How to Start an Official Gaming Company

I've been reading some articles and some few searches about this matter but most of them are really lacking or it doesn't really fit with what i'm searching.

So yeah, how to make it happen. We have a decent budget for a gaming network really. We have few good developers for different games. We have a financier. The only problem now is how to make it realize.

I have few ideas in mind though,

Renting a Building
Hire Business Professionals
Hire Technical Teams
Get a Permit?

What's your idea about this guys.

Not worth it.

A friend of mine and I talked about this recently. We're both software engineers in the bay area. The discussion is motivated by the fact that our employer let us work remotely so we could spend more time at home with our families in other states. We thought it would be awesome to be able to work like that much more often (most of the time, only coming in for attendance-critical type things, in which case a round-trip plane ticket + a few nights at a hotel every month plus the cost of living outside of that area is still cheaper than living there).

I'd suggest telecommuting. There are tons of collaboration solutions available to make this a reality. If you have enough money to rent office space, that may be a future alternative for people who don't like working at home. In the meantime, it's a huge expense reduction that would make it much more likely to make funding happen.

(assuming you mean MMORPG publishing)

Have you even looked in to potential publishing deals? Do you have any games ready for immediate closed beta?

Most gaming companies are just publishers, meaning they purchase rights to host a game and also share profit with the creators of the game.

For RF, a 1 year license from CCR will cost you $110,000 (quoted from 7 months ago). CCR also demands a 30% share of all income generated directly from hosting their game.

Thats just to put other options in to perspective for you. Some game licenses can go as low as $20,000, but those games aren't the popular ones. Your best bet is to find a game that has yet to reach the western region and offer a publishing deal.

If your budget doesn't range within the 10's of thousands, I do not recommend getting involved in game publishing. You'll just waste money.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jMerliN

The discussion is motivated by the fact that our employer let us work remotely so we could spend more time at home with our families in other states.

I'd suggest telecommuting. There are tons of collaboration solutions available to make this a reality. If you have enough money to rent office space, that may be a future alternative for people who don't like working at home.

---

I'm also working at home because my employer is in another country and most of the staff are in different countries as well. We currently have unofficial gaming network.

The idea just popped out because our employer suggested that instead of hosting private servers, why not get a license for an official online game and the target games would be the popular ones.

That's when i started searching on where to get a deal for hosting an official online game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ron

(assuming you mean MMORPG publishing)

Have you even looked in to potential publishing deals? Do you have any games ready for immediate closed beta?

---

Nope. We only have our private servers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ron

(assuming you mean MMORPG publishing)

Most gaming companies are just publishers, meaning they purchase rights to host a game and also share profit with the creators of the game.

For RF, a 1 year license from CCR will cost you $110,000 (quoted from 7 months ago). CCR also demands a 30% share of all income generated directly from hosting their game.

Thats just to put other options in to perspective for you. Some game licenses can go as low as $20,000, but those games aren't the popular ones. Your best bet is to find a game that has yet to reach the western region and offer a publishing deal.

If your budget doesn't range within the 10's of thousands, I do not recommend getting involved in game publishing. You'll just waste money.

---

We really want to host many games as possible with different genre (like most gaming networks do). And our budget is 300k+ USD.

Right now, i'm having a hard time looking for a site or a contact to make a deal or i don't know maybe ask for a Meeting with the Game Developers / Game Publishers. I already tried contacting the Business Managers of popular Online Gaming Publisher but failed to receive a response.

I don't know. Are the private servers just leaked binaries?

I'd prefer hosting an emulator to their binaries, just because the ability to add game features is just the kind of huge benefit that could be used to actually make some money.

you can always start your make believe company and act as if it was all official and legit any time
but if you want a real company you have to stop illegal activities such as hosting private servers, you'll never find an MMO Host that hosts without license

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jMerliN

I don't know. Are the private servers just leaked binaries?

I'd prefer hosting an emulator to their binaries, just because the ability to add game features is just the kind of huge benefit that could be used to actually make some money.

---

Most of our private server files came from the shared files here in RZ really. And i don't really get what you mean there about hosting an emulator to our binaries.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jolin88

you can always start your make believe company and act as if it was all official and legit any time
but if you want a real company you have to stop illegal activities such as hosting private servers, you'll never find an MMO Host that hosts without license

---

That's the plan. We will stop hosting private servers if we can just get a deal from Official Game Publishers. But i have not receive any response from their Business Managers. I was asking for a Formal Meeting in their Business Office.



Maybe someone knows here how to make an approach to such deal. Or a direct contact maybe with the Popular Gaming Publisher.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vision

Most of our private server files came from the shared files here in RZ really. And i don't really get what you mean there about hosting an emulator to our binaries.

---

Emulators are essentially re-implementations of the binaries. They have tremendous capacity to be far superior in every way to the real binaries.

For instance, resource consumption, technologies like scalability and enhancements like being able to upgrade the servers without disconnecting any users (which benefits uptime).

Not the least of which is adding custom functionality (chat commands, custom AI, etc) which can greatly improve playability and make the game more fun.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vision

I've been reading some articles and some few searches about this matter but most of them are really lacking or it doesn't really fit with what i'm searching.

So yeah, how to make it happen. We have a decent budget for a gaming network really. We have few good developers for different games. We have a financier. The only problem now is how to make it realize.

I have few ideas in mind though,

Renting a Building
Hire Business Professionals
Hire Technical Teams
Get a Permit?

What's your idea about this guys.

---

1. Don't ask on RZ. Asking on RZ shows you probably won't get far in this venture regardless of your budget(300k startup wouldn't be enough for a game like RF Online as stated before due to employment costs ontop of hosting environment and the 110k for licensing). Maybe a 500k USD startup if you have some good management employed.

You'd need an actual business before you can even think about publishing a full MMORPG. Also note that you won't be doing much developing unless you purchase the development rights to the game(which I would imagine cost > 1million for a game like RF Online considering the developers wouldn't get profit after that).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jMerliN

Emulators are essentially re-implementations of the binaries. They have tremendous capacity to be far superior in every way to the real binaries.

For instance, resource consumption, technologies like scalability and enhancements like being able to upgrade the servers without disconnecting any users (which benefits uptime).

Not the least of which is adding custom functionality (chat commands, custom AI, etc) which can greatly improve playability and make the game more fun.

---

Resource consumption isn't an issue for almost any Korean developed MMORPG. The position security is usually lacking, which frees up a ton of resources including bandwidth, CPU, and memory. For example, you can get away with $500 a month/1k average CCU for Flyff using unmodded binaries.

Adding functionality is usually the only advantage to using an emulator, besides possible security fixes. This can still be done with binaries, it's just more hacky and time consuming.

You don't get business deals by messaging some hosters, you need to message the game's creator

for example, Ran Online's creator is Min Communications, if you message any official server you get ignored, but Min Communications on their website have contact information for business talk, but they might still ignore you because you're a nobody in terms of the industry. They can't offer a deal to just anyone with enough cash for 1 year worth of licensing

Thank you for your replies. I already understand how to get deals with the Game Publishers. Also thank you for the tips.

I'm not the one who will make agreements though, it will be our employer. Someone already message me about how to close contracts and how it is done.
And some of the information stated here about the licensing is not true. I mean it's not that they get huge money from you for getting a license or closing a contract.

Though a business center really is a must. But there are still other options. You can still work remotely.

Are you going to make your own MMORPG or your going to get license from the official publisher to run it?

I'd be pricey but in my opinion it's not worth it.

Sounds to me like you want to start a private server network. Hosting private servers on one specific network and an actual gaming company are two completely different things.

Can you elaborate more and which you are trying to do?