Plan your business?

Okay, so far I’ve been working on three projects if you exclude the contract work I’m doing at Sproing.

The interesting thing about those Indie productions: they’re all built upon a different assumption of how to be successful.

The first one, a sort of rhythm action game, heavily relies on the music publishing industry or some broadcast network to pickup the idea, make sure the rights to the music are there and then cross-market the game through their channels. Sounds tricky and hard, right? Well, I guess it won’t be too easy. On the other hands, this baby is most likely to reach a large (mainstream) audience once it works.

Then there’s the second project, which was born out of the unyielding idea of ‘this being the one game that we have been missing all those years’. I basically help out because, honestly, it is a novel concept and can be a lot of fun if done properly. No too deep business plan, a lot of trust in the power of a kick-ass demo. If it turns out playable, the demo will probably speak for itself. Also, this project is the only one done in a specifically rented office space with only this one purpose.

My last one could be called the ‘pet project’. I’ve been working with a former programmer, turned producer, turned programmer on a nice little PvP fighting game. It’s all done for the fun of making a game, without the urge or need to sell it later. Even if so, it’s the one thing I’m the most attached to.

So the careful reader will have noticed that none of these three babies where born under the stars of the ever so important business plan, market niche or extreme innovation. Or maybe, as in the time before game design documents, they are based on such plans without actually writing them out :)

Oh, and they are all done using free 3rd party engines, version control and art pipelines. No time to waste on reinventing the wheel. That’s probably why we had running versions of all three games after a couple of days, and have been ever since.