The Other Side of the Biz

Here you mostly hear me talk about design. It’s my first love. It’s the thing I want to be talking about… but it’s not the majority of the job. So, I figured I’d do a blog post on what it is I actually do in the hopes that it’ll be helpful for some of you as you start up your own game studios.

Because, for an indie studio to survive, it unfortunately takes a lot more than just making a good game.

First, you have to get your game made. This means finding a manufacturer, then it means hours and hours going back and forth with the manufacturer; first going over prices, then sending proofs, making sure they understand what you need, how your box is laid out, what components go where. Hours doing quality control, double checking everything, because no one is going to know your game as well as you will.

Second, you have to get your game to people, and if you’re not working with a publisher it means working out shipping, figuring out costs, trying to shave a few grams off your game’s weight because doing so means tens of thousands of dollars difference… All the while, if you’re a stubborn git like me that refuses to compromise design,  this means having to rebuild things you thought you had solved so they’re lighter but still just as good or better for the game. 

When you get your hands on the game you’ll run into a number of double faced cards that you might say to yourself “why is this a double faced card instead of just two different cards?”  The reason is, if they were all different cards we’d actually have to charge you a couple of dollars more at retail. I don’t want to do that.

Next you have to make sure your game is actually profitable, that you’ve priced it right: which means days pouring over spreadsheets. Because, truth is, even without a publisher, between the cut for distribution and for retail, margins on tabletop games are razor thin.

You’ve also got to protect your company, your employees and yourself by making sure that all of your contracts are solid. Even if you have a specialized games lawyer, no one is going to understand your product as well as you do, so you have to go over all of those yourself. And if you’re going to responsibly run a company you should know what all your contracts say. Your lawyer is always going to do everything they can to protect the company, that’s their job, but sometimes that means that they’re going to put things in your contracts that you don’t actually want to subject your employees or contractors to, so you always have to read them over yourself.

After that’s the money. For better or worse, we live in a world where money is the engine of creation, which means that you have to make sure you have enough of it and that it’s flowing to the right places.

This means that you’re going to have to be elbow deep in invoicing, navigating payment platforms and just making sure that people are paid on time all the time. You also have to figure out the tax situation because, especially if you’re crowdfunding, it’s going to get weird. You’re going to have this giant influx of cash that you’re going to be taxed on. It’s hitting you as a lump sum so you’re getting taxed on it all at once and the rate’s going to be high… but you might not have manufactured anything yet, so even though you’re planning on spending the vast majority of it to create and ship your game you can’t actually write any of that off because those expenditures haven’t, in fact, happened yet. Oh and if you and your buddies own the company, well let me tell you what getting a big pile of cash is going to do to your personal taxes if you’re not careful, because you don’t actually have to take a cent out of your company to be personally taxed on it as an owner.

Then of course there’s finding the money to do all this. For Cyberpunk Legends I emptied my personal savings because I believed in the project that much. But that money wasn’t nearly enough, so I’m writing this on the plane back from a consulting gig that I had to take to keep the money flowing. 

When you’re working two or three jobs to make the company work, it can be grueling. Personally, I’m worn down to a nub right now, but what am I doing? Writing for the company blog because it’s important and I can’t just let that slip.

Once you’ve got all those pieces in place though you still have to find ways to make sure that people actually see your game. We live in a world where there’s more content produced every day than anyone could possibly consume. No matter how dedicated a player is, even if tabletop is their only hobby, they’ll never play everything out there. So how do you get people to see your game among the sea of other products?

Well, you have to reach out to influencers, media sites, conventions and, for anyone who’s interested, you have to do interviews, play through demos, and just spend time coordinating schedules.

You should also be active with your community.

I’m not a social media person. I don’t use a twitter account, I don’t have an Instagram, I post on facebook once every few months, usually to say “so a bunch of my friends ended up out of a job in this round of industry layoffs, anyone got any openings?”  I also peg as a hardcore introvert. I can absolutely hang out with large groups of people, I can chat with strangers… but it all comes at a cost for me. I find all those things draining, not regenerating, even when I’m having fun.

But you’ll find me on our Discord, doing our TikTok, because in today’s industry you have to have presence… and for me personally, I believe in a game company that is more directly connected to the people who play their games. It may sound silly, but I really do feel like we’re all pulling together for the same thing: a great game, so I always want to hear your feedback, your ideas, what you think is awesome and what I’ve done that sucks. All that takes time. Time and energy. 

Then you still have to make a good product. Which doesn’t just mean finding time for design, it means finding time to test… and test… and test even more. Because the fastest way to get to right is to be wrong faster. 

Then there’s all the management stuff. As someone who has a very high-level view of the project you’ll have to make sure everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done, juggle schedules and make sure everyone has what they need to work effectively.

Which means I could never do this all alone. Every member of the Night Crew has jumped in on some aspect of this, often taking over whole segments as new things crop up for me to do. 

I’m lucky. Lucky for every person I work with. Lucky that I have people who I can trust…

And perhaps that’s the biggest thing. The people around me have saved me from working myself into the grave. They’re the reason this is possible. So if you’re building out your company, remember that every single person you bring on board is going to have a huge impact on your tiny studio. Being able to communicate with and really truly believe in the people around you is far more important to getting out a great game than having a genius game idea.

Which means you’ve got to learn to let go of control. When you first start noodling on an idea in your basement, you control every aspect. Every part of the game is either exactly how you envisioned it or you know exactly why and how it falls short of your vision.

But, as soon as you bring people in, not every decision is going to be made the way you would make it. There will be things that you’ll look at and think are wrong, but you can’t go back and second guess people’s work, you can’t nitpick everything. A game company is a profound act of trust… and sometimes that’s the most difficult thing.

So I’ll just end this by saying thank you, thank you to the whole Night Crew. You guys have kept me alive and kept me sane. There would be no product without you. There’s no one I’d rather go through all the stress and the exhaustion with than you. No one I’d rather build a company with. Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for indulging me when I do nitpick. And most of all, thank you for trusting me enough to tilt at this ridiculous windmill with me.

-JP