Games Business

Throughout the semester I learned quite a lot from both the lectures and working on the group project. 

 

               Even being a business centred module, it covered so much more than that, starting from insight on what made the games industry become what it is today, a general overview of the history of games business to modern day. How the modern industry is currently doing, and which sectors are getting more attention from the public. This immediately brought a realisation of what I am up against if I am to make it here, and it looks harsh, there was already a seed of doubt in my head but at least I may be more ready to tackle it after all this.  

 

Doubt, it is a strong word, an even stronger feeling – so much that I even doubt if the contents of this “essay” really fit its reflective requirement – but by no means doubt is dispensable, something that became apparent while working on this module’s group project, and probably the basis for my pathway from here. 

 

               Just before grouping together for the group project, we had a little “what type of person are you?” session with the MBTI Instrument (Free Personality Test | 16Personalities, no date; ‘Myers–Briggs Type Indicator’, 2023), just to make us aware of the fact that we would be working with different types of people with different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to working together. 
Then I grouped together with Michal, Marius and Piotr. The first few meetings overall went well, even though we were lost at first on what to do we have managed to come up and progress though our weekly tasks and divide roles effectively, I was honestly concerned but decided to trust my teammates. 
We set up our own Discord (Discord Inc., 2015) server to facilitate communication, file sharing, and online meetings. We also set up a Figma (no date) whiteboard to keep track of meeting all in one place. 

 

               So, we as a group decided to create a games company that would offer services based on the skills that we already have and realistically could offer. All of us being able to work in engine, two of us mainly following the programming pathway (myself among them) and the other two following the more artistic pathway meant we could offer a quite varied set of services. With a team that can offer a lot means more possibilities and a bigger chance at something potentially successful. 

 

               As for the group project itself, my main tasks in this group project were research into every considerable expense and work on the cash flow as I thought that having this would give more insight into how early we could expand given the company's financial flow, this is where the doubt I mentioned early really shinned, doubt brings out questions, many questions. What are all the possible expenses that a business of the type we agreed could have? What are all the possible software we may have to use for all the services we can provide? Where do we get funding from? How would we balance our own wages from the company when it cannot support paying us full-time in the initial years? 
Surely some of the questions were answered throughout the course of the module, but a quite a fair bit of research went into finding out what our needs were and how much would those cost us on a monthly basis, and how could we cut some costs somehow to get a good balance of costs/profit knowing that we would be struggling to make profit in the first couple years. 
Despite not being very good at numbers I am a numbers person, if the numbers match up then it can dictate the direction forward. Without knowing the numbers, it would be very hard to make such decisions, while they can’t fully predict the future, they give a pretty good idea of where things are heading towards. 

 

               While keeping in mind all the questions and working on how the cash would flow it gave me a somewhat educated guess on what we could achieve and allowed me to pitch in my opinion on the possible goals of the company. I believe that I have extensively informed my teammates and discussed with them my discoveries while working on this specific task of the project which I think was very much invaluable. 

 

               As for my own performance, when we first started, I had no idea how to work with excel, I knew I was not suited to write official documents so really took upon myself to do the money bit. Again, I had doubts of how much valuable my own contribution for the project was, but by the end of it I came to realise and appreciate how much it was worth. I also appreciated how much effort and work my teammates put into their own tasks and how considerate they were of my own input based on my work so far along the project. 

 

 

               For the big question, what exactly is it my role in the games industry? 
I would like to believe I could make it as a programmer, doubt is a two-edged sword, while it would work wonderfully for all the problem-solving aspects that you need to consider while writing code, all the implications, and even the debugging, it strikes me on a more personal level if I can make it or not. Doubt is good up to the point when you start doubting your own capabilities. Realistically I will never be the best at what I do but I know I have the capacity to be very good. I want to be able to prove that as a programmer despite the doubt. 

 

               On the technical aspect, I know I am also able to get good work done from various aspects of game development, as a matter of fact I learned a great deal of them throughout the course, I am comfortable working with different types of software and producing work as long as there are clear objectives, I am able to consider implications and pipelines in between the different software which gives me a better understanding and better guesses for troubleshooting when issues do arise. 

 

               On the planning, design and decision-making is where I struggle more, I feel confident in giving input based on research but not so confident in dictating a course of action that could affect a project and/or company. As much as I enjoyed researching, punching in numbers, reading numbers and pitching in ideas and possibilities based on them, my strengths are in the practical side of the industry, that is where I see myself. 

 

               As to what I need to do to get there, a lot of it involves networking, something I personally struggle with, but is an essential part of it. Being able to from professional relationships with my peers and learning how to work with other individuals that have a different focus in the game development process, not only the individuals that I would have to work with on a project but also the ones from management positions. I need to put myself out there to form these connections and actively participate in events that are games industry related. However most importantly I need to keep working on improving my skills so that I can become a valuable asset to any potential company in the industry.