how about facemakr then?
Role:
Date: June 14th, 2010
A couple of years back I wrote a blog post on how I’d like to make iPhone games. Everyone has ideas, right? (Link to that post)
I’m well trained for the task at hand, having worked in a games company as an art director for a few years, I was often planning games for clients. How wrong can it go?
Not that wrong as fate would have it; I had my arm unceremoniously twisted late last year to become freelance once again. The only thing I was lacking to start my own games company was time and money (like most of us, I guess).
Now I had time, plenty of it. Money, not so much.
I have ideas, I have something called Facemakr. What to do?
Several business plans and much grovelling to investors later, I was pretty much back where I started. Tokyo is a hard town to find capital in! As many people will let you know, the tried and tested way to get investment here is to move.
Tokyo is my home, I’m not about to upsticks just for the sake of starting a company.
Realising that the only way to start this is on my own, I set out to make a games company with whatever finance I had. I begged, borrowed and stole. I ate noodles for months. I made agreements for delayed payments. I crammed incredible amounts of new knowledge into my tired peanut brain.
And the rest, as they say, is history!
My first title “Facemakr” was published in March of this year, maybe a little prematurely, but now in full swing – it’s been reviewed in 9 languages across the internet, to growing acclaim! It’s the first application on the iPhone that uses my custom technological solution. (although, no one really cares about the tech – it’s the reason the application exists.)
The app was featured on the US store front for about a month, and then featured in 4 more countries. The iPad version was the best selling Social Networking app on the US store just hours after it’s release!
I am just about to release a new version & start rolling a new project into development with 3 freelance staff. Ironically I can be based anywhere in the world with this setup.
To say this process has been hard, is probably the greatest understatement of my life. I have accumulated a mountain of unpaid bills, bar tabs and an angry landladies. (Which, I can now happily un-accumulate.) No one said it would be easy, but it is possible, without investors. Thank you to everyone who helped me along the way, your encouragement and kind words were investment enough.
That is how I learned to stop worrying and love iOS4