Marcelo Figueroa on Starting a Game Company

4 Comments

1. Whaddya Mean It’s Only Tuesday? « Old School Rant on 09.03.2010 at 05:22

   […] certain Mr. Figueroa talks about how to start a game company, so bookmark this for later when you can watch the whole […]

2. Joe on 09.03.2010 at 11:09

   So where can we download this video to watch at our leisure? Having it stuck on sucky YouTube, particularly a video this long, is hardly all that useful. Someone toss up a link to D/L this bad boy, please and thanks! ;)

3. David on 10.03.2010 at 18:01

   I’d call it more of a pep-talk on developing clear goals and reasonable expectations for a career in the game industry. On that basis, it’s definitely worth the 50 minutes, particularly for idealistic young designers.

   On the other hand, Marcelo rambles a bit and mentions the mass-market but fails to really adress it. For example, he holds up Peter Adkinson as an example of super success. Not that I’m suggesting he’s wrong about the probabilities, but other success stories include Trivial Pursuit, Cranium, Blokus, Apples to Apples. Even on the hobby side, Rio Grande and Fantasy Flight Games would have been good case studies for differentiating between design and business.

   Speaking of design, I found his definitions of “designer” and “inventor” interesting. Marcelo suggests that the difference is full-time vs. part-time. I think that they’re basically the same thing. I hear “designer” used more often for hobby games and “inventor” more often for mass-market games. But if you ask me, the most important differentiating factor is whether the person in question designs games based on what they like to play, or designs games to match requests from publishers.

4. Jay Treat on 22.03.2010 at 20:08

   Thanks, Marcelo. I very much appreciated the time and thought you put in to this presentation. I’m sure this will save a lot of people (me included) time and headache.

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.