Are you an Amateur or a Professional?

[cairnswm]

I'm sure this article will recieve a lot of comments. But with our new Marketing and Distribution Forum I think this is relevant:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art...rticle1950.asp

[Gadget]

I'm sure this article will recieve a lot of comments. But with our new Marketing and Distribution Forum I think this is relevant:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/art...rticle1950.asp

That's an interesting article! Thanks for posting that link. I think I am bang in the middle of the two. It's taken me 5 years to come up with a marketable profitable idea, and I want to make it work from every aspect

Just about everything you think of coding has been done =/ Brainstorming is what you need to be good at, and you need a clear mind and no financial concerns while you do it

[cairnswm]

Based on that article I am clearly a professional at work - getting things done and ensuring that all aspects of my career are covered. (I also think I've made a success of my career so far. I have effectivly caught up with experts 10 years ahead of me - I've been working for 10 years).

Also I am very much the Amateur when it comes to my personal stuff (like games). I spend only enough time on each idea to ensure that I know what I am doing. Then the idea is passed over while I move onto the next bright idea I have. In my personal life I never really seem to finish anything. I have 3 game projects on the go at the moment, I am working on creating my own Knowledge Base System, I'm busy building up a library of Windows API calls in delphi etc.

[MikeS]

(Sorry to revive year old post, but it's only the third one down )

This is a very good article. No offense to Delphi develpors but we just don't own the professional market for games like C++. However, the shareware industry can be a big market for us. If approached right successful shareware developers can get into the professional industry for games using Delphi.

Perhaps we should do our best to be Professional shareware developers and have 1 up on everyone.

[WILL]

Not a terrible idea... in fact you may want to have a chat with carinswm about this. As he had mentioned earlier that he is interested in this avenue.

The leap from from Amateur to Professional doesn't have to go the way of the traditional IBM token businessman, but companies like id and Apogee did rather well and had some success(to say the least with the Doom and Quake series, under the id Software label). They just needed a good game and a good concept to help them take off. The business world is much, much more accepting of this trend especially these days where 13 year olds are super-hackers and highschool kids are CEOs of their own business.

[cairnswm]

I think I have taken a large step forward in moving toward being 'professional'. I've got my first shareware game on sale now through BMT Micro (I need to advertise more though).

I think its a mind set of 'doing it for a hobby', as opposed to 'I want to do this fulltime'.