The best time to start a company.

Start a company when you are young.  Take chances right out of college.  When you're single and the relative level of requirements on your life are low.  Risk is a young person's game.  So if you think that you might ever want to start a company, take that risk before getting married, having a kid, or buying a house.

You might feel pressure when young from debt.  You may feel that a stable job somewhere makes sense to pay those bills.  But the requirement of stability from debt is nothing compared to being married, having a kid or creating a home.  Add another person or two into the mix, and it becomes very easy to do the stable thing, and very hard to do the risky thing.  Even if that risky thing is your dream.

Stability is a trap.  A very comfortable trap and it's oh so easy to get into.  A great skill to learn early is being comfortable with instability.  Not many people are good a thriving on random events.  Fewer still are good at capitalizing on them.

Tonight (this is being written 11/1/2012) a friend asked me to be a co-founder of his company.  This is a roll of the dice, dream opportunity.  But I can't accept.  My life demands the stable job.  It makes me wonder if I'll have these kinds of chances again.  The Zen answer is yes.  But that is little consolation tonight.

[update] Actually I am co founding that company, despite my busy schedule...  Don't tell my wife.

Lessons from failed Kickstarters

You may have noticed a number of kickstarters showcased here recently.  Mostly just mentions of successful and failed projects, and some notes that they would be discussed later.  Now is the time to take a look at an old idea in a new light.  The success of a kickstarter does not mean a game will be made.

Why do so many games go to Kickstarter?

The real brilliance of Kickstarter for game designers is the reversal of quality assurance.  Instead of paying people to debug a game, through kickstarter you can offer 'exclusive' access to Tester Only sections of the forum, and charge more for it.

It sounds snarky to say the really great thing about kickstarter is profiting from QA....  But I seriously considered paying Timber and Stone $50 to get that tier of reward.  For tiny indie game developers this is actually a really great QA solution.  However, if the AAA companies start doing it, that might not be so good.

Dishonored; Looks Boring.

I have not been playing it, but I did watch Dave Bagnall's Dishonored Let's Play.  It has something to do with what seems like a lack of peril.  Xcom can go so very badly wrong sometimes that it really makes you feel something: Tense.

Perhaps the lack of emotional connection is due to watching a Let's Play instead of playing the game...  But usually watching Let's Plays inspire me to want the game.  Dishonored looks a little flat, emotionally.

[Update 11/28/2012]
Nope...  It's just me.  Dishonored has far exceeded sales expectations.  It's headed into franchise territory.

Crowdfunding Definitions

Anyone else notice that I'm very interested in crowd funding games lately?  Yeah.  Fortunately I'm not hooked on spending money I don't have funding them.  Some people have problems.  Over the next few weeks that should shift towards the funding on game companies.  Lets go over some terms, as I use them, to clarify things.

IndieGogo
One of the two big crowd funding websites.  Notable because they allow some projects to complete without reaching a set goal.  Also they have fewer game design projects, and many more art projects.  Still a viable place to fund indie game development.

Kickstarter
One of the two big crowd funding websites, notable because of the pass/fail programs.  Campaigns cannot chose an option that allows them to get whatever funds are completed, the campaigns must reach their goal.  This site is more popular among the indie and some mainstream game developers.

Open Crowd funding
A project which independently creates and runs it's own crowd funding campaign, without using a service like Indiegogo or Kickstarter.  This is a rising trend among AAA game developers.

Equity Crowdfunding
The really neat kind of crowd funding, promised in the JOBS ACT.  Also called Accredited Crowd Funding because Accredited Investors will be able to provide money to start up companies, in exchange for ownership of the company.  They most likely will not get swag as well...  But we shall see.

Iterations on Crowd Funding.

Star Citizen is taking an 'Open Crowd funding' approach.  Looking up Neal Stephenson's CLANG for a friend reminded me that Star Citizen and Mechwarrior Online are not the originators of this tactic.  You can still contribute to CLANG even though the kickstarter successfully completed four months ago.

Leaving contributions open after a kickstarter campaign is a great idea.  Open crowd funding before running a kickstarter seems to be putting the cart before the horse.  If a successful kickstarter can keep funding going after it closes, what about a non successful one?  Can you reach you're goal even after the kickstarter has failed?  And what about a Flexible Funding program that only reaches half the goal?

What is a kickstarter that is not a kickstarter? Successful, apparently.

There are a couple big name game titles, from big players in the industry, who are using the Kickstarter idea.  But without using the Kickstarter website itself.  This is an interesting concept and although successful in a couple big cases is a terribly risky proposition.  The internet is all about removing the middleman.  But where does this trend lead?  Will this be the end of Kickstarter and Indiegogo as everyone does their own thing?