So my friends want to make a AAA game...

[Nieroshai]

Dang, I find Map Editor on Warcraft III fun to play with and I've seen some insane things done with that program which are really great (I have a friend who's pretty good with it) but making a completely new game which will make them rich... Good Luck & Have Fun!!!

That is where DoTA was born isn't it? So great things can come from just playing with legos in your basement, as it were. Maybe OP needs to explain to them that the greatest games of all time started simple and built from there.

 

[devotedsniper]

Well if there serious about it, let em. But a word of warning from someone who has basic knowledge from uni in C#, C++, Java and Visual Basic, now i'm good at standard programming but when i decided to do a games module my god it's totally different a lot of math involed, i in fact failed it.

Point is you need more than just basic knowledge.

 

[Puzzlenaut]

People like this never understand the first thing about code of any kind. Ask them what coding they've done/plan to do and for some proof of it.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Woah, wasn't expecting this kind of response. Thank's, you've all been very helpful and hopefully I can use these suggestions to at least steer them in the right direction.
Maybe I should've been clearer, of course I'm jealous, they have crazied ambition and about three other guys that share it, which is more than what I have regarding my own ideas and concepts. But I really want them to succeed but I don't want them to fail classes, waste their time and ignore the reality of what such an undertaking would entail.

Or I maybe should just sit back, wait for reality to kick in and laugh my ass off. I just hope they either begin to aim to do something less ridiculous or just abandon the project entirely before they waste too much time and effort getting nowhere. They've also started arguing and generally losing interest lately, and apparently two of the other guys aren't involved in it anymore.

And they aren't trolling.

Real dev here, laughing my ass off. Thanks. That made my morning. Let them be stupid; reality will do a better job of crushing them than you could ever hope to.

I was hoping a dev would see this. Just how weird does this seem to someone involved in the industry exactly?

I'm with Sixcess here. 15 year olds often dream big. There is no harm in it. And in the end, they might get a lot of positive out of it. In the process of working on this AAA game, they will learn a lot. This game will probably not make it to light, but that is the first step.

Let's say goals can be pun on a scale of 1 to 10. If you Aim at 10 and only achieve 5...you've done a lot more than than the person who only aimed at the sure thing of 1.

This may be true, but the OP said their friends had started to fail classes.
This sounds like borderline obsession, and that's not good.

Yeah that's exactly it. It's the downright obsession with it that worries me, and on the topic of the classes one of them is practically ignoring mathematics entirely yet absolutely wants to get big in the game industry. Even before he met my other friend who came to him with the game idea he full on intended to go work for a big developer like Blizzard. Just when talking with him it's clearly evident that he's smart but just has a completely untrue grasp of the industry and game development overall and how to get involved in it. The other day he pretty much said to me that it wouldn't matter if he doesn't know code or game mechanics, but that a big dev would hire him because he's smart and his ideas are so great.
You may have seen that video on Youtube, 'So you want to be a game designer?' It was exactly like that, except instead of me being the dreamcrushing robot I was just smiling and nodding nervously.
The thing about him is he has potential which he could act on, but he think's he already has it, if that makes sense.

I hate to say it, but this is how brilliant people are born. Everything between the real birth and this point is just fluff. So you are simply being anal. You seem jealous that you have no real dreams of your own and are perfectly content to live the same life as billions of ants before you, you mindless drone you.

There is also a big chance that one or more of your friends will simply fail. But one of them may be the next Todd Howard. So I think you need to suspend judgment.

Everyone has dreams. In this case their only difference is that they truly believe they could essentially make something with nothing.

I have dreams, for instance I want to be in a band as a guitarist and singer, I want to see my film and game ideas hit the screen. But I play poorly, can't sing at all, my ideas are probably utter bullshit and I probably don't have the skills, ability or creativity necessary to be involved in either the game or film industry. I have a bunch of ideas, so does everyone else. I have the potential to act on those ideas, but I won't because they're shit and will go nowhere and I'll just be wasting my fucking time.
The major thing that separates the successful from the unsuccessful is just luck. Like the luck to be born in a country where you have a decent chance of living past 10, and having access to education, medical facilities, basic human needs. Or the luck to have a good (or even bad) idea, design or concept and get noticed by someone who helps you make something out of it and create the next best thing, and end up being CEO of World Incorporated or whatever.
Of course there are people who try their hardest and strive towards their dreams and being all they can be. And while that certainly helps the worlds biggest divider is simply luck. Like, why is it the so called 'musicians' of now get absolutely huge just for utilising programs to enhance their 'music' when a ridiculously smart person which may have been fortunate enough to see their dream come true has their life cut short in a freak accident such as a plane crash? Why do truly talented songwriters and musicians never get out of playing in trasy bars despite their best efforts to try and get somewhere? Why are there thousands of kids who are in such an instance and such an environment where they don't live long enough to be anything.
Everyone you meet has their own dreams, just like you, but noone is inheritantly better than anyone else because of this.
There is no such thing as a mindless drone.

That saying about being able to do anything if you dream of it, and that everyone has the potential to do anything is utter crap. A child born into a poverty stricken country who is continuously and constantly hit by negative events won't magically become a rocket scientist overnight. A man without legs won't win a marathon. It's all luck. Life is a series of events which may or may not turn out shitty.
I'm not negative, or depressed or whatever. I'm perfectly happy and fully content with my existence, as insignificant as it may be. I'm simply just a realist, just like everyone else who knows their limits.

 

[Balaxe]

Give them a reality check or keep out of the situation. Raging on the internet about it is not going to solve a thing.

 

[RollForInitiative]

Real dev here, laughing my ass off. Thanks. That made my morning. Let them be stupid; reality will do a better job of crushing them than you could ever hope to.

I was hoping a dev would see this. Just how weird does this seem to someone involved in the industry exactly?

Well, I'll be blunt. My initial reaction was pretty goddamn mean but I'll explain from my point of view.

I've been doing this for years and I've never worked on anything but AAA titles; games with huge budgets that were considered "event" release titles. I know what it takes to make one and I know how many incredibly talented people it takes to get a triple-A out the door. Two kids with less than a highschool education want to take on the hundred plus team of veteran developers at their own game? Yeah, I laugh at that. I laugh a lot.

That said, you have to start somewhere. I'm sure most of those veterans had similar thoughts when they were young. Fantasizing and completely losing grip on reality are two different things though. Aiming high is well and good but failing to temper it with knowledge and reality marks you for failure before you even begin. Educating one's self is utterly invaluable.

If they were serious about game development, they would consider the modding scene and the indie scene well before trying to fight triple-A titles on their own turf. Put simply, unless there's a major shift in the future, AAA titles will continue to require massive teams. The amount of work involved, in terms of man years, is simply astronomical. I've been on my current project for four years. There are a few hundred people here. Do the math and tell me that two people can do the same.

 

[MrTwo]

A thing that's been bothering me a bit that I decided to make a thread about.

-

The other day a friend of mine brought up the fact that he was apparently in the process of creating a videogame, and another friend of mine wanted to get in on it.
They're pretty clever, and sane guys, so I was a little taken aback when they announced that their game would have the best graphics on the market, would feature hundreds of levels, dozens of enemies and would have it's own engine. It'd be published by Valve and released on Steam.
They're 15, they have absolutely no knowledge of any kind of software development and they reckon they can make the best game in the world.
They don't even know what kind of game it is yet.

They just have no idea how much resources it would take, and seem to think the only thing they need to make a fully fledged game is time (five years they guess) and a very basic understanding of C++, which they don't have. Not cutting edge software, and hardware, and concept artists, and animators, level designers, sound designers, modellers and floors of people working on other stuff about 10 hours a day, along with the backing of a publisher and millions of dollars.
They've been talking about making an entire engine so they can have 'more control over it', and at school the other day they were looking up photos of people like Amy Lee from Evanescense and Felicia Day from The Guild to apparently use as face textures for the protagonist of a first person game which features no cutscenes. And they just didn't seem to get how dumb what they were doing was and how weird it looked to everyone in the room. Then they started finding pictures of mannequins and weird, dark, 'cool' stuff like that to use as images for the planned website for the game, which would apparently feature above all things, a donations page.

It bothers me. Primarily because they might actually be able to get something cool done if they weren't so thick and reaching for the stars without so much as a toy rocket, and because they like to go on about how great they think their ideas are and their arrogance is becoming astounding. Every now and then they'll come up to me and say "Dude I just thought of the coolest way to do the engine ever!" and I'll just mentally facepalm and hear the word 'mod' go through my head over and over again. Also, like everyone else I suppose, I've had quite a few game ideas of my own but aren't even trying to make actual progress on them aside from the development of settings and background and what not, because I know they just won't happen. They on the other hand come in saying they'll make 'the new Minecraft' and earn shitloads of money while I've been quitely developing my own idea's whilst fully understanding they won't be anything more than a couple hundred pages on Onenote, but I think they might be able to get something done if they really tried (there's apparently 3 or 4 other guys 'working' on the game with them but they're in another part of the country and they most likely have no idea what they're doing either) instead of trying to make the 'best game ever' from scratch and tried a mod or something, rather than waste five years in the pursuit of nothing. One of my friends said he won't study (he wants a career in game development) and won't get a part time job so he can work on it, but he doesn't even know how to or even what it is.

It wouldn't worry me so much they weren't so damn serious and ignorant when they talk about it. Like, the other day at school they made a sketch of some shadowy monster thing in an exercise book which was apparently supposed to be concept art, then went on and on about how they'd feature them in the game for over an hour in class. Just the way they were talking was quite frankly disturbing. One of my friends has been too busy fiddling with photoshop and making graphics (black shapes with certain bits cut out of them) for the website every lesson to get any of his schoolwork done, and now he has two or three major assignments which are about three weeks overdue. Whenever I look at what he's doing in any class he's doing something to do the website or the game rather than what he's supposed to be doing. All the time.

What really kills me is that they are great friends and smart guys, but never before have I seen them come off as so ignorant, narcissistic and just stupid, and they really seem perfectly happy with wasting five years of their lives in pursuit of nothing. It's actually kind of scary and sad.
I should probably tell them to pull their heads out their asses and tell them to wake the fuck up, but they're seriously so into this thing they'll probably hate me for it and carry on with...I'm not sure what exactly.

Anyway, is this as ridiculous sounding to anyone else or am I overreacting and is it just me?

I had a couple of friends who did almost this exact thing 2 years ago when they were 13. They were all like, "Yeah, we're making an MMORPG and its gonna go on the internet, we're gonna earn heaps of money, wanna help?" I'm thinking "Are they actually going to do this?" I think I wrote a page on a 'quest' for them but my heart wasn't in it. They're not really friends anymore and one is best friends with guys I'm pretty sure take drugs. I sometimes wonder, "what if he'd actually kept trying?" So maybe its better for your friends to keep trying to make it, at least they'll learn something (although the overdue assignments seems a bit far, kick your friend into gear over that).

 

[Zeh Don]

The less you know about a particular topic, the more you over estimate your abilities because you don't understand the complexities. The more you understand about a particular topic, the more you under estimate your abilities because you understand how complex the particular topic is.

You can tell them anything over and over till they're blue in the face; they'll still think that they've got that special 'something' to set the world on fire.

Generally, they'll be thinking something like this:
"Make a few guns, a few levels, lots of bad guys, draw up some textures, and put it together. It's not hard, its companies being bloated and slow that make games cost so much. I mean, Doom was made by like, what, 5 guys? Half-Life 2 had what, 20? We'll just work hard enough so that it doesn't matter. Then, we'll stick it up on Steam, so everyone can see how amazing our talents are. BOOM. Make an easy million, maybe two. Wait for the interviews to roll in, then get to work on that 'Call of Duty' killer everyone's been waiting for."
They'll spend more time thinking about what to do with all the easy money than how to get the basic collision detection system working.

If you want them to see sense, jump over to SourceForge.net and grab an open source game. Copy a section of the code that's easy to pull apart - the control stuff is child's play, so I'd recommend you start there - and then show it to them. Then, show them more complicated stuff like normal mapping. Look up 'Carmac's Reverse' and show them some of the math behind the Doom 3 lighting system.

If they're interested in getting started in game design, good on them. For a truly easy introduction, I'd recommend the XNA development tools. It's not like a normal language; it's easier to read, and easier for first timers to understand. It also handles some fairly complex stuff for them out of the box, and has some excellent 'kits' like the platformer starter kit and the RPG kit. It's free, too!

Everyone needs a hard lesson in life once in a while; trying to shield them from that is what leads to the current downward trend of kids thinking their super intelligent and gifted geniuses because they read 'Atlas Shrugged'.
The best thing a real friend can do is let them fall, and help them pick themselves up again. We all like to pretend we're going to be the next industry super story and set the world on fire with how magic game, or book, or movie. Maybe we will be: but it takes a fuck load of hard work to get there. Drawing shadow monsters in class between math tests doesn't give you 'Deus Ex'. Though, you might get a 'Dragon Age II'

 

[Chased]

Let the

If you want them to see sense, jump over to SourceForge.net and grab an open source game. Copy a section of the code that's easy to pull apart - the control stuff is child's play, so I'd recommend you start there - and then show it to them. Then, show them more complicated stuff like normal mapping. Look up 'Carmac's Reverse' and show them some of the math behind the Doom 3 lighting system.

In all fairness normal mapping is pretty easy. Take the hi-poly model, decimate it, unwrap it, create a new UV texture and then bake normals selected to the object (one way of doing it). Takes about 2 minutes but having a computer that can handle doing this with high count models is an entirely different matter.

 

[Slash Dementia]

Meh, they're optimistic, 15, and daydreaming. At that age, I wanted to at least make a game. Didn't happen. I grew out of the phase and gave up (trying, not wanting to make a game). It's fun to think about and plan out a game. If they're serious about it, let them be. If they neglect school work, oh well--it's on them. Eventually, they'll find out what a "AAA" game is, and know that it takes the work of hundreds of people working long hours, and spending lots and lots of money. I doubt they have the drive to come up with all of that.

If anything, they'll make an okay game. Just leave them alone, or rather, have fun with them because it seems like nothing more than that--even if they are that serious and adamant about getting this done. Don't ruin it by telling them the truth, sometimes people just need to keep that held from them, and they'll find it out for themselves and come back from blissful ignorance.

 

[Nami nom noms]

It'd be published by Valve and released on Steam.

lol!

Ok so they're very possibly and quite likely wasting their lives... but then again maybe not.
At least they are enthusiastic about it, if they begin making the game it will take them all of 10 minutes of work to realise what a truly daunting task this REALLY is. No doubt that will scare them off, and they'll do something else.

Or maybe, which can rarely happen, they might do it. They might get so far and gain valuable experience. Your friend who is neglecting his schoolwork? well, that's his choice, if he really wants to make games schoolwork isn't going to mean as much to a future employer (in the games industry) as making a game from scratch. Some of the richest and most successful people in the world dropped out of school and pursued their own thing.

My advice is to leave them to it, and concentrate on your own studies. They might (and probably will) fail, but mistakes are for each person to make, and if nothing else, they'll have a slightly better understanding of what it takes to make a game.

(also 5 years? More like 10 if its just the small team )

 

[Sgt. Dante]

You know what I have to say to this? Good. They're being more creative than most, and the very process of realizing a game is going to teach them some very valuable things. If you're close friends with them, the best thing you could do is to get them to be more practical. Talk to them about how the game will play, what the premise is and the general concept behind it. Get them to work with the Source Engine, learn Hammer, learn about 3d modelling (for reference, there's a free program called Softimage Mod Tool, and another one called Gmax).
Even if they don't manage to make a game, those will be some really useful skills that they'll acquire.

Yeah, and dropping out of highschool because they're completely obsessed with this idea will really take them far in life. :/

I completely agree in pronciple mind you, people should be encouraged to chase their dreams and make a living doing what they want to do, within reason. There comes a point (often when they start failing exams and stop going to class) that what they really need is a swift kick in the ass and a reality check.

And again, the skills they're sacrificing their future for is only useful in the even that it pans out for them and they get to make their games. But if i were a publisher and two highschool dropouts pitched me a game it'd better be fucking golddust or i'd laugh them outta my office.