What Does It Take to Run a Videogame-Company?

[Sweyn78]

Greetings! I'm supposed to conduct an interview for a school-project for economics-class. The project is that we're all supposed to create our own "companies", and one of the required parts is to interview a similar company to the one we're creating. The "company" I chose to create for this project is called "Arrowe Softworks" and it produces a cheesy, 2D MMORPG (I actually started this "company" awhile back, but I've more-or-less forgotten about it since the ninth grade) in VB6 (an open-source VB6 application... it's just full of contradictions! I just put it on sourceforge last night, lol).

But I digress.

I was hoping that someone here might be willing to answer just a couple questions (I'm supposed to ask several, apparently. I'll come-up with a few):

1. What kinds of skills does a videogame company such as Wildfire need in order to produce it's games? (yes, I know; this is a very easy question -- but I have to ask something and be able to prove that an interview took place)

2. How long does it usually take to create a community-driven, open-source game?

3. Do you prefer advertisements or donations?

4. How do you attract new players? (yes, I'm well-aware it's only an alpha version )

5. Do you use a release-cycle?

6. Do your users prefer a certain OS or group of OS's? (I'm presuming Linux distros)

7. Do you have any sort of central location, or do most of the people who work on your games work-from home? (I'm presuming the latter)

Okay, that's all seven of them. I'm sure a lot of this information is already provided on the 0AD website, but, again, I have to show proof of an interview (the teacher's).

I would be very grateful were someone to quickly answer these questions; it's due tomorrow...

Thank you in advance!

Edited December 14, 2011 by Sweyn78

[feneur]

Greetings! I'm supposed to conduct an interview for a school-project for economics-class. The project is that we're all supposed to create our own "companies", and one of the required parts is to interview a similar company to the one we're creating. The "company" I chose to create for this project is called "Arrowe Softworks" and it produces a cheesy, 2D MMORPG (I actually started this "company" awhile back, but I've more-or-less forgotten about it since the ninth grade) in VB6 (an open-source VB6 application... it's just full of contradictions! I just put it on sourceforge last night, lol).

But I digress.

I was hoping that someone here might be willing to answer just a couple questions (I'm supposed to ask several, apparently. I'll come-up with a few):

1. What kinds of skills does a videogame company such as Wildfire need in order to produce it's games? (yes, I know; this is a very easy question -- but I have to ask something and be able to prove that an interview took place)

2. How long does it usually take to create a community-driven, open-source game?

3. Do you prefer advertisements or donations?

4. How do you attract new players? (yes, I'm well-aware it's only an alpha version )

5. Do you use a release-cycle?

6. Do your users prefer a certain OS or group of OS's? (I'm presuming Linux distros)

7. Do you have any sort of central location, or do most of the people who work on your games work-from home? (I'm presuming the latter)

Okay, that's all seven of them. I'm sure a lot of this information is already provided on the 0AD website, but, again, I have to show proof of an interview (the teacher's).

I would be very grateful were someone to quickly answer these questions; it's due tomorrow...

Thank you in advance!

Hmm, while we certainly could answer those questions, perhaps it would be better to ask a real company? After all your class is on economics as far as I can see, so our experience might not be all that relevant as we don't have that concern to a great degree. Sure, there are costs involved with having a server etc and currently we have Philip doing some paid work on the game, but that's really an exception. I mean your questions are definitely relevant as to WFG, so I'm more curious whether or not your teacher would approve of this kind of approach to the task. I'm only asking since i don't want you (and to a lesser degree the person answering) to have to spend time on something that then will have to be redone.

[Sweyn78]

Hmm, while we certainly could answer those questions, perhaps it would be better to ask a real company? After all your class is on economics as far as I can see, so our experience might not be all that relevant as we don't have that concern to a great degree. Sure, there are costs involved with having a server etc and currently we have Philip doing some paid work on the game, but that's really an exception. I mean your questions are definitely relevant as to WFG, so I'm more curious whether or not your teacher would approve of this kind of approach to the task. I'm only asking since i don't want you (and to a lesser degree the person answering) to have to spend time on something that then will have to be redone.

He'll probably be fine with it; he's usually pretty laid-back about things and has a pretty liberal sense of humour. The fact that I actually made a videogame (well, hardly that; four maps and a half-finished UI, but, eh, whatever), a website, and an FTP server for the project will probably make-up for any minor faults elsewhere (I kind of went a little over-the-top for the "Create a Product" part, lol). Besides, it's the day before it's due; I'd probably have to set-up appointments with anyone else, and today's Wednesday -- the busiest day of the week.

Thank you for your concern though!

EDIT: Interesting... every post thus far has been posted more-or-less exactly 2 hours after the one immediately before it.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Sweyn78

[feneur]

1. What kinds of skills does a videogame company such as Wildfire need in order to produce it's games? (yes, I know; this is a very easy question -- but I have to ask something and be able to prove that an interview took place)

All kinds, well not wood-working or metallurgy necessarily, but definitely a broad assortment of skills overall. To create the actual game itself we need people with programming skills, and people who are good at creating 3D models, at texturing those models, and at creating 2D art for the menus and background etc. We also need people who are skilled at creating the appropriate sounds and recording them, and at composing and recording and in some parts playing the music for the game, and at speaking the relevant languages for the unit voices. As the game is historically based we also need people who know enough of the history of the time to make it reasonably historically correct. Then there is need for skills which aren't directly related to the game as a product, but rather as a project, that includes management, PR, and perhaps most importantly a great deal of communication to make sure things go smoothly.

2. How long does it usually take to create a community-driven, open-source game?

You'll have to ask someone who's actually completed one to get a good answer to that one

3. Do you prefer advertisements or donations?

Donations I'd say personally at least. We haven't spent much effort on advertisements though, apart from the full time work Pledgie we don't really have that big needs for money currently. Just maintaining a web server + a domain name or two doesn't cost very much. If/when we implement some kind of lobby server that might change though, depending on how many people who will play the game at the same time. The main issue with advertising as I see it is that it's often controlled by someone else, and we might end up with ads for something that goes against everything we stand for etc. If the need arises for more money at a later time it's probably more likely that we will try to find a sponsor for e.g. a multiplayer lobby server or similar.

4. How do you attract new players? (yes, I'm well-aware it's only an alpha version )

To some extent we rely on word-of-mouth, but we do have accounts and post on IndieDB/ModDB, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and we try to get relevant bloggers and other sites aware of 0 A.D.

5. Do you use a release-cycle?

We try =) The long answer is that partly we are finding our way and haven't really gotten all the way to a perfect release cycle yet =) Perfect is of not necessarily attainable, but things would certainly benefit from a slightly more well defined release cycle in some cases. Partly, and this is related to the learning as we go part, we are after all doing this on our free time, and haven't really done anything like it before. So while we can have ideas about what we want to accomplish for a certain release it's impossible to know for sure whether it's going to be possible to achieve all of it. Not only don't we know how long it will take to implement a certain feature, but the other factor making any kind of prediction hard is that we cannot know beforehand how much time a contributor will have during a release cycle. Overall things seems to work at least reasonably though, we've been releasing new Alphas relatively regularly.

6. Do your users prefer a certain OS or group of OS's? (I'm presuming Linux distros)

[i will have to ask Philip about that one, a caveat is always that it's hard to know for sure as people are getting the game from so many different places. And even the we cannot be sure they actually play the game. A rough guess from the web site stats is that we have Linux and Windows almost even (a bit above 40% each), but with Linux a bit higher, and Mac at slightly lower than 10%. The latter might change once it is easier to install the game on Mac and once we have the game working better on Macs.]

7. Do you have any sort of central location, or do most of the people who work on your games work-from home? (I'm presuming the latter)

Since we do this as a hobby it's all from home. And those homes are in many different places around the world, which of course adds to the fun in being part of this project, but also to the difficulties as it's hard to have real time communication when people live as far apart as in the US, in England, in Israel, in India, and in New Zealand.

[Sweyn78]

Thank you so much!

[hhyloc]

Sorry for interrupting, but for question 2 I recommend you to ask people of the Battle for Wesnoth project (especially Dave). All others question will still be relevant since they are too an open source game development team and you can consider their project is somewhat finished (relatively, since people will improve it over time), with a large community and lots of user-made contents.

I wish you good luck with your review.

Edited December 15, 2011 by hhyloc

[Ykkrosh]

6. Do your users prefer a certain OS or group of OS's? (I'm presuming Linux distros)

This data is from a while ago, from users who choose to enable the feedback mode (which is seemingly about half the people who download the game, though it's hard to tell, and could be biased towards certain OSes). That's showing 62% Linux (of which over 80% is Ubuntu), 38% Windows, 0% OS X.

[shnbwmn]

Sorry for interrupting, but for question 2 I recommend you to ask people of the Battle for Wesnoth project ...

Another good option is the Alien Arena dev, 'Irritant' ... that game has been around since 2004 and is already in version 7.