The realities of funding your first game

Unless you are extraordinarily talented or unfathomably lucky, no one is going to knock on your door and offer you sacks of cash to make your first game.

For the rest of us, starting out likely means digging into personal savings and time in order to make a project come together. A number of themes emerged as we interviewed developers about starting up for The GameDev Business Handbook.

Here are three things we distilled from those conversations:

1. Unless you’re independently wealthy, chances are you’ll be making your first game as a side project. While you’re building your early games, you’re probably going to be working a different job to earn your living. If that job happens to be at a game studio, you should also be aware of what your contract and/or employee handbook specifies about side projects. There’s a chance you might be breaking the rules, and it’s better to know up front how your company handles such things. The last thing you want is to make an amazing game, only to have to hand it over to your employer because of a contractual agreement.
2. If (and, hopefully, when) you decide it’s time to make your own games full time, the financial considerations shift. In our first blog post, we talked about planning ahead and putting funds away in savings. The reality is that you don’t have any way to monetize your first game until it’s on sale. If you can’t get across the finish line on savings, you may need to consider a part-time job or contract work. Compared to full-time employment, both of these offer you more time to work on your game while mitigating financial risk. The other option is using credit, which can be a risky proposition (as we discussed in the last post).
3. Perhaps you’re an experienced developer looking to break out of AAA and start your own studio. Your ambitions may be a bit grander than someone just starting out. This means bigger expenditures, hiring employees immediately, and renting space. Unless you land a publisher or investor before you open the doors on Day 1, you’re going to need to fund this yourself. In speaking with us for The GameDev Business Handbook, Ninja Theory’s Nina Kristensen discusses the personal risk she and her co-founders took on, how they handled salaries, and what building a studio means in the short- and long-term.

You can read more about personal finance in The GameDev Business Handbook by Michael Futter. Read more about the book or click to order the digital version or hardcover direct from Bithell Games.