
The 7 Deadly Sins of Startup Companies - psyklic
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article2603.asp
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jacquesm
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.

