Questions and Answers

I received an email with a ton of questions in it and rather than spending a lot of time answering the email, I thought I would post the answers here so that everyone can receive the wisdom of my sage advice.  Questions from the email are in italics.

First, who decided to start the company and how many people were there initially?

Me and me.

How many games had you completed before you started it?

None.

What type of games did you want to create when you first started?

Fun ones.

When you started the company did you have money saved to start it or did you just start with no cash on hand?

It started with nothing.

How long do you plan a game before you begin work, and have any of your previous experiences changed this?

In the old days, I thought about it for a few days.  Now it can be years before a game actually starts.

Were you inspired by any specific company or developer?

Not really, although there were a few shareware companies I tried to emulate, such as WinZip.

When you hire people to your company, do you base it more on college degrees, or previous game work?

I only hire people who are exactly like me.  So far, I haven't found anybody.

What is the work environment like at your company?

Excellent.  My boss is very accomodating towards my needs.

When a game fails financially, what actions do you take at that point?

I shoot it.  Actually, I put out a new and hopefully better version.

Do people play games at work in their freetime?

Does the pope wear a funny hat?

Have you tried to get any game shops to sell your games?

If by game shops you mean Wal-mart, yes.

How much money do you put into a game on average and how much do you get out of it on average?

Averages are for wusses.  If you do it yourself, a game can be very cheap.  If you pay someone to program it, any reasonable game is going to cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to develop.  If you sell it long enough, any game is going to eventually make that back.  Good ones will make it back faster.

What do you think is the best way to advertise your games?

Having beautiful models play them on TV.  Failing that, try Google AdWords or Yahoo/Overture.

Do you try to implement or fix things that players point out to you or once the game is done, it's done?

A game is never done.  I'm still finding and fixing bugs from 1996.

Quite often people take on huge game projects and then they are unable to complete them. Do you think this is because of a lack of planning, lack of staff, or lack of commitment to the game?

It's because they are stupid.  Start small, you can always make it bigger later.

Which platfom do you believe is the best to develop for, consoles, or pc?

What the hell is a console?  PCs are best, but Macs can be a good market, apparently.

How many computers does your company use for development and what kind of computers are they?

One.  It's a Gateway.  Actually my contract programmer probably has a computer too (maybe even more than one), but I have no idea what kind they are.

Which programming languages have you had the best experience using?

Visual Basic.  The contract programmer uses Visual C.

How many game ideas do you have that never got used?

Dozens.

Comments

[Jeremiah Henley]

Thank for answering my questions. I was planning on posting the answers to the questions on my website but since you've done it for me, I'll just link to your site.

[Lane]

So Jeremiah,

Tom has a point...what is a console?

[Rob Drimmie]

I suspect I am just not getting a joke, but what the hell, I'll bite anyway:

PlayStation, XBox, Nintendo, Sega, Atari, TurboGrafx16, NeoGeo, Intellivision, Colecovision.

Just a few of the more notable consoles.

[jn]

Funny :)

[Gregg Seelhoff]

A couple of "contract programmer" responses:

>Actually my contract programmer probably has a computer too (maybe even more than one), but I have no idea what kind they are.

I tried programming without a computer for several years, but I found that it was much easier to be productive with one. :)

My Windows development is done primarily on a single machine, albeit one with multiple processors and removable drives, allowing me to switch to different environments or operating systems as desired.

We have many other Windows systems, but I do not normally use them for development of Goodsol products. Conversely, I have a few development systems that are for platforms other than Windows, but I cannot comment publicly on their current usage. :)

>The contract programmer uses Visual C.

To clarify, I primarily use Visual C++, and still prefer Visual Studio 6. (See my blog for a non-glowing review of VS 2005.)

More questions? Ask Tom. :)