Finding the Right Fit
Well, Dinowaurs was rejected because it was "too cute." While we really liked the idea, it's not the end of the world for us. Thankfully, coming up with ideas isn't too hard. Three new pitches have arrived at Adult Swim this morning. What if they still don't like those ideas? Does that mean we're just not the right fit for each other?
The concept of the "right fit" is an often neglected, yet very important part of game development. Adult Swim would essentially be our publisher. It's very important for a publisher and developer to have like-minded goals in game development. Unfortunately, most of the time the goal of the publisher is to make money by bringing profitable games to market, instead of bringing games to market that create a certain kind of game experience. I don't think this is the goal (at least not the short-term goal) for Adult Swim. The games on the their website are free after all. The short-term goal seems to be simply bringing people to the website by many different means, including original Flash games. What is the long-term goal? That is yet to be determined.
If we focus on the short-term goal, then we need to ask ourselves if the people Adult Swim wants coming to their website are the people we want to make games for. I think an easy way to find that out is whether or not Adult Swim likes our ideas. If we get rejected again, than it's a pretty safe assumption that the people we're focusing on don't match up.
Surely there's more to funded Flash development than just Adult Swim, right? Shouldn't we not put all our eggs in one basket?
Enter Kongregate, an attempted "YouTube of Games" website that aims to bring Flash games to the masses. So far, they seem to be well on their way. In fact, they just recently started sponsoring Flash game development. So off Dinowaurs goes to Kongregate. Maybe it will be appreciated there. If only we could make another Dinowaurior...
What is the right fit for us? We're still not sure. These are just two of many opportunities out there. Part of being a new company is wandering around trying to figure that very thing out. One thing is for sure, though: this is an exciting time to be in game development.
1 comment:
Another lesson that I think we're learning with this experience is to forget about those ego things that tend to either get in the way or end up destroying an entire team's will to work.
Dinowaurs might be a great game, and I'm sure everyone on the team believes that, but it wasn't denied because "they" are out to get us, or anything like that, it's just the reality of the arts. This isn't math here (even though we use it) there is no absolute answer/pitch/idea that will win.
Being persistent isn't easy, especially when the hurdles of this industry are so tall, but with each effort they get less intimidating for us as we learn to think of our ideas not as our "babies," but more like pieces of paper. ^^
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