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Make it Big in Games

by Chris Remo, Jan 20, 2006 11:00am PST

Jeff Tunnell, co-founder of classic development studio Dynamix and a founder of current indie developer/publisher GarageGames, has started a repeating column about how to Make it Big in Games. Tunnell has a long history in game development, having started Dynamix in 1984. Most gamers today probably remember the studio best for its long partnership with publisher Sierra, where it created games such as The Incredible Machine, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Red Baron, and Starsiege: Tribes. Now, Tunnell plans to pass on what he learned over his decades in the industry to those looking to create games themselves. The first entry comes off as kind of a motivational speaker type of thing, but Tunnell promises that he'll get on to more practical matters soon.

This blog is not about blowing smoke, or being an inspirational get rich quick advice column though. I’ll explore hard edged, nuts and bolts strategies and methods of deciding what kind of game you could make, how to find your team, what you can expect once your game is complete, and many more of the thousands of decisions you will need to make in order to survive in the game business.
Given his involvement with GarageGames, Tunnell will be focusing on development from an independent perspective, which happens to be where he thinks "the real action is going to be in the future." It's not clear how frequently he'll be updating, but his current two posts are separated by a week, so maybe it'll end up a weekly affair.


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Comments

8 Threads | 19 Comments
  • #19
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    By: ThomW x
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    I really agree that you don't need to be a big name to make money doing this game thing -- even small shareware games make tons of money.

    I've always been bummed that as I was in the middle of doing my Disasteroids 3D game, Atari was suing small publishers for releasing shareware games that were too close to game licenses they owned. One version of Disasteroids 3D was downloaded over 50,000 times in one week from 3dfiles.com, and even with a paltry 1% conversion at $5 a pop, I still would have had $2500 for really doing something I wanted to do anyway, and money would continue to pour in.

    I still get emails from people still downloading and enjoying the game today, despite the fact that I haven't released a new version since 2001.
    Jan 20, 2006 6:10pm PST