3 Business Models for your mobile game.

The topic of business models happened to come up at the GAMBIT event at MIT titled "Indies will shoot you in the Kneecaps".  Eitan of Firehose Games, Ichiro of Dejobaan Games, and Scott of MacGuffin Games and now of Viximo, talked about working for Indie Start ups in all stages of operation.  The moderator was Alex of Owlchemy Labs who stepped out from behind the lap top to answer a question himself.   For PC games check out a business plan for a computer game...  But let's shift focus to mobile games for a moment and take a look.

Some of the MIT students had questions relating to the business model for releasing games as apps.  They were concerned about spreading the game while also recovering some money.  The price point of most games needs to be low in order to attract an audience.  Competition is fierce to drop the price and get more players.  But development costs need to be recouped.  How do you make sure to have some kind of return on investment while still attracting an audience?  From that discussion came these suggestions about business models for your apps.

The Long Game: Give away your app for free to build a fan base.  Worry about recouping development costs later.  This method works if you are in college and have the time to really focus on community development.  In college you have time and a roof over your head to make games which build a name.  This is not a great option for those who do not have resources to cover their expenses up front.

The Guilt Game: Give away low cost of free app, have in app purchases.  This requires using a system that allows for in app purchases.  Which apparently completely excludes Microsoft products.  Some players may have negative attitudes towards in-app or in-game purchases, and this may drive some audiences away.  Many times gamers feel that a free game should be completely free.  They erroneously believe that games appear as if by magic, and there is no cost associated with the production of said games.  Free to play games are slowly eroding that stance.

The Twin Game: Release a free version of an app that contains ads along side a paid version of that app which contains no ads.  This requires more work, and more development time.  Not only do you have to code a version of the game which contains some kind of ad support, but you also have to code one without.  While this may not exactly double the amount of work you have to do before launching a title, it will require more resources.  However, it will allow players to self select into the kind of game experience they prefer.

Have you launched any games under these models?  Mobile or otherwise?  Any horror stories about a method that you will never use again?  If you know someone that can use this information don't forget to +1 the post!  Or share with them directly through twitter.

Razer Blade: Disruptive Technology that has missed the mark.

Razer released a full page Wall Street Journal ad telling us all the obvious. PC Gaming is not dead. Thanks. Mojang and I agree with you Razer. They made that claim as a teaser for the release of the Blade. A very thin, very portable gaming laptop. They must not have done much market research as they touted it as "the world's first true gaming laptop." Or perhaps they just don't feel that Alienware machines are up to par.

Gaming the stock market: PVP your own investments

Picture from Finance.google.com 8/5/2011

Here's a tip.  Find two investments; one that gos up at the same time the other goes down.  Make sure to buy the low one, and sell the high one.  You have just pitted two investments against each other in a PVP grudge match.  When one drops, buy more of the lower.  When one rises sell more of that one.  Wait for the cycle to repeat.  Sounds as simple as waiting for Gold Farmers to post their daily auction house items, right?

Now the practical side of that statement, it is very hard to do that.  Professional investors seek out that kind of thing, and occasionally find them.  Personally I have never found a relationship like that...  You would find it by looking at an industry or two that when one does better, the other does worse.  So what's a gamer to do?  Well the next best strategy is to find an investment that goes up and goes down, and find one that doesn't fall very much or at all.

Lets try that on Easy Mode.  The Stock market goes up and down all the time.  Daily volatility is impossible to get any kind of decent return from, but over the long term you can expect 8.28% per year.  Here is a neat little calculator that shows this.  That includes recessions.  But what about those recessions?  What if you are trying to maintain value during those down times?  The best place you can keep your cash right before a market down turn is a Money Market Fund.  Here is a link to a chart of the Vanguard Money Market Mutual Fund performance over time.  I'll save you the click.  It's worth $1.00 a share.  The chart is really boring, it's a straight flat line.  When the market is crashing, a straight line is a beautiful thing.

So to implement this strategy start buying shares in an Exchange Traded Fund, like we talked about.  Right now, because the market is very low.  Make sure that Etrade, Fidelity, or whatever brokerage you use allows you to exchange ETF shares into a MM fund.  Set up an automatic purchase plan and keep buying more (this is just good advice from The Intelligent Investor).  The market is going to steadily climb out of this recession.  If it looks like things are going to crash again, switch the money out before the fall to a Money Market Fund.  A few weeks later, switch back.

There is a lot to be said to buying more when the stock market crashes.  But we're going to save that for another post.  Additionally more elaborate plans can be made based on that simple beginning.  Remember I don't advise playing a particular stock.  Timing the market as a whole is slightly easier than VVVVVV.  Timing one stock is damn near impossible.  Also this takes guts.  Everyone in the rest of the market will be shouting "SELL, SELL, SELL"!  But gamers have guts and smarts.  We know that grouping behavior is bad in FPS levels...  And guess what, it's bad on the stock market too.

An interview with the Coordinator of Everything at Harcos Labs

Every company has that person behind the scenes that does it all. There are the innovators, the founders who have the big ideas that turn into products. Most stories focus on those few crazy individuals who have zany ideas. But there are also the unsung hero's of the business world. The people who come with 1000 great ideas about making a business run. Today we have an interview with just such a person, and she's a gamer.

The Cheap Fast Guide to Google Adwords.

The Cheap Fast Guide to Google Adwords has been released!  It's cheap because you pay with a tweet! It's fast because it will save you time in creating your first Adwords Campaign.  It also is a bit less spread out then my blog posts, so you will save time learning.

This guide condenses my blog posts on the Adwords Experiment.  It also contains one or two new suggestions that were not mentioned in the posts.  Expect that number to rise over time as the guide will be expanded over time.  The current revision is 1.0, keep checking back to the Guides page for updates.  You will always be able to pay with a tweet.

If you just want to learn about how Adwords works, my guide is the perfect place to get a start because it's from a beginners perspective.  If you need someone to put the guide into practice, but don't have time yourself?  I'd be happy to help out with that as well.  I love helping out start up game companies and first game projects, as you may have gathered from the rest of my blog.

"Rules for Revolutionaries" by Guy Kawasaki

"Rules for Revolutionaries"
By Guy Kawasaki

This book was assigned reading at Boston University, and should be assigned reading for any game business start up or even a first project.  One of my professor, who is a serial entrepreneur and sits on the boards of start-ups, wanted us to read this book.  It's a short book, a quick read, but the rules Guy has put down are critical.  You can get the same general information by watching videos of Guy present his talks...  But they always change a little bit.  If you want all his ideas in one place this is the place.  Here is a youtube video that gives you a flavor for the man and his ideas.

Anyone with a business, a game project, a product, or a service  can benefit from understanding the philosophy of Apple Computers.  If you are an Apple fanatic and wonder 'how do they do it', this is how, written by one of the guys (ha) that helped build their corporate culture.

If you have talked to me for any length of time about business development or game development I have quoted two of Guy's rules.  "Don't worry, be crappy!" and "Churn, baby, churn!"  they are fundamental tenants of how I go about things.

Game Design + Project Management = a new kind of certification?

When you study Business Administration one of the main components is learning Project Management.  I had a great project manager at Boston University.  He has tons of years of experience in manufacturing and business project management, and was an absolute sage when it came to helping any project of mine.  But when I suggested a project based on a computer game, he shrugged his shoulders and politely suggested that I pick a different topic.  I did pick a different topic (a comparison of Call Centers including a new kind called a "Distributed Call Center") but kept working on my own project that became The ZoRTS Project.  Effectively doing two senior projects...

Keith Fuller has been writing blog posts on #ALTDEVBLOG about his Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certifications.  These are things that I was encouraged to get, and have thought hard about getting.  His recent posts have convinced me that learning more about them is a critical step for my future in game design, but actually getting the certifications may not be.

The issues that he's addressing today is more along the lines of creating a new certification specifically for Game Designers, born out of the same place as the previous two.  I am VERY interested in this concept.  PMP or CSM certification specifically for game design would resolve my "should I, shouldn't I" debate instantaneously.  The question is how do we move things forward?  I don't know the answer to that.  I actually only have more questions.

Are there any other break away certifications?  Have they succeeded or failed and why?  More gamer's who are learning to be game designers need a familiarity with CSM and PMP ideas.  Folks already established in the industry need more familiarity as well. We should find more folks in the Community who are very familiar with project management and get their advice.  Perhaps everyone interested in this idea should sit down face to face and talk about it.

This has already been brought up to with Scott Macmillan of Boston Indies in a casual way (a quick tweet).  But the Boston area has some great resources to start talking about this in a more serious way.  I think it's time to rally the troops and give this some serious talking time.

Gaming the Market: Where do you learn about this stuff?

So we know that understanding whats happening in the world is important...  Right?  Just like understanding the latest patch notes from Blizzard.  So where do we get the patch notes for the stock market?

We've already linked to a great one.  My financial education started there, and its the place that I return to when learning more. The Motely Fool.  Additionally I love the Planet Money Podcast on NPR.  This American Life covered the economic crisis better than anyone else, and spun PMP off from those endeavors.  Around the house WBUR gets streamed almost all the time.  It is the best NPR radio station in the country...  And broadcasts from BU.

Of the various books out there two great books are worth recommending.  Follow the advice from just these two, and you'll do better than most folks.  If you are a business persona already grab a copy of The Intelligent Investor.  This is basic guide and primer to investing.  It's like a game guide for the market.  It has both 'in depth' and 'in general' advice.  The second book I recommend is The Boglehead's Guide to Investing.  Geared towards folks not as familiar with the stock market, the bond market, and investing in general it would be a really great place to start if you are not as business savy.





The next tip is going to be an analysis of which kind of game the market is and how best to play it.  What do you think?  Is the market more like an FPS?  More like an RTS?  There's the real answer, and then there's my answer. Check back for future tips and as always post questions, comments, or follow the RSS.

The Adwords Experiment: Week 4

In the fourth week of The Adwords Experiment things really started 'moving'.  But it took that long and a lot of trial and error to really learn the system.  Which is actually much longer than originally thought.  On the outset it seemed like a week to learn and then three weeks to collect data.  But in the end...  Not so much.

Week 4 recap:

Overall project.

So eight clicks over a month.  Not exactly what we were looking for when we started the project.  And from the amount of money needed to spend it is pretty clear that we cannot get 10,000 hits out of $100...  Clicks would have to sell for the one penny starting bid.  But here's what we did get...  10,000+ impressions.  The name of my blog was seen over ten thousand times.  While there is no tangible benefit to that, maybe they will think more favorably of me in the future.  Who knows?

First Hypothesis: Dis proven!
There is no magic number that can bring you enough clicks to pay for your Adwords bid.  You cannot game Google.

Second Hypothesis: Dis proven!
There is no magic number that will bring you a profit on your clicks.  And that makes sense.  If you could they would run out of money and wouldn't be able to do things like buy Motorola.

Conclusion:
That does not mean that using Google Adwords to 'sell your product' is a bad idea.  This conclusion just means that it's not a money machine.  Using Google Adwords to sell your product is a good idea...  As long as you have learned how to do it at the least possible cost.  Being efficient is the way a company makes money with the revenue it generates.

On the plus side the whole experiment cost .33 cents.  That's a great value for the learning experience.  Hopefully from your standpoint, these blogs are worth way more.  The cost to me personally was only $.33, but a company would be facing opportunity cost, plus incurred expenses during such an experiment.  Paying someone to do such an experiment, or learn this 'new technology' would cost a company much more than it does me.  A big thanks to Google for financing this whole experiment!

Now the thing to decide, is do I keep the campaign running and go for more hits?  Or do I save the money in the account until another project needs it?  What do you think?  What I will definitely be doing is writing up a guide based on all the little tricks discovered during this process.  Its going to be short, sweet, and to the point.  The goal of the document will be to save you the learning time I had to spend to get the Adwords Campaign up and running.  This document will cost you...  Nothing.  That's right, I'm going to give it away.  It will be short, more of a checklist and therefore quick to write.  So I won't charge you for it.  More information about that soon.

1 Free business plan for your computer game.

What happens if while making a game you run out of money?  Do you have a plan in place if that happens?  Is there a way you can get funds while still developing?  Let's face it, if we're in the game making business we have to think about the business part of things.  Development is a giant Expense so you need Revenue to pay for it. There is a business plan that you haven't thought of yet, that will get you at least a little Revenue during each stage of the game design process.  Which could make the difference between closing a game project, or continuing to develop.

(I couldn't help putting that old South Park gag in there).

This suggestion is based off an older post about the 4 Stages of Game Design.  Check into that if you don't know what the four stages are yet.  At GameLoop 2011 this weekend a fifth new 5 step that some dev teams are implementing was mentioned.  Look for that post coming up soon.

1. Prototype: distribute freely.  That's right, give it away.  It acts as your demo.  Maybe use something like paywithatweet.com to get the word out.  But don't forget to ask for donations.  Gamers can be really generous when they like a game.  Use these funds and the feedback to rev the game into Alpha.  
2. Alpha:  charge a low amount for the alpha version of the game, promise that if people buy it now they will get all upgrades included with this price. Suggestion: 1/4 of the Full Release price.  Use these funds to rev the game into Beta. Make sure people know that the price is going to go up if they wait.
3. Beta: charge a higher amount for the beta. Suggestion: 1/2 of the Full Release price.  Use these funds to rev the game into Full Release.
4. Full release: Once the full release of the game is ready, the price should increase to the full amount.  You need to set this price first, and then decide what the others will be.   Tell everyone what these numbers are going to be ahead of time and stick to them.

If you think this business model sounds familiar, you're right.  This is really a recap of the sales of Mojang's first title Minecraft.  More recently QCF Design was inspired to use this model to release Desktop Dungeons.  They released a freeware version of the game, then charged for Beta, more for Alpha following in Mojang's footsetps.  Notch and crew didn't have the benefit of hindsight or success to think of this as a good publishing methodology, but I bet they had a good idea it would work.  Given the right set of circumstances it could work for many independent games.

A word of warning: this would not be a good strategy for developing a console game.  At this stage asking console users to download many small chunks of data, getting them all vetted through the console makers, etc would be a huge hassle.  For a game on Steam or self published it could do alright.  Additionally restrictions in how games are published via app stores might also make this a bad business plan for an app.  We're going to cover three great business plans for apps in the future.

Is this business model going to work for absolutely everyone?  No. So what should come from this post?  Hopefully a good conversation on your team.  If you haven't even thought about business development yet (and most beginning developers don't), then use this as a jumping off point to explore the idea of monetization.  You might not have a business guy on the team.  But you still need to spend some time considering 'business' aspect of game design.  Most game developers come from the coding or art world.  Tweet this to a fellow team member and take this as an opportunity to walk for a moment in the business world.

If I could ask Carl Mennah one question it would be: "What are the steps to building the infrastructure through these stages?"  This is something they had to piece together themselves.  Some of their trials and tribulations were rather public (IE issues with Paypal).  Some decisions were private and that insight would be valuable to future attempts at making this method work.  If anyone has an opinion on that, please comment.

*** Edit ***
There is some great discussion about this topic over on Reddit.  If you like the post, head over and give me a up vote and jump in the discussion!

Know the playing field.

A good PVP player will tell you that success requires understanding the terrain.  Knowing what your goals are in Arathi Basin  and where to go to achieve those goals are key to getting your honor points at the end of the day.  (Am I dating my time in WoW by mentioning Honor Points?  Most likely).  Also understanding how other players react to the field is important as well.  Where are the hotspots?  Watching out for repetitive behavior is key to understanding a PVP match.  This concept is also key to doing better in the market.

There is another side to this coin.  If you don't understand something, don't expect to play it well.  As the example in the intro illustrates: I didn't understand the market forces which lead to the collapse of the industry, and lost money.  The same will happen to you.  If you are a gamer looking to start investing the first advise is to learn as much as you can about what you are going to invest in.  It is actually far easier to stay on top of the market as a whole.

Advice #1: Play the market, not the stock.

Unless you really know a particular company very well (say Activision Blizzard for example) don't try and play just one stock.  Instead look for things called Exchange Traded Funds (ETF).  This kind of fund should have very low costs, because a human doesn't get paid to manage it.  If you find one with high costs, run away.  Find a different one.  An ETF just tracks the market.  That's all.  Instead of paying attention to one particular stock now you just have to pay attention to what's happening overall.

Advice #2: Collect Good Information.

For weeks NPR has been talking about troubles in the market because of the stagnation on the rise of the debt ceiling.  And the market slipped a little bit more each day.  Were you paying attention?  Were you taking action based on that information?  This is like a big red zone in the heat map.  The thing to pay attention to is 'nervousness' when investors are nervous the stock market drops.  In this post, lets avoid the issue of what to do when the market drops, we'll talk about that in future posts...  But for now simply understand that although you cannot predict specific behavior in the market, at times you can really get a great idea of the increasing likely hood of a drop in the market.  Last weeks "Market Meltdown" is a great example.

I'm going to apply more gamer strategies to business over time, but for now, lets keep this post to that one tip.  So now that we know we need to pay attention to something, where can we find great places for that information?  Preferably places that don't include a lot of craziness.  Some great suggestions come up next week!

The Adwords Experiment: Week 3

The Adwords Experiment is up to week 3! Actually going through this process has taught me a lot about using Adwords.  If you are going to run an adwords campaign that uses many low competition keywords, you have to create an ad group for each keyword.  Ads must have the keyword in the text of the ad.  Learning how to do this is like learning how to walk.  Clever bidding is like learning how to run.  The first two weeks of this experiment was definitely running before walking.

At the end of the third week we see stats that are pretty close to the first two.  Something is not right, so more drastic changes need to be made.  In week 2 we started seeing Adgroups increasing the effectiveness of each ad...  But at the end of Week 3 going into Week 4 its time for a complete overhaul.

During weeks 1 and 2 more Ads in my campaign were created and polished enough to become 'eligible' for inclusion on the results for the keywords in the campaign.  But not many people were seeing them.  And no one was clicking them. The campaign now contains 23 keywords and 19 adgroups which support those keywords.  Ads no longer double up on the keywords, which seemed fine at the beginning of the process.  There are multiple copies of ads in each adgroup if multiple keywords happened to be used in the same ad.

Going forward each Ad Group will have one Keyword.  Even if it has multiple ads.  Operating under the assumption that whatever algorithm Adwords uses is smart enough to use multiple keywords with multiple ads in a single Adgroup is apparently not the case.  So some major time will be spent resorting the Adwords Campaign, and rewriting the rough draft of the guide.  Getting that guide is going to save you so much time.  It will even be better then reading about all these mistakes and corrects as I make them.

Till next week!  Keep Experimenting... Share your results if you have any! Oh and keep an eye out for my ads.

5 Great Ways to Find an Artist for your Game Project.

 For the ZoRTS project finding Artists seemed to be the biggest challenge.  There is just something about artists which makes them really hard to find.  Maybe there aren't many out there at the moment.  Maybe Artists are looking in traditional media instead of game design.  Or maybe working on a project for no pay is not very appealing.  Regardless of the reason for a difficult search here are some of the strategies the ZoRTS project has used to find Concept Artists and Sprite Artists for The ZoRTS Project.

1.) Trade Shows/Conventions.  While attending Pax East 2011, I went to every panel for art.  Not to attend the panel, just to talk to the Artist lining up to listen. At a big convention you have an hour long wait for the room.  Two words: captive audience.  You can talk up your game, get business cards, or just chat with art folks.

2.) Art Schools.  One of those Pax East Attendees was a representative from an art school.  They are always looking for 'internships' and opportunities for their students.  They even have offices set up to help find projects that are looking for artists.  You may want to avoid the fine arts colleges, and go with ones that have game or programming curriculum...  But don't limit yourself if you are located in a part of the country with only a few colleges.

3.) Go to Kongregate.com.  Many of the games there have art under a Creative Commons License that will allow you to use the art for free, as long as you mention the artist.  This pack of art may be all you need for a prototype, or it may be a place to start and build from.

4.) Build a website!  If you are laboring in secrecy there is no way you can get the word out about your game.  Polish those inbound marketing skills, or contract me to do it, grab some free Google webspace and start telling us about your game.  Use this to attract the attention of the artists that you need.

5.) Reddit!  Use the /r/gamedev, /r/indiegame or similar subreddit.  And there are other more appropriate boards there as well.

In fact this blog post was inspired by a reddit post.  Check it out here to find out if they have added any new and useful comments.  What ways have you used to look for artists to work on a game?  Any 'war stories' about trying to find that great artist?  Next week it's finally here, 1 Free Business Plan for your computer game.  It was held back one week to tweak it and make sure it's perfect!

Late to the Debate...

I like to think about things for a while before posting about them.  This Gamasutra article about Canada helping game designers reminded me of an opinion about our own debate about tax incentives for computer games.  This post is basically a rewrite of a comment Caroline's post on the Fire Hose Games website. Give it a read and leave a comment with your opinion.  Also it would be great to catch up with the current state of this debate, so if you know of any locations where it's being talked about online, link them in the comments section.

A Gamer's Advice for playing the Stock Market.

Could looking at the market from the point of view of a gamer shed some light on preventing terrible losses in the real stock market?  Does being a gamer provide helpful insight into 'the market'?  Can we gamers prosper by looking at the elements of the stock market as we look at the elements of games?  Lets explore those questions with a new series of blog posts.  These posts will get released on Fridays.  If this kind of thing seems interesting, let me know in the comments below.

Economic downturn.  It scares everyone who is trying to 'play the market'.  Scares them more then their first Creeper attack, because a downturn is long and drawn out, not sudden and explosive.  Watching your portfolio shrink is the creeping fear of disaster, not the sudden death of a gunshot.  In my time I've worked at a Mutual Fund Company and a Private Student Loan Company.  My investment education started at the height of the market in 2008.  An employee purchase program sounded like a great idea.  A few hundred dollars set aside from my paycheck went into a $45 dollar stock, which  promptly fell to around a $1.00 over the next couple months.  The official toll: 96.96%.  My advice comes from my experiences, my business education, and reading about investing.

If there are any topics that you would like to look at through the lens of gaming, leave a comment.  They'll get written up in this series.  So post them now to get your burning questions in.  Oh, and I am not a professional so please consult with a trained financial professional before making any large stock purchases...  Or even small ones.  Next Friday we going to talk basics of investing for gamers.  First Strategy: Know the playing field.

One really exciting thing coming up is the release of Diablo III.  There have been a few ruffled feathers from
gamers of late about some of the protection surrounding the game.  I for one am going to be thinking more about the in game economy.  Diablo III will allow players to auction off goods in either gold, or real currency!  There is major opportunity for applying lessons learned on the real stock market to the virtual one, and vice versa.  One great resource is The Diablo 3 gold guide.  The guide is written by Markco Polo who wrote the amazing Just My Two Copper blog, and also The Traffic Blogger.  Markco does a ton of research and experiments into the best ways to make gold, and now real money in Blizzards Games.  Hopefully this series of posts will have good crossover and we'll be able to highlight some real world economic effects using the games economy!

The Adwords Experiment: Week 2

This week on the Adwords Experiment the bid on each keyword has been kicked up to 2 cents per click.  There was some additional tweeking which many help the ads come up in keyword searches.  These tweek's were necessary and should have been done before the experiment started.

Remember before you start an Adwords campaign, make sure that your ads actually contain the keywords they target.  Google uses relevancy and bid amount to determine if your ads come up in searches.  Apparently they wont let just anyone bid on any keyword with an unrelated ad.  To make sure your ad actually comes up, polish the ads to be meaningful and contain the keyswords relevant to your site.  For this reason the 'shot gun' approach is most likely not a successful one.

Fortunately Google lets you have multiple ads per campaign.  Which gives you an opportunity to create ads which target those keywords.  This has been a classic example of learning how to run before learning how to walk.  The experiment may be in trouble simply because time hasn't been spent perfecting the ads.  But on the bright side it won't cost anything to keep going...  So the experiment can be rerun at a later date.

For Week 3 the keywords and ads are narrowing down into 'Ad Groups'.  There will be six ad groups each with between 1 and 3 ads.  They will end up having 3-4 keywords each.  You can save yourself a lot of time and effort by setting this up ahead of time.  For me this is a fun experiment, so the trial and error approach is fine.  But if you are doing this for real money, at a real company, make the Ad Groups ahead of time.  You know you are doing it right when Google starts suggesting additional keywords to go with your ads.  For me that took till the first day of week 3.  If you group well it should happen almost immediately.

There isn't much reason to post pictures of the graphs...  They look exactly the same.  Same number of clicks, same cost.  But the impressions are rising.  So people have been seeing the ads.

This week was pretty much the same as the first week. Which is disappointing, although informative.  It means that the amount that you bid is not the only relevent factor in using Adwords.  I'm preparing something really special for you guys based on what I'm learning.  Anyone who wants to run a good Adwords Campaign is going to want to take a look.  Check back with Week 3.

Newbies guide to the 4 stages between an idea and selling a game.

This discussion is the Business Development side the 4 Stages of Game Design.  If you've been paying attention you'll notice that ZoRTS gets referred to as a project a lot.  Have you ever wondered why that is?  There is a good reason for that, and it can help you think about your game project.  There will be some elaboration on these concepts in a future post which contains a free business plan for a computer game.

My Project Management Professor at Boston University one day told our class to make sure not to confuse a company with a product. This idea has been expressed here as a logical expression Game Idea != Product.  Many, many people especially gamers, confuse an idea, a plan, a project, and a company. This is completely understandable, they get excited about taking an idea and turning it into a business. It's very important to understand the difference between them to preserve productivity, and to put your efforts into the correct thing at the correct time.  A big point that Scott MacMillian makes is that some projects can be created without starting a company.  Why go into $30,000 to $50,000 (or more) worth of dept when you would be completely happy just making the prototype?

• Project: A plan for taking a set of ideas and turning them into a product (in this case a game).  Additionally the  process of taking that idea and actually doing something with it. The project would include starting with some kind of plan (referred to as Project Documentation) to create Game Design Document and then execute the plan to produce a prototype.  The documentation should also include a deadline, goals and a timeline.  You obviously cannot sell a Project to a consumer.  In the game design industry until you actually have an executable file that you can have another human sit down in front of and enjoy, you don't have anything.  You simply have a collection of ideas written down.

• Prototype: The output of the first project should be a playable prototype. Unless you are really ambitious, like the Dwarven Fortress folks, then your prototype will be a demonstration of the technical skills of the coders, and the basic ideas and game play you intend to elaborate on.  The DF prototype/alpha is way more than a technical demonstration, and they happen to be the exception that proves the rule.  For us mere mortals we want to make our prototypes demonstrate that we can deliver something that has some fun game play.

• Computer game: (aka a product) the full release version of executable piece of software that someone can get some enjoyment out of.  We learn that there are multiple stages between Prototype and Full Release in a previous post.  For the big AAA titles there are years of production which include QA testing, Beta Testing, all kinds of polish.

• Company: Once you have a product, something that generates revenue, something that the players can get their hands on, you finally can start a company.  Why wait this long?  Because on your first project, or first game you are bootstrapping.  Which means you have to pay out of pocket for the expenses the game incurs plus the expenses the company incurs.  The second you start a company, your expenses go through the roof.  People have to be compensated for working at a company.  Employee's are much different than 'volunteers'.

Go through these stages at your own pace.  And if you find one partcular stage that you don't want to move past, don't.  You could stay in the project space forever and still produce a game...  It may not be really great, but you wouldn't incur the cost of incorporation.  If you really want to make a company, respect the stages that lead up to it, because you can save yourself a whole lot of money by making mistakes before incorporation.

For these reasons I try very hard to tell people that ZoRTS is a Project, and the result of that project will be a game prototype.  It is very tempting to tell people that I work on a computer game or that I have started a game company, but that just isn't the truth.