{"id":150,"date":"2014-08-08T15:57:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T19:57:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2014-09-13T16:18:55","modified_gmt":"2014-09-13T20:18:55","slug":"why-ive-said-goodbye-to-mobile-in-favor-of-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/defiancegamestudio.com\/index.php\/why-ive-said-goodbye-to-mobile-in-favor-of-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I’ve Said Goodbye to Mobile in Favor of PC"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am fed up with the whole mobile\/tablet gaming market.\u00a0 I\u2019ve worked hard for three years and released two games to almost every mobile device you can think of.\u00a0 Never again.\u00a0 From now on I am focusing all my development resources on the PC.\u00a0 Frankly, I should have started there to begin with.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So how did I reach this conclusion?\u00a0 I am going to share my story with you.\u00a0 Openly and\u00a0honestly.\u00a0 Some of it is\u00a0gut-wrenchingly honest.\u00a0 Maybe this vulnerability won\u2019t paint me in the best light, but I\u2019ll take that risk in the hope\u00a0you can learn from it.\u00a0 (I have changed some people\u2019s names to protect their identity.)
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\nI love games.\u00a0 As an art form, as an expression, as an exploration of ideas and worlds only possible in the imagination.\u00a0 I got hooked at 6 years old on a TSR-80 in 1982.\u00a0 Ever since that moment all I have wanted to do is make games professionally.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, life threw me a bunch of curve balls instead.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I knew this would catch on!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I started my professional programming career in Toronto during the late ’90s.\u00a0 I built websites and e-commerce sites with many tools, but most of my work was in C++.\u00a0 A good language to work in if you want to eventually make games (especially PC or console).<\/p>\n

After being married for five years and working as a senior web developer for seven, my wife and I sat down to discuss what would be involved for me to make a game.\u00a0 I thought I had built up my programming and tech skillz enough on the side, maybe now was the right time to go all in.\u00a0 We prayed about it.\u00a0 I sent out my resume to various game studios around Toronto.\u00a0 No bites.<\/p>\n

At the same time, one of my contacts from the e-commerce company I worked at left to become president of another company.\u00a0 He wanted a technology overhaul and he wanted me to build it.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t interested.\u00a0 I wanted to make games!\u00a0 But I wasn\u2019t getting any traction in games.\u00a0 I thought about starting my own software company and taking this guy on as my first client.\u00a0 He agreed and we struck a six-figure deal that Friday.\u00a0 On Saturday I got two emails from Toronto area game developers interested in interviewing me for game contract work.\u00a0 Doh!\u00a0 I was already committed to this new business venture!\u00a0 So I got mad at God and the world for tricking me into starting a software company and taking me away from my dream.\u00a0 But I was wrong.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Like all new businesses, the software company struggled at the beginning to make ends meet.\u00a0 Agonizing over when to hire another programmer, stress over customers not paying their bills on time, squeezing through a payroll by cash advancing my mastercard.\u00a0 The professional services business is tough: regular expenses of staff and rent yet variable income based on client whims.\u00a0 Any money we made was reinvested into the company.\u00a0 Profits could be quickly eaten up if we didn\u2019t close another project quickly enough.\u00a0 I worked 80-100hr weeks.\u00a0 I did everything from sales, project management, coding, marketing, accounting, to repairing the network, and even buying the plastic forks and knives we used at lunch.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get a paycheck for the first two years.\u00a0 My wife wasn\u2019t impressed: I was never home AND didn\u2019t bring home a paycheck (wives usually want one of two, but are happiest with both).\u00a0 But in the end it worked.\u00a0 We built a talented\u00a0team, shipped\u00a0some great projects, won some awards, made a name for ourselves in the enterprise mobile space in Canada.\u00a0 In a few months we will celebrate our 10-year anniversary.<\/p>\n

Now if you have read any of the stories on game company startups, like Blizzard,\u00a0Br\u00f8derbund, EA, or Ensemble, you\u2019ll know (as I do now) that building a software company from scratch was\u00a0precisely<\/strong>\u00a0the right thing to learn before I went into making games as an independent studio.<\/p>\n

So in 2011, with my software company running well, I stepped down as president to pursue my dream of making games.\u00a0 I would use the profits from the software company to fund my game development.\u00a0 Little did I know how much it would cost.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I should have paid more attention to\u00a0Game Dev Story<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In high school I met Tsung.\u00a0 Tsung was an international student from Taiwan studying in Toronto to learn the language.\u00a0 He loved video games and was an amazing talented artist.\u00a0 We became quick friends through\u00a0Street Fighter II<\/em>\u00a0and SNES.\u00a0 Every game idea I had in high school, he made the pixel art for.\u00a0 He was best man at my wedding.\u00a0 When I joined the work force to make websites, he went to one of North America\u2019s top schools for animation.\u00a0 He graduated and worked in TV shows and comic books while I was busy doing business software.\u00a0 But in 2011 I asked Tsung if he wanted to join me in making games.\u00a0 He absolutely did, and so we were able to pursue our high school dream together.\u00a0 We couldn\u2019t have known 20 years prior we would be working together, but reality IS stranger than fiction.\u00a0 I founded\u00a0Mirthwerx<\/a>and Tsung became the first employee.\u00a0 Working with your friends can be great, but it also brings unknown pitfalls…<\/p>\n

I put together a business plan for our first year of operation.\u00a0 We were going to make three titles in 2011.\u00a0 It is a 20 page business plan, but here are some high level numbers just between you and me:<\/p>\n