Which Big-Name Game Developer Would Consider The Pandora Seriously?

[lobski]

The other thread got me thinking.

If one of us (like myself) sent a well-known developer a Pandora with a nice letter asking to tinker around with it, and see if he or she (just kidding about the she part, competent female game devs do not exist) would be interested in porting their an old title or making a semi-exclusive game for it. Many will probably go "lol no, no big name game developer is going to waste his or her time on such a niche product with very little users." This is probably true for MOST game developers, but I don't think all. Some come into mind, but I think the biggest contender is Carmack.

Can anyone else name any? What big name game developer has shown interest for porting/creating games outside the box et all?

 

[Caine]

just kidding about the she part, competent female game devs do not exist

What's up with the women hate? Some very nice homebrew titles are being developed by women in this very community. There is no need to insult them.

Maybe some indy developers could be swayed to port their software. I would look for developers who develop cross-platform titles as they are most likely to be able to cheaply port their games. The more effort they need to port, the larger the target market will need to be. And the Pandora market is tiny.

 

[skeezix]

If you're talking _real_ developers, like big companies, oyu're out of luck for awhile; theres a critical mass to be supported.

Consider some basics..

How much will people spend on a game? $10? $15? $20? The recent app-stores have made joe public want to pay much less for a title, which means much lower investments into sed titles. Anyway, say peopel will spend $20 (which is pretty high by 'mobile standards' today, but acceptible for a pretty good game on a niche platform maybe... though maybe half price would triple sales for a higher net, hard to say on this platform.)

Then, how many could you sell? ie: #devices-sold * penetration-=percent; ie: if your game is hot-shit and you can sell it to 20% of the platform, and you've sold 1000 units, you get to sell 200 games. Back in the day on the Atariu ST, Dungeon Master sold to like 90% of the owners (yay!), but usually today its a very small number. Still, Pandora is unique, and people would support something.. so I bed you could get 20% (or for a kick ass and accessible game, maybe even 50% at best)

So say you sell 20,000 pandoras (quite a ways off), and get a 20% penetration .. thats say 4000 units of game sold; 4000 units * $20 = $80k. Your first thought is hey, not bad ... but wait, you have to pay artists, advertising, coders, etc and so on, which is not cheap. Your game for a mobile is not going to take 2 months to write,m its oging to take 6months give or take (probably more, unless you're doign a quick port from another handheld.. most 'big companies' you're tlaking about are not, they'd need ot redo the art, redo the game UIs, redo game logic to downsize, etc.) So talk 6mo or a year .. Also, gotta pay for desks, lighting, insurance, office stuff.. that is quite expensive actually.

And well, 100% profit woudl still be nothing.. whats 80k to a company?

Well, for $80k, mins advertising and profits (they do need to make some, say 20%) leave about 40-50k; thats another for 2 people to work on it for a couple of months.

So all told.. big companies aren't going to be interested; they're going to want to make a couple hundred K before they even look in your direction, which means you need many tends of thousands of units out there.

--

But huge companies (EA's of the world are not the target here; you want your indie dynamic small companies with only 3-4 guys making great games; those guys can move fast, and already know about mobiles so can do a port; they could get a game out on your indie plkatform inn a couple months, with low costs, and don't need to make millisons per title.. they'd be hapyp with covering costs and staying in business.

thats your dev audience.

jeff

 

[Ratfink]

she (just kidding about the she part, competent female game devs do not exist)

The lead developer of Portal was a woman. I'd say that pretty much proves the quoted statement false. Please, keep your sexist comments to yourself in the future.

 

[Letalis Sonus]

In April ED said in the German forums that he had a lot of e-mail talk with Gameloft (some really big mobile games company) who showed a lot of interest and some time ago I think Craig said that even Microsoft showed interest but he didn't want to say what they had in mind.

 

[Tempel]

she (just kidding about the she part, competent female game devs do not exist)

The lead developer of Portal was a woman. I'd say that pretty much proves the quoted statement false. Please, keep your sexist comments to yourself in the future.

Kellee Santiago is the president of thatgamecompany (flOw, Flower). On these boards, our own Eniko is working on two different games. Seriously, lobski, don't be an ass; even if you're trying to make a joke, it's a poor one.

On topic:
Skeezix, we all know that there's little financial sense in big studios porting to the Pandora, but I think the OP was asking about big-name devs who might want to play with it and produce something anyways - the kind of people who will make something just for the sheer joy of it. I don't know many game devs (or I probably could have named more female ones), but I feel like Carmack has a bit of that exploratory spirit. Beyond that, don't know.

 

[Eniko]

I love you guys. ♥

 

[Prometheus]

I'm more interested in what future "big names" from here (like Eniko and countless others) are doing, myself. The fact that the big "big names" probably wouldn't consider the Pandora doesn't even seem relevant to me, given this (after all, if I want to see their stuff, I can go somewhere else).

 

[Barnaby]

she (just kidding about the she part, competent female game devs do not exist)

The lead gameplay designer for Mass Effect 2, Christina Norman, is a woman. A producer at Epic Games, who I believe is working on Bulletstorm, is also a woman (Tanya Jessen). There are plenty of capable, and infact brilliant female games developers. Even if that was a joke and you weren't being serious, it wasn't a smart thing to say.

I think there's no point wasting time on bigger devs - the Pandora is too small (right now anyway) to really catch anyone's attention in bigger companies. Personally, my vote goes to sending a Pandora to Introversion. Defcon would be perfectly suited to a handheld game, I think. Darwinia (or Multiwinia) would also be cool. Still need to try out Uplink, but I'd love to have that on the Pandora as well.

 

[Grench]

As far as big companies go - I think you're going to have a lot better luck convincing them to port an existing ARM title to the platform - and even then it's dubious until we cross that magical 100,000 consoles boundary.

Personally, there is software I'd pay $50+ (again) for to have a native compiled version of running on the Pandora. (Neverwinter Nights 1, Half Life, a good GPS suite, a great PIM suite, an ODBII reader/plotter/diagnostic, a Netflix viewer) But that's a "dream on" list.

 

[Mr B]

I already hinted at this in a different thread. We are going to have to be rather lucky to have any commercial development studios look our way. In the "close future" (with current production rate, some rather distant time, measured in years) we could get a small development studio, like the once usually referred to as "indie developers" or similar.
But, honestly, i doubt it. Luckily, enthusiasts are able to move mountains on there own, so in a while there will be no shortage of software, or games.
B!

 

[SomeGuy99]

Well certainly not Jeff Minter. He's the console assassin.

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

Well certainly not Jeff Minter. He's the console assassin.

LOL
He was Microsofts' bitch. Now he's Steve Jobs bitch.

LlamaSoft was brilliant, back in the day.

 

[SomeGuy99]

Well certainly not Jeff Minter. He's the console assassin.

LOL
He was Microsofts' bitch. Now he's Steve Jobs bitch.

LlamaSoft was brilliant, back in the day.

Oh yeah? What's he doing for Apple then?

I would imagine some more music visualisers. Last I checked, Itunes only came with two. But to be honest, I was never turned on by his 360 ones.

They should include Tempest 2000 as an Easter Egg

 

[Tempel]

Personally, my vote goes to sending a Pandora to Introversion. Defcon would be perfectly suited to a handheld game, I think. Darwinia (or Multiwinia) would also be cool. Still need to try out Uplink, but I'd love to have that on the Pandora as well.

Introversion has the stated goal of making source available for all of their games (not as FOSS, just SVN access for a fee). Uplink, Darwinia, and Multiwinia have been released as such; hopefully Defcon follows soon. But the point is, we would probably have better luck porting it ourselves than we would convincing them to do it for us. Also, it would cost less - £30 for source access versus the whatever-hundred cost of a Pandora.

Still, I like Introversion. I'd send them one anyways.

 

[Fishbong]

Wasn't Centipede developed by a woman?

 

[Prometheus]

It was, yes. If memory serves it's believed to be the first video game that was.

 

[SomeGuy99]

It was, yes. If memory serves it's believed to be the first video game that was.

Wasn't it also the first game to feature a sinister, long, snaking thing that advances towards you?

 

[Cameleon]

I don't know whey the indie scene isn't being looked at for Pandora. In the UK there are tons. there are Zombie Cow, Beatnick, Kitsune, Bitshift, Oort Games(Me), Pirate Games (Me and Poke), Squax(a guy I went to Uni with) and hundreds of others. I think Once all the pre-orders are dealt with and the App store is up and running OP should be looking at shifting some Units(even half built ones, call them "Dev Units") to the indie community. And no I'm not looking to change the Pandora into a "Pay only" device. I think that there should be a choice, I think that each developer should have a mix of free and paid for games/software.

 

[NLS]

Lol, let John Romero port Daikatana to the Pandora.