quote: Original post by Domini
Industry questions
- What resources are needed to start a successful game company?
- In you''re opinion, how has the industry done even during the recent recession in America?
- Do you see room from growth in the industry.

David hit the nail on the head, although there''s a lot of room for interpretation on "a successful game company." If you want to do your own games by yourself and self-publish, then you don''t need much more than a lot (a lot a lot) of willpower.

If you''re looking to start a company to do console games and get a publisher, well, you''re either going to need an incredible amount of willpower AND a large number of contacts AND a good deal of cash to hire the people who don''t know what needs to be known to get a venture off the ground (like any business). Video games are right in there with the rest of the entertainment industry; it really doesn''t matter too much what you''re doing as long as you know the right people.

So, what skills do you need to get a company and a staff together to work on AAA games? You need several programmers to get the Technical Design Review in place to evaluate risks and solutions that are coming down the road at you. You need several artists feeding your programmers with test data so they can push the technological solutions that they''re playing with. You need a designer or two, one with *real* writing experience, to flesh out your game design doc. You need someone well versed in financials so that you can budget the company, to figure out your burn rate (of cash), and to see where the money is going (typically game studios of 15 burn about $100k a month) and to make sure you don''t run out of it. You need someone who is business-savvy to be able to get a decent contract and make sure that the studio doesn''t get screwed. You probably need a lawyer to make everything legal, and you need an office (200 square feet per person, office space is cheap here at $2/sq ft- a team of 15 needs 3000 sq ft at $6k/month).

Then you need to buy computers for everyone. The artists need software and the programmers need software. Figure on $5-10k average SOFTware costs per person, add the cost of whatever computers you need.

You then need to get that demo ready, get the design doc and tech review doc ready, and start flying all over hell and creation to hit up publishers for contracts. Agents can help here, but they take up to 30% of your gross (e.g. they get $900k of your $3M budget). hmm. what else? Oh- nothing but the fact you''ll spend weeks of your life on the phone to get rolling, distracting you from development, so it becomes a 16hr/day affair.


Is there room for more game companies? Most certainly! Entertainment *is* what it''s all about. The trick is making yourself show through all of the noise and getting in touch with the publisher and showing yourself as much better than all of the other crap that''s out there (remember, everyone thinks that they''re better than all of the crap).

Good luck-