The Leap

September 2019

How do you start a game company? 

That’s the question that plagued me last October when I was getting ready to spin up Scree Games. I’m detail-oriented and a little anxious by nature. My default tendency – one which I fight all the time, and a bad tendency for a budding entrepreneur – is to know everything I can before I leap into solving a problem.

So I asked a lot of questions. I’ve been in the industry for a while and I reached out to anyone and everyone I knew for advice. What did they wish they’d known when they first got started? How did they manage all the competing demands on their time?

It wasn’t long before I learned the only thing that matters: I wasn’t ever going to know enough to feel 100% comfortable. Starting a business is a risk, and everything you think you know about how it will go will change long before you get to the finish line.

In the end, despite my tendency to overplan, I leaped.

Almost a year later, the leap is still in progress. I haven’t hit the ground yet, so that’s good. And while I continue to tumble, flailing my limbs, waiting for gravity to catch up with me, I’ve picked up a few tips during the descent.

If you’re dreaming of starting your own company, maybe these suggestions will be helpful. If you’ve already started your own company, they’ll mostly be obvious. Either way, they’re the kind of details I wanted when I was getting started.

Plans Change

My initial business plan was straightforward. My wife and I have been frugal over the years, and when my last full-time position ended, we decided to put six months of our savings into building our own businesses. 

On the Scree Games front, I figured I’d run at an indie game full-time for six months, looking for funding to complete the game. I’d reevaluate our progress in June. My goal was shipping the game in less than a year.

As it turned out, a variety of consulting and contracting opportunities presented themselves, including one long-term contract that has taken 20+ hours a week for almost the entire year. 

While devoting my time to contracting meant progress on my own project was slower than I’d hoped, I also knew that the game I was building was not time-sensitive – and because of all the contracting, my runway was now a lot longer. 

Further, I found I enjoyed consulting. It was refreshing to be able to dip into a variety of projects and use the skills I’ve built up. I wrote recently about investing the right amount of passion in a project; when I’m contracting rather than working for a company as a full-time employee, I can think about a game’s problems with a far more objective eye.

So I reshaped my initial plan for Scree Games to better fit a new hybrid business model. The first Scree Games title will always be my number one priority, but I’m much more comfortable and content with a split between my own work and helping other great companies with their projects, as well as a little blogging in between.

The balance has worked well for me but I’m alert to complacency. It would be comforting to simply settle into a routine – contracting on and off while making slow, steady, tinkering progress on a passion project for years. 

That’s not for me – I like to ship stuff. One of the Scree Games mottos is that a game can’t succeed if it doesn’t ship. So I continue to aggressively seek funding opportunities, improve my prototype and presentation decks, and set hard deadlines for the first Scree Games title.

Environment Matters

Though I spend a few days onsite at one of my contracts, the majority of my time is spent in my home office.

Working at home is not for everyone. Some people thrive on an office environment and being able to collaborate face-to-face. Personally I get more done when I’m less distracted and I’ve always been self-motivated, so working at home has not been any kind of barrier to productivity, but your mileage may vary.

It’s critically important to set up an environment that works for you, with the right set of equipment that allows you to maximize your comfort. This is true whether you’re working for yourself or for someone else.

Whether you’re at home or not, ergonomics are critical – a decent chair (or standing desk if that’s your thing), good keyboard height, the right lighting. My desk fits into a corner of the room, with good shelves above it for various reference materials. I primarily develop on a mid-range Windows 10 MSI laptop, but I don’t move it around much – I have it hooked to a good monitor, USB keyboard and mouse. 

In addition to the MSI laptop, I have an aged hand-me-down Apple laptop from a previous employer. This is a more portable, lightweight device that I use for e-mail, presentations, communicating with contractors, business paperwork, and blogging. It also serves as a device to test Mac builds on; I try to make sure both a Windows and a Mac build of my prototype are functional at all times.

Often I have a third laptop set up as well – a second more powerful Mac that’s on loan from my long-term contract – and I might switch between working on any of the three machines throughout the day.

Some people prefer a neat, minimalist workspace. I personally like a bit of clutter, so I scatter knick-knacks around. The home office is lined with shelves filled with an extensive board game collection. One game is usually set up on a folding table behind my desk, often some kind of sprawling co-op game that I can play solo. Though the game might go untouched for weeks, I really like being surrounded by gaming stuff.

Get Only the Right Tools

Working for over four years as producer on a game with a large live operations component, relying on a variety of third-party software, made me keenly aware of how quickly too many tools can bust a budget. 

It’s tempting to find a nifty piece of software with a subscription and think “it’s only $5 a month – I can afford that.” But quickly you find you need another thing, and then another, and suddenly you’re paying hundreds of dollars a month for a bunch of software you don’t actually use.

The right tools can help you be more productive, but always start by trying free alternatives and evaluation versions of what you need. Most good tools have demos; use a tool for a week and see if it’s what you actually need before you buy it.

I use a variety of communication vectors to work with clients as well as contractors I’ve hired. Slack is my go-to chat program and is used by a lot of game studios. I set up a Slack Scree Games workspace, but I keep costs down by bringing in contractors as single-channel guests. I also keep Discord, Skype, and Google Hangout setups as options if clients prefer to use those.

For task tracking, I rely on Trello. It’s a very lightweight tool and would not be sufficient for a project in full production with a large team, but it’s perfect for what I’m doing. I have separate Trello boards for the business and the game, as well as one I share with my wife for household stuff.

While I primarily use Google’s suite of tools for design documents, blogging, flowcharts, and spreadsheets, I also spring for a Microsoft Office subscription. There are a few things Office does differently that I like, and some companies I’ve worked with on contract prefer the Microsoft products.

Most independent developers will leverage an existing engine like Unity or Unreal to build their game. There’s a lot of information out there about the advantages and disadvantages of different engines, so I won’t rehash that debate here. In my case, Unity paired with Visual Studio was the right answer for developing my first title, both from a cost perspective and for its suitability for the type of game I’m making, and to minimize technical barriers since I’m not an engineer.

I do use source control – Git with Sourcetree. It’s tempting as an indie developer to shortcut this step, but it’s worth taking the time to set it up for that unexpected day when a tree falls on your laptop.

The Business Can Wait

One of the best pieces of advice I got was to stay focused on the game I was building, rather than getting distracted by setting up the business. “The paperwork is easy, and you can do that stuff any time,” a friend said. “That’s a known problem. It makes you feel good to work on that stuff, because you can check things off on a list, but it’s not difficult and you can postpone it.”

This advice was absolutely spot on. I couldn’t completely ignore the business side, but I was able to delay it. I started working on the game in October of 2018, but held off on forming any kind of business entity for Scree Games until 2019, when I felt I needed it to be able to hire contractors.

Everyone’s needs are different, so I can’t offer advice about what kind of business entity is best for you. In my case, a single-owner LLC gave me the right level of flexibility. If things change down the road and I expand the business or bring in partners, an LLC can be converted to a corporation.

The paperwork to set up a business feels overwhelming at first, and if you have money to burn, getting a lawyer’s help is the safest approach. I’m not a lawyer, but I do have a law degree, and I’m able to read a contract and understand legal requirements, so I ended up doing my own paperwork. Setting up a single-owner LLC in Texas is relatively easy, and at the federal level a single-owner LLCs is a pass-through business entity – which in the early days of your company will make your tax paperwork significantly simpler.

Speaking of taxes… I’ve always done my own personal taxes, and I’m still deciding whether to do that again this year. While my situation is not too complex, like all self-employed people I file quarterly estimated taxes. I’ve also paid some W-9 contractors this year, as well as taken on a lot of different contracts myself. 

If you want to do your taxes yourself, Intuit has a great suite of integrated products for self-employed people and small businesses. In particular, I’ve found QuickBooks to be a great way track your income, expenses, and invoices throughout the year and handle estimated taxes every quarter, and it integrates with TurboTax when tax season rolls around.

Free Advice – Worth What You Paid

Scree Games is about to enter its second year of life as a microstudio. I’ve made a lot of mistakes so far and I’ll make a bunch more next year, but on the whole it’s worked out better than I expected.

I’m glad I leaped. I have friends ask me when I’m going to take a full-time job again. They don’t seem to understand that, even though I make far less money now and I don’t have the stability of a full-time position at a larger studio, I’m twice as happy and twice as productive.

Tales of failed indie ventures are everywhere these days. Keeping Scree Games going is definitely stressful. There are huge challenges just ahead – health insurance to be figured out, unplanned family expenses, dramatic shifts in the market that dry up opportunities for indie funding – but I’ll take every challenge as it comes.

I did not think I had it in me to start a company. I thought the people who started companies were special and knew something I did not.  

But it turns out I did have it in me – and you do too.

The company you would build won’t look like Scree Games. It’ll be its own special thing, just like every studio. 

I hope someone benefits in some tiny way from something I’ve written here. Or you may already know this stuff – but I’m sure that when you start a company, you’ll figure out a bunch of things that I haven’t. (I look forward to your blog!)

So if you’re wistfully eyeing that first step, but are anxious because you don’t know how it will turn out, and you don’t have all the answers…

Leap!

Have you considered starting your own game company? What’s holding you back? If you’ve started one…what worked and what didn’t? What do you wish you knew then that you know now? Let’s chat in the comments!