So, you want to establish your own pizza plac... Oh, wait, game dev studio?

gamesindustry.biz:

The games industry is full of dreamers, but way too many times have I seen those dreams shattered, including my own.

People perceive the games industry as something cool and fun while also being a good business opportunity – and they are mostly right.

I've met many people attracted to the idea of either working in the industry or funding their own company, more often so while the business was in a booming state, but it still happens now and will likely happen more once the recession is over. But the market is more competitive than ever. So, what are essential aspects both newcomers and veterans should be aware of while building their studio?

I challenged myself to make this article more digestible to people who come from other industries and decided to use the more familiar metaphor of running your own restaurant, in particular a pizza parlor. Why pizza? Simply because almost everyone loves pizza and a lot of people tend to think it's a simple business. Restaurants are also creative businesses and a pizza might seem like a simple recipe but there's a lot of hidden complexity to it – just like running your own studio.

It's very unlikely to have a great pizzeria if you haven't tried many pizzas before and you do not understand what makes a great pizza… great. And I mean really understand.

The business is evolving rapidly so even if you know a lot about the game industry and consider yourself a veteran, it's healthy to assume that you don't and ask yourself a lot of questions!

Those questions could be:

This list could go on, and I hardly imagine being able to establish and run a healthy game development business without such industry know-how. It's not to say it's absolutely impossible, you can invest a lot of your