Starting a Casual Game Company

OK, just for giggles... your rich uncle dies and leaves you 500k but his will stipulates it has to be used to start a casual games company. Where do you start?

I would hire 1 coder and 1 artist full time. I would handle the business end and design and code. The game plan would be to put out a new casual game every 4 months to build a respectable catalog in a 2 or 3 year time at which point the original 500k would run out. The games would have to be acceptable to the major game portels. The revenue from the catalog would then have to be enough to continue developing a new game every 4 months.

Is it possible? How would you do it?

I would start a casual games company and then pay myself $499000 for services rendered... he only said it needed to be used to *start* a casual games company.

Put it in a tax-covering investment account until the groundwork is layed out. Get a good bank manager and hire an accountant and solicitor who specialise in this small businesses, hopefully with media experience. Draft up detailed business plans, cash flow forecasts and the like and use it to approach additional investors. Analyse potential distribution channels and do your research. Incorporate to protect against bankruptsy. Purchase initial equipment, rent, bills. Design the first game outright, maybe the first two. Realise that you can't realistically code, design and run a business of this scale all at once, settle for a business/production role or hire a dedicated business manager. Hire staff and additional equipment only when needed and only when additional funding is likely. When the first game is 50% complete hire testing staff or outsource it. Work on the design phase for the next game now. When first game is 90% complete hire a good PR firm. Remember that you will probably need to provide updates for a game 6 months after launch.

+ musician/sfx part-time. Also maybe differet artists for 2D/3D and backgrounds/sprites. If you wanted to self-publish as well as go on the portals you'd need some good web/e-commerce skills + marketing skills etc.

oh yeah + what team monkey said.

With that sort of money might well be better off investing in one of the more successful studios and living off the proceeds of the dividends. Why? because if you have £500K and you don't know the first step in forming, running and growing a company then you'd be better off letting other people do it for you.

Buy me a copy of http://www.kasualkit.com/index.htm and come out with new game every 5 minutes! I would make millions.

Commision something

If I had 500k I'd pay my mortgage off and save the rest. Setting up a small publisher needn't cost a lot - I'd rather run it on a shoe-string and build it up gradually than risk a lot of cash. In fact that's exactly what I am doing (apart from the 500k in the bank bit).

Zee 3 is the third business I've set up with my brother. Neither Z1 or Z2 cost a lot to set up and both grew to a significant size (Z2 was turning over 1million+). Both of them hit problems due to either work drying up or publishers going bust and and not paying. Thankfully neither Z1 or Z2 went bust but we 'sold' them to bigger companies which was a slightly more graceful exit. With Z3 we intend to keep it smaller - growing a company is actually pretty easy to do, just hard to maintain. I always raise an eyebrow when I see a game developer increase in size very quickly - they pretty much always collapse soon after.


Apart from stashing the cash in the bank, that's pretty much the exact opposite of what I would do (and have done). Not saying you're wrong but I couldn't operate like that.

what about starting that company in some cheap outsourcing-country in the far east orso.. have them code/draw your game, all that's left can be invested in me, for the music. :P

Great, then maybe Microsoft or Nintendo would want you building game projects for their online arcades/virtual consoles...

Start the company... pay myself 100,000 a year - that'd be enough dough to make u get off your hoop and motivate your backside to do blah and some if nothing else.

I would say "screw you, dead uncle", start a half-arsed games company with £50, deliberately go bust within the week, and sensibly invest the rest and live off the proceeds.

Great to see all serious replys. This comunity is just getting better and better..

Well you can't really ask a question like that and expect not to get a few quick witted answers.

Seriously, let's suppose the "dead uncle" expects a return on investment in the 3 to 5 year time frame and is looking to me for ideas for investments. He's got plenty of money and lots of other investments going so this isn't his entire life savings.

I've been involved in 3 different startup. One got huge, one got bought, one dryed up. I even shipped 2 PC games, Slob Zone 3D and Ashes to Ashes (<-- #1 game in South Africa in '93! oh yea... oh yea...) The problem is that I have a good job in the IT world (>$100k) and I'm not ready to just jump into a startup again.


Outsourcing in hard. I already outsource some of my www.speechchips.com work. You really have to stay on top of contractors and even then you may not get what you want. Working remotely is an extra hassle a small company doesn't need. Of course, outsourcing works best when you can explicitly define exactly what you need and you can find someone with experience in the field. It's possible just not the silver bullet one might expect.

I have to give John's comments some thought seeing as how they are back up by hundreds of games. (Sticky Balls Rocks!)

... I would buy up the rights to Aurora (~£ price of Xbox 360) and then blow the rest of the money on paying lawyers to fend off the disgruntled ex-customers ;-)