游戏邦注：本文作者为Tomas Rawlings，他是游戏设计师和游戏咨询顾问，同时是Red Wasp Design联合创始人以及Auroch Digital创意总监。

Tomas Rawlings from static.flickr.com

今天我们就从商业角度谈论游戏工作室创建。文章并未囊括所有议题，也称不上游戏制作简要指南。制作游戏需要大量繁琐工作，但看到玩家从中获得乐趣让我们觉得所有付出都值得。

我首先要谈的是游戏是项业务。经营任何业务都具有挑战性，管理工作不属于游戏制作，但是个必不可少的内容。若游戏无需以盈利为目的，那么尽情享受创作乐趣。有些模块图像和开源团队就以此为工作目标。开发者是否需着眼创作乐趣，将工作当作爱好？

即便你将游戏视作业务，也应首先让其成为爱好，创工作氛围，你才会愿意为游戏掏钱。你最好掏钱买份《小行星大冒险2》，尝试制作游戏，看看自己是否适合开发工作，而不是告诉老板如何制作，所有工作瞄准创收，最后你会发现你所认为的游戏设计其实和实际情况相左。

若你想要把游戏设计变成业务，你就要清楚自己要运作何种游戏游戏。这里有个古老的谚语：低耗、高质和快速，只能任选其二。我认为这也适用游戏工作室。你能够耗费少量资金快速制作游戏，但作品定难以达到上乘质量。你或许能够制作高质量作品，但其必定需耗费更多资源，因而需投入更多成本。通过制作大量游戏以期获得成功符合常理。《愤怒的小鸟》开发商（游戏邦注：即Rovio）早前就已推出52款游戏。重要的是参与人员需明白工作室属于什么类型，要朝何处发展。

现在我们就来谈谈投资。制作全新也许两个月（简单作品），也许1年多（更复杂的作品）。在这期间，你和你的团队需要开销。你要付出的成本包括时间、所需设备和营销预算。不要认为游戏仅凭质量就获得广泛销路。若作品不巧碰上数百款应用同时发行，那么要从中脱颖而出绝非易事。即便是简单作品，也至少需要准备5000美元用于打广告和开展其他营销活动。营销预算对新游戏的成功来说非常重要。这里我只能说开发者应给予大量关注，这和游戏开发本身同样重要。

你可以选择利用工作之余制作游戏，但从我的经验来看，如果你希望将此发展成某项业务，仅把它当作爱好是不够的，只将少数精力用于游戏开发最终只会带来不良结果，开发进度将每况愈下。不仅如此，若你想要通过开发游戏谋生，就要投入更多精力。这意味着你需要资金支撑项目。

幸运的是，和其他业务不同，游戏开发只要投入少量资金。只需人手一台电脑，若干开发软件及其他零星费用（游戏邦注：例如，苹果iOS开发者每年支付100美元授权费）。和开餐厅比较你就会明白我的意思。最大的成本在于你支付给自己的酬劳。在投入项目前，你也需要将自身成本降至最低。除吃住外你还需要什么？哪些奢侈享受是你所不需要的？虽然你已筹集足够资金支持项目进展，但世事难料，你需要留有调整空间。

你可以选择节省部分资金，所以当你退出项目时仍有资本。你可以尝试从IndieGoGo之类网站筹集资金。你也可以先投入能够带来些许营收的项目，或者寻求外部资助展开项目。例如，我目前正协助在英国开发者大会成立座谈小组，创建Wellcome Trust组织，旨在给生物科学主题游戏提供资金帮助。

Battle for Hoth from gawkerassets.com

你也可以选择受雇他人，开始自己的游戏开发生涯（游戏邦注：如帮助发行商制作游戏，从中获利）。你将需要我们之前谈到的创意和构思，但在这里你的创意和构思是用于服务他人。你可以根据现有作品进行构思，就像《Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth》，或者向发行商提出新构思，获得他们的融资，就像《Savage Moon》。这些都是艰苦工作，你首先需同发行商联系，因为仅向他们提出构想很难有所收获。你需要同他们面对面交谈，发表你的看法，至少需要传递大概设计构想（大概1页）和简短视频（大概10秒钟），呈现游戏最终形态。有些发行商需要更多内容，如演示文本或构思画面。记住还有很多开发者在争取他们的投资，所有你需要确保能够在他们中脱颖而出。

Savage Moon from aeropause.com

你可以在E3游戏展、科隆游戏展以及开发者大会等活动碰到发行商。参加大会需支付相应费用（通常1000多美元），但如果这能够换来10万美元合同，那么一切都值得。进入大会，你需要进行系列社交活动，若没有预约，发行商通常不会让你进入他们的个人展台。办法之一就是参加发行商代表的演讲大会，随后在重要会议中表达自己的祝贺，询问自己能否同他们交流，谁是沟通最佳人选。再来就是留心观察他人ID名牌，若你发现一同排队等咖啡的人是发行商，就试着展开交谈。你需要进行系列闲聊，不是所有人都具备该技能，所以如果你缺乏该技能，可又希望采取此策略，需要同团队其他具备该能力的人讨教。这个办法确实有效，我们就是采用此办法使我们的初创工作室同索尼公司达成合作协议。

这里我还得谈谈社交媒介，Twitter和LinkedIn是很好的社交工具，你应该充分利用，但他们不过是面对面交流的补充工具，所以记住你无法仅对着PC屏幕就完成所有工作。

谈到这里，你应该知道如何争取合作开发商，如何构想有望发展成热门作品的游戏创意，学习运作游戏工作室，明白如何融资。我最后想说的是希望你能够从中有所启发。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How to Start a Games Development Studio – Part 2: the Business Side

By Tomas Rawlings

My last blog article looked at the creative side and if you’ve not read it yet, I’d suggest starting there. Now let’s look at the business side of starting a games studio. Again note; neither is an exhaustive list of all the issues nor a fool-proof guide to making games. Making games requires lots of hard work, but the pay-off of seeing people having fun with your creation is often worth it.

The first point I should make here is about games as a business; running any business is very challenging and ultimately the time spent administering it is time not spent making games, but still an essential requirement. If you’re in a position that you don’t need to make games for money, then make them for the pleasure of creation. There are mod scenes and open source development groups doing just that – might it be right for you to concentrate on the fun creative bit and treat it as a hobby?

Even if you want to do this as a business, it might be worth spending a little time making games as a hobby first to get a vibe for the work before you spend any of your own money on such a venture. Better that you spend a little money buying a copy of LittleBigPlanet 2 to make a game in there to discover if development is right for you, than to you tell your boss where to shove it and leave your job to make millions in gaming only to discover that the version in your head of what it is like to make games is not what the reality turns out to be…

If you are going to make a business of it then you need a vision for what sort of a games business you wish to run. There is an old adage that goes; cheap, quality, fast – pick two. I think it applies to a games studio too. You can make games quickly and for not much money, but they won’t be the best quality. You can make amazing quality games but they take many more resources to produce and so cost more. There is nothing wrong with playing the numbers game of trying to get lots of titles out there. The developer behind Angry Birds made 52 games before they had a huge hit. What is important is that all involved know what sort of a studio you are and what sort of a vision to have.

Now let’s talk investment. Making a game from scratch is going to take anything from 2 months for a simple title to over a year for a more complex one. During that time you and your team still need to eat and pay the bills. What costs you need to plan for are the cost of your time plus the equipment needed to make the game, and also a budget for marketing. Don’t be tempted to think that the quality of the game alone will sell itself. It might if you are very lucky, but with hundreds of apps being released per day, standing out from the crowd is hard. Even for a simple title I think you need at least a budget of $5000 to use for ads and other marketing activity. This area is vital to the success of any new game and needs more space to talk about it than I can put in this article. Suffice to say it needs serious consideration and is as important as the development itself.

You can work on the game during your spare time while you earn a living, but my experience is that if you are trying to make a business and not do it just as a hobby, the energy drain of doing your normal work on top of the new venture soon takes its toll and development will drop off. Not only that, but if your new venture is going to be your income, you will take it much more seriously. That means you need some money to bankroll the project.

Fortunately, unlike many other businesses, making games has few capital costs. All you need is a computer each, some development software and a few other bits (for example, it’s $100 per year for an Apple iOS developer licence). Compare that to the cost of setting up a restaurant and you’ll see what I mean. The biggest cost is how to pay yourselves while you make the game. Before you embark on this venture you also need to get your personal costs down to a minimum; what do you need beyond food and shelter? What is a luxury you can do without? Even if you’ve got the money to bankroll you for what you plan to be the development time, things don’t always go according to plan and you may need room to manoeuvre.

You can simply save the money up so you’ve got some capital before you quit your job. You can try to raise investment from sites like IndieGoGo. You can also make your first project something that earns you a little money or look for grants to help you start. For example, I’m helping to produce a panel at the Develop conference in the UK where an organisation called the Wellcome Trust is giving away grants for games ideas that engage people in the topic of biomedical sciences.

You can also look to start as developers for hire; making games for publishers to earn money. You still need the creativity and ideas we talked about, but here you’re putting those in the service of somebody else. This can mean either pitching games ideas around existing Intellectual Property (IP) as we did with Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth or pitching new ideas to publishers hoping they will fund them (as we did with Savage Moon). Both are hard work and firstly you need the contacts with publishers as I doubt you’d get anywhere simply sending in your ideas to them. You need face-to-face meetings where you can pitch ideas, and even then as a minimum you need an outline design for the idea/s (about one page of text) and a short video (10+ seconds) showing what the final game might look like. Some publishers ask more, such as a demo or concept art. Remember, they have lots of developers looking to get them to fund their games, so you’ve got to stand out from this crowd.

You can meet publishers as events like E3, Gamescom or Develop. It costs to get a pass to be able to go into the business areas of the show (often over $1000), but given this might lead to a $100,000 contact, it can be worth it. Once inside you need to do lots of networking, as most publishers will not allow you in to their private booths without an appointment. One method is to attend talks where representatives of publishers are speaking, then congratulate them after on a great session and ask if you can pitch to them and if not who is the best person to speak to. Another is to keep looking at everyone’s’ ID badges and if you spot that the person in the queue for coffee with you is from a publisher, strike up a conversation. You need to be doing lots of schmoozing and chatting, and it’s not a skill everyone has, so if you’ve not got it and you want to go down this route then you need to get somebody in your team who has. And it does work; we got our contracts with Sony for the first games studio I was involved with from just such means.

I should also mention social media here; things like Twitter and LinkedIn are a great means of networking and you should use them, however they only really complement the face-to-face networking, so note that you can’t do all of it from behind a PC screen.

By now you should have an idea of how to get fellow developers to work with you, generate ideas that will become hit games, a strategy of how you are going to run this games studio of yours, and thoughts about how you’re going to get the money to run it. My final point then is that I hope it works out for you. Yes it means I’ll be in competition with you, but great games are great games and one day I hope to be playing a title you’ve created and thinking, ‘Wow, I wish I’d thought of that!’

Tomas Rawlings is a games designer and consultant. He co-founded Red Wasp Design and is Creative Director at Auroch Digital. He is currently producing amongst other things, a panel at the Develop Conference in the UK where you can find out more about making games.（Source：gamezebo）