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How to Screw Up a Perfectly Good Game Company in Ten Easy Steps


#9 - Believe the clichés

No matter what the press say, do not assume that you have to be id or Blizzard to be successful.  You might think that the elusive Holy Grail of retail is the only way to become a "real" developer.  Not so.  Some people out there make quite a good living writing small games for internet portals, edutainment, shareware or even the dreaded hunting games which terrorize the editorial staff at your favourite gaming magazine.

There are many, many opportunities in entertainment software that have never been properly exploited.  If you have the guts, try to come up with software for the elderly, or for the stay-at-home mom.  We did, for a cable set-top box, back in the early to mid 1990's.  These games made a viable platform out of a brown box with an 8-bit CPU, 20K of memory and a crappy remote, which you had to rent (at 8$ a month) to be able to get pay-TV or PPV.  There are still over 100,000 of these units in the field today.

Hey, the PC version of Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire sold close to 600,000 copies in one month during the 1999 Christmas season.  That's more than Baldur's Gate, Half-Life and Tiberian Sun did in the entire year.  (In fact, according to PCData, only Roller Coaster Tycoon and Sim City 3000, neither of which feature exploding intestines, sold more copies in 1999.)  And I bet it didn't cost $3,000,000 to produce, or require the 3D programming skills of a minor deity, either.



Step #10


Contents
  Introduction
  Step #1
  Step #2
  Step #3
  Step #4
  Step #5
  Step #6
  Step #7
  Step #8
  Step #9
  Step #10

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