My new work of art, and a project update...

[onlineprime08]

Interesting game. The somewhat lightning lines are great and that it attracts me. Hoping for it soon. Very nice and innovative game.

[jstrike]

Hey wow, this thread took off!

I just want to say that making CM my daily reading, and being able to interact with the community here, has really helped my thinking about how to make games, and given me a lot of fresh ideas and encouragement. Especially at a time when I was really starting to despair that, you know, my whole creation was just a tree falling in the forest. It's like I got a second wind. I wouldn't have come up with this new game if I hadn't been reading all these threads and seeing what people like, what they don't, and thinking "how can I do that?" And I've also had some very cool, very open industry members share some great advice, both publicly and privately, that's pushed me to take my work to the next level. So it's awesome to have this community to sound ideas off of, and there's nowhere else like it. Thank you ALL, and please keep it up...I need it.

I'm not giving up on actually launching it one day, at least as a private club, but I know I'll need plenty more money even for that. The idea of doing it out of my own pocket and starting as a poker club is DOA because of the processing barrier. I just applied for $100k of investment through the new AngelList site (who knows?)... but even if that doesn't work, I hope if I just keep putting out new ideas, sooner or later I'll hit on something the industry won't be able to ignore, and someone will pick up the software and the boutique business model, and get us set up as a franchise, or a game incubator, or a sub-licensee, or something. So I don't end up being the Preston Tucker of casino software. Who's one of my heroes, but not how I want to end up.

In the meantime, I sort of feel like getting these ideas out and creating new games is the only thing that keeps me sane...nothing else is really happening without the money to make it happen, but as long as I'm still at the drawing board, I feel alright.

[Rhyzz]

I think the problem you face jstrike is that to get this game to market takes an awful lot of investment 'after the fact'. The game design and code is a very small portion of the work involved, you will need to integrate it with the closed platforms widely used by the industry, have the game tested and verified at significant cost and also hold a license to distribute the game.

I sincerely hope you land your $100k investment and push it because the game looks to be of a decent standard, with some practice and maybe a minion or two helping out you could probably make some good quality games, just make sure you're not 'p**sing in the wind' so to say and do some proper research into what will be involved to get this game to market.

[jstrike]

Thanks, Rhyzz. You're right on the money...you definitely know your stuff. I found out lately from discussions with industry folks that it would probably take $40-100k to bring any one original Sapphire game to market on a closed platform under normal circumstances, I mean if their own people had to do the integration. I've got 22 games. $100k for one game is crazy, because in my real job I charge $100 an hour for code, and I can make a finished game in anywhere from 40-80 hours if I know the system...and I'm sure most experienced coders could do that too. I'm more interested in the creative side, of inventing the games. Code can be outsourced to guys in Romania who can do it even cheaper. But for me, it's all one thing, inventing and coding, because I have the luxury of owning the platform. In the web world, the process of bringing something new to market is -- well, the easiest part, because all you have to do is code it from your dorm room. Not like in the retail world, for example, where dozens of regional buyers have to be satisfied. I'm used to that there because I design packages that go into Walmart on the side. But casino ops and bureaucracy seem to be working more like retail chains than like Silicon Valley startups, I guess because the regulation is so complex. Or maybe it's because they have too much money to waste. IMHO they'd profit a lot more than they'd lose at this point if they weren't afraid of a little Google-style innovation for the sake of innovation, seeing that the market's already bound and gagged and most of the players are just waiting for something to knock their socks off. But in my experience, when things happen in corporate committees, it always takes about twice as long and four times as many people as when one lone programmer, or one CEO, just makes a decision and goes with it. That's the inertia of being big. Anyway, I'd have to come up with one hell of a great game, that no one else could rip off, for anyone to justify that kind of expense to convert it to their platform... and I don't know if it makes sense to try to market my games that way in the end. The cost would be a lot lower if I could do most of the coding on my end, but that would mean the operator/platform has to have an API or some kind of documentation on integrating with their system... and from what I've heard, most of them don't.

Selling a game or even just the math for a game would be great, but that's not really where I think the money is. My platform works as a single unit...the games aren't separate, they're all coded into one web page, and on my system each new game only adds between 2kb and 6kb to the page load size. And new games -- not clones -- can be developed, tested and deployed on it inside of two weeks. It's the only casino platform in the world that doesn't have to load a separate window or java/flash program for each game. I'm hoping someone will see the potential of the system as a whole, and just let me set the damn thing up, rebrand it with their logos as their "labs", like Google Labs, and operate it under their payment processing. Then it wouldn't cost them anything up front or later. With a deal like that in pocket, I'd be able to raise enough to bank it and have my own people run it in a heartbeat; I'd give our master operator full access to the system, exclusive rights to all the new games I'm churning out and consultation if they wanted to integrate one of my games into their old system; and I'd kick back anywhere up to half of our gross gaming revs for the privilege of operating under their licensing and banking arrangement. If they weren't worried that our games would make their games look bad, I can't see how they could refuse a deal like that.

The major IT / internet / software companies fund small publishers and startups under these kinds of terms all the time. It's totally retrograde that the online gaming industry hasn't started looking to the future and started to acquire independent startups this way, and the only explanation is that they're in equlibrium, they don't feel the need to innovate, and they're stuck in a rut.

But assuming that doesn't happen, I'm hoping that the when the Feds get around to legalizing online gambling in a year or two, a clause about land-based casinos having rights to go online would let me take this to a small land operator -- like, a family-run hotel-casino in Reno -- brand it for them, kick 'em back 25% without any work on their part, and everyone would be happy. And I wouldn't mind seeing it launch on that scale...that'd be just about right.