I found this article today on Garage Games: So You Want To Start A Game Development Company? A very practical article, I think. Check it out and feel free to comment. I may add this to the forum FAQ in the near future. DavidRM
Samu Games

Great article. And probably pretty timely too, seeing as how everyone is going to be getting out of school and wanting to start the next Doom 3 over the summer. Always nice to see someone else pushing the Self-Funded Company-Building approach. A lot of people look down on it, because it isnt as glamourous as working on a demo to get your $1.5 million from EA, but for 99% of the developers out there, its the only realistic way.

Thanks for pointing this article out.

Really nice read..

Anyone here tried the growing your own company route ?

ALlan

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Dexterity Software is self-funded, started with about $20K of my own money in 1994. This approach can work very well if you focus on getting to a positive cashflow state as quickly as possible. If your first project is too ambitious, you''ll likely run out of cash before you reach that point. New VC-funded companies can blow through $20 million and go bust because they never figure out how to reach a sustainable positive cashflow state. On the flip side, it''s really hard to go bust if you keep bringing in more money each month than you spend, no matter what else you do wrong.

The nice thing about self-funding is that you don''t have to give up control or ownership. You are free to work on your own goals, not those of your co-owners. It requires serious persistence and commitment though and a great deal of "sweat equity." If you''re able to successfully build the company this way, you own the whole asset free and clear, including all the gold press latinum it generates. Imagine the feeling of going to bed each night knowing that your assets will be hard at work while you sleep, and you''ll awaken slightly wealthier each morning.


Steve Pavlina
Dexterity Software
www.dexterity.com

So, Steve;

you gave up your day-job, started focussing full-time on doing games, and ate into those 20k until you released your first game, or did you make the game, then quit the burger-flipping after it started generating a profitt ?

My background is all in larger dev houses, with the traditional VC/publisher model, so the entire concept of self-funding is a bit scary =)

Allan

Fe doeyr
Frender Doeyr
Ein sjoelv doeyr paa sama vis

Eg veit et som aldri doeyr...
Dom over kvar ein doed.

I second everything steve says. I dont quite make the cash he does, but its cool to be munching your breakfast as you check your email and see the registrations come in as you think "That just paid for my bagels"
Its very hard work though. If you just want to make money, go be an accountant or a lawyer

http://www.positech.co.uk

And I agree to Steve too. Isn''t it nice we all have the same opinion?

But in my eyes its more difficult to become a lawyer than a well paid game developer. At least I reached the second and I am still struggling for the first.

-----------

Niels Bauer Software Design
Creators of Smugglers 2, TV Manager and Coffee-break: Star Trader
Website: http://www.nbsd.de

quote: Original post by __ODIN__
Anyone here tried the growing your own company route ?

Working on it right now. Unlike Steve, who sounds like he saved up a chunk of change and then ate into it while he developed full time, I''ve been developing part time while I work a full time job. So for me it has cost me hardly anything but time (and along with that, a bit of sleep).

I''ve been working almost 18 months, and my work should be wrapping up in July. My first game was a bit more ambitous than most entry level shareware games (that why it took so long), and it might not have been a bad idea to start with something a bit smaller first (so I could have started bringing in cash 12 months ago, especially since I got laid off 12 months ago and took 3 months to find a temporary job and another 6 months after that to get a full time job with benefits), but I had an idea and I wanted to create something unique that would set me apart from other shareware games. Eight months ago I was halfway teetering on regret, thinking I should have taken on something smaller so I would be done already, but by that point it would take about as long to start something smaller as it would to finish the project, so I stuck with it. Today, I''m very happy where I am.

Of course, I hope to be a lot happier in a few months when I get MY bagels paid for.