Indie Gamedev Meetup #3 with the topic "My Experience on Failure with Business Dealing" shared by Matumit Sombunjaroen, a Managing Director of Zodiac Alliance Digital Entertainment.
The presentation itself is straight forward as you might want to directly look at the presentation slide below (if embed slideshare code works on your side) or via this slideshare link.
And here the video recorded from the event.
He started with the quote from Doctor Somchai Sombooncharoen, Founder and Former Director of National Cancer Institute saying that
Let the Stupid ones study Medicine, since they only have to deal with textbooks and experiments.
Let the Smart ones study Marketing, since they have to compete with other people.
His point in telling us is that Dealing with other people is a hard job.
He brought with himself 3 cases of failed business dealing.
1st Case : Book Reader Project
He tried to make attention over something, of course, it's his project. He talked to the person involved who has a decision power. But it's fail as they didn't interested even though they listened.
He stated that the problem was the person isn't a technical person that might truly understand what he would have in hands to offer so the solution was to explain things and benefits to the middle man which was a a technical person from the side he's talking to.
2nd Case : History Based Games
He had a chance to work on history-based game, but later in the process someone with political standing & power had ceased the operation as there's an issue with naming the game involving with the king in history. The project was cancelled. This case has no clear cut in how to turn the table around so whenever there's a chance to work on history-based game, beware of this issue.
3rd Case : Setting up a Company
As for the second case, he decided that it's time to set up a company. This meant he needed additional personnel before things get done. The problem was that the company wasn't registered just yet so nobody would apply. This resulted in eternal loop with an additional that administrative people also weren't helping. Not to mention that even he got candidate into the team, 20k salary per month request was too high thus a joint project was a go go instead.
So he needed to propose a new project but there're 3 issues.
Budget calculation have to be made on friend's side
Need to have everything designed out in order for approximation to be made
Majority of technical documents must be complete before the project can be approved
He spent months on documents in which at the end weren't put into use at all. The reason is that investor popped in and asked to change the game direction to target on Asian people as they see an opportunity due to there're 600 million altogether in that region. Also a new project care-taker is 60 years old woman who probably never play a computer game before. At the end, contact couldn't be made thus resulted in project got cancelled.
Anyway, he also admitted that there're some problems on his side.
Cannot guarantee profit on the new project
Did not provide necessary marketing data
Did not get enough sleep before negotiating
Right now, he decided to resolve all the people-related issues and problems by staying at home to make the game he wants to make.
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