Here's the thing, you can't start up a games development house just by thinking "I want to make games". You gotta have a plan beyond just the idea of just making games.

You gotta have direction, purpose and proper management to make sure that you can develop a game because it IS a serious undertaking.

So far, I think the only local studios that have done anything original was Phoenix Studios (Of Fung Wan Online) and they have since long closed shop.

I hear so many people say they want to make games but when asked for details and other pertinent information, they just come out blank.

All it needs is an idea and the desire to execute that idea. If you don't have that then your brand new Malaysian games studio will just be destined to do kiddie ports for big games or asset production.

So, the obvious route would be, the indie route. Plan out the game you intend to make. Think of the tools and platform you're going to be using and then see if you can do it yourself or hire someone if need be. The point is TAKE INITIATIVE. Nobody's going to hold your hand to make a game and if you want to be a proper games development house, you HAVE to start at the individual level first. Just look at notch (Minecraft) and Chris Park (AI War). Both these fellas started out solo, but once they became established, then sought to expand their efforts into a proper business.

Alternatively, there's always the modding method (Which is very high risk with little reward). Start a mod team. Again you'll need to have a game in mind to make before embarking on this as well... Except that since you're building a mod, its a lot easier and cheaper since you don't have to pay anyone. Make one that's successful enough and then you've got a shot at commercializing it. Just ask Tripwire (Red Orchestra, Killing Floor) and Black Cat Games (Alien Swarm).

Wanting a game studio for the sake of having a game studio to your name just sounds foolish... You'll need far more than that... Get that, then you've got a good headstart over everyone else.

Ok aspiring game developer, here's some tips for you despite having zero programming skills:
1 - Pick up a simple game development tool like Yoyo's Game Maker. With it you can make simple top down old school JRPG games. Its designed to allow people with very little programming skill to do game development. Its not very powerful (Though some really good stuff was made with it), but it will at least serve as a good stepping stone to help you get familiar with game development
2 - If you're feeling more adventurous and gutsy, try Unity3D. Its definitely more programming centric, but its not impossible to pick up even if you don't have a background in programming (Since this was designed with that in mind). This is something you can really sink your teeth into if you're willing to dedicate the time since this software suite is good enough for production level quality games (Like Arcen's AI War and Tidalis). There are tons of tutorials for you to use for this. Another alternative is Unreal Engine, but that's a lot harder to tackle as a starter project. The plus to these two dev tools is that they're free to be used for indie developers, so if you want to press on with a proper release, you can.
3 - Learn a programming language... Simple as that. You're not looking for a career in IT, so you don't need to spend years perfecting it, but you just need enough to be able to at least understand how it works, so at the very least, when working with a team, you won't bombard your coders with stupendous requests. But even as a solo effort, programming knowledge will definitely be a boon. Picking up a programming language is all about whether it "clicks" with you. If it does, you could probably be able to master the basics in less than a week... If it doesn't a whole month wouldn't be enough and even then, its a real uphill struggle to fully understand it. My recommendations for languages is just C++ (Both procedural and Object Oriented Programming concepts) as that alone will give you enough tools and understanding to get around to using it.

Most game designers these days don't have programming skills (The kinds that graduate from "game designer" courses), but that's ok in Western countries since the pool of game programmers, coders and developers is so large there that you don't really need it. That's not true here and so you have to get down into the trenches for it. Don't focus too much on "I need a team" and instead try to do it yourself first... Only when you realize that you need help do you go sourcing for others.

Based on what I read about Flash development is that its highly esoteric... Meaning that its hard to translate all the skills you learned in Flash (Or ActionScript which is the name of the language used) for use in other game development tools. So, unless you plan to do only Flash games, not really recommended as its a very big time investment and it severely limits your scope. Again, its not impossible, but it doesn't sound easy.

I think case in point would be the time difference between Meat Boy and Super Meat Boy's release times.

Gamebrains were the dev studios that I lumped under "Doing kiddie ports of big games". That being said I think they were planning an original release during the Xbox and PS2 era, but nothing materialized from it I think. Yeah I haven't heard about them in years though (I think they moved to Singapore or something)

Googling them shows that they are still in Malaysia but are now full on "Doing kiddie ports games for mobile devices"

This post has been edited by H@H@: Jan 10 2011, 03:11 PM

Honestly speaking, if you can, don't skip C++. Yes, its old and fairly backward compared to the newer fancier languages, but the best thing about C++ is that its a great everyman language since it teaches you the two main programming paradigms (Procedural and OOP) and is similar enough in syntax to just about every modern programming language (The only exception would be VB.NET, but even then, its just syntax as fundamentally they still function the same).

I say this because you should never view programming languages as just an esoteric skill where you only master one language when its fairly easy to master quite a few if you're willing to put the time into it. Besides, you never know what language you'll end up using in the end due to various factors, so its better to not put all your eggs in one basket.

LUA scripts are used very extensively in most multimedia works. They're used in everything from 3D animation, event scripting, configurations, AI and other stuff... So, its not really limited to games really.

But LUA scripting isn't a development language per se... Its more of a skill that helps development that kind of thing. Yes, its great to pick up but I'm not sure of how useful it is in terms of bottom up development.

I do programming for a living and I'm pretty sure you have that backwards.

Wait, what?

Steam own Minecraft? Source?

Plus, Minecraft picked up marketing speed after the alpha launched (Prior to that it was just a free alpha that was very different than how it was when the actual "pay to play" alpha launched) and word of mouth started spreading. It hit its stride around the time RPS started posting on it, or it was briefly mentioned in a TF2 blog post.

But yeah... Minecraft is still indie dude.

So your history of Minecraft's success isn't really right.

And you DO need marketing. Just looking through the list of games in TIGSource and that should tell you that you have a TON of competition and so you need to market yourself well to set yourself above a lot of the other crapware indie games.

Looky here for probably THE best guide to indie marketing
http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693

Duuuuuuuuuuude, wrong again. Infiniminer inspired Minecraft, it isn't the same game. Infiniminer is from the guy behind Zachtronics Industries (Who just released the truly excellent indie puzzler, SpaceChem).

Seriously, you need to reread your Minecraft history.