(re: Good old Sierra-Times, Thanx to Ken & Roberta!) Marco:
Thank you for the comments!
If you want, try posting a screenshot from some of your games – I’m curious to see what kind of games you are making.
I understand your comment about only 3-d games selling. You may want to experiment with producing an adventure game in 3d, using one of the game engines that is already on the market. My guess is that lots of different 3d engines are available to pick from. Check out
Link: http://www.garagegames.com(http://www.garagegames.com)
– this is one of the Sierra developers (Jeff Tunnell from Dynamix) who has developed a 3d engine and is selling it cheap (around $100) for people who want to build 3d games. To be honest, I don’t have any idea if Jeff’s is the best engine or not. I haven’t really looked to see what is in the market. But, I do know that Jeff is a good guy, so I’d be surprised if his engine wasn’t pretty good.
Actually .. my sense of the market is that the real money these days is in games for the video game machines (playstation, etc). My guess would be that the PC software (entertainment) market is smaller today than when I left the industry six years ago.
Here’s my current thinking as to what I would do, if I were to do something: (or, at least what I’ve been thinking lately)
I’m thinking that my next project will be a server base game that has a simple text based interface, but is open to independent developers writing front ends to. In other words, start with a game that is server based, and fun to play – but, ugly – and, then let the hundreds of independent entrpreneurs/developers around the web write sleek looking clients/graphical interfaces for different parts of the product. The idea would be that a whole market would revolve around developing pieces to the game.
I’m explaining this poorly. Imagine if you will (and, this isn’t really what I’m thinking about) – that I were to build a server-based simulation of a battlefield. The battlefield might recognize that soldiers could be in it, that they could be in vehicles (some of which drive and some of which fly). Soldiers or vehicles, etc might have weapons. On the server side I would resolve where everyone is, what they have, and the result of conflicts — but, all the graphics are on the client side. If I do the server right, then lots of different graphic interfaces could be written to display the battlefield. Code could be written to represent (and display) different kinds of tanks, airplanes, weapons, etc.
Anyway…. that’s what I’m thinking. I’m a little different than most developers in that I need to do something that I can do myself. I’ve done my time of running a company. It was an awesome experience, but “been there, done that”. I like travelling now, and always have my laptop along. I’m not an artist (as this site proves beyond a doubt), but do know how to code (although my coding skills are very rusty after 20 years as a bureaucrat).
Good luck with your games!
-Ken W
