Amateur Gamer Designers

I am an Amateur Game Designer.  I do not make a living from the creation of ZoRTS.  I am not even indie (not yet anyway).  Scott MacMillian was trying to make a point that many people that want to make a computer game should not try and build a company to do it. My Project Management Professor once told me that its important to understand the difference between starting a project (a computer game) and starting a company.  You do not have to do one to do the other.  And many, many people would be better off just making a game, and not trying to make a company.

Somewhere between being a Gamer, working for an Indie Game Company, and working for a AAA company lies a zone that not many designers or gamers talk about.  The realm of the Amateur Game Designer.  There are no websites which support the Amateur Gamer.  No place where people with a day job, who like making games can chat about running a project.  If you talk with someone in the industry it can be a little intimidating.  They have concerns like deliverable products and deadlines, and those things are tied to dollar values.  People really can and do loose money when projects fail in the professional space.

But on the other hand we do have a non professional space.  Generally flash games, but not necessarily.  Kongregate is an interesting showcase of games which most likely are not professionally made.  I don't want to talk in absolutes because there are 40,000+ games on one website.  There have to be rule breakers in there somewhere.  Anyway...

So here's to the Amateur Game Designer... The non professional.  Maybe one day we all want to be professional game designers, and maybe we will be.  Maybe one day we'll all have a place that we can discuss how the pros make a computer game, and how we can cheaply do the same.  But until then we can create fun games.