BG-000. The IT of a game studio
I have some inkling about what I need to do to setup BitsGofer Studio. Still, it was a lot more work than I ever expected.
Outside of making the game, just setting up the technical infrastructure to run everything is no simple task. For example, there are:
Github
Google Workspace
Communication
and more
Even as someone who work in infra, thus having the knowledge and know-how, I actually doing all this work is tiresome for me, haha. But I think it’s worth it, especially if I ever need to bring in external collaborators in the future (e.g: artists, composers, developers, etc).
One thing I learnt from my job and decide to do different this time, however, is to try and manage things as code.
Of course, it can’t be 100% infrastructure-as-code. But it should be possible to as automated as possible. That way, it will be possible to keep the technical operations lean (since it’s automated).
Aside: Choosing a communication platform
This actually took a few days to figure out. At first, I was wonder if it make sense to self-host a communication tool like matrix. This is because most tools out there like Slack, Google Workspace, MS Office, Discord, etc will charge you per user, which, if you are running a studio of mostly contractors and part-timer, will be a huge unnecessary cost.
But diving deeper into the hosting work involved revealed that the labor cost is expensive as well. At this point, I’d prefer some free service, try not to rely on it too much and the re-evaluate in the future.
In the end, I chose Slack because that’s what I’m using daily && feel that it’s a good platform (as opposed to Google Talk or MS Teams, which I also used in the past).
Let’s just hope that it’s possible to migrate/manage this better in the future.