You want to make games?

When I was younger  I always dreamed of making games for a living. I couldn't have imagined my life in any other way, I pictured playing games all day and drew up really bad drawings of games that I would make. As I grew up, that passion was still there I studied programming languages and began to learn how to design games when I joined Greenwich University I met a huge amount of people that wanted to become game developers or artists in the gaming industry and so Rampant Studios was born.

Trial and Error

Even though Rampant Studios is a new company, we've already learnt a lot of valuable lessons and picked up a few tricks along the way. Everyone wants to make some sort of game, it's even a dream job for some, but the truth is it will take a lot of hard work, many sleepless nights and a bunch of trial and error.

Lots of development groups fall short of their goals for many reasons, the main reason in my opinion is having too high a goal which isn't feasible with the team that they have. For instance if a group was to start up and announce that they were going to make a brand new RPG game with 3000 creatures, real-time combat and an epic storyline you would expect them to have a huge team plus a lot of experience but sadly that's normally not the case.

Funding a Studio

Independent studios face a tough task in their first few months in business. Where do you get funded? There is nothing you can sell out right, unless you already have a title which is bringing in some funding. In my experience the trick is outsourcing yourself, be it a website that needs developing to random segments of code that need to be written. When Rampant Studios first started we was working overtime just to get some sort of cash flow for our first title (Which we are currently developing with Bamboo Raven) , it was tough but worthwhile.

Another approach you can try is Crowd Funding, sites like IndieGoGo.com or Kickstarter.com allow people to post projects online where people can donate to the project in return for certain perks, in our case we are using this as a background funding for our current project with perks running from backstage access to the development log's, limited edition sculptures of the in-game characters and even being listed as one of the games designers, you can find that at http://www.indiegogo.com/Lazarus.

Thanks to the age of the internet, getting your company noticed is less of a challenge. A few pieces of good concept work and a video detailing what your company is all about and you can hope to set yourself apart from other game studios out there.

Why make games?

Making a game is hard work, months of preparation and lots of sleepless nights. But at the end of it all you will have something that you can enjoy (or despise), I think most developers do it to test themselves, some do it for the passion of a challenge but ever game developer shares a common goal, making something that people will like.

Danny Goodayle
Rampant Studios - http://rampantstudios.co.uk