Remode开发者分享工作室创业经验

作者：Ella Romanos

无论你是处在学习阶段，还是已步入游戏行业，你已有发展的财富，不过，关于如何利用它去获得生意或者发展已存在的产业，你还未获得深度建议。

我是Remode工作室CEO，英国的独立开发者，五年前开始创业，当时我（一名程序员）以及我的商业伙伴Martin Darby（设计师）刚从普利茅斯大学毕业。

Ella-Romanos(from gamesbrief)

起初，我们以代工承揽的方式进行，现在准备与一个拥有18人的团队合作开发自己的IP。如果说，我们在过去的五年里收获了不少经验，这完全是一种保守的见解。自大学毕业后，我们就认为自己了解如何制作游戏，但却不了解如何经营自己的公司。

来自前辈的建议

我收到的第一条有价值的建议来自Specialmoves老板Daryl Wilkins。和我们一样，他也是从普利茅斯大学毕业后就开始创业，并在这一行业积累了十年的经验。他解释道，目前他必须吸取的最大教训是一个好项目无法成就一笔好生意。他表示这可能是十年经验中需要转告我们的最重要的信息点，我记住了他的话，且深信自己理解其中的含义。

五年后，当我回过头来看时，我意识到至少前三年，我完全误解了他的意思，而且忽略了他的建议，我坚定这是我们早前一直挣扎不前的主要原因。在那之后，我们的公司开始发展，并成为了成功的工作室。如果一开始我就完全理解Daryl的建议，那么Remode从毫无经验开始发展成颇受推崇的中型独立工作室的这五年行程至少可以缩短成两年。

我现在理解拥有作品集的重要性，但它只能给你加分而已。一个优秀的作品集不会对你的工作有益，也不会提高你的名声。信誉才是建立公司的重心，关键是取得人们的信任。我们是通过与人合作，而不是依靠作品集来运营公司，重要的是同经常打交道或者信任的人们谈生意。虽然做好工作准备是第一要素，然而如何遇见潜在客户、如何同他们交谈会影响他们是否同你合作的决定。

为此，你该如何处理？

了解自己，了解市场

首先，需了解以下事情：

1.市场。关注市场就是关注你的目标群体。游戏行业中存在一些次级分类（比如，休闲类、社交类、AAA类），大多数的游戏都有重叠的分类。了解市场的动态，确定目前及未来的发展趋势。但关注点过多也可能限制工作室发展，因为你可能会错失太多机遇或者无法灵活适应快速变化的市场，过于广泛，意味着你无法有效建立一个关系网，因为很多不同的人之间并未相识，你无法在同个地方找到他们，或者他们没有太多共同点，以至于你不知道对他们推广什么东西。

2.了解你的产品及服务理念。必须了解你是谁，你不是谁。了解你的核心价值与理念。了解对手是谁，同辈有哪些，谁会在意你做的事，谁不想了解，为何不想了解。

建立联系

一旦了解这些基础知识，你需要开始建立自己的关系群。

1.保持高效运作的同时，让自己置之度外。你的公司中需要一个专门负责接待宾客的员工。一般通过会议，但也可以通过其它方式安排同重要客户的会面。千万不要认为新的关系群毫无价值。许多机会会在你最初引见后的数个月或者数年后才显露出来。面对面的会议需要大量的时间和费用。对新兴公司来说，谈话是最有效的营销策略，但只能在形成相当大的关系网后才可以实行。

2.保持专业性的同时表现出亲切与友善。友善与专业性之间有一个浮动比例，这取决于员工素质、企业文化类型、公司所介入的行业市场。最重要的是要保持自己真实的一面，并能始终如一地真诚地管理公司，因此人们才能了解你、你的工作方式，因为真实是信誉的基础。

3.要自信，不要自大。只有对自己自信，其他人才会对你有信心。然而过度自信通常被视为a）令人讨厌b）伪装内心的不安。自信源于能够简明连贯地解释产品，引用大量证据来支持你的说法，保持放松状态，且热情大方。你必须具备同陌生人交流的能力，尤其当你处在陌生地方或者酒后状态时！

4.推销自己，从而推广自己的工作室， 但要避免盲目地大肆宣传。无论你工作室的规模发展得多么庞大，你都需谨记只有你最了解自己的工作。了解PR也是必须的。你可以自己做，也可以同PR公司合作。最近我们雇佣了一家PR公司，而且工作成果令人满意。我们本应早点尝试这一领域，然而我们需确保自己有值得推广的产品，而不是为了找PR才做这些，否则会产生相反效果。PR是一种微妙的平衡关系，只有了解你想说的，你才可以获得你想要的结果。

5.将推广视为一种艺术。我们需要很长时间才能做到，即使我们已了解自己的市场以及我们可以提供的产品。用正确的方式向人们解释我们做的事情是困难的。关键在于：

*准备好所需事物的模版文件以备出发。这些内容在面对面的推销，通过邮件发送材料，回复推广请求时可以派上用场。

*确保文件体现企业文化以及你的个人风格。

*吃透自己的推广文档，直到你达到可以脱稿演说的境界。

*根据当前对话情境，灵活调整推广手段。无论是口头扩展推广内容，还是使用可简便编辑潜在客户的模板，都要确保你设计的文本简洁明了，但也要灵活且有针对性。

最后，不要着急。我们无法在一夜之间就拥有商业头脑，每个开发者都需亲身经历才能了解自己的公司的需求及潜力，并且随着公司的繁荣发展而持续掌握经验。话虽如此，拥有一个实用的创业指南多少可以让自己少走弯路。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Why a good portfolio is not enough

by Ella Romanos

Whether you’re still studying or already dipping your feet into the games industry, chances are that you already have a well developed portfolio, but haven’t necessarily been given in depth advice on how to use it in order to get business or grow an already existing one.

I’m the CEO of Remode, a UK based independent developer, started five years ago, when my business partner Martin Darby (designer) and I (programmer) graduated from Plymouth University.

We have grown our business primarily through work-for-hire, and are now starting to develop our own IP, working with a team of 18 people. To say that we have learned a lot over the last five years would be a complete understatement. Coming out of university, we thought we knew how to make games, but had very little knowledge of how to run a business.

Advice from a pro

The first valuable piece of advice I received was from Daryl Wilkins, my boss at a placement job at Specialmoves. Like us, he started his own business after graduating from Plymouth University, and at that point had ten years experience under his belt. He explained that by far the biggest lesson he had to learn was that unfortunately good work didn’t equal good business. He said this like it was the single most important nugget of information from his ten years of experience that he could convey to us, and having a lot of respect for him I took his word for it and truly believed I understood what he meant.

Five years later, I look back and realise that for the first three years at least, I completely misunderstood what he meant and effectively ignored his advice, which I firmly believe was the main cause of the struggles we had in our early years. It was only later that we started to grow, becoming a successful studio that is a source of pride. Had I fully understood Daryl’s advice from the beginning, Remode’s five year journey from a fledgling start up to a respected mid size independent studio could have taken two.

What I now understand is that whilst a good portfolio is important, it only backs you up. A good portfolio alone will not get you work or grow your reputation. What will build your business is trust, and the key to trust is people. Businesses work with people, not portfolios, and crucially with people who they get on with and who they believe in. While it’s important to have your work ready as evidence, how you meet your potential clients and what you say to them is important first and foremost in influencing their judgment on whether they will hire you as a person.

So how do you do that?
Know yourself, know your market

Firstly, understand these things:

1.Market. By focusing on a market, you are focusing on a network of people, your target audience. In the case of the games industry, there are several sub-sections within that (e.g. casual, social, triple-A), most of which overlap in some ways.  Be aware that these markets shift and change so make sure you look towards the future as well as the present. There is a delicate balance between focusing too much, which could limit the growth potential of the studio because you miss too many opportunities or aren’t agile enough to adapt in the fast changing market, and being too broad, which means you can’t effectively build a network because there are too many different people who don’t know each other, can’t be found in the same places or have enough in common to enable you to know what you are selling to whom.

2.Know what your product or service is. It’s important to know what you are not, as much as what you are. Know your core values and ethos.  Know who your competitors are, who your peers are, who will value what you do and who won’t and learn to understand why.

Get connected

Once you understand these basics, you need to start building your relationships.

1.Put yourself out there, while remaining efficient with your time. You should have one person in the business whose primary role is to meet people. This is often through conferences, but also just being willing to go out of your way to arrange meetings with key individuals within your market. Never assume that a new relationship is worthless. Many opportunities develop months or years after your initial introduction. Face to face meetings have value that hugely outweighs the cost and time taken to arrange them. Word of mouth is one of the most useful marketing strategies, especially for start-ups, but that only comes once you establish a sizeable network of people.

2.Be approachable and friendly while remaining professional. There is a sliding scale between friendly and professional, it depends on the person, on the type of company culture you have, and on the industry niche you are in. The most important thing is that you stay true to yourself and conduct business genuinely and consistently, so people can understand who you are and how you work, which in turn builds trust.

3.Be confident, but never arrogant. If you are confident in yourself, then others will have confidence in you. However, over-confidence is often perceived as a) annoying and b) as a masquerade for deeper insecurities. Confidence comes across through being able to explain things concisely and consistently, being able to back up what you say with evidence, being relaxed but passionate and proactive. Ability to talk to new people is a must, particularly when you’re put on the spot or after a few drinks!

4.Promote yourself and your studio, but don’t let your own hype blind you. Only you know your work from within and it’s key to retain this insight no matter how big you grow. Understanding PR is important. You can do it yourself, or work with a PR company. We recently took on a PR company, which has worked out brilliantly. We should have done it slightly sooner, but we wanted to make sure we had things to genuinely shout about, rather than just PR for PR’s sake, which is counter-productive. PR is a delicate balance, and knowing what you want to say and is key to achieving the results you want.

5.Have your pitch down to a fine art. This took us a long time to figure out, even when we knew our market and what we could offer. Explaining to people what we did, in the right way was tough.  The key we found was:

1.Have template documents of everything you might need, ready to go. This applies for face-to-face sales pitches, sending stuff over email and responding to pitch requests.

2.Make sure the documents reflect the culture and approach that you have as a person and a company.

3.Know your pitch documents inside out. To the point where you could pretty much talk through them without even looking at them.

4.Be able to tailor pitches easily to the current conversation. Whether that’s verbally expanding on a pitch document or having a template that is easy to edit a range of potential clients.  Your documents need to be designed to be concise and clear, but flexible and bespoke.

Finally, take your time. If the above sounds like a lot to take in, it’s because it is. Business acumen cannot be picked up overnight and every developer goes on his or her own journey to get to a point where they understand their business needs and potential, and they continue to learn and develop after this point for as long as the business thrives. Nevertheless, having a useful guide will help make that journey as enjoyable as possible.（ source:gamesbrief）