The Adventure Begins: Founding a Game Studio — Part 1

Imagine grinding away in a proverbial mine. Imagine doing so at some of the world’s largest institutions. Places where you’re not just a cog in the wheel, but a spec of friction on the tooth on the cog.

Labor specialization rules the days; software production is treated as an assembly line on super drive. Only what is quantifiable, only what is commoditized, seems worthy of consideration. Mostly anyway.

This mentality helps optimize the world’s businesses. The division of labor is foundational to modern society. It brings us many of the things we should be more grateful for. But it can also be what boxes us into personal stagnation. Overly-defined processes and highly granular specializations do not often encourage deep creativity or lateral thinking.

For me, this meant I was grinding but I wasn’t leveling up the things I wanted to be leveling up.

What could I do? I needed an escape plan.

I have been saving and investing for years. Squirreling away as they say. And through a combination of hard work, good choices, good fortune, and investing in the right things, I’ve managed to put away enough coin to make the leap into starting a company. Stressful, but exciting.

I am founding Mad Joy Studio to produce a video game.

Making the type of video game I want to make will take a few years. Is this dumb? Depends. On paper, it may not seem like the greatest idea. I’m putting aside a lucrative career as a senior Silicon Valley tech worker. To put it bluntly, I’ll be leaving a lot of money on the table.

What are my chances of success? There are a lot of creative and smart people out there making video games. The competition is fierce; the landscape is packed. Gauging the possibility of success isn’t at all something that can be done precisely. There are so many factors. But nearly all people would agree, it is a risky move.

So why do this then? Okay, so despite doing what people would normally think is a creative career, working in design within Silicon Valley for tech companies, there weren’t enough opportunities to actually trigger what I’d call the creative parts of my brain.

Think about it. To do something creative. To explore. To push your limits. You live once. If you had the opportunity to have the creative experience you really wanted, would you?

“Well, Tony,” you say, “you’ll need more than that to succeed.” There are more than a few things stacking the deck in my favor, which maybe we’ll get to, perhaps in a future story.

In the future, I’ll share some thoughts on the two questions which have persisted most in my thoughts:

• How can I accelerate the development of my game?
• How will this game rise above all the noise?

About Mad Joy Studio

Currently a studio of one. But I’m hoping to grow soon. Please reach out.

Founded by Tony Topper, a former design leader at Fortune 500 eCommerce companies. Sick of the corporate grind, thinking making enjoyment machines is more fun than selling people stuff they probably don’t need, he decided to take his savings and plunge into the world of indie game development.

With over 25 years of computer programming experience, two decades of software design knowledge, and almost a decade of experience critically analyzing board games as part of The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast, it seemed like something that he could have a go at.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/madjoystudio

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/madjoy/