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Five Realistic Steps To Starting A Game Development Company

Name:	Jeff Tunnell
Date Posted:	Jun 12, 2006
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
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This is the beginning of a huge article that I posted a couple of days ago on my Make It Big In Games blog. The article just got a big mention in this Gamasutra article, so it will be interesting to see if my traffic goes up.

Oh, by the way, I did an interview for 2Old2Play Issue #3, an on-line magazine. The download is here. That issue, along with my interview made it to the front page of Digg, which is a first for me.

Lately, I have read a couple of blog articles about starting your own game company. To me, they are too short, overly simplistic, and not very complete. So, I decided to start at the beginning, and write a step by step approach to starting your own development company. I hope to string all of these articles together, along with a few of the posts I have already written, and create a freely downloadble eBook. I will still circle back around and finish the "How much money can Indie games make" series, but it will be a part of the eBook.

You've played games since you could walk. Fond memories of your NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, N64, and PS1 fill your brain like your console collection that fills your closet. Your Gameboys are piled up in a box that you just can't bring yourself to give away. Your collection of current hardware, i.e. GameCube, PS2, DS, and a hopped up PC hooked to the Internet powers your play while you are saving up for your new XBox360, and probably a Wii and DS-Lite too. Your game collection looks like a museum or a small library, with countless birthday presents, allowances, and parental gifts adding up to thousands and thousands of dollars worth of investment. Playing this collection of games over the years must make you an EXPERT on gaming! Well, at least on playing them. Making them is a different story...

Continue article here...

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List:	05/15/08 - An Itch That Can't Be Scratched 12/20/07 - Blog O Fix 10/09/07 - Acquisition Fun! 09/14/07 - Design Journals Rule 09/21/06 - Publishing Solutions and Affiliated Developers 06/12/06 - Five Realistic Steps To Starting A Game Development Company 05/10/06 - Puzzle Poker Ships! 03/29/06 - Is Game Developers Conference Worth the Investment?

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Tom Spilman (Jun 12, 2006 at 21:10 GMT)

Great article Jeff! We're at "Full Time Developer, Supplemented by Contracts", but haven't shipped a single game yet. Too many contracts... gotta fix that ASAP.

Rodney Rindels - Torqued (Jun 12, 2006 at 21:27 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Jeff,
What you've written there is not only accurate , but quite refreshing to those of us sitting in our pajama's right now hacking out the our next manageable project. What my development company does, is we choose two paths, one more than compensates for the other (Thankfully). Our average work day is 12-16 hours, so we work 8 hours on revenue producing ventures, and anywhere from 4-8 hours on indie projects. Our hopes are to flip the model, and at some point remove the contracting all together, unless its an b2b type venture. I look forward to reading more of your series as you submit them.

Highly Appreciated,

Rodney Rindels
Carapace Software, Inc.

Jeremy Alessi (Jun 12, 2006 at 23:24 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I don't quite fit into any of those stages exactly ... I'm kind of all over. Got a game shipped through Garage Games and several through our own portals ... doing contract work but not dealing with computers at all :0 It's a great article for the general outline of the whole process though. Each individual is going to have some sort of crazy life 'blockage' though that won't let them fit the mold exactly. Again, it's a great article though!

Martin Schultz (Jun 13, 2006 at 13:20 GMT)

Thanks for your articles Jeff. Very valueable for me.

Vashner (Jun 13, 2006 at 18:46 GMT)

When I got my hands on pong I was living at grandmothers house. But she said "it will blow up the tv". So we only played when she went to work :)

I'll be interesting in the ebook.

Joshua Dallman (Jun 13, 2006 at 19:59 GMT)

@Jeremy: you beat me to it, I don't fit either - especially since I don't code per se - but this article was refreshing nonetheless - comforting to hear an industry professional say that it takes years to do - that I'm taking years to do it doesn't feel so bad/slow in that light - though somber to hear that even after making a game you may not make enough to live on - that it takes years on top of that to build a "portfolio" - I mean, name 3 indie studios that actually have such a portfolio! - these are big challenges, but then, they're big dreams so I guess it comes with the territory

Robert Stewart (Jun 14, 2006 at 15:26 GMT)

I loved the article.

BTW, check out my blog.

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