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It is very nice video. I am still not too sure why Improbable just don’t make their own games. That’s how Epic basically marketed their engine. This type of

by timavr 8y ago

It is very nice video. I am still not too sure why Improbable just don’t make their own games. That’s how Epic basically marketed their engine. This type of games require massive investment of time and resources. I feel it will be much easier developing your own game vs trying to pursuade studios spend millions of dollars on development, which is inherently risky.

taneq 8y ago
> I feel it will be much easier developing your own game vs trying to pursuade studios spend millions of dollars on development, which is inherently risky. In general it's easier and much less risky to persuade someone else to spend millions of dollars on something than it is to spend millions of dollars on the thing yourself. That's basically what venture capital is, right?
- timavr 8y ago
  Well you need to have huge marketing and support for B2B. And then B has to actually make money for you to get anything. It is really hard sell in gaming world to get paid for engine licence upfront, because developer is only going to make money on launch. So even if you sign somebody you are only going to see this revenue when they launch 2-5 years from signing date. On top of that gaming ecosystem is very much platform and IP driven. So if I want to distribute MMO on Steam using existent IP, about 50-40% of revenue is gone. If I use Unreal it is another 5%. Then there is marketing, live support. It is super hard to take more from this cake. It is not the same as selling enterprise software where enterprise already has core business and revenue. So in Improbable case with 0.5 B raised spending 20m on game should be no brainer. It might be complete waste, but they are going to learn so much more what industry needs and develop much bigger set of tools for this kind of games. I really like idea of the company, just implementation very much VC driven and they are clearly not experts in the field.
andrewmcwatters 8y ago
Before Unreal Engine 4, it was actually easier to build games with Unreal, because you had a platform to build off of with modding as a starting point. In UE4, you do _everything_ yourself; this isn't an exaggeration. A brief look at Unreal Tournament results in viewing an abandoned project. Working with the engine feels just the same.

by timavr 8y ago

taneq 8y ago

> I feel it will be much easier developing your own game vs trying to pursuade studios spend millions of dollars on development, which is inherently risky. In general it's easier and much less risky to persuade someone else to spend millions of dollars on something than it is to spend millions of dollars on the thing yourself. That's basically what venture capital is, right?

timavr 8y ago
Well you need to have huge marketing and support for B2B. And then B has to actually make money for you to get anything. It is really hard sell in gaming world to get paid for engine licence upfront, because developer is only going to make money on launch. So even if you sign somebody you are only going to see this revenue when they launch 2-5 years from signing date. On top of that gaming ecosystem is very much platform and IP driven. So if I want to distribute MMO on Steam using existent IP, about 50-40% of revenue is gone. If I use Unreal it is another 5%. Then there is marketing, live support. It is super hard to take more from this cake. It is not the same as selling enterprise software where enterprise already has core business and revenue. So in Improbable case with 0.5 B raised spending 20m on game should be no brainer. It might be complete waste, but they are going to learn so much more what industry needs and develop much bigger set of tools for this kind of games. I really like idea of the company, just implementation very much VC driven and they are clearly not experts in the field.

andrewmcwatters 8y ago

Before Unreal Engine 4, it was actually easier to build games with Unreal, because you had a platform to build off of with modding as a starting point. In UE4, you do _everything_ yourself; this isn't an exaggeration. A brief look at Unreal Tournament results in viewing an abandoned project. Working with the engine feels just the same.