EA says we're crazy!

Actually one of their Canadiens was chattin aboot the cost of game development and got covered by gamesindustry.biz. You know that site that always makes Firefox think its a phishing site? Anyhoo, ole Tascan talks about how not all EA teams are monsters that are eating up the midway and in turn spending billions to bring you the mext Motorcity Online. No instead they have many "small" teams of 35 to 85 members. Yep, you heard that right, that's less than a hundred. Sometimes a LOT less.
Sure he goes on to say, small teams without billions to spend still have a place in the biz cause "there are, like, mobile games and casual games, you know, like that Burger King stuff on that console thing?" (note: quote not attributable to persons mentioned in article)
If Uwe can make a media splash outta boxing I think Greg Costikyan should take this guy down. he's my all time hero for small business games. If it came to a match we'd probably buy a dozen tickets or so, since that's like all the developers and artists and producers we use to make a MMO, that puts out regular content patches and does junk like, you know, military contracts and stuff.
Listen up kids. You don't need a gajillion dollars and 500 people to make a profitable business in this space. What you need is a solid idea, a good plan to execute it and some capital to hold you through development. In a way, that's about 90% of any successful business. Funny how that works eh? The first lesson of running a game based business is the same as running any other business. That's right, remember that 90% of ALL business is essentially the same but the 10% difference is the most important. Run your shop like that and you'll be successful out there.

7 Comments:
Crazy talk!
So did you guys end up doing military contracts or would you have to kill me after you told me?
We have had a few projects that have gone off. Nothing top secret on our end but also nothing that we've publicly talked about. I think we'll be going to Serios Games summit in the coming months and probably start returning to ITSEC.
I'd think that talking about your side jobs for DOD or whoever would earn you props and respect among potential simulation / grognard / ex-military / history-buff /older-type customers.
Those groups are a small segment of your potential market, of course, but since your communication opportunities to those groups and the larger mass gamer market are almost wholly separate, there's no reason why they need to have the same message.
Gotta agree with jwilly here. We are the type of audience who would think that the company who makes the game we play is also doing stuff for the military is just cool.
Might also help us understand why we aren't testing 1.25 yet..:D
trooper76 (too damn lazy to remember his blogger login)
test.
hah!
I would tend to agree. I don't, however run biz or marketeering. Still, our 'other' projects could be generally seen as taking away from our ability to deliver and not, as you have expressed, our ability to be real.
Tough to say.
Heh. Some of us would reckon that you guys coming up with a mission-compatible means of generating revenue to help *pay for* development is not "taking away from" development. 8^)
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