Channeled Anthro Alien Games

[AnthroHeart]

Hi all,

Over the last few weeks, Cyan and I have been in telepathic communication with an anthro alien race.

I was able to channel 17 game ideas, and Cyan channeled 3 game ideas from them.

They are short games like 3 mins or so each, such as the Ice Cube Chewer, where the only objective is
to chew ice cubes without hurting your teeth or your brain.

They are simple and campy.

Does anyone have any ideas on how I could get a demo created for this game?
I then want to use that demo to get funding like GoFundMe for the other 19 games.

I want to release all 20 games as one set on Steam.
Cyan recommends using raytraced graphics with a cartoon filter, and the Unity engine.

I would also want help to flesh out my game ideas and word them well in order to get funding.

They are for the most part mindless games, and some are a little ironic. The ideas had me laughing.

Thanks.

[Aion]

Well, game design and production in and of itself is a pretty extensive field. It is possible to hire a production studio to create a demo but it will definitely be expensive. There are tons of Freelance developers around.

https://www.quora.com/Where-can-I-hire-a...I-pay-them
https://www.upwork.com/hire/game-developers/
https://www.freelancer.ca/hire/game-development/

Etc, etc.,

So that is one approach. However, I know you have some programming knowledge. If you've got some time to work on it the other route would be to maybe take a look at Unity or another development program. It is actually easier to build a game than it seems and Unity, for example, has a ton of tutorials. All you would need to do is team up with an artist who is also interested in making games.

I mean, you can go all sorts of directions with graphics. Personally, to me, that sounds like an idea that would be pulled off better almost in 2D, but it could be imagined by a million different minds in different ways.

[AnthroHeart]

I read though that it costs $1500 to license Unity. So it may be cheaper to hire someone just for a little 3-minute demo.

[Aion]

Actually there is a free version you can use to learn on and develop, it's meant for beginners and you can use it free so long as your funding/revenue is less than $100k/yr, which is obviously the case.

https://store.unity.com/

While it may be cheaper in the short run to hire someone, if you have the desire to make these things it might be a useful skill to invest in.

[AnthroHeart]

I just hired a 3D modeler today. He also does game development.
He is charging $300 for a 3D game model and an HQ model for marketing. And $200 for the game itself.

If I can get most of my games done for around $500-1000 each, that would be great.

Then I want to turn my book into a game. By then if my company does well, I will probably hire him onto the company if I like his work.

He goes between Brazil and New Hampshire, so I'll have to figure out how to bring him on later if it gets to that.

Here is one HQ model he did:



https://www.furaffinity.net/view/32385490/

[Aion]

That's a pretty good set up and not a bad deal at all. I'm glad you found someone who can do it for you. That's a good looking render too! Looking forward to seeing the games. Let me know if you need any help with marketing if you want to try to promote them.

[AnthroHeart]

Is it better to release each simple campy game at 99 cents on Steam, or to wait till I have 5 games and release them as a set for like $3.99?

He's also going to develop for Android and iOS I think I mentioned.

[Aion]

I would do both. Release them one by one and then put out a package deal that's cheaper than buying all of them. Then people can choose to either buy one or all of them. That's great, bud.

[AnthroHeart]

The 3D modeler referred me to another game developer who he says is better at game dev.
I will still have the 3D modeler for doing the game and HQ models, and animation for the games.

This other game dev is also a furry so loves anthros too.

And he only is asking $25 upfront and 5% of sales.

I've set up with a lawyer to review a basic contract he wrote in another week.

I have a business service that provides legal and tax advice. It's so worth the money.

legalzoom.com is great if you live in the US. They are helping me set up my company.

I already have the domain, and the company name was available: www.anthroentertainment.com

I just have a placeholder image there now.

[Aion]

Sweet, man! Looks like the project is gaining a lot of momentum. Great stuff!

Also the company name is both simple and succinct, I like it.

[AnthroHeart]

Well, I will just have them for just this one game. Because they are uncomfortable filling out a tax form I would need if they get $600 or more in a year.

I am going to check online later to see if I can afford to hire a freelancer who would be even more skilled than the 3D modeler I have for my first game
and one who is willing to fill out the tax information.

They weren't comfortable giving out their personal information because they respect their privacy.

I'm ok with that. Just have to get through the first game.

And starting up a gaming company is hard. It's hard to find someone who wants to work with you for long.

[Diana]

I found a really awesome animator on Upwork. His name is Paul Dixon if you need anything like that. You might try Upwork for the 3D modeler. Upwork is all legit and there will be no problem with tax forms. 

I like your direction on this IGW. Your passion will drive this project to success.

As an aside, if you find a great game app developer who doesn't cost a fortune, please pass that along. 

[AnthroHeart]

Thank you Diana. The game developer I am using made a simple visualizer for music which was pretty neat.

Though he doesn't want to do tax forms, and will only work until I get just under the $600 threshold.

He asks for $25 upfront and 5% of sales on Steam and 10% of sales on Android for my particular simple game.
He does it on a per-game basis. This gives me a year of support from him.

He also had $25 upfront and $25 when finished, but there wouldn't be any support for the game after finished.

I'm going to see how good he is when he makes my first game. We're working on the agreement now,
and I'll be meeting with my lawyer through LegalZoom on the 8th of August.

If I start making more off of the sales than I can give him because of that threshold, he may reconsider and
send me the required W9. In any case, I'll keep track of what I owe him.

Thank you so much for the Upwork recommendation. Someone else recommended www.artstation.com but it is
like $150 or so to post a freelance job and it only stays there for 15 days. Still it's tailored to art professionals.
But I don't need a super professional unless they can do the 3D modeling and animation for like $1500 or less.

I'm going to save 4 months for my next 2nd game and have a $1500 budget for the modeling and animation and then
another $500 if needed for the game development. Or maybe $1000 each. Have to see.

On upwork, you get to have them bid for it.

[AnthroHeart]

Here's the model my modeler has so far that he's sculpting in 3D.

He did this in like less than a week.

[ZW929]

^reminds me of Keaton from Majoras Mask^

^_^

<3

[Tae]

Upwork is all legit and there will be no problem with tax forms.

Legit it may be, but ethical, not so much. They scalp a ridiculous amount of fees and their whole model is to acquire lowballing global professionals. However, they also now require you to pay to even send your portfolio to a client, which is truly taking advantage of those people from 3rd world countries who depended on their income to come from places such as Upwork and might not have the ability to put in any overhead like I did. Since they already take 25%+ I consider this to be absolutely insane that they nickel and dime just for someone to submit a job or to apply to a job.



They're basically bottom feeders getting rich off the hard work of skilled professionals. Like I pay less than $100 a year for my web hosting and domain names and all that, and working off of Upwork, if many clients paid a total of $5000 for my services, I end up only getting $4000–that chunk is WAY more than the cost of self-hosting. Yeah, if you do a large job for one client they reduce their cut to like, %20 and eventually as low as 10% with that client only, but the sort of jobs I did never let me get that percentage. Nothing about their business model is STO, anyway. I just don't have any good ideas for how to create an improved job board for freelancers and create it, so I guess it's not what I'm meant to do.

As a freelancer who worked on Upwork for a few years, I would not recommend them to anyone who wants to freelance. They're pretty scummy. I'm glad you found a good artist though. Some of them are great. Obviously I worked through Upwork and I'm all right at what I do (fantasy maps in case you end up needing some 2D map work, I'd be happy to work something out to help you). I now work independently off my own portfolio site and it's definitely better for me. Right now I'm working on learning to build 3D worlds, I have World Creator and that allows me to theoretically create an entire 3D world plane to play in. Once I've done a couple of personal projects I would feel more confident using it but willing to work with you if you end up needing a world builder. It's no secret of course, I'm not a furry. It's creating tiny worlds that's my passion. Maybe in the future there will be an intersection; right now I know you're looking to do short quick funny games and I tend to end up working for RPGs.

I know one game making furry guy, and he gets most of his business from Fur Affinity, actually.

That all said it does offer an easy way to connect. Like I said, I am glad you found a decent artist. The models look decent for the quick turnaround.

[AnthroHeart]

Thanks, Tae for the recommendation on World Creator.

I can use https://www.artstation.com/

They charge the company $150/post.

I'm going to have to wait until I get a business plan to get funding. I need to save up $2500 to have a company do one. Or I can pay less and have them do part of it.

Or I can save up $2000 / game, which is like 4-5 months of saving I think. My finances changed recently so I'm not sure.

Thank you for telling me about upwork's model.

I think I'll find better artists at artstation. If I can have an artist build and animate the model simply for like $1500 that would be great.

Like my next game will have 2 characters playing cards. That's about it. The card game has rules to it. I will have the first model, and will need the 2 models animated.

I don't know if I want investors in on it, but it may be easier to create it with additional funding.

[Diana]

Upwork is all legit and there will be no problem with tax forms.

Legit it may be, but ethical, not so much. They scalp a ridiculous amount of fees and their whole model is to acquire lowballing global professionals. However, they also now require you to pay to even send your portfolio to a client, which is truly taking advantage of those people from 3rd world countries who depended on their income to come from places such as Upwork and might not have the ability to put in any overhead like I did. Since they already take 25%+ I consider this to be absolutely insane that they nickel and dime just for someone to submit a job or to apply to a job.

Thanks for the perspective on your end. I actually circumvented Upwork with the animator I found there and we worked directly together and I paid him through Paypal.

I know what you mean. I am appalled at the business world today and how businesses operate—in particular online platforms. Ethical standards seem to have become obsolete. Most of my career was as an illustrator; I was highly respected and paid very well. Those days are long gone because of the current trend in business. Platforms such as Fiverr coerce freelancers to sell their services cheaply, and then as you say, take large cuts. This not only takes advantage of third-world countries, it has forced what the global market will bear way down. At this point the average person looking for services has gotten used to paying ridiculously low prices.

I know some members here on B4 think things look rosy moving into 4D. I just don't see it. I think the world has gotten worse. I just try to accept what is, work with that, and stay focused on what I can do in my life.

[AnthroHeart]

I'm probably going to use: https://www.freelancer.com/ to find the new modeler and possibly game designer.

I have used them before for my book and they have a good reputation I believe.

And they may handle the tax forms, I don't know for sure.

[Tae]

Thanks for the perspective on your end. I actually circumvented Upwork with the animator I found there and we worked directly together and I paid him through Paypal.

I know what you mean. I am appalled at the business world today and how businesses operate—in particular online platforms. Ethical standards seem to have become obsolete. Most of my career was as an illustrator; I was highly respected and paid very well. Those days are long gone because of the current trend in business. Platforms such as Fiverr coerce freelancers to sell their services cheaply, and then as you say, take large cuts. This not only takes advantage of third-world countries, it has forced what the global market will bear way down. At this point the average person looking for services has gotten used to paying ridiculously low prices.

I know some members here on B4 think things look rosy moving into 4D. I just don't see it. I think the world has gotten worse. I just try to accept what is, work with that, and stay focused on what I can do in my life.

Yes, you definitely understand the perspective I'm presenting. It does suck how it takes a certain amount of advantage of independents in all ways, not just third world countries, but the undercutting effecting Western priced workers. And of course I also want people who have little income but need a resource made to be able to find someone to work with, but I want people to get paid a living wage.

That said, I believe I'm on a positive timeline moving into a positively charged density. In fact, I think we're already there, and if we function within the parameters of an entry-level 4D collective we'll begin to see the influence around us. For example, it's easy for me to get so in the vibe with my house mate that we don't have to talk, we pick up on unspoken cues, and when we do talk, it's often to say almost exactly the same thing the other person was just about to say. She doesn't buy my opinion on it–I think it's baby telepathy, since we're on such a similar wavelength, both very positively aligned people in service to others. I think if we were to increase the amount of people surrounding us on similar wavelengths we would see a compounding effect. I think we're here not to ascend into 4D, but to start shaping the world that's already moving into that frequency. Negativity is heavily marketed to us, I look instead at the real world around me to see if I find traces of those old modalities instead of what the news is telling me is definitely out there. I don't have a global reach, so why work myself up into a frenzy about it?

I'm not immune, of course; I broke down the other day due to my concerns of an apocalypse happening. Me and my person decided that if that's the case, we're really only going to survive if we band together so the best thing we can do is get to know the surrounding people and have sharable skills and not make ourselves frantic and suicidally depressed over the notion but do the best we can with our surroundings.

Ever since I decided I was on a positive timeline that attracted abundance, well, things have been working out a lot better. There's a ton of awful things happening in the world, says the news. I've decided to not let that stop me from seeking out freelance gigs that creatively stimulate me, and doing nice things for real people whom I run into on the road through this life. When I see people taking advantage of other people, I use that as impetus to try educate young freelancers about how to protect themselves and their businesses.


Yeah, World Creator is a great program, very easy to learn compared to other 3D programs, I think you'd probably have good luck working with it if you want to make a 3D space your dudes can run around in. The experience was quite user friendly, I made a cool result the first time I used it!

You could always run a kickstarter. Especially if you get people pumped on a site like FA.

[AnthroHeart]

The kickstarter is a great idea. I was going to go the route of creating a business plan and then finding an investor.

But private investors usually want control of a project I think.

I don't know how much I would need for the 20 games.

I wonder if I could do the 20 simple games for $100k.

The first game will cost me like $400, but I won't have that 3D modeler anymore
and maybe not the game developer, after the first game. So it might go up 10X more expensive
to find someone for the future.

I'd like to hire a CEO but that's like $150k/year that I'd have to come up with.

[AnthroHeart]

Here is the next step of the model for Flim. He will be like the mascot for my company
and the star of most of the games.
The colors of the hands, feet and tip of tail are off a little.
This is the game model so far. The HQ one will be much more defined with fur and stuff.
This one is getting pretty good.

[AnthroHeart]

Here is the final model. He's going to rig it up now for animation.

[Aion]

Has a classic superhero kind of feel to the colours and design. Looks pretty good!

[Tae]

I'm pretty sure you're the CEO.

[AnthroHeart]

When I get the first game done, I'm going to look into this company as becoming a potential business partner.
They work with you once you have something.

https://www.ideapros.com/start-now/

Maybe others can give their input on business partners.

[AnthroHeart]

I have my game company website started: https://www.anthroentertainment.com

I also got word that the paperwork for registering my business has gone through.
So I have my business name.

[Diana]

Congrats IGW for following through and making it happen. Anthro Entertainment is a good name. You might consider trademarking it. If you want the name of a good and reasonably priced trademark attorney let me know. It's about 900.00 for the process. You can do the filing yourself (that portion is the government fee, and about 275.00, which you can't get out of), but you would want to research the TM data base yourself first to see if there are any similar TM names.

[AnthroHeart]

So far I can only budget about $250/month. Maybe up to $500 in some months.
And I have bad credit because my debt-consolidation/settlement company I used told me to stop paying on my cards
and pay them and they negotiate with the debtors.
So after 4 years, my credit will be good again after these debts are paid off.
They may settle the debts for 40% of what I originally owe.

I need a proof of concept, which is the first game I am working on. Then I might make $5k or $50k games. It depends on the funding I can get.
I'd like to be able to hire employees. And Cyan had helped me open up my abilities to be able to channel these games.

I'm learning now what it takes to start a video game company. But my internet is terrible and the training video
I was watching is buffering terribly now. Will have to wait to see it.

I'll see if legalzoom can do trademarks.

I have a DBA now. I may get into a partnership, so I will have to see if the company name will change to like an LLC.
I couldn't afford to do the LLC yet.

[Diana]

I couldn't afford to do the LLC yet.

You can do the LLC yourself online for about $50.00 or less. Then the EIN is free, with which you can open a business checking account.