How to start a Video Game production company

Video games have become big business and are now one of the largest segments of the entertainment industry. If you have an idea for a video game it may be possible for you to get in on this market by creating your own video game publishing company. Before you get too excited you need to keep in mind that designing and building a video game is a lot of hard work and their is considerable risk involved, most video games lose money. However if you have a successful game there is a lot of money to be made.

The first thing that you are going to need if you want to start a video game production company is an idea. There is little chance of being successful if you are simply rehashing old ideas, you will need to come up with something original. You can come up with your own idea or you can solicit game ideas from designers outside your company, the key to success however will be having a good idea for a game.

Once you have a game that you want create the next step is to find the money to actually do it. In most cases designing, programming and marketing a game is a very expensive endeavour, you will likely need investors. In order to find investors you are going to need to put together a business plan that tells them how much money you need, how you plan to market the game and how long it is going to take to complete all of these steps. You need to make sure that you are realistic about these things, don't promise things you can't do. If you can't find an investor it may be possible to do it on your own as a one man show but this will require a lot of work.

Once you have your financing lined up the next step is to actually design and build the game. There was a time when one person could do all this, and in some cases it is still possible with a relatively simple game, but most games these days require a team. You will need designers to actually design the game and you will need programmers to create the game. The trend towards more complex games and higher expectations amongst the players has led to an increase in the size of the teams required to build a game. Also remember that it will likely take more than a year to get a game to market so most video game production companies have more than one title on the go at once.

Once you have the game ready for market you will need to have a plan for distribution, this is usually done in partnership with a publishing company. Usually the production company will enter into an agreement with a publisher to sell the game for them. There are a large number of video game publishers out there so you may have to invest some time in finding one that will work with you. It may be possible for you to distribute the game yourself by using the internet, this is becoming increasingly common amongst small video game production companies.