This forum is full of great ideas. Why do people give up on their games? My friends and i are developing a game, but the lack of commitment i see is disheartening to say the least. Am i missing something? Ive read articles on creating ccg's... im just curious why most people give up?
Well I'm want to develop a game for the community but I don't seem to have alot of interest, but what about that game that you and your friend are making.
Also you double posted by mistake.
People give up because to do a CCG right requires two things
Lots of money
Lots of time
I've been working on a horror type card game for almost 4 years now and I've had to restart from the beginning 3 times now when the mechanics failed to give a good game.
I've got a lot of good ideas, but good ideas alone do not make a fun game and it's the fun that counts.
Give up? NEVER hahahahaha! ( <- that's me going crazy)
The 2 biggest problems I have are (A) I always want to revise it and make it better, and (B) I never give myself a deadline to just sit down and start working. Since making my ccg's original topic here, I've probably revised it over 20 times, practically none of which were major revisions anyways.
It's got to do with a few different factors really, some of which inter-relate. In terms of actually releasing a 'proper CCG' you need money to generate interest through advertising, more money to get a company to print the cards OR the programming skill and time to make it online.
You can technically advertise through sites like Kongregate and Armor Games, but I know of CCG's that have done this only to receive little notice. It's also difficult to make an online game(any game, but especially online CCG's) accessible enough to generate a decent player base, yet with enough incentive for people to pay for things. I generally think it's a good idea to put accessibility first, as it's more sustainable and gives better profit in the long run.
Lackey is obviously there to help with the programming(ie production) side of things, but making your own CCG on Lackey doesn't guarantee any sort of player base; it can be demoralising to receive little genuine interest in your game.
A difficulty faced is that there are so many CCG's out there already that it's hard to come up with refreshing gameplay. It's also easy to mistake originality for quality; some things haven't been done because they simply don't work well.
I'm confident there are concepts out there that have great potential, just waiting to be thought of, but picking the right ideas is hard and when you're in the conceptual phase of creation it's easy to become jumbled.
By the time you get to structuring the game itself you find that things don't work the way you had hoped; that A is a cool idea, but doesn't fit with B... So you restructure, hoping to preserve your ideas. Sometimes it's best just to let something go, remembering it in case you make something similar down the line.
I think the real reason many give up is that people who are good at thinking up ideas suck at applying them without procrastinating or making sacrifices(I'm talking from personal experience here, maybe some are suited to both).
The obvious solution is to form a team with some other people who enjoy the production side of things, and problem solving, but this also complicates things. If your team doesn't work well together the game will suffer, and if one of you is disinterested it will make it hard for the others to be motivated. Not to mention the burden of responsibility this puts on you.
Basically, it's not easy to think up an original and functional CCG, and is even harder to actually get a finished product. The various obstacles this incurs aren't often suited to one persons strengths, and working in a team has its own risks and dillemas. Then, if you want it to be commercial, you need revenue.
Actually developing the cards is a very tedious, and a long process. That is when I have noticed myself stopping the most.
As far as the community project goes. There was one attempted less than a year ago that failed, and on top of that the attendance on the forum is very low right now.
thanks for hte replies guys! sound explainations!
have any of you gotten as far as to pitch your ideas to a company to get it printed/marketed/distributed? also, if you takingan existing fanchise, such as mortal kombat or something, how hard is hte process to get licenses to use characters?
If you want to design a game around an existing license, I would suggest making the game with eerily similar titles and theme, and then work on getting said license. Because it will probably not be very easy or cheap, and it will be easier and possibly cheaper (with parent-company backing) if you already have a working game that you just want to throw the images and names on.
As far as unfinished projects go, game design is somewhere around a second or third tier hobby for me (behind playing music and gaming itself, which are expensive and time consuming enough), so its hard for me to ever get that far. One day I do really hope to get a game off the ground though, been having some pretty cool ideas lately!
It's hard to do. Takes a lot of commitment. Needs play-testers. And it's hard to stay motivated if you're not sure anyone is interested in playing it when you're done.