I have an idea for an advanced MORPG for Pokemon. It will make lot's of money eventulay if I can get this idea on the market. So, where can I find programmers?

... erm.... Not to particularly wish to be a bit of a stick-in-the-mud or anything, but doing it anyway nevertheless, principally, because I can - have you considered at all the notion that:

A: if you don't actually possess the programming skills to bring to the mix yourself, what on earth would a bunch of programmers actually want with you in the first instance and, second:

B: Pokémon is a copyrighted, trademark protected property. You can't make any money off it, you've not the slightest legal right.

Answer to question A: I have ideas for them to create that they would not be able to think up of on their own.

Answer to question B: I can ask permission from Nintendo to use the idea and make them and myself money off of it.

Well, first, with regard to that latter. In order to get anyone interested to consider the idea of working on your project, you'd have to get Nintendo's agreement and permission first...

And here would be something of the rub.

Should you're idea be of any merit, they'll want to keep it for themselves. This is just the nature of business. To get their attention in the first place you need to first:

A: Formalise and Present your idea fully in the form of a Pitch.
B: Prove a market exists for what you have in mind and
C: Back your claims up with cost projections, market share values and expected returns on their investment.

Assuming you're idea actually is of some merit, they'll probably just show polite disinterest and then quietly look into the matter themselves, in the meantime you will have invested a great deal of your time and effort for singularly little return.

May I make the following suggestion?

Try first adapting your current idea into something original - something you have thought up yourself, from scratch, own all the intellectual rights to and can genuinely call your own.

Read up about what exactly is involved in games production, visualise your idea's through first with artwork and script and then, maybe, you have something a coder might be interested in considering doing something with.

Not trying to put your idea down here, actually can't - have very little idea what it is, but if you're keen and of entrepreneurial spirit, be prepared to put the hours in and make your idea work for you.

If you thing is something that can be expressed just simply in an email to someone, it's nick-able. Develop your idea through, think about what you're doing and, who knows, you'll probably end up with something 20 times better than you originally though of and can legitimately call it you're own.

I do wish you luck with it, but really you genuinely do have to put the time in first realising you idea fully so that another person can actually see the idea working before anyone's going to invest the time and effort in the project themselves.

All the best,

A ;)

Well this is what I've been lead to beleive...

Firstoff, Even if you say "Hi, I have an idea for a game..." and direct it at a games firm, they will pretty much turn around and say "Thanks for the thought, however we'll have to stop you there as we do not accept ideas from the public for legal reasons".

(Notibly this is a rough version of a reply I had from Rockstar which misread the question I actually asked.)

Quite simply such companies will only deal with their own employee's because their own employees have signed a contract.

What information I was actually after the time was pretty much the same as you, "I have an idea for a game... how do I go about getting it out there?".

Well I know of some of what you can do, Games making isn't all about programming most of the time it's about the preliminary things... Storyboarding, Conceptual artwork etc. Without those things nobody can visualise what they are attempting to create from the Artist trying to create a 3D representation, The animators or the programmer thats got to stick it all together (with stickybacked plastic and a plastic bottle).

So really for a game idea what you have to do is look at getting a portfolio together of what you intend, once you have that together, you'd then have to talk to a lawyer because when you going start approaching games companies you need to have something to setup an agreement about non-disclosure should they not like the idea and you want to try and sell it elsewhere. (Of course this is after you've got them to be a little interested beforehand)

In essence the only real way to get a game made is to actually founder a games company, Might sound easy but it's known that the industry is one of the toughest to break with a company from the number of bankrupted or consolidated companies in the past. (i.e. Bullfrog, Muckyfoot & Elixir)

Should you're idea be of any merit, they'll want to keep it for themselves. This is just the nature of business. To get their attention in the first place you need to first: A: Formalise and Present your idea fully in the form of a Pitch. B: Prove a market exists for what you have in mind and C: Back your claims up with cost projections, market share values and expected returns on their investment

Pretty sure it would work like this:

He develops a prototype w\ backups etc. to prove the idea was his first. That would make it hard to steal and if they do not like it he's finished, if it isn't complete trash they may give it a shot.

May just end up getting a cease and desist though.

It is noted that some developers sometimes do run out of funds, so they look through their portfolio of work (Their half finished jobs) and occasionally sell them on to other developers to continue. (They might sell one to fund another) This is why some games have lots of different logo's at the startup.

Good point. He also needs to contribute more than the ideas in his head, unless he deleloped a killer storyline but were talking about a Pokemon MORPG.

new concept
new characters (may be a problem)
good story
concept art
storyboard

Not being a programmer will make things harder too.

having worked with nintendo in the past, i can say that this will never get off of the ground. that company is infamously insular as far as creation of new intellectual properties based on their copyrights.
and besides..nintendo is NOT the developer for pokemon (this was the product i worked with nintendo on), Gamefreaks is.

google them if you want to work with a pokemon setting.

Answer to question B: I can ask permission from Nintendo to use the idea and make them and myself money off of it. The royalty for a huge corporation like Nintendo is going to be huge. You'd have to be assured of making enough money that you could make a profit with the huge overhead involved.

nintendo doesnt produce the pokemon games.

Yes, I didn't realize that until after I posted.

Well, with the information I just read and with my own work I've been doing, I'm guessing I have a 45% chance of making this game and make a profit. First, I'll see if I can just add a copyright of nintendo and gamefreak like the Pokemon RPG sites do, but seeing how I'll be making money, I'm guessing they'll want a certain percentage. I don't care about the money, just the joy of creating this game will be enough. If anyone would like to help just email me at mewskitty@hotmail.com and we'll see what we can do.

What platform do you want it to run on? If you want it to run on a console, then not only would you have to get permission from the copyright owner (and pay a royalty), you would also have to keep in mind that consoles are proprietary. If you could reverse engineer the system (ie cartrige or disc format), you would have to pay the patent owner.

I would suggest learning some coding yourelf, and at least get the project started. You'll probably have a much easier time finding other interested people if they can see that the project is actually going somewhere. I still think it will be very hard to make money off of it, but it could be a fun project for you.

I don't care about the money, just the joy of creating this game will be enough.
Then get going :) I used to try programming simple games in QBASIC when I was 14 or so. It was fun, but they were always half-hearted attempts - I typically gave up when it was time to develop the AI.

You can create the game and leave profits as an afterthought, or decide you can't be bothered with the legal hassle and make it freely available. You shouldn't need anyone's permission if you do that.

Then get going I used to try programming simple games in QBASIC when I was 14 or so. It was fun, but they were always half-hearted attempts - I typically gave up when it was time to develop the AI.Sweet! I did QBASIC when I was 12, and I continued for a few years. I made a few decent asteroid and shooter type games, as well as some pretty cool graphic effects, such as "realistic" flames.

My advice: just start simple. There are a ton of beginner languages out there. Just pick one that you can read about. Then after you develop the basic programming skill set, you can pretty easily move on to more and more powerful languages, and extend your skills even further. Go to the library, and find a book on game programming for beginners. I had one a while back that taught game programming in some modern flavor of BASIC (I can't remember the name though).

Sweet! I did QBASIC when I was 12, and I continued for a few years. I made a few decent asteroid and shooter type games, as well as some pretty cool graphic effects, such as "realistic" flames.
Nice. I did a few simple shooter and driving "proto-games" - mostly with the intention of trying out ideas as opposed to producing finished games. I also wrote one or two simulation-type programs. Eventually I got tired of BASIC though - too slow and I wanted a bit more than wire-frame graphics (at the time all I had was a Pentium-100).

Already moved on, for the reasons given above. No, I knew you had moved on. Sorry. I was talking to MewSkitty when I said that. Sorry for the miscommunication.

No, I knew you had moved on. Sorry. I was talking to MewSkitty when I said that. Sorry for the miscommunication.
No problem - post edited accordingly (list of programming languages przyk knows removed).

I think it would be a good idea to just parody Nintendo's Pokemon. make up your own monster things. hell, have your users (once its running) contribute to the creation of characters.

I could recontinue my plan for a prodey of Pokemon, but I prefer to be with my babies. I'll learn as much about programing as I can as I have people try to create the game for me so I can be of some help. I have leanred a lot about what to do in this thread, I thank you all for your posts.

One last point to make is that you don't actually have to use someone elses creation and pay vaste quantities off in royalities. I once asked about trying to get a multiplayer game made of something that was originally a single player and I asked the main programmer, there response was that over the years the games rights had been sold to a number of companies, so they no longer had actual say over the game itself, but they suggested that it didn't stop me making a game "Similar". Not an absolute port of the original.

So in essense, invent something slightly new, don't use Pokemon.

But I want to! Pokemon is my life's amibtion! My life revolves around Pokemon. My fieance likes Pokemon, and it's a good thing cause if she didn't I'd dump her like a rock.^^

EDIT: I IMed someone on this board who knew programing, but they blocked me for no reason at all. Obviously they greatly underestimate my knowledge of this type of game. I know everything about these games, including programming details. All I need is someone who can duplicate and edit this program and add website portionts to it. To save some time we could just edit the ROM of the newist game, Pokemon Emerald, and only edit it to add multiplayer online maps and items. Hell, if I can find someone who knows these games as well as I we can make it and have it up and going in less than a year! But that's obviously not going to happen unless I meet one of the origional programmers of the game =/ Well, I guess I'll just keep looking.

But I want to! Pokemon is my life's amibtion! My life revolves around Pokemon. My fieance likes Pokemon, and it's a good thing cause if she didn't I'd dump her like a rock.^^


ever consider applying for a job for their company?

I've tried that, they said you need to be 18 or older to work for Nintendo.

lol well then you better get used to waiting, and while you're at it you most deffinitly need to invest into programming classes, or just get really good at reading half way decent texts on how to program.

I've tried that, they said you need to be 18 or older to work for Nintendo.
Did they say anything about offering internships, or do you need some qualifications?

Check out some freelancers, here (http://www.project4hire.com/) .