[casual_games] Startup

[Gabriel]

Hi Luke,

> Was wondering if any individuals or small studios out 
> there had any stories of how they started up. In particular, 
> it seems there would be at least several months running 
> without revenue before a game could be produced.

I do run a small studio. In my country there's no game industry, so
while I always wanted to make games, the feeling was it was impossible.
In the university where I graduated and now teach, I met Esteban, a guy
with similar interests, and ended up being friends.

Near mid-2002 I found the Dexterity Software forums (the successor is
IndieGamer - http://forums.indiegamer.com ) where several indie
developers hanged out, and for the first time we saw the possibility of
actually making money developing games. We founded Mystery Studio with
him as 3D artist and SFX guy, me as the developer, two 2D artists, and a
musician. This was around october 2002.

Our first complete game experiment (development, website, marketing) was
a logic puzzle, PegSweper
( http://www.mysterystudio.com/pegsweeper.php ) While it wasn't
commercially successful, we acquired a huge amount of experience that
enabled us to make Betty's Beer Bar
( http://www.mysterystudio.com/bettysbeerbar.php ) which was released on
november 2003, was successful, made Mystery Studio profitable, and even
inspired some later games (you could say it spawned a genre). We
recently added another 3D artist so we now have two independent art
teams.

So answering your questions : it took us over a year to become
profitable. In the meantime, both my partner and I kept our day jobs and
tried to work on the smallest budget possible, because we financed it
ourselves. We now all work full time (although I left my full time day
job, I teach Computer Graphics at my university mostly as a hobby).

By the way, my first post to the list. It's humbling to see so many
successful and well-known people here.

	--Gabriel

-- 
Gabriel Gambetta
Mystery Studio - http://www.mysterystudio.com
Gabriel on Graphics - http://gabrielongraphics.blogspot.com