top of page

I have a game idea, what now? A practical guide to game development

Hi everyone!

The most common phrase I hear from people stepping into the game industry is "I have an amazing idea, but I don't know where to start." Fair. The industry looks like a maze: platforms, business models, grants, publishers, engines, and a thousand other decisions before the project leaves the page.


In 17 years in the game industry, and as president of ASCJogos (Santa Catarina's game development association in southern Brazil), I see this question come from very different people: the passionate solo developer, the brand manager who wants to activate a product through gamification, the company that needs to train employees, the educator who wants to engage students with a game. There are clear paths for everyone, but no one really tells you what they are. So a lot of people burn budget, deadline, and energy on decisions that could have been better at the start.


This is a condensed version of what a panel of specialists and I are presenting at Gamescom Latam 2026, in the panel "I have a game idea, what now?" (in Portuguese). If you're in São Paulo on May 1st, drop by Palco Connect 2 at 12:15. If not, keep reading: what's here gives you a foundation.


➔ Where the idea comes from, and what its goal is

Before any technical decision, it's worth understanding where the idea came from. There are five common origins:

  • The developer's dream game. Personal project, fueled by passion. High creative freedom, scope tends to escape control.

  • The commercial idea. Came from a market opportunity, with explicit revenue expectations. Business model enters early.

  • The corporate brief. A brand wants a game: advergame, activation, event tie-in. External brief, short deadline.

  • The open grant. A grant exists with clear rules, and the idea emerges to respond to it.

  • The game as a teaching or training tool. Includes two distinct territories: educational games (focused on academic and pedagogical learning) and serious games (focused on corporate training, healthcare, simulation, technical capacity-building). They are different things, with different audiences, metrics, and sales processes, but they share the logic that success is measured by learning or behavior, not by sales.


Along with the origin comes the goal. It can be one or more, but set priority:

  • Make money. Revenue from sales, in-app purchases, ads, or subscription.

  • Brand visibility. The game is the marketing channel. What matters is exposure.

  • Event activation. In-person engagement, experience generation.

  • Education. Formal learning, in classrooms or educational platforms.

  • Serious gaming. Corporate training, healthcare, simulation, capacity-building.

  • Experimental game. Testing a mechanic, exploring an interactive art form, validating a concept. Doesn't scale commercially, but it's a legitimate path, and many classics started this way.


A game that tries to be good at everything usually isn't good at anything. And the pitch gets confusing when you need to explain the project to an investor, publisher, or grant committee.


➔ Platform, deadline, budget: the tripod that defines everything

With origin and goal clear, three variables start to define the project:

  • Platform. Where the game runs: mobile, PC, web, console, or virtual reality? Each has different audiences, technical rules, and entry costs.

  • Deadline. Is there a deadline imposed by a grant, event, product launch? A tight deadline forces lean scope and rarely forgives rework.

  • Budget. How much can you invest, in money and time? Free time is also investment (the famous sweat equity: when the team contributes hours of work instead of capital), and a lot of people forget that when calculating the project's real cost.


This tripod isn't a rigid spreadsheet, it's a filter. Three months and $1,000 USD? A hardcore RPG for console is off the table. Two years, small team, aiming at Steam? Wishlist strategy (Steam's wishlist, the main interest metric before launch) needs to be in the DNA from day one.

Decisions before production cost hours. Decisions after cost months.


➔ Where your game will live

Platform choice is strategic, not just technical:

  • Android. Largest global user base, especially strong in emerging markets. Average revenue per user (ARPU) tends to be lower than iOS.

  • iOS. Smaller base, but audience with higher purchasing power and more willingness to pay. Stricter curation, especially for kids' games.

  • Web. Own site, portals like itch.io, Poki, or CrazyGames. Immediate distribution, no store, great for brand campaigns and casual games.

  • PC (Steam). Engaged community, robust tools, but extremely high competition and demanding marketing.

  • Consoles. Higher entry barrier: official devkits, certification, platform-specific rules. Usually comes after a PC cycle.

  • Virtual / mixed reality (VR / XR). Meta Quest, PlayStation VR2, PCVR via Steam, Apple Vision Pro. Smaller player base, engaged audience, strong B2B demand in training and corporate simulation. Higher development cost.


➔ Genre, platform, and audience: the equation no one teaches

This is a point I see miscalibrated all the time. Genre plus platform defines your potential audience. Get this equation wrong and even a brilliant game struggles.

Some examples:

  • Hardcore RPG on mobile? Hard. Mobile audience plays in short sessions.

  • Casual puzzle on Steam? Brutal competition, high cost per install.

  • Educational game on console? Niche within a niche, with devkit and certification barriers.


Research first. SteamDB shows performance of similar games on PC. AppMagic and AppFigures help on mobile. Google Trends shows whether a theme is growing. Fifteen minutes looking at data save months.


➔ Validate before you build

The industry adopted some practices that came from the product world:

  • Design thinking. Understand the problem before proposing the solution. Why does this game need to exist? Who does it serve?

  • Lean startup with Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Build the leanest possible version and validate fast.

  • Tests with real players. People who never played your prototype give the most useful feedback.

  • Playable demo. Still the best sales argument that exists, for any audience.

The cycle is: idea → research → prototype → feedback → iteration → production. Skipping feedback is the most expensive mistake. Discovering the mechanic doesn't engage in a week of prototyping is much cheaper than discovering it after six months of production.


➔ How to fund the game in 2026

Before the paths, the macro picture: the global industry went through mass layoffs in 2024 and 2025. Global venture capital is concentrated on artificial intelligence projects. Hardware (consoles, GPUs) got more expensive. Some say the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is dying, and I disagree, but investment focus has shifted to AI. For anyone starting a game right now: money is more expensive, scarcer, and investors are more selective. It's not impossible, but it requires a realistic plan.


Four main paths, and they're not mutually exclusive:

  • Bootstrap. Personal funds, sweat equity, time invested. Most common at the start, gives freedom, slow.

  • Private investment. Angel, seed, series A. Always rare for games in Brazil, and harder now with AI capital concentration. Brazilian funds barely understand the industry's risk model.

  • Publisher. Funds production in exchange for a slice, distributes, and usually handles marketing. Works well on PC and console. On mobile, what's called a "publisher" is often, in practice, a user-acquisition (UA) money bank with expectations of already-consolidated metrics.

  • Grants and incentive laws. Cultural grants, innovation grants, regional grants, federal cultural-investment laws. In Brazil specifically, Lei Paulo Gustavo and FSA (Fundo Setorial do Audiovisual) are federal cultural funding mechanisms. The Marco Legal dos Games (Federal Games Law) opened new opportunities, and Lei Nº 19.789/2026 turned the SC Games program into permanent state public policy in Santa Catarina.


Most of these funds cover production but rarely cover marketing and user acquisition. This gap needs to enter the plan from the start.

Each investor wants something different. A public grant wants cultural, social, or technological impact. A private investor wants financial return. A publisher wants a game that sells. Adapt the pitch to who's listening.


➔ Revenue and who will play

Even with funding, two questions remain: how does it generate revenue, and how does it reach the player.


Main revenue models:

  • Free. Great for reach, but needs something to sustain it: ads, in-app purchases, partnership, sponsorship.

  • Premium (paid). Pay once. Common on Steam and consoles. Simple model, but requires high perceived value at the moment of purchase decision.

  • In-app purchases (IAP) and free-to-play (F2P). Dominate mobile. Requires monetization-aware design from prototype.

  • Subscription. Recurring, common in education and premium content. Requires constant updates.


The next question is uncomfortable: who will play? If you already have customers (established IP, corporate game, school contract), distribution is internal. If you need to win players over, and in most cases you do, you'll need a user acquisition strategy, ideally starting well before launch.


Start building audience early. The main fronts:

  • Community. Discord (the ASCJogos community runs there, by the way), Reddit (genre-specific subreddits, like r/IndieDev, r/cozygames, r/RPGmaker, are gold for indie games), social networks, devlogs, newsletters. Cost is time, return is loyalty and qualified feedback.

  • Steam seasonal festivals throughout the year. There's a list of seasonal Steam festivals (Cozy Games Fest, Visual Novel Fest, City Builder Fest, and dozens of others) you can use while developing. How To Market A Game maintains an updated calendar.

  • Steam Next Fest. Important: Steam Next Fest is a specific event for playable demos, and the rule is to participate only once, ideally in the weeks leading up to launch. Not at the start of development. It's the most powerful wishlist acquisition tool on Steam, and needs to be used at the right moment.

  • Other events. BIG Festival, Gamescom Latam, SBGames. Good for B2B, networking with publishers and press.

  • Paid ads. Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, Apple Search Ads. Careful: ads without well-mapped retention data burn budget fast.

  • Partnerships. Influencers, streamers, specialized press, cross-promo between studios.


Some quietly important skills that help a lot:

  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Does your game show up when someone searches on Google?

  • App Store Optimization (ASO). Icon, description, screenshots, keywords. Appfigures has a public library of practical guides.

  • Killer creatives. Icon, trailer, Steam capsules, screenshots. First impression and almost always the only one.

  • Content creation. Devlog, TikTok, YouTube. Free marketing while you develop.


For deeper PC marketing, the main reference is the How To Market A Game blog, with analysis based on real Steam data.


➔ Come to the panel

This text is just the skeleton of what we'll explore in the panel "I have a game idea, what now?" at Gamescom Latam 2026, on May 1st at 12:15, at Palco Connect 2. The panel is in Portuguese. I'll be talking with Gabriela Gaio Fratini (Yellow Panda), Heleno Orlandino Martins Junior (SCTI - Santa Catarina State Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation), and Leonardo Minozzo (Cafundó Estúdio Criativo) about exactly this, with real cases and answers to questions from the audience.

If you want to send a question now, before the panel, just use this link: https://www.menti.com/al6quc7bggn7. I'll bring the best ones to the discussion.

For a next step after this text, the post How to prepare for the games market goes deeper into the practical side of career and studio building.


➔ References

Brazilian legislation and official sources


Game marketing and market


Related ASCJogos content


Market research tools


Events and festivals cited


About the author

Leonardo Bilck is president of ASCJogos (Santa Catarina's game development association), CTO of Plot Kids and Plot Interactive, and co-founder of Truth and Tales. He has 17 years in the game industry with 20+ published projects. At Gamescom Latam 2026, he moderates the "I have a game idea, what now?" panel and participates in "Diálogo Estratégico Sul" as ASCJogos representative.


➔ Frequently asked questions

I only have an idea, is it too early to think about platform and monetization? No. The earlier these two variables enter the conversation, the less rework later. Platform defines viable genre, monetization defines whether the business model closes. It doesn't need to be 100% defined, but it needs to be on the radar.


Should I try for a publisher or go straight to Steam on my own? Depends on the budget and reach you can manage alone. A publisher solves marketing and acquisition, but takes a significant slice. Self-publish gives total control, but requires you to do the marketing. For a first PC or console game, looking for a publisher is usually healthy.


How do cultural grants for games work in Brazil? Most cover production (not marketing) and have cultural, social, or technological impact criteria. Lei Paulo Gustavo, Lei Rouanet, FSA, and state grants like SC Games in Santa Catarina are the main paths. Each grant has its own rules and requires advance planning.


What is a Minimum Viable Product in games? The leanest possible version of the game that still proves the mechanic works. It can be a level, an isolated mechanic, or a 10-minute demo. The goal is to validate with real players before investing in full production.


When should I participate in Steam Next Fest? You participate once, with a demo, ideally in the weeks before launch. Too early (before the demo is really good) or too late (after you've already launched) wastes the opportunity. For festivals throughout development, use Steam's thematic seasonal festivals.


How do I start building audience if I don't have a finished game yet? Through the process. Devlogs on YouTube and TikTok, posts in your genre's subreddits, updates on Discord, presence at Steam seasonal festivals. Don't wait for the game to be ready to start marketing. By then, it's too late.

Tags: indie games, brazilian games, indie game studios, games for PC, game development, Gamescom Latam 2026, game funding, game monetization, user acquisition, Steam Next Fest, ASCJogos

Comments

ASCJogos Logo (5).png

Santa Catarina Game Development Association

bottom of page