There seems to be two main ideologies on how to grow your independent games (or any) business.

The first is work-from-home. Here you value the opportunity to work from home and be near your family and kids enough to grow your business by being smarter and subcontracting only. You essentially work alone, but extend your earning potential by being more efficient and adding some outside hands. You might even cap the growth of the business at some point, to keep it manageable by one person. Or then you just push the limits as far as you can go without adding employees.

The second school of tought is the build-a-team. You might start out in someones garage, but you are essentially occupying a office space. You value the efficiency the physical proximity brings to the team and the fact that you can leave work and go home without taking anything with you. You are ready to share ownership in the company if it gives you a bigger piece, and you value faster growth. You add employees as the company grows and are ready to shift your responsibilities with the growth. You might even go for outside funding at some point.

I know most long term developers here have been shifting between the camps during their careers, and probably will be shifting in the future as well. What I am intrested in is hearing you opinions on the potential up and downsides of both sides and maybe your personal motivation for choosing what you chose at different times in your career.

I have myself shifted from camp 1 to an office environment and am currently wondering what going fully for camp 2 would mean in practise (or shifting back to camp 1). Thanks in advance for you insights .. :)

without a doubt, given the correct alignment of the planets, go for camp 2.

I hate hate hate sitting at home programming. Because I see game development as a social experience as well as anything

The point about doing indie stuff for me at least, isnt to simply squirrel myself away in my bedroom and work on my masterpeice.

I want to build a business, but I want to build a bussiness that I can control, that if I kill myself shipping a project, that its ME that reaps the reward for that.

I plan on doing things slowly and building up from nothing to a sustainable size. I certainly dont think that being bigger is a good thing. In fact, being a small studio of maybe 5-7 guys is my ideal.

I'm too sociable to want to stay alone doing development for long. This is just a means to an end for me.

Pretty much what Phil said.

I like working with a team of really sharp and dedicated people who help push each other to excel, and who provide a synergy that makes all of you greater than the sum of the members. Building such a team, and making it work is part of the thrill for me. But I don't really harbor dreams of empire-building.

Working at home is just a way to keep the expenses down. I'm VERY fiscally conservative that way. But I wouldn't want to stay that way. Nor would I want to see a games company grow so big that it loses the focus and efficiency it takes to make great games.

If I get big enough so that an office and employees makes sense, I'm all for it. Even if it does add to my overhead (which I love to keep razor thin), the benefits of being able to leverage the output of multiple, dedicated people would be more than worth it.

On the other hand, I'm happy working at home. I've been home 5 years (as of March), and I don't have a problem working without other programmers in the cubicle next to me. I've worked well in multiple remote team situations, and that seems viable for the future, as well.

The idea of programming as a social activity, BTW, seems really foreign to me. Even when I've worked on teams, big or small, remote or otherwise, programming has never struck me as being even remotely "social". I've always tended to keep my "work life" separate from my "real life", though, and this might simply be another facet of that. Different strokes... :)

-David

My ultimate goal is to create a "system" that could work by itself without me, so that eventually it would be possible for me to just leave, and the company would still be able to function fine without me. This gives you a lot of flexibility in what you can do within the company. For instance you can be the CEO if you wish, and handle executive duties. Or you can hire a CEO (interesting huh?) and spend your time programming or designing. The point is that just because you own the company doesn't mean you have to waste your life away in an executive position. (hey, if it works for Bill Gates it works for me) :)

Keep in mind that having a team increases your risk, first your projects have to be more financially successful as now you have to support 2-3 mouths, not just one. Now you are also dependant on other team members to perform. What happens if they dont? can you afford to replace them? chances are you'll be on a tight timeframe as your burn rate is a lot higher then when it's just you.

It's even worse if you arn't paying your team members anything besides royalties, essentially you don't have too much leverage about how and when they get their work done. If you've proven to be successful individually, then I think it might be valuable to persue growing your team SLOWLY, I definitely wouldn't reccomend it for a new indie right out of the gates.

Yep, this is a highly personal question, bound to have diffrent answers depending on what your reason for doing this is.

I'm of the thinking that if you are doing tasks you don't enjoy and aren't find fufulling, then it's time to think of how to either automate or delicate those tasks.

Whats the point of doing this if you don't enjoy what you are doing.


I'd say automate 1st if you can. People are expensive, and they have needs that software doesn't :)


If you need to have people do it, then you are down to two more chioces: Give it to a person in house or outsource.

If the task is approate to outsource, it might be best. A good example would be press releases, sure you could hire someone, but do you have enough for them to do? IF not best to out source to someone like dpdirectory.com

IF you want to grow you business into something less Homey, then rent a space and start bringing on staff.

Just rember that when you do, it's a fairly constant cash burn, that needs to be fed. So just weigh your needs with the best solutions.

Lastly, remeber that when you are "da boss' you are effectively becomeing a manager. IF thats what your dream goal is, you;ll be a-okay :)

Call me anti-social, but I greatly prefer the 1st solution :)

So far I've been able to go both gfx and programming (with some help of friends with chat) and I love the "art of making games from your bedroom" (also known as bedroom gaming).
Maybe I'm just nostalgic ;) but making a team is too risky for me, of course unless I am making a steady income of over 50,000$/year but I guess that is unlikely to happen :)

Having a team is more risk. Having a team means also that you may be tempted to go for higher games (more time consuming) and they can be a miss or hit (not like small shareware ones).
If you hit, you make lot of money (but you have to pay co-workers) and if you miss, you're back alone, but you don't even have the money :P

I don't want to scare you! I admire your choice. But personally, my dream is to continue to make (small) games until the age of 70, living in a cottage (with DSL line!) near a beautiful mountain scenery... :D

The ideal for me, would be to grow by staggering between programmer and artist..

So I'd first find a great artist with the right attitude, personality and drive, get them on board.

Then I'd go for another programmer, so that we can tackle the programming quicker (usually, Ive found that programmers on most games are the bottleneck), then an artist..

Basically, a team should kind of reach that right balance. Between costs and rewards. But you can only judge that over a period of time.

One other problem with the team thing is that often, with a team, you can get to the point where you have too much work, so you HAVE to hire. Being in that position is just bad, because having to hire can mean a bad hire, which is far far worse than not hiring anyone.

So its definitely a slooooow process.

Thanks for the input people. I'll add it to my file for decision time .. :)

well having little to NO experience in this field, my advice is close to worthless :) but my ideas may be of some help.

efficiency is always a "curve" its never a straight line... meaning, spending more time on something, does not necisiarily mean you will spend that time getting things done at the same rate... for example.

lets say you can spend 30 hours a week on your game, and in those 30 hours, you are capable of working equivalent to 40 "man hours" (so you are one of those really fast programers, that can get things done faster than the average guy)... so you are running at 133% efficiency... now lets say you put in another 10 hours, working a total of 35 might be stretching it, maybe you sleep a little less, dont go play pool on wednesday, whatever... something that effects you mentally, and your total man hours is now 45, so now you put in 40 but only got an extra 5 out and you are now running at 113%(abouts anyways)... so for you in this extremely simple example, your maximum efficiency output is 40 hours for 30 hours put in...

so if you need a little more time a week on the game, maybe fining an employee that can do 30 / 35 is a good investment, cause now you have 60 hours a week in and 75 out... this is 125% efficiency... depending on how you look at it, in most cases this will help your project... (think about putting in 60 hours a week on your own... you would probably not get more than 50 hours output... just because of burnout)...

so by this theory then the more people you have working less time the better :) WRONG... there are obviously other factors... and effiency is direction proportional to the power of your management (not just a "management team" but management in general... the ability to keep your employees in line)...

with two people, thats relatively easy, adding a third, if its a friend, wouldnt be too difficult... but imagine having 10 people and trying to coordinate it... this is where the large studios end up LOSING efficiency compared to indie's... because they need to spend alot of money managing these teams, and that takes away from DIRECT EMPLOYEE benefits, which is one of the motivating factors for your bread and butter the creative team..

well this was long winded... but its basically just thinking about social theory...

3 people fixing your roof takes 2 days, 10 people also takes two days, because only 3 can fit on your roof, but it costs ALOT more beer ;)

First person I ever hire will be in sales & marketing.

Cas :)

I don't think that a lone game developer could keep a sales & marketing guy busy full-time. That would be something I'd contract out for (or employ someone part-time at best) until I was sure my company could crank out more than 2 products per year.

My ideal would probably be a full-time studio with 3 programmers, 4 modelers/artists, and one manager-type who handles not only internal management but deals with all the external contracts like sound, music, marketing, and accounting.

4 artists? I would think you'd need 2 at most, unless some of them are doing your game designs and ideas aswell and maybe even some sound and music themselves...

a good artist could probbaly do all the art for an indie game in a week of solid work :) unless you want REALLY crazy stuff.... but thats what the other artist is for ;) hehe

I do 3D games, so I guess that would be, "artist / modeler / level designer." Assuming you aren't developing your own engine from scratch, there's usually more work for the "content creators" to do than the programmers.

My current project is an exception to the rule (but I'd planned it that way), AND I had to create my own engine from scratch. But I don't expect that to be the norm.

I am not as seasoned as most posters on here, so perhaps what I say doesn't count as much, but I think what you choose really depends on the situation. It might be that it is better to work alone for the particular project you have at hand. Managing people is hard. Especially if you don't know them well. Many people go into business with friends and relatives simply because they know them well (in most cases) and they trust them (again in most cases).

If you know people that you worked with previously, I'd say it is better to go into business with them. There is something extra that comes out of a group of people who work together well which is not present in the individuals alone. The sum is more than the parts alone.

On the other hand, a group of people who are strangers to each other might not be the greatest thing. When you don't know the people you are working with, it is hard to guess how they'll react during the bad times. You really need to stick together.

Apart from the social aspect of working with others, I think it is more productive to work with others simply because more (trustworthy) minds are better than a single one.

My problem is that it is hard to find people you can really work well with. Making friends and getting to know them takes a while. It is an investment really. One that takes a looong looong time. :)

> First person I ever hire will be in sales & marketing.

An interesting article RE sales guys:

http://www.msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnsoftware/html/software03242004.asp

I agree with Cas, Sales&Marketing is a big thing for Indies. One of the positive sides I see in expansion is getting more time to work with marketing. I could easily see an almost 60-40 split between production and marketing for an Indie. Marketing is your core business, it is difficult to outsource without loosing the identity of the company.

I disagree with employing friends .. :)

You grow into knowing your work companions, but I'm definetly for separating friends and business. I have been in several leadership positions and it has always been easier when working with people on a completely professional level. Trust however is essential.