In agreement with most of the rest here. If you want a particular game made you should fund it yourself. It is unlikely that a game studio would even look at your pitch.
I was a lead designer for most of my ten years with BioWare and it would have been unlikely for a pitch by me or my peers to be considered.
The core game pitch came, generally, from a higher level, and the true design emerged through collaboration with the entire team.
If I have a complete game design document for a game to be made, how can I get a game company to create it?
Probably depends on the kind of writing you are doing. In general I find the iPad okay for draft work or proofreading (but not revision).
The apps I use are:
- PlainText for rough draft writing because it has DropBox capability built in. No formatting or anything though.
- Notorize - This app allows marking up a PDF file with notes and voice annotations. I use this when proofing the near-final draft of my work.
What are some of the best iPad apps for writers?
I can’t speak specifically to how to get respect from the engineering team but as part of many design teams in development I knew I appreciated it when a project manager:
- Made an attempt to really understand the game and how it needed to be built. This meant playtesting prototypes and submitting feedback through proper channels (not annoying me with poorly thought out feedback while I was trying to work)
-Does not try to leap before s/he walks. What I mean by this is that a manager should prove that they are a good manager by removing roadblocks to development, getting access to needed software and doing other management tasks before they start meddling with programming, art and design.
- Respected what I was good at. I had a hard time taking serious a manager who wanted to radically change the story, for example, if they had not previously proven themselves a good judge of story.
- Respected the work the team did. A manager who consistently makes the team rush to implement features and then cuts them for arbitrary reasons (poor scheduling etc…) will not get the respect of the team. Mistakes do happen of course but time and effort is important to employees.
How do you earn the respect of the engineering team as a product manager or someone outside that team?
Yep, definitely agree with Heidi and Cliff. I’ve worked as a writer in the games industry and outside and it is really hard to write game dialog well (and quickly).
At BioWare it was hard to find high quality writers.
A while back I did a couple of posts on this http://blog.brentknowles.
How does writing for a video game such as Mass Effect or Dragon Age compare to the conventions of modern day screen and television writing?
Scroll to 1:29:25 to see Brent make his speech!
