|
Bad news; almost never happens. But there are venues...
The way things are currently its the number crunchers and coders who get to pitch game ideas. It happens within developers mainly and they try to get a publisher to back whatever idea it is. Your past successes help publishers back your project. So yeah, you wanna go to videogame school, graduate, get hired at some developer, and riff ideas at the water cooler. But...
Microsoft's recent XNA(?) developer kit gives small garage teams a chance to whip something up for XBLive Arcade. That is an American Idol sorta way to get noticed nice and quick. Who knows; a publisher digs you, you get funding for a larger project, and there you go. Then again, you'll still need to know how to crunch numbers - or atleast have a team who can and will crunch whatever you're selling. The tools you get isn't the Unreal Engine but its something.
Another way that's kinda crazy is to send mail, seriously worded mail, to a developer and pitch something. They might want something serious, like an entire Game Document, if you want them to look through it. Game Docs are essentially the game you're talking about on paper. Gameplay, visual concepts, the fuckin menu, all of that. A good way to practice is to take any game you have and try to word it on paper. This is similar to sending studios screenplays - but I imagine you have a better chance at scoring a game than selling a script.
|