Making a limited company

[Tefal]

what type of games you thinking of making?

I'm assuming nothing with modern engines as i hear the licenses for those are insane

 

[Bengaboy]

what type of games you thinking of making?

I'm assuming nothing with modern engines as i hear the licenses for those are insane

Might well go the whole hog and make a new engine! (how hard would this be? have no experience making games, but want a company doing it - instant fail? )

Reason being is because it goes with what Im trying to do.

Or may well just nick the source engine - hey ho...

 

[Tefal]

If you nick an engine you can't sell anything though

Any particular type of game fps, rpg ect?

 

[utherpendragon]

Setting up a limited company is probably in your interests, as you've said it is relativly cheap (£30 for a certificate from the registrar is completed online). In regards to the potential extra costs you will have to file both annual accounts and a directors report with companies house on an annual basis. These will not need to be audited (where it gets expensive), but it is advisable as you make a mistake on your reports and you can get in deep doo doo . I'm not sure of the auditing requirement atm but believe it is £2.8 million turnover or £5.6 million on the balance sheet so should be a little out of your price range.

Needless to say if you do look for investment, selling a limited company is a hell of a lot easier, especially when looking at releasing equity. Not to mention the obvious in that you won't screw up your personal finances too badly if the firm does go **** up.

First point of call should be to see someone with some actual experience of small startups, im sure somewhere like the local job centre will be able to put you in touch with someone local. If you are going into business DO NOT be a cheapskate, any money you spend now will pay dividends later!!!

 

[Bengaboy]

If you nick an engine you can't sell anything though

Any particular type of game fps, rpg ect?

Yea I know

Any game mate, fps, rpg and even have a cracking idea for a mmorpg in mind!

Do you have any experience in making game mate? You seem into them at least and Im sure Ive seen you in the games section of the forums

Setting up a limited company is probably in your interests, as you've said it is relativly cheap (£30 for a certificate from the registrar is completed online). In regards to the potential extra costs you will have to file both annual accounts and a directors report with companies house on an annual basis. These will not need to be audited (where it gets expensive), but it is advisable as you make a mistake on your reports and you can get in deep doo doo . I'm not sure of the auditing requirement atm but believe it is £2.8 million turnover or £5.6 million on the balance sheet so should be a little out of your price range.

Needless to say if you do look for investment, selling a limited company is a hell of a lot easier, especially when looking at releasing equity. Not to mention the obvious in that you won't screw up your personal finances too badly if the firm does go **** up.

First point of call should be to see someone with some actual experience of small startups, im sure somewhere like the local job centre will be able to put you in touch with someone local. If you are going into business DO NOT be a cheapskate, any money you spend now will pay dividends later!!!

Pardon me for being thick, but if I make no money, it should be a case of saying I made didly squat? Do I have to list all of my potential out goings too? For example website costs, etc?

Love your idea about going down to the job centre! Maybe connexions would help me too?

 

[Tefal]

Yea I know

Any game mate, fps, rpg and even have a cracking idea for a mmorpg in mind!

Do you have any experience in making game mate? You seem into them at least and Im sure Ive seen you in the games section of the forums

Nah no experience in making them but a healthy (obsessive) interest in playing

You might want to try joining a mod group will help you learn.

 

[daz]

Pardon me for being thick, but if I make no money, it should be a case of saying I made didly squat? Do I have to list all of my potential out goings too? For example website costs, etc?

The accounts still have to be prepared and the annual report filed with companies house. It's a lot more hassle than it's worth if you're just getting started.

 

[Makhaira]

I used http://www.quickformations.com/ when I set my company up a few years ago as a casual source of income from webdesign. No problems with them.

Having run a Ltd company for a few years as a "hobby", my advice would be do NOT set one up if you are just looking to make a few quid, nothing significant. More hassle than it's worth then. If you're looking to find out how to set up and run a small business though, and want something that looks great on your CV, then definitely do it. Future employers love seeing something like this on a CV.

Your annual costs are only £15 in filing charges, and you will need to file a set of Companies House annual returns, Companies House accounts, Inland Revenue Corporation Tax, and Inland Revenue Pay As You Earn paperwork each year. Most of which are trivial once you know what you are doing due to the small size of your business.

You don't actually need an accountant to prepare your accounts, it's something you can do yourself, although as mentioned above, you need to keep precise records since you don't want to start filing false paperwork.

I would recommend you contact BusinessLink, who can give you a lot of helpful information about running a business, Companies House, who produce a series of booklet guides about their own processes and paperwork (also available online), and your local Inland Revenue tax office - with me they were more than happy to sit down with all my PAYE paperwork the first time and talk me through what I was doing (because I was utterly clueless!).

I've been with both Barclays and HSBC for my banking, and would recommend HSBC, I would Barclays to be incompetent at best. HSBC also do a nice business account where as long as you do things online, and don't require a counter service, you do not incur any banking charges.

I'm not sure what else to add in here, but if you've got more questions, feel free to ask.

 

[***F1ZZY***]

Ideas do not make computer games anymore. Gone are the days of bedroom developers.

Todays games are huge in comparison and require teams of 20+ people working for 2or 3 years or so. You will need level designers, artists, character modellers, sound engineers, physics engineers, coders and scripters etc etc.

Most of the ideas have been hammered out of the different genres and really most are just permutations on a similar theme but with bigger and better graphics with each release from the big games developers.

You might be better off just trying to patent an idea and sell it (licence it) to a developer. To develop it yourself (in line with modern production) will cost hundreds of thousands and ultimately it is a risk as it is never guaranteed to sell.

 

[InvaderGIR]

Might well go the whole hog and make a new engine! (how hard would this be? have no experience making games, but want a company doing it - instant fail? )

Not trying to squash your dreams or anything, but have you done any coding or game production before? It really isn't all that easy, even for simple, small games.

I've produced a couple of games for mobile phones, one asteroids style game and one which was blackjack over a network, both of which took a lot of time and effort...and if I'd bothered to do them properly a massive amount of time and effort. I doubt that it I were to try and sell them that they would get any worthwhile financial gain from either of them.

Do you have any coding experience? C, C++, C#, Java ? If not then you'll want to look in to it, it make look easy from the off, but it isn't all that fun.

For producing games though I'd point you at XNA Game Studio Express, it's a free product from Microsoft that allows you to easily (relative term, if you don't know code it isn't easy) produce games for Windows and Xbox 360 (although to test them on the 360 you require the DevKit on the 360). These games though will not be very good, as it is quite hard to produce something of worth by yourself (as F1ZZY says).

InvG

 

[melbourne720]

I've produced a couple of games for mobile phones, one asteroids style game and one which was blackjack over a network, both of which took a lot of time and effort...and if I'd bothered to do them properly a massive amount of time and effort. I doubt that it I were to try and sell them that they would get any worthwhile financial gain from either of them.

That network blackjack game sounds good, if its in the public domain then feel free to send me a link

@OP: Best of luck with the project, some helpful stuff in this thread.

 

[Guv]

I'm not sure of the auditing requirement atm but believe it is £2.8 million turnover or £5.6 million on the balance sheet so should be a little out of your price range.

£5.6m turnover
£2.8m gross assets




As others have mentioned it's not expensive to set up a limited company but the cost to prepare the accounts/tax return is more than if you're a sole trader.

Also if you expect to make £3k or less a year in profit as a sole trader you will pay no tax as your personal allowance covers it, whereas if you had a limited company tax would be due.

 

[InvaderGIR]

That network blackjack game sounds good, if its in the public domain then feel free to send me a link

@OP: Best of luck with the project, some helpful stuff in this thread.

It's no where near complete, only complete enough to get me a 2i (Two one) as my final piece of coursework on the game development of my course.

Currently it borks after a short while, it also runs over a network (when run on a PC) but over the phone's data network (so costs lots) if run on a phone, and I don't fancy paying to test that aspect of it.

One of my friends made his work over bluetooth, which I may look into once my exams are over as I would like to finish the game.

The other game is unfortunately using a theme I like (Invader Zim), which means it can only be used on my assignment due to copyright etc. Although it is easy enough for me to change the theme.

Some pics of my rather naff games...

Singleplayer Asteroids style with Zim theme...
1, 2, 3, 4

Multiplayer network blackjack...
1, 2, 3 - The dealer has gone bust and it should display so on both phones, but it doesn't, one of the many bugs.
4


One of the major problems I have with my course is the fact we had to produce games using Java and for mobile phones, when the vast majority of game production is done in C (C++ / C# usually), yet we have to do stupid games for mobile phones which will get us nowhere if we want to go into game production.

InvG

 

[daz]

You might be better off just trying to patent an idea and sell it

You don't patent an idea, you patent a method of doing something.

 

[bennyboy2606]

Done this is business studies once, don't you need like at least 2 people & £50k start up capital, i may be wrong though that might be a Plc.

 

[Makhaira]

2 people, yes. £50k, no.

 

[melbourne720]

It's no where near complete, only complete enough to get me a 2i (Two one) as my final piece of coursework on the game development of my course.

Currently it borks after a short while, it also runs over a network (when run on a PC) but over the phone's data network (so costs lots) if run on a phone, and I don't fancy paying to test that aspect of it.

Vodafone have just put me on an unlimited data tariff (for free), and have done so for a large number of people I know. There could be a market for it after all. I'd like it, and my brother would love a texas hold em poker variant

As a software tester myself, I would be happy to test it for free email in trust if you're interested.

One of my friends made his work over bluetooth, which I may look into once my exams are over as I would like to finish the game.

The other game is unfortunately using a theme I like (Invader Zim), which means it can only be used on my assignment due to copyright etc. Although it is easy enough for me to change the theme.

Hence the username eh? Good choice of theme.

Some pics of my rather naff games...

Singleplayer Asteroids style with Zim theme...
1, 2, 3, 4

Multiplayer network blackjack...
1, 2, 3 - The dealer has gone bust and it should display so on both phones, but it doesn't, one of the many bugs.
4


One of the major problems I have with my course is the fact we had to produce games using Java and for mobile phones, when the vast majority of game production is done in C (C++ / C# usually), yet we have to do stupid games for mobile phones which will get us nowhere if we want to go into game production.

InvG

Looks good mate, keep up the work

 

[Samione]

Going into game development on your own... you got balls mate.

 

[[TW]Fox]

Fair play - but I want to protect my potential company name(ie - overclockers), and maybe protect the way I would make the games (if that would be possible, not an invention, just a business plan that I wouldnt want others to copy).

You don't need to be a Limited Company to do this.

Effectively I want to make a company (not sure if its a ltd company I need really...) to protect the ways I do business (if that is possible) and protect the company name.

Just set up as a sole trader.

Also, I thought a ltd company would cost £120 - not bank breaking! (most likely wrong though...)

Thats the incorporation fee. You then have new, complicated and hassle filled legal obligations as a limited company. A limited company is useful for when you want to limit your liability to the value of any investment you've made in it. Not relevant in your case.

Might well go the whole hog and make a new engine! (how hard would this be? have no experience making games, but want a company doing it - instant fail? )

With the greatest amount of respect this sentance says to me that this isn't going anywhere and is a complete pie in the sky idea. Making a new engine isn't exactly easy - and infact if you've no prior experience of proper coding etc etc then neither is coding a game.

Perhaps you need to look at other ways to make games becuase it sounds like starting your own business is absolutely not the correct way to go about it.

 

[InvaderGIR]

Vodafone have just put me on an unlimited data tariff (for free), and have done so for a large number of people I know. There could be a market for it after all. I'd like it, and my brother would love a texas hold em poker variant

As a software tester myself, I would be happy to test it for free email in trust if you're interested.

Hence the username eh? Good choice of theme.

Looks good mate, keep up the work

Yeah, great cartoon.

A few of my friends did poker, we had a choice, blackjack, poker and checkers. I went for blackjack as it was challenging and a decent game, but not too hard.

I need to do a lot of work on the app before it's even worth getting someone to test it on an actual phone, which can't start till Sunday due to exams and moving. Will try to remember to work on it and keep in mind I have a guiniepig.

With the greatest amount of respect this sentence says to me that this isn't going anywhere and is a complete pie in the sky idea. Making a new engine isn't exactly easy - and in fact if you've no prior experience of proper coding etc etc then neither is coding a game.

Perhaps you need to look at other ways to make games because it sounds like starting your own business is absolutely not the correct way to go about it.

That was my thought too, your best bet is going to uni and doing game design, it'll get you the knowledge you need to get further in the field of game production than just attempting it yourself will.

InvG