Business Rongkai Guo Game Business? Having experiences with a big - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Business

Rongkai Guo

Game Business?

• Having experiences with a big game company is always great!
• How many of you did think about working as an individual game

designer?

• What you need to do as a junior/senior game design college student?

Business Plan

• A business plan is needed BEFORE you start doing anything!
• Summarize the outline of your plan – objective of a resume
• Business description
• Current landscape of the game industry as a whole
• Be specific about your industry, like mobile game
• Detail where you think for the next 5-10 years and where you hope your game business

will stand

• How to market your game business – strengths and weakness of your

competition

• How to manage your business – manage your finances in the first two years of

your business

Legal

• Operating your business without any legal protection could be costly
• Crooked developers
• Individual – Assets, outsource, etc.
• Partnership – Protect your debts and other liabilities, form a LLC.

(limited liability company)

• In US – There is a place called IRS

Business Plan for Independent Game Ventures

• Average cost for producing a computer game: millions of dollars per

title

• How does an independent producer get the money to create the

game?

• Talking to industry people
• Pitch your idea to local business
• Conferences like SIEGE investors’ Panel
• But, what to say?

Make Yourself Ready

• A good gaming concept
• A good prototype to demo
• Know how to communicate with people (listen is part of this)
• **A well-written business plan

Game is the Most Difficult

• Very hard for an independent gaming project to get financed, why?
• Very few titles ever make their costs back
• Very few projects ever make it to the shelf
• But, that was few years ago.
• We have more shelves now. Google play, Apple App Store, Steam…

What are the Investors Looking For?

• Most common misunderstanding
• Investors are not looking for an interesting game concept
• They are looking for money as well, like us.
• The project will give their investment back is the one they are looking
• Risky is acceptable

What should be included?

• Background Data
• Executive Summary
• Distribution
• Costs
• Quantitative Demonstration
• **Package

Background Data

• This part is the source of supporting all of your financial and strategic

assumptions

• Good reference can satisfy a skeptical investor
• A secondary report
• Study
• Survey
• Business case study
• This data might support why your project will succeed in the future

sections of the business plan

Executive Summary

• Usually, this is the section will be read by everyone who looks at your

business plan

• It has to be impressive
• Don’t be afraid of repeating yourself here. Not everyone will have

time to read through your plan.

• The executive summary should reiterate the most crucial points from

each section

• Funds sought paragraph should be the final one in this section – how

much money you need and what the return on investment will be

• Write this section last

Funds Sought Example

• The Company anticipates one round of financing with $1.5 million

being sought from a single investor in return for passive equity. These funds will be utilized for start-up expenses in addition to production, staffing, distribution and marketing costs related to "Your Game Title Here."

Distribution

• In the game business, distribution is KING
• Describe your distribution strategy is the key to a game business plan
• Choose vendors vs do-it-yourself
• Big distributors want financial backer
• Do-it-yourself requires you to find a reliable marketing and

distribution partners. Make sure you include his/her bios, resumes in the plan.

Costs

• Like what you did at the beginning of the semester
• Estimations
• Period
• Cost of crews
• All based on launch day

Quantitative Demonstration

• Business people are usually sensitive to those “numbers” (money)
• Game titles live and die by the number of units sold
• The easiest way to create reasonable financials is to create scenarios
• f what the world might be as the product is being developed and

launched.

• Calculate your financials based on worst case, middle case and best

case scenarios.

• Consider various market traend scenarios – New console launch boost

game unit sales?

• The background data will be support for the estimations here

The Package

• A lot of people didn’t realize how important the package is.
• Horribly packaged or no package will tremendously decrease the

chance of getting funded.

• Diagrams, character, environment sketches will make the plan easier

to read, but only when they are well laid out, organized and bound.