Starting a game company

As I see it now, there are 3 ways of starting a game company. They vary greatly in the change of success, but they all have their own dislikes.

1. Find an investor, or
2. Do it on your own, or
3. Just do something

This is an article in the ‘Research’ category where I dive into a subject on game production.

I thought I did the ‘on your own’ kind of starting up a game company. But in reality it was more of the ‘just do something’. It did bring me a lot of experience, but the result wasn’t me being independent and having a job in my own game company.

Don’t get me wrong, I value the experience greatly, but if you (like me) want to get more out of it than experience alone… you have to do things differently.

Option 1: find an investor

• Catch
  • Build on trust.
  • Money injections on various moments in the development cycle.
  • You need to invest your own money and love time, the investments acts as levers for more success.
    
  • Biggest change of success, if you know what you are doing.
• Identifying characteristics
  • At least 1 dedicated core team, investors must be able to trust them in being able to deliver.
  • Your daily job.
  • Clear product goal and product vision (for this and future products).
  • You have ample and solid evidence you are making games for markets that want these game.
  • Investors have control over your company and products.
  • 1+ years of development per product.
  • Big budget for marketing.

Here are two video’s that inspired me on the investor subject:

Option 2: On your own

• On your own
• Catch
  • In theory fun, in practice not that good. You don’t know when you can support yourself or your family. Brings big issues with time management.
  • The invested time is not worth it (time vs gains) for a long time.
  • In the end you have very few financial means, change of a (even small) success is small.
  • If it works you have full control and are completely self sufficient.
• Identifying characteristics
  • Part time (or dependent on cheap house holding services of others like relatives).
  • Many small games.
  • Max half a year dev time per product.
  • Becoming a master in a niche (genre/style).
  • Small but dedicated fanbase.

Here are two great video’s. The first one inspired me to give it a try, the second one is afterwards when I discovered this option isn’t that great nether.

One important thing on this 11 years thing, if you missed it: the person in the video above made his fame before and in the Indy Apocalypse. Things are different now. See the next one.

Option 3: Just do something

• Just do something
• Catch
  • Fiddling around.
  • Watch out with what you think what you are doing: it is very easy to get lost thinking that you are making something great.
  • Very very few people are able to make money this way. Although we know the examples (I look at you Flappybird) these are extremely rare compared to the amount of people that tried. Just buy a lottery ticket, you then at least know your chance.
• Identifying characteristics
  • You are just doing something.

Here is the video I saw that opened up my eyes and made me think ‘Am I this developer he is talking about?’