Industry Insights
Three things we wish we had known when we started
MVGIE ·
We are coming up on a year of running MVGIE as a real thing — emails, invoices, a Steam page in progress. Some of what we have learned has been from generous people who told us straight. A lot has been from things going slightly wrong.
Three things, in case any of them are useful.
1. Tell people what you are making, earlier than feels comfortable
We sat on Stand Up for months before saying anything in public. Our instinct was that nobody wants to hear about a game that is mostly a prototype.
That was wrong. People who like the idea of a game find each other. The earlier you give them something to be curious about, the more time they have to care.
2. Build the boring parts first
The first thing we tried to make was a comedy-club room. It looked nice. It did not tell us anything about whether the game worked.
What told us the game worked was the week loop — money, sleep, relationships, a notebook full of observations. Boring on paper, but it is the engine. We should have built it first.
3. The “indie scene” is not one thing
There are at least five overlapping scenes inside what people call “indie games”, with different goals, different aesthetics, and different ways of being supported. Figuring out which one your game actually belongs to is more important than picking the most prestigious-sounding one. We picked wrong twice before we worked out where Stand Up actually lives.
That is it. We will keep writing these as we collect more.
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