Next week sees the start of perhaps the toughest module of the course. It’s also the one I’ve been looking forwards to the most. Indeed, it was this module that swayed my decision to enrol back in the summer of 2020 and the one that differentiated the MA Indie Game Development course at Falmouth from other Universities’ offerings.
As I look forwards to the week 1 content being released on Friday, I’m slightly nervous about the volume of work involved. Many of my peers from my original cohort reported that 740 was a gargantuan module — no only do we design a business and prepare it for launch but we also need to product a game as well. Thankfully I have prior experience of creating and running a business from my days as a fashion photographer so I’m quietly confident about the business plan and running the numbers for profitability and cashflow. The one aspect I am nervous about is running all this simultaneously with developing a game concept and keeping up with the day job.
The next three months will certainly be interesting and my gameplay here is to do the pre-production for a game concept here that I can take forwards with me to the dissertation project of module 750, assuming this is allowed. This approach, if it works, will give me about a year to work on the final game project. Furthermore, I can enter into the final module with the confidence that the business side of the game has already been validated.
The last tidbit of preparation for this module is the TechStars Startup weekend being run on-campus over the weekend. For me this is a chance to pitch my initial game idea and gauge it’s reception. Having never actually pitched a game idea before it will be interesting to discover how it goes and identify where I can improve (I don’t for one moment expect to ace it on my first attempt and fully intend to rely on the closest experience I have, that of business networking through BNI, 4Networking and Business over Breakfast where 1 minute pitches are the daily order of business, although those skills are probably very rusty now). TechStars will also act as a pre-cursor or warm-up for the module proper, and generate material that will be useful later on.
Wish me luck, I’m going in…
Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash
