY SINGLE PERSON. This cannot be stressed enough. Everyone needs to know the game plan, order of operations, who to talk to, what to do, and when to do it. There needs to be a series of time frames in which the team members are assigned to various stages of the game development.

Inspiration - Everyone on the team needs this, also. Mostly the game designer, or “vision person”, but everyone else needs it too. This is what the ideas come from. Also, the game designer needs to set a certain feel for the game, etc., etc.

Anyway, I hope that helped. Everyone on the team needs to read a few game design textbooks, and they’ll get much more than I’m telling you now out of them. Signing everyone on the team up at Gamasutra, would also be a good idea, since they provide a wealth of infomation on everything related to game-design.

Okay, I hope this goes well, and I hope everyone has fun. :smiley:

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hehe preaty intersting! this is the dream of every game blenderer :wink:
but i must say that projects like this are very very (did i say very?) hard to make.i think lemmy is right on those things,maybe another thing is that big projects like this one are hard to put together virtualy (from net i mean) cuz there is more motivation in a real game studio.

do you have an idea for some game in particular?

cheers leon.

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thanks for the responce lemmy :slight_smile:

Talent - That one’s obvious. The contributors to the game need to be extremely talented, or the game will not even get published.

oh, ofcourse…like I said, im only looking for people who geniully think that they have enough talent.

For most game developing companies, their main sources of motivation are:
a) creative motivation
b) deadlines

yea i know…whoever the manager of the project is we’ll have to have milestones and deadlines to keep ourselves on task…realistic and doable deadlines ofcourse…

the organization paragraph I agree with too…the project will become organized once the people organize together and talk about this idea more in-depth…ill be taking care of that though(email me if your interested remember! :wink: )

Signing everyone on the team up at Gamasutra, would also be a good idea, since they provide a wealth of infomation on everything related to game-design.

haha, already a member myself. :stuck_out_tongue: probably going to subscribe to game development magazine this month too…

Okay, I hope this goes well, and I hope everyone has fun.

thanks lemmy! :smiley: …and thanks for the advice too…

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but i must say that projects like this are very very (did i say very?) hard to make.i think lemmy is right on those things,maybe another thing is that big projects like this one are hard to put together virtualy (from net i mean) cuz there is more motivation in a real game studio.

yea, it will be a challenge…but, as long as we have enough talent between the whole team and put in enough solid work into the project we can do it…our first project isnt going to be any AAA game or the next smash hit ofcourse…i mean, it will be relatively simple(in the realm of pro games anyways), so it shouldnt be impossible by any means…

and yes, doing it virtually will make it harder for collaboration…but its really the best option right now, if we were to put in all of the money to move to a single city and rent out a building or studio and then have the project fail we would all be stranded…doing a first project over the internet will elimanate alot of the risks like that one that im sure not many people in the community would want to take…once we can prove ourselves and publish a game with virtual-based collaboration we’ll be confident enough(and might have enough start-up money) to go for the studio-based environment…but until then, we’ll just have weekly IM meetings, a reliable forum, mics, webcams, everything that we can use to collaborate…

do you have an idea for some game in particular

not yet…something thats not too complex, thats very entertaining and very innovative…

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You must also remeber that most people have school, or work or both (like me) to commit too, so development will go slowly, however this is not a bad thing, as long as the game as true depth and beauty

another thing to keep in mind is that the style of the game most be perfectly unified, if not the game will seem peiced together, for example look at world of warcraft, the art, models, textures of everyone and everything blend in together seemlessly, making the entire universe seem geniune unified.

also the biggest step needed to launch this program is to chose a leader, or manager, and people should not talk about the type of game (fps, rpg, whatever) untill the team is assembled, or else nothing will get done becuase people have different preference. You could also make a game that isnt defieded by genre, mixing together to make the interesting, or create minigames within the game

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You must also remeber that most people have school, or work or both (like me) to commit too, so development will go slowly

yea im aware of this…even with a job or school most people could contribute 5 or 6 hours 5 days a week im thinking…if you cant contribute close to 30 hours or so a week i wouldnt recomend joining because we are going to treat this professionally not like something were just doing on the side(even though that will be the case for most of us :wink: )

another thing to keep in mind is that the style of the game most be perfectly unified

yea, this is extremely important…we’ll need to keep this in check and we should be able to as long as we commit to a basic visual style and gameplay style while still allowing for alot of individual creativity…and weekly meetings and a high level of collaboration should also help to keep this in check…

also the biggest step needed to launch this program is to chose a leader, or manager, and people should not talk about the type of game (fps, rpg, whatever) untill the team is assembled, or else nothing will get done becuase people have different preference.

i know…thats why im trying to organize everyone now, and then once everyone is organized we’ll start discussing the company and how it will operate…then get a website up and some logos and things like that together…then start concepting and designing the game…that sounds like a lote but it really shouldnt take that long…

i would be glad to be the leader of the team myself, and it would seem natural since im the one organizing everyone…just keeping our options open though…if someone else on the team has more experience in the field then they would probably be the leader i suppose…we’ll decide all of this later once we get the team together. :slight_smile:

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%| Hmm, TomorrowMan you must have missed the post about the BCGP. Check out http://bcgp.dyndns.org.

Lol, we probably just weren’t advertising this enough. Others might have missed it too, so go check it out. :stuck_out_tongue: Sorry for hi jacking the thread.

However, what you have said up there coincides with what we’re trying to do as well. We’ve been through talks and lot’s more talks, and even started out with 12 members, but afterwards, we’ve only gotten a few active members in the end. Check out the orginal thread that started it all https://blenderartists.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33540&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0.

This is a blender community game project (BCGP) and others are welcome to contribute. There are really no time constraints or deadlines. But there are a few members that do more work, while other members of the community can choose to contribute to the project on their own spare time whenver they wish. We’re aiming for this 1st game to be close to professional quality.

%| The prospect of creating a large professional game is not feasible at the moment. That’s why ours is still considered a small project. For a larger project to be accomplished the community would need at least a group of more than 20 people. This way the project can be finished a lot earlier, rather then having it drag on and people losing interest in the game too quickly.

I may be wrong with all this since you want people over 18. I’m guessing you want to start a game company or something.

Jason Lin

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saluk and i are already doing this stuff. :wink:

RonC

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saluk and i are already doing this stuff.

your going to publish Crecent Dawn? i mean, are two people alone enough to finish a game of that magnatude?

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:o Do you know what i really like in this forum/this tread? People whith the same passion. Is incredible, amazing, to find out people around the world thinking about the same problems, having the same dificulties…

I agree whith all the stuff said before, specially whith Lemmy and He Blend. Its also hard and freeze to work in the web.
Maybe if we start thinking about an eficient structure for sharing heavy files? I don’t know… maybe the traditional mail post whith cds.
I also think that meetings whith camera is motivetional %| :expressionless:

More about the structure: a padronized portifolio to show our ideas to the other members via web. Like drawing files, blend files, writing stuff, skills, age, how many time we can spend per week, how is going to be the game distribution in our area (our possiblilities of distribution), this kind of thing.

Not to mention another competitive task: Multiplayer. :wink:

(or talking right in english, or abording one theme at a time :-|)

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I admire this kind of ambition, but for a successful project of the scope you’re talking about, you need a LOT of these 4 things:

Talent
Motivation
Organization
Inspiration

not verry much Inspiration needed. about 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration :smiley:

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We should keep in mind that to see a real game on the shelf of a computer game store, it doesn’t have to be Doom 3. Why not make a pack of 10 3d arcade games and sell that?

IMHO, Blender is capable of creating commercial games, but it doesn’t have all the modern technique and speed that other games have. Therefore, any game you make that sells is probably going to have to be focused on some really great textures, a really good plot, and some gameplay that ROCKS!

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Maybe if we start thinking about an eficient structure for sharing heavy files? I don’t know… maybe the traditional mail post whith cds.

we would probably use a forum much like elysiuns…we would exchange links to our big files there with explanations of those files and whatever the hell else we would want to talk about, there could also be an attachment feature for those who dont have webspace…

We should keep in mind that to see a real game on the shelf of a computer game store, it doesn’t have to be Doom 3. Why not make a pack of 10 3d arcade games and sell that?

exactly…we can make something reletively simple(compared to other commercial products) in 1-2 years or less depending on how much help we have…we wouldnt be making anything too complex, but it would be very entertaining and innovative…And yes, the pack of 10 3D arcade games could be cool as well, that would give an oppurtunity to those who cant work on a project for more than a few hours a day to help since each individual game would be simple and easy to make.

Therefore, any game you make that sells is probably going to have to be focused on some really great textures, a really good plot, and some gameplay that ROCKS!

yea

a couple of other ideas ive come up with over the last few days:

why dont we join forces? i mean, there are around 3 or maybe more smaller groups which are trying at the same goal(a pro or semi-pro level blender game)…we could join into 1 supergroup…it would give us a better shot at accomplishing what we all want in the end…

another thing: to allow people who cant pay much commitment to something like this but are still interested in it to participate we could give a list of basic things that would need to be done and then anyone in the community could do one single task and thats it…or more if they wanted…like for example someone could model a few guns for the game without joining the official crew and they would still get there names in the credits.
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:o What does a guy have to do to be heard around here. If this would be a blender community game project, it would suck to have so much talent split up. :expressionless: Just look at the site http://bcgp.dyndns.org. We’ve been through this and already have forums setup (very much like elysiuns) and are trying to do all the things that are being suggested already over here.

Granted that our 1st project, some people just might not like to work on an underwater racing game. :smiley: Well if you guys end up forming another community team, that’s still great.

Jason Lin

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I like that idea!

Goldertaiji: To be quite honest, I don’t see a lot of organization besides “anybody who wants to can contribute”. That isn’t encouraging people to join up, you know. But hey, prove me wrong. Maybe I haven’t looked hard enough.

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:expressionless: Sorry about that. The information and structure isn’t straight out there to click on along with the tabs on the left hand side (Main Menu). %| It should be. Currently all the info about assignments availiable, art work for the game, and progress is in the form of forum threads. Check the lowest category (it’s named “BCGP Project#1 Assignments”).

Been busy with the game that’s in progress. I guess after the game is done or during that time, we need to reorganize things to make the information stand right out there so people might not have to browse around.

Hmm, you don’t have to register to post in some categories. If you have any ideas on how we can improve the site just go to the category “Community Input/Ideas”, click on “Site Improvement Ideas” and type away :smiley: .

Jason Lin

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In fact i just sugest that we need improved profiles, less generic more specific. Something a little deep about our artistic ambitions and padronized between users. :wink:

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IMO you need a thorough online design document detailing everything (art & code) in the game. Break everything down into tasks that can be completed in 1-2 hours. Ppl can sign up for a task, complete it, and post the results for the rest of the group to view. Creativity may be the initial motivation, but accomplishment and success are needed to sustain it. If the group can see progress even in small increments, I think they can stay focused.

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Thats very true and is what we want but have to sort out alot of stuff and we are in the middle of a project so thats where our consentration lies at the moment but when we are finish we plan to organize the BCGP more but until then we’ll have to wait :smiley: