Quote:

The aim would be to develop a working demo to proove you can complete the full game, should it be picked up.



This makes alot of sense for our community.
If instead of people gathering together with hopes of making a complete game ("Dream Big"), they instead recruit people to merely make a passable demo ("Start Small"), they can then use the demo to gather funding for real development.

This is an excellent solution to the 3DGS Dilema:

a) A person (the game designer lets say) has a great idea for a game. They work on a very rough Game Design Document and a rough Technical Design Document (this can be all of two pages combined, but write something down). The empahsis of the GDD and TDD is the DEMO not the full game

b) This person uses the GDD and TDD to recruit the right people to make the demo. The promise here is actually quite novel: you won't receive any royalties since you aren't selling anything, but if the demo gets picked up and funded, by working on the demo, you get first crack at working on the full product.

c) A few people volunteer and make the demo. It's small and doesn't look great by any means, but adequately describes the "vision" for the larger game. Depending on your proficiency with 3DGS, this shouldn't take more than a few months to complete...any longer and you are going to lose your volunteers attention as well as probably working on too large a demo.

d) Armed with the demo and some experience, the game designer goes back and spends some time re-writing the GDD and TDD. During this time, they also work out a Business plan. Included in this plan is the Budget to support all the volunteers that helped you in the demo. Mind you, this doesn't have to be done by the GAme Designer alone. The volunteers may be MORE than happy to help you with this since getting paid is dependent more on these documents (and the demo) than anything else.

e) Armed with the BP, GDD, and TDD, you go out into the world and try to sell your idea. If no one buys, then you take this as a learning exercise and try to figure out what didn't work and fix it and what did work and emphasize it. If someone does buy, then there isn't any of this pay-after-publish ordeal; the volunteers get paid immediatly for development of the real product which is included in the BP Budget.


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