The Triangle Factory Story

How to start a game studio, bang your head against the wall until great stu ff

falls out, and remember why it ’s worth all that trouble

by Kenny Deriemaeker

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Hello.

My name is Kenny Deriemaeker, and I’m a technical artist at Triangle Factory. I was scheduled to give

a presentation at the “The Pixar Story” event on December 2nd at The Studios, but had to cancel at

the very last minute due to unforeseen circumstances. I’d like to apologize to both the organization

and you guys for not showing up.

To make it right, I thought I’d write an article with my thoughts – and our thoughts at the company –

about some of the topics that came up in the Pixar documentary, and how that wonderful story

relates to the story of a young Belgian games start-up with its roots in Howest. The way I see it, this

has three advantages for you:

1. I write better than I speak, so this should be a little more coherent.

2. You may spread this document around if you like, so it gets out to more people who might

also like it.

3. You can put this article down if you get bored – which isn’t nearly as rude as walking out of a

presentation.

Thanks!

Kenny Deriemaeker

Triangle Factory

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Triangle Factory: Year One

My origin story

Allow me to tell you a personal story. In the summer of 1996, I got my first real computer – a beige

Pentium 100Mhz with 8 Megabytes of memory and a 15” monitor. My sister had used the old

“schoolwork” excuse on our parents, and god bless her – it worked. Wordpad, MS Paint and QBasic

(look it up) were interesting to play around with, but the real fun didn’t start until a friend came over

one day with a CD-ROM in an exciting red box. On it was an absurdly muscular action hero, firing his

machineguns on a pile of dead monsters, against the backdrop of a mushroom cloud. Underneath, I

read “Duke Nukem 3D”.

Not only was Duke3D an amazing shooter for its time, it actually came with a full set of tools on the

disc for level editing and adding new art to the game. That summer, I didn’t leave the house much.

The experience of drawing lines and pushing buttons in a complicated little program, then starting up

the most awesome game you’d ever seen and being able to play your own creations was nothing less

than Magic to me.

When I was your age, we had to carve our GPU’s out of wood!

It’s easy to forget, in 2010, that computers really are magical machines. If you get right down to it, a

computer is a machine that manipulates information, visuals and sound at nearly the speed of light.

Realizing that that power could be used to create virtual worlds full of stories, puzzles and action was

a defining moment in my young life. Like John Lasseter from Pixar, it didn’t take long for me to figure

out that this was what I wanted to do forever.

I expect, and surely hope, that you know this feeling very well.

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The DAE years

Digital Arts and Entertainment was exactly what I needed. As I like to tell anyone who will listen, I

was the first of 180 students to sign up that first year – and one of it’s 35 or so first graduates two

and a half years later. In DAE I met two

guys who were just as passionate about

this stuff as I am: Timothy Vanherberghen

and Filip Van Bouwel. Our first major

project together was taking part in the

2008 Imagine Cup, which was themed

around sustainable technology. Together

with Jeroen Van Raevels (now at Grin) we

came up with Future Flow, an XNA-based

puzzle game in which you build and

manage a city through ecological issues.

To our own great surprise, the game was selected for the World Finals in Paris, and won 2nd place.

Fabulous Prizes!

We got a nice cash prize out of that, a good relationship with Microsoft, and most importantly – the

realization that maybe we could have a future together making games. After a lot of deliberation, we

finally committed to the idea of starting a company together – something I had never considered to

be a possibility before I met Filip and Timo. If it werent’ for DAE, I might be making e-commerce

websites somewhere right now. Horrifying.

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Getting started

By late 2009, we had put our heads together and firmly decided to

go through with our startup idea. We had a new name (“Triangle

Factory” instead of the slightly less professional-sounding “Drunk

Puppy Studios”), a 40-page business plan and a small but adequate

pile of funds to get started. In case you are interested in the

practicalities, these are the concrete steps we went through in

order to officially start the company:

1. Found a really nice office at The Studios, right across from our old school.

2. Opened up a business account with BNP Paribas Fortis and deposited our startup capital.

3. Found an accountant that gave us some good advice and could do a lot of the startup

paperwork for us (cost: around € 1.800).

4. Had a notary write our official statutes and startup agreement, which we all signed. (cost:

around € 950).

5. Made initial investments in workstations (€ 4.000) and software licenses (around € 6.000).

I’ve included the numbers because it’s important to realize that even to cover the bare minimum

formalities and infrastructure needed for a very small company, you need a pretty large sum of cash.

The risk you take is not seeing any of that capital come back to you for a while. In our case, after all

that investment there was not much money left to cover our own salaries. We anticipated this, and

accepted the fact that we personally wouldn’t be seeing any profit for a few months. This is one of

the hard choices you may have to make when choosing to self-fund your startup.

The reason we chose to self-fund the company is that we didn’t want to take on the extra pressure of

a large loan with a bank, or giving up part of the company to an outside investor right away. In both

cases, you trade in some of your independence for short term security – we chose the hard route,

which means having to do it all by ourselves but getting to keep total control of the company and its

resources. Which doesn’t mean that taking a loan or investment money is a bad idea – but it’s worth

considering whether you really need it. In business, you rarely get something for free

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Growing pains and new opportunities

In early 2010, our plan was to further develop Future Flow for the PC and XBOX Live Arcade, with the

hopes of submitting a demo to Microsoft in February/March and being able to release the game by

the summer. In hindsight, that was a much too ambitious plan for a team our size. It quickly became

apparent that finishing the project would take A Lot Of Work; it wasn’t even clear that the XBOX Live

team would accept our submission; and we had bills to pay. As every young entrepreneur will quickly

realize at one point, your idealized Big Plan can fall apart fast when the realities of time and money

start setting in. Sometimes you have to be prepared to set your plans aside and not look back. By

February, we had decided to put Future Flow away for a while and look for other opportunities.

Our new project was MyClub, a social game for Facebook with a twist – instead of using Flash like

95% of games on Facebook, we would use Unity, which is a crossplatform 3D engine ideally suited for

the web. We had some talks with a well-known social networking company based in Gent (figure it

out ), but ultimately decided to go straight to Facebook with its 500 million potential users. We

found a partner company, Proudfield Social Media Applications, and signed a deal with them to

publish MyClub on several social networks.

Keeping the customer satisfied

Back when we were drafting our business plan, it was clear to us we couldn’t put all or money on on

our own creative projects right away. That should be the first lesson anyone who enters the game

industry (or any kind of creative commercial endeavour) ought to learn.

So we did (and still happily do) projects for customers, mostly other businesses, in everything from

still 3D renders of products and characters to interactive 3D business applications.

You’d think that maybe these “side projects” are just necessary evils to bring in revenue, and what

you really want to do is work on your own creative projects. That is true to some extent, but working

for customers has its advantages as well. They force you to go outside your comfort zone a little bit

and get to know about subjects and people you normally wouldn’t come into contact with. You get

pushed to try new technologies, to understand what a clients’ needs are, and to deliver quality on

time and within a budget. You really do reap the rewards of all of that when you start working on

projects of your own.

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MyClub

From the end of February onward, we put most of our waking hours into the development of

MyClub, a game in which you manage your own nightclub and interact with your friends on

Facebook. We knew we had an ambitious

project when we started; but the full extent

of what we were trying to achieve only

became clear during development. None of

us had ever used Unity before. None of us

had real experience using a database server

for keeping track of thousands of players’

data in a secure way. We had no experience

with the Facebook API, in trying to combine

that with Unity across PC and Mac, and all

the fun browser compatibility issues that

inevitably come in a complex web

application. It’s no exaggeration to say that

we had to learn something new every single day.

But we had to get there, so we did. Filip, our Lead Developer, took on the back-end of the project

(SQL database, secure server-side API, data optimisation) while Timothy and I worked on the Unity

client. We also managed to get three interns from DAE to help out – an advantage of being so close

to Howest Twelve and fourteen-hour days, pulling all-nighters at the office and banging our heads

against the table in frustration were common. Yet at the same time we were seeing a large,

ambitious project come to life – that whole process from a vague idea and some sketches to the

intricate system of code, content and designs that makes up a modern game. Being able to stick with

a large project for so long and actually releasing it to a large audience is an exciting experience, and

one you probably won’t get at school.

On 22nd September we released MyClub on Facebook, and a little while later started actively

marketing it. We are now approaching 70.000 monthly active users, with up to 4.000 people playing

the game every day. These numbers aren’t astounding when compared to, say, Farmville or

NightClub City – but considering our tiny team and shoestring budget, we’re doing alright. The game

is getting good reviews and bringing in revenue, and as we continue working on the game, there is

plenty of room left for us to grow. If nothing else, we’re proud of finally bringing a good-looking 3D

game to Facebook

Get used to staring at this for 12 hours a day.

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Lessons learned so far

We’re a very young company, and any experienced game developer would probably shake their

heads at what we still have left to learn, all the mistakes we still need to make in order to not have to

make them again. But I do think we’ve learned a few things over the past year, which we want to

share with you as you take your hard-earned diploma and go out into the world – whether you’re

thinking about starting a business or not.

Have a backup plan.

So, you have a design document for your Magnum Opus, a state-of-the-art voxel-based MMO that is

going to obliterate World of Warcraft and make you millions. That’s fantastic, but consider the

possibility that you may be wrong, or that your brilliant idea may actually be impossible to generate

enough sales to pay back its development. The games industry in particular is a wonderfully dynamic,

but very competitive market. Always have something more secure to fall back on when your plans

don’t work out.

Be critical.

Don’t be afraid to be critical of yourself, your own ideas, and your teammates. Always ask yourself if

you’re not putting the bar too low (or too high!) for yourself, and be mature enough to bring up

issues before they turn into problems.

Assume responsibility.

Whether you’re running your own business or are part of a development team, certain things will be

expected of you – and those things won’t always be spelled out clearly. Don’t count on being taken

by the hand and told what to do all the time. Working in a high-tech industry in 2010 means needing

to develop some discipline about planning things, keeping up with commitments, and

communicating with others. Take it from me, this is not always easy to do – especially when you’re

up to your elbows in work and have many things asking for your attention. And don’t forget there’s

more to life than work alone; it’s okay to go outside and interact with other people once in a while

Don’t sink your time into meetings and e-mail.

Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s normal, or even “professional”, to have several hours of team

meetings each week. Meetings were invented by managers who needed to feel in control of people

who actually get work done. If you’re smart (and I know you are), you can probably get all the

information you need from one-on-one conversations with teammates, IM, or short team briefings.

Having long regularly scheduled meetings without a clear goal is a great way to waste a good

developer’s time.

Also, resist the temptation to constantly check and respond to your email. You do not need to be

informed every 5 minutes of incoming mail, and in 95% of cases it’s fine to not respond to an email

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immediately. If it’s something really really urgent, people will call you. Having Outlook open all the

time and interrupting your work every time someone somewhere decides to push a “Send” button

with your email adress next to it can destroy your productivity quickly. So I turn off auto-notifications

and check my mail only two or three times a day, which allows me to focus on my work for a few

hours and actually get stuff done!

Focus.

I mention the meetings and the email because the more work I do, the more it becomes clear to me

that as a developer (whether you’re coding, designing art or doing administration), you need long

stretches of time to really get into the headspace you need to be in. Some people can sit down at

their desk and start doing awesome work right away; most of us aren’t so lucky, and need some time

to get into it.

That also means that every interruption, whether’s it’s someone talking on the phone, an incoming

e-mail or someone randomly dropping by to chat, may pull you straight out of that mindspace. You

can go from 100% concentration to 0% concentration in a second; getting back to that 100% may

take fifteen minutes or more.

When you’re really focused on your work, and can make yourself forget everything else, you can get

great work done. Take your work seriously, go for quality and have the discipline not to give up

immediately when things aren’t going as well as you wanted!

Remember why you’re here.

Don’t forget why you do what you do, and what your goals are. It’s sometimes easy to only see

what’s in front of you and feel lousy when you can’t find a bug, or can’t quite nail the design of that

3D model, or are struggling to meet that deadline. Remember you’re doing this stuff because you

love doing it – and if you don’t love doing it, you really shouldn’t be here. The games industry is full

of passionate, smart, talented people, which is one of the things that makes it a great field to be in.

Game/3D development is fun, but hard work. Our advice to you is to stay motivated. Keep

challenging yourself. Strive to be better at what you do than you were yesterday. And always

remember the sense of magic that attracted you to it in the first place.