Game Company Entrepreneurs!!!

Good Morning To Whomever Reads This,

I am looking into starting up my own video game company that is stricktly virtual workers. I am doing this because not every game developer out there has the ability to travel to a major city to work. I am asking for some info on how some of the game company owners how they started up there company? I have resources that are offered to veterans and getting info that way but some direction would be great!!!

Thanks For Reading!

 

Unity is sort of run like this in some ways, and most software companies have a lot of staff that work from home, or from overseas or via outsourcing, so it's fairly common these days.

I would start with setting up slack, understanding it's a virtual office. This is structure, and structure is essential. Do not use it like a chat program. Use it like you would an office with a couple of rooms and threads for each important discussion.

Set up Trello to work with Slack. So that you have a noticeboard of what is going on and control over direction means control over what needs doing. Organisation becomes your modus operandi. You'll have a few Trello boards. One for running the business. One for the game.

Once you have your virtual office, it's time to look at contracts. Each and every person that will work with you on your game or within the business will have a contract that covers your innocent, unknowing buttocks in the event something bad happens. And usually something bad will happen, because this is your first rodeo.

You should also talk to a chartered accountant. These guys can be mines of great free advice. They are able to recommend other professionals too.

Think about those things then come back for more forum suggestions, and do not take legal advice from anyone but a lawyer.

 

I will look into Trello and Slack and I appreciate the advice and the quick response. I’ll repost about what I found out and ask a few more questions if you continue to monitor this thread.

Thanks

 

Practicing using Trello and linked it to the practice slack page.

I also contacted a local chartered accountant near my location about starting up the company.

Where or how do you setup contracts? I’m familiar how contracted work is but why would you prefer contracts over hiring employees?

 

Hiring an employee requires a contract. Contracting someone also requires it. Anything to do with you making money? or your business? or your game? Contract. Nobody can do you then. Why risk it?

I cannot advise where to draw them up or anything.

 

Honestly, you should get official guidance on these things, and you're asking for trouble if you start flailing around blindly. Starting a business is a thing that should be planned and researched in advance. Asking questions about where to get started is good, so don't take this as me being negative. Your next steps from here should be researching how to do this properly, and that's not something we can give you much advice on.

Do you have anything like a local "business enterprise center" or startup community or government department where you would register a business? If so I'd start there, because they'll be able to give you advice specific to your region. If you don't know about those things or where to find them, a local business accountant or lawyer may be able to point you in the right direction, and they're important people anyway.

Very broadly speaking, accountants help you deal with managing finances and financial compliance. They can also save you money once you have cash coming in and out, but make sure they're reputable or they can get you into trouble.

Lawyers are where you'd get assistance with contracts and legal compliance. They're pretty important because, in short, any time a new person is involved with your business there's likely to be some kind of contract involved. Selling something? It probably has warranty (even if it's implied/statutory). Hiring someone? That's a contract. Many contracts don't specifically need a lawyer's attention (eg: I bet you agree to software licenses regularly), but some do, particularly any time you need to write one of your own.

 

So you want to strictly be a developer correct, not a publisher?
If you also want to self-publish/distribute, it gets a little more sticky.
Great post above.

 

Yeah although I would be wary of just taking such a discussion to email. No offence intended to above poster, it is the internet and the default must be caution, references and evidence

 

Doubly so when it seems like there's a sale's pitch involved.

 

removed off-topic posts. Please keep it on topic.

 

Thanks for all of your great advice. At least now I know where to start. Market Research and the sort isn’t foreign to me. They taught us that when I was getting my BS in Video Game Design. I’ll let y’all know if I have any other questions.

 

Our small studio does not have a office, currently we are 4 peiple, and 2 of those live under the same roof and there for office (me and my girlfriend). The other two are off premises, we communicate with discord, the same discord as the public official one for the game, we use Trello as scrum board. And we use Gitflow as versioning strategy.

We run a tight ship and it's working very well. One of us four are a intern and he has his own branch and only read access to the other branches. It works well and we have control over all his pushes, since we use Gitflow this is true for all work, but the difference is we code review our own work most of the time. For more complex tasks we code review each others work.

 

When you remove off-topic post, please remove replies to off-topic posts too. In this case, i think you should've remove also these posts, as they were replies to removed post(s):

https://forum.unity.com/threads/game-company-entrepreneurs.533982/#post-3517424
https://forum.unity.com/threads/game-company-entrepreneurs.533982/#post-3517471

 

I made games on my own when I was a teenager, then worked in studios (EA, etc.) for six years, learning the game business, then started my own company in 2000 by... making games and selling them. So far so good.

Have you made any games? What are you wanting to hire developers for?

 

I can't emphasis this enough. Make some games on your own. Get some successes under your belt. Do this before you go around hiring people.

Otherwise game dev is simply a way to burn cash.