The Indie Team Startup.

Starting as an indie is a pretty daunting task. You don't have to just make a game, you have to make a business. You can't get away without knowing about your target markets, press release distribution or how to lodge a BAS. Ignoring any aspect of your business can very easily make the time you spend on game development moot, which is a scary notion when you're in this by yourself.

So at first you might think that bringing more people in can make things easier. Time to team-up! But creating an indie team has its own hurdles and issues that need to be considered before you start slapping high-fives and chanting "C-C-C-COMBO" with your best buds.

Here's the response I gave to some fellows over east looking to start up a medium sized indie team, similar to RocketHands in scope. I talked mainly about the issues that team start-ups face, although quite a bit is still relevant to the lone wolf start-ups. Enjoy, I hope it is helpful to you guys as well.

Game Design for the Non-Technical.

So lately I've been getting a number advice requests over email from indie developers, ranging from business structures to game design. In typical fashion I'm unable to reply to these emails in anything short of five paragraphs, so I figure: "Why not kill two birds with one blunt object haphazardly hurled in the direction of my blog?".

The following is my lightly edited reply to an email I received from a fellow non-technical type asking how to get a game made without the development know-how; something I can very much relate to!