5 don'ts for gaming startups

As a newly established independent studio, a lot of the decisions we have made were made for the first time. As a result, we have made certain mistakes that we would like to share with our fellow developers. Please note that some of these mistakes were actually made by our team and some were fortunately bypassed.

1. Financial planning is important

Some entrepreneurs think that once they receive the seed funding, they are then not required to do financial planning. There is also the myth that startups do not need to be disciplined and do financial planning. It is absolutely crucial that you plan every step of the way and if you don’t plan, you can pretty much expect to fail. Luckily, we figured this one out earlier on but some damage was already done.

2.  Choose the company or product name wisely

Remember, Facebook will not allow you to change the company/product page name after you have more than 200 likes. In the beginning of March we started our social media marketing and in about a month we had acquired more than 400 likes on Facebook. A month and a week in, we realized that we need to change the name of our Facebook page. We got in touch with Facebook three times, asking them to change the name of our page. Unfortunately, it seems that Facebook doesn’t have a customer complaints service so we got in touch with them on the topic of advertising, as we were advised that this would be the quickest way to get a response. This proved to be a wrong solution to the problem, since Facebook is very slow and got in touch with us until a month after we had initially gotten in touch with them. Eventually we had to go through the list of Facebook members, who’d liked our page, contact them and ask them to unlike the page for a day. We brought down the number of likes down to 200, changed the name and asked everyone to like the page back. In the process we lost over 150 followers. And that, my friends, is a horrible feeling!

3. Stop thinking about strategies and tactics, act!

It is very easy to sit down with the management team and discuss marketing strategies. Hundreds of sheets of paper and tons of ink can be used to draw diagrams, write down tools and gather resources to start promotion. The truth is none of these matters unless you act. Instead of going through a vast number of marketing tools you need to choose the ones that are effective and more importantly you have the skills to deal with, everything else will move forward on its own.

4. Team building is important but don’t waste your whole time on it

As with any other startup we have worked tirelessly to bring in the best professionals and people to our company. During the process we realized that bringing in new employees could be very time consuming and you have to make sure that you have the time and the resources to. At the same time, don’t forget that team building is a non-ending process and you should never stop looking for the best talent.

5. Don’t announce a Launch date if you have doubts

Game developers understand that even after completing the initial project, lots of changes will be made. All of us, game devs, strive to create that unique and perfect game and that is why sometimes we delay the launch to make changes, but remember the customer doesn’t understand this and if you have promised something to consumers you have to deliver. Thus be careful with launch dates, relax and do your best to deliver the best product.

Please note that these are only some of the mistakes we’ve made or things we have realized that we could have done better. Please tell us about mistakes and failures that you have made, as we want to learn from you and also provide useful guidance for future gamedevs so they don’t repeat our mistakes.

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