My personal plan following college
would be to establish my own games studio; firstly I want to get a job in order
to build a very high spec computer that I can use to make a game on. This job
would allow me to fund the costs of required hardware and software. I want to
build a computer that costs some where in the range of £1500 which should somewhere
in the ballpark of 3 – 6 months. This is because it would take me 2 month to
get the money needed to build the computer but this is if I don’t spend a
single penny, which is highly unlikely. With living expenses and other
unexpected costs it will take a little bit longer. During this time I will also be setting up
the studio. This is one of the things that I will have to look in to, as I know
very little about creating a games studio. I think that I could easily get
around this problem, as I know multiple people who have started their own
studios and business. None of them are games studios but I think that there is
a lot of fundamental things that I could learn from them including the steps I
would have take to expand a business. To my understanding it does not cost a
lot to establish a company from my research; I found that it only cost £15 to
be officially recognized as a business (the website I found this price on was https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/companies-house).
Then as I go along and I get to the
point where I can start distributing and making a profit I will expand the
company’s rights, such as having exclusive rights to the name of the company
and name of products made. I would have to wait because getting to the point
where I have to apply for copyright needs the business to be making a profit
because copyright requires yearly payments to stay as the copyright owner. Further
development be to hire a sectary and accountant and maybe some other members of
staff, this all depends on how big of a profit the studio can make and if it is
viable to have employs. From this I would continue expanding the studio in
conjunction with profits made. With new modern methods there is a chance that I
could make money even before the game has started development, using websites
such as Kickstarter people can donate money to a project so that they can get
the funds to start a project or continue it.A good example of this
is the game
Broken Age.
The
goal for the game was to rise $100’000 over a long time and in a short amount
of time to the Kickstarter being made they ended up rising $3.3million the game
ended rising by the end of the Kickstarter. I am going to be realistic and say
that the chances of me make that much money off of it is very small but there
have been lots of people that have made a enough money off of this to properly
fund the project and there for did not need to self fund the project which
would be a massive help as this would spend up the development side dramatically.
The next set for me after a while in developments would be to get the
game on Steam Green Light so that I could sell it in early access (This is
where you let people perchance you game while it is in it development stages and
it is completely up to the developer/publisher when the game goes on early access).
Unlike Kickstarter there is no time limit to how long it can be in early access,
so this means it is a constant stream of revenue. This is also something that I
have realistic view on because I know that not a lot of people will not buy a games because it is in early access and dont want to pay for an unfinished game.
Because
this will be my own business I do not need to have any formal education/grade.
This is primarily qualification that one would get by going and doing a 3 to 4
year university course in my extensive research I found that
if you what to join an established games developer you need to go to university
so that you can learn/train your self and build up a portfolio. Rather then
making a game that they are passionate about they have to spend 3 to 4 years
making something that shows off their creative side and skills with a
particular software. So most end up making something that they don’t really
like. As I don’t what to join an already established games studio it is not
pointless but not needed to follow the path that I am going down and in all
honestly I do not think that I would be very good in a university environment.
To build my own skills I could use online course and/or tutorials but my
preference is trail and error, this may take longer to improve my skills but I
like this method of working a lot more. A famous independent developer called
Phil Fish
who designer and co-creator of the game Fez also worked in the same
manner and his game was a big success. The biggest problem he had when making
Fez was that his skill’s where always growing so when he finished the game and stepped back and looked at it he saw that the begging of the game was no where
near as good as the end, so he started improved the begging and then noticed
that the begging was far better then the end. This happened over and over again
for the game. I think since I am working in the same why that I will encounter
the same problem as Phil Fish. 