Crunching the numbers behind an indie game studio

"In three years, I personally went from having $20,000 in savings to $35,000 in debt."

- Guillaume Boucher-Vidal, founder of independent studio Nine Dots What does it cost to get an independent studio off the ground? In a candid new post over at Polygon, the founder of small, independent studio Nine Dots -- which is currently developing GoD Factory: Wingmen with publisher Bandai Namco -- breaks down his costs and relates his experiences of working from home, working without pay, and giving up a stable job to chase his dream of developing games. Though the publisher deal has let Boucher-Vidal pay his team of seven developers a salary, his worries aren't over: "Every month scares me as I watch our funds melt at an alarming rate," Boucher-Vidal writes. He estimates his costs honestly, taking into account the fact that he didn't pay the team salaries at first: "I had to spend roughly $80,000 over three years to get the business going until its first significant source of income. Had I been able to pay for salaries during the first three years, it would have cost me about $700,000 more." "I've been told that any entrepreneur should expect to spend anywhere between two and five years before knowing if your business will really take off and I do believe it's true," Boucher-Vidal writes. The full post gives a complete breakdown of what Boucher-Vidal has invested into starting up Nine Dots so far, and it's well worth reading.