Business Plan Task 1

An executive summary is the most important thing in your business plan, and is sometimes the only thing someone will read. It should generally provide an overview of your business, and explain all the basics, allowing someone to get a base level understanding of your business in very little time.

A business description provides a more detailed insight into your business, including the nature of your business, your studio location and legal structure, company culture, products/services, plans for the future, and more. This is meant to give the reader a more detailed understanding of what your business will be, and how you plan to move forward with it.

Market analysis involves looking outwards and judging the state of the industry as a whole, potentially looking for gaps in the market you can fill, opportunities for business, and potential threats to your business plan. This may include growth or shrinking of the industry, info on demographics, looking at competitors, SWOT analysis, and the regulatory system surrounding the market. This section demonstrates that you understand the market you’re trying to enter, and what would make you stand out from the crowd.

Organization and management is the section in which you demonstrate that you understand elements like keeping stock, supply chains, and management of employees. This section should show readers how your business will be structured, how you will manage your employees/staff, and how you will keep on top of your business.

Products and services are what your business sells/provides for customers. This section should detail what you plan to sell/provide, as well as how you plan to do so (production).

Marketing and sales strategy is how you plan to promote your business and get people to buy your product/service. This could include online advertising, social media accounts, billboards, etc.

Financial projections detail your projected startup fees, costs, and revenue over a span of a few years. This should include when you expect to have made a profit, how much money you will need for startup costs, and what your cost/revenue ratio should be.

 

Game Concept and Development: This embodies the entire creative process of game design, including selection of platform, initial concept and design decisions along the way. One great example of a new and innovative game concept is no man’s sky. At the time it was conceptualised, there had never been a game that was quite like it, which made the pitch of a procedurally generated, open world online space game all the more appealing. source

Technology and platforms: a game made for pc would have room to require a lot more processing power than one made for the switch. Controls and such would also have to be accounted for between platforms. For example, Baldur’s Gate 3 had a delayed release on Xbox because Larian studios couldn’t get the game working on the Series S, the weaker of the 2 Xbox consoles. Ultimately, they had to cut 2-player Co-op from the Series S version of the game so they could release the game on the Xbox. source

Monetization Strategy: different monetization strategies can be received differently by different audiences. Fans of single-purchase games such as Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild might be displeased with receiving a live service battle royale game. For example, in 2018, Valve studios released Artifact, a fantasy card game set in the Dota universe. Overall, the game was a travesty at launch, costing 20 dollars just to play, and then costing additional money to buy more cards, at a time when most card games were free to play. This strategy was lambasted by players, who had, by and large, abandoned the game by 2 months after release. Source

Market Trends and Audience Analysis: Understanding what’s popular at the moment is very important to the success of a game. For example, with the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom, it has become clear that Single purchase, open world games that provide a full single player experience at base. With this in mind, releasing an incomplete, microtransaction-ridden live service game would likely be a very bad idea, and may be very poorly received. This was demonstrated very clearly with the release of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as it was incredibly poorly received for being a live service game, being unplayable on release, and generally having boring gameplay. source

Competitive Analysis: Knowing what your competitors are doing is very important in game design, as being too similar to a competitor, or released too close to another release, it may cause your game to be overshadowed. For example, in 2016, when EA released Titanfall 2 (an undoubtably phenomenal game) on October 28, it was vastly overshadowed, as it was released within a week of both Call of Duty and Battlefield, all of which were full-price games, leading most consumers to overlook Titanfall in favour of the other 2. source

Intellectual Property Considerations: When making a game, you have to consider the identity of the franchise you’re creating a game for. For example, suicide squad was widely criticised because it was set in the Arkham universe, and thus retcons or changes a lot of pre-existing story elements, such as the Deadshot from the Arkham games being a fake, because the real Deadshot features in suicide squad, and batman’s dramatic death being faked, then proceeding to be replaced by him being unceremoniously killed by characters nobody really cares about. source

Community and Social Engagement: A lot of hype and interest in a new game comes from the studio having a strong social media presence. Conversely, having a weak social media and advertising presence, and not communicating with your community can cause a game to be overlooked or forgotten, as the community doesn’t know what’s going on. For example, Raid: Shadow Legends is a game that has millions of players, and almost every person has heard of at some point. This is because Raid has a plethora of sponsorships with any tangentially related youtubers and influencers, causing a wide array of potential players to be made aware of the game.

User Acquisition and Retention: The ability to draw in new players and the ability to retain current players are 2 pillars of game production and design that should always be kept in balance for a game to succeed. A game with only player acquisition can boom in popularity, but will likely die out quickly as nobody wants to keep playing. On the other hand, a game with only player retention can survive on just an existing fanbase, but will start to stagnate without new blood to freshen up the game. An example of the latter is Yu-Gi-Oh. The game’s constant release of new products and consistent legacy support is great for player retention, however the complicated mechanics of the game, like chain-blocking, if/when, colons/semicolons present a sheer cliff of necessary knowledge to players trying to enter, leading to very few new players joining the hobby. source

Game Lifecycle and Updates: Understanding the potential life cycle of your game, and boosting it with updates is an important aspect of the longevity of a game. A game that receives regular updates will both retain players better, and give the message to potential players that the game is still alive and healthy, increasing player acquisition. However, a lack of updates indicates a dead game, and will cause players to slowly stop playing. An example of this is Team Fortress 2, a game that has gone without major updates for over 6 years, and has been kept alive almost exclusively by community support. However, valve has been willing to coast along on community-generated cosmetic updates, which seems to be working for them, considering that just last year, tf2 beat its own top user count during the summer cosmetic update. source