
MakeGamesWithUs (YC W12) Wants To Turn High School Kids Into iOS Game Developers - DesaiAshu
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/06/y-combinator-makegameswithus/
======
dgant
American culture is quick to dismiss the abilities of teenagers. But often,
the biggest barrier to, say, teens making video games, is the doubt we've
taught them to harbor.

"the developers get 70% and MakeGamesWithUs will take 30%."

That's incredibly generous. When I was making games in high school I'd just be
thrilled that anyone was actually playing my games. Good on them for not being
greedy.

~~~
mrobataille
Don't forget the qualifier - "the company will take all profits from the game
until the cost of hiring artists for the graphics is payed off".

So, what do they offer?

\- Tutorials/community? Ubiquitous and free anyway, no value added.

\- Analytics? Useless to everyone not doing highly targeted design (read:
social games)

\- Art? Well, as per the above, the devs pay for it anyway.

\- Fit and finish? Now this is actually worth something. But all game devs
should develop this skill anyway, and if you're a teenager learning game
development, that's a good time to learn.

\- Networking libraries? Could be useful.

The overall package might be worth something, but probably not worth having
another finger in the revenue/IP pie. I say IP because, what happens if you
publish game XYZ with them, independently iterate on the concept, and self-
publish XYZ 2? Better to just own your work outright.

~~~
DesaiAshu
Thanks for the feedback! I think you're underestimating the value of some of
the things we add to the process such as the work involved to get good art, as
well as being the place where they can learn about fit and finish. We want to
let developers focus on the coding / game-design while we handle the not so
fun parts. Instead of having to worry about the not so fun parts you can spend
that time building a second game and make even more money!!

For those who don't have money, we take all the risk out of making a
successful game. While the developer in some ways ends up paying for some of
the art costs (ignoring the fact that the process of getting the art done
itself has cost to it), it is guaranteed he will not lose money on art and
promotion, which we see as a big win.

We hope the overall package will be worth it, and we plan to add more and more
tools / support to make it worthwhile, potentially features like allowing
others to beta test your game and A/B testing logos etc. If you can think of
more features that would make a revenue share worthwhile please let us know!
We want to build things our developers / potential developers need.

------
paul
This is the kind of thing I would have loved to do in high school. Alas, it
was the early 90's, so I tried to write BBS door games instead.

~~~
lowglow
Write another BBS Door game for the iPhone -- instant nostalgia.

~~~
jvrossb
We'd gladly skin and publish it! MakeGamesWithUs is also for kids at heart :)

------
levesque
Exactly what we need - more bad iOS games :)

I'm kidding, in all seriousness it would be a great experience for the kids.

~~~
jvrossb
Hey! We're pretty proud of Elemental Fury ;)
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elemental-
fury/id532040551?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elemental-
fury/id532040551?mt=8)

It turns out that high school and college students make games they want to
play, so the quality of games in our pipeline has been quite good so far :)

------
adriand
This is excellent. I'm not convinced that playing games has many benefits for
the average teenager, but there's no question in my mind that learning how to
build games will have tremendous benefits. A successful iOS game requires
expertise in such a tremendous number of areas (typically some combination of
programming, AI, music, art, geometry, trigonometry, physics, even calculus)
that getting youth involved in building one will be a definite learning
experience.

A recent topic of conversation here on HN lately has been the difficulty many
young people are having learning math. I think one of math's major obstacles
as a teaching subject - and perhaps it's the biggest one - is that much of it
can seem totally irrelevant.

But get someone totally committed to building a game and then watch what
happens when they realize they need to understand Newtonian mechanics in order
to make it work properly: I'm willing to bet that a lot of young people will
take up that challenge and master it.

Good luck with your startup and be sure to update HN on your progress!

~~~
jvrossb
That's a great point. We've worked hands on with quite a few high school
students developing games. You should see the notes they scribble while
coding. Even if their game isn't physics based there's usually a good amount
of trig and I guarantee it feels like much less of a chore than math homework.

------
pfisch
I think this is not a great business model. You are planning to take the
distributor portion of revenue but also take the additional risk of making the
art. This could maybe be okay by itself but probably not. However,
additionally it sounds like you want to bring xblig quality games made by
young people to ios. Something like 90% of xblig games make less than $200, on
the more competitive ios app store they will probably make less.

You need to change your business model drastically for this to succeed. I
don't think you will break even with the current business model, much less
make a profit.

Most people's first 4 video games fail spectacularly, the younger they are the
more likely this is.

There are some exceptions but I doubt they will cover your mounting losses. I
am the only person I have ever heard of whose first video game made it on to
Steam, but while my game made it on I think many many games did not. Also I
was a grad student in engineering at the time, not a high school student. You
are essentially trying to VC video game development but only take 30%. This
will not work with a 30% cut, and it won't work anyway unless you become a lot
more selective on which games you choose to invest in.

~~~
jvrossb
We have a game that's currently in review by Apple that hopefully will give a
sense of just how good these games can be:) The median for games on the App
Store is also a lot higher than $200 - in the thousands of dollars. I think
we'll break even fine on plenty of games and by virtue of opening up iOS game
development to so many potential talented developers we'll have the
opportunity to publish real gems.

Only time will tell whether the model works. I'm curious - what cut would you
say we should take?

~~~
pfisch
I'm not sure how much you provide beyond art, also an sdk? It sounds like you
are essentially a publisher. Since you are giving a royalty advance in the
form of art, software support, handling distribution and possibly marketing.
You are then giving devs a royalty rate of 70%.

My understanding is that publishers usually take more than 50% of revenue. I
don't know if you should take that much or restructure your payment system,
and honestly I don't think being a publisher for tiny xblig like games makes
sense.

~~~
jvrossb
Noted. Check out [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elemental-
fury/id532042459?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/elemental-
fury/id532042459?mt=8), we just released it, is this the type of game you mean
when you say xblig like games? It's an honest question I'm not particularly
familiar with xblig.

------
EdJiang
HS students are extremely capable of building amazing stuff.

We run hackathons for HS students every few months and are amazed by the
things they do. <http://codeday.org/pastevents.php>

I met with Ashu & the team a month or so ago and it seems like they're up to
something great =]

------
bazookaBen
anyone who creates a dead simple tool to bridge the game dev gap deserves
praise

------
dev1n
Can I log in or create an account without facebook?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1732411>

~~~
DesaiAshu
Not at this time. We only request your email so we don't have permission to
post on your behalf. I understand some people are not fond of FB login, but
we'd like to use real identities on the site. If it comes up as a common
complaint we will add a separate login.

~~~
dev1n
That's unfortunate. I fit in your target audience and I deleted my facebook. A
lot of my friends have too, two of which I had already sent the link out to
before I realized I couldn't actually log in.

edit: _If it comes up as a common complaint we will add a separate login._

I also like to think the fact that the article I linked to had 504 upvotes
certifies that this is, in fact, a common complaint.

------
jhenkens
Fun to see an article pop up on this - it was very interesting talking to you
a few months ago about this, Jeremy. Hope its going well.

------
nvmc
I can't help but briefly consider the proportion of existing iOS (or Android,
for that matter) developers who are high school kids.

------
bazookaBen
question: how are you guys different from GameSalad, or Construct2?

~~~
DesaiAshu
We're not very similar to either of the two (although I'm not too familiar
with Construct2). While there is some overlap, those are at the core a game
engine. We are a game publisher. Our tutorials teach you to use Cocos2d (an
open source game engine for iPhone, which is similar to GameSalad but in
native ObjC). Our value proposition is also very different, instead of you
paying us for tools to build a game, we only make money if the game does well,
in which case you also make money!

------
ezesolares
Wouldn't be making games for Android cheaper? Not having to buy overpriced
Apple devices

~~~
rimantas
Define "overpriced".

~~~
pjmlp
1000€ more for comparable PC hardware in terms of technical specifications.

~~~
angrycoder
The cheapest Mac laptop is $1,000. The cheapest Mac desktop is $600. So you
are saying there are comparable PC's available for free and -400 dollars?

~~~
sukuriant
I think it's a historically common consensus that high powered macs are
considerably more expensive than their equally powered non-mac alternative.

My historical stance on the matter has been that the money goes to R&D. I have
no proof to validate my assertion, though.

And some quick links to compare. I could have taken more time on selecting the
links, but this was pretty quick:

<http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MD104LL/A>

vs

<http://www.alienware.com/Landings/laptops.aspx>

~~~
rimantas

      > I think it's a historically common consensus that high
      > powered macs are considerably more expensive than their
      > equally powered non-mac alternative.
    

By consensus you mean misconception? I don't remember Macbook Air "clones"
being cheaper by $1000. Some are even more expensive. OTOH, I prefer to use
computers, not specs. "Multitouch trackpad" may look the same in specs, but in
practice it makes huge difference.

~~~
sukuriant
Those aren't the specs I look at or think about. I look more at:

8GB DDR3 1600Mhz RAM

Core i7 3.2Ghz Processor

nVidia 650M

256GB SSD

1920x1080 resolution

My mouse is usually a peripheral.

I would also imagine a clone to cost more than the original anyway, in many
cases.

