The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Companies

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2603.asp

by psyklic • 17 years ago

3 1 17 years ago

jacquesm• 17 years ago

Most of these are pretty good points. I've worked for a bunch of startups before I did my own and I've seen many of these errors 'in real life', as well as committed a few of them myself.

A couple of notes on the article: To build a flash game in with a team of 5 people in 6 months in a high wage environment as a 'starting goal' is not how it is done. To try to compete with the giants of the world from that kind of background is not going to work, a serious game has the budget of a movie, and about as many contributors.

Most flash games are written in Asia these days, the larger operators in this arena have their own partnerships in China and India, they crank out titles at a much lower cost than you could ever do from 'the west'. Incidentally, once the initial kinks are worked out it turns out that the quality is as good or better compared to what is produced locally, which is a trend I would expect to continue. They heavily 'pipeline' their operation too, with new titles on the drawing board while others are in various stages of development.

The 'Buy that engine' part is spot on, too often startups die because of a fascination with technology and the NIH syndrome. If you can buy it ready made, it costs you a fair bit of money, true. But contrast that to keeping your team afloat for your most optimistic guess on how much it will take you to develop that thing in house. Not all 'costs' are good to avoid, and when you can trade-off time-to-market for a piece of software that you don't even have on the drawing board yet then I would say 'BUY', every time.

Of course your coders won't be happy they don't get to implement that sexy lighting model they've been dreaming about but that's just too bad.

Good enough is another one of those items that is so hard to get right. One advantage that web developers have here is that they can roll out new versions at a moments notice. There are times when my websites go through 4 or 5 minor changes per day. That would be much harder in a 'download' environment such as a major game title. But by setting clear goals up front you know when you've reached that RC grade milestone.

Leadership is a tough one, too much and people will feel micro managed, too little and the place will turn into a zoo. I was probably guilty of the latter more than the former in most aspects, but some of my employees might see it the other way :)

One thing is for sure, you can't please everybody and those that don't play nice will have to find a place elsewhere. Most (but definitely not all) startups go through a period of shake-out before the final configuration is reached.

There is a bit of a taste of 'sour grapes' in this article, I'd say chalk it up to experience and do it again. Don't sit there being 'unemployed for 4 months', you could be 4 months in to showing how it's done 'your way' and with all the experience that you've got now at least you'll get it more right than you did the first time. Failing a couple of times is an excellent school.

It took me 10 years to get it even remotely right, there were months when I really wasn't sure what was going to pay the rent - forget about the food - but eventually it did pay off.

Oh, and for the record, I worked for a game studio in the gray past, it went bust in a spectacular way, with the CEO in jail for fraud and a bunch of other juicy details.

The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Companies

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