- So you don't actually have to start your own company to make games. If you notice on the Apple App Store, you'll see that there are many games that have a person's name on them. Really the purpose of starting a company they're several of them, one of them is to protect yourself from lawsuits and other things that may happen, but the government wants tax money from income that you are generating from the games. And whether you're an individual with your own social security number or you are a corporation or an LLC, with a tax ID number, the government's going to get money one way or another so Apple obviously facilitates that and will let you publish games under just your name, or you can publish with a company name.
So you don't have to do that, but it's actually a good idea to do that for branding purposes if you want to have a pretty cool sounding company name, you want people to know the brand, people are used to hearing about company names, and the employees inside of the company may change who are the people who are developing the games, and some people might not identify with a single person unless that person is the idea designer type person behind the game but when it's a team of people, and it's not just you, it's a good idea to have a company name that's out there in front, versus the one designer on the team, or the producer on the team, so if you're doing your own game, and you don't want to start a company, go ahead and just use your own name, but other than that, I'd say go ahead and start a company, come up with a really cool name, and begin the process of understanding what it's all about to have a company and how you run a company and what you would want to do with that company.
Released
11/30/2015For a different perspective on breaking into the game industry, check out the interview with John's wife and creative partner, Brenda Romero, in our Insights with a Game Designer course.
- Creating a business plan for a game design company
- Registering a business
- Understanding the costs of running a game company
- Getting funding from publishers and investors
- Keeping a game company going and growing
- Handling payroll and HR
- Hiring game development contractors
- Developing original intellectual property (IP)
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Video: Do you need to start your own company?