Long Term Game: How to Build a Video Games Company

by Joakim Achrén

In Long Term Game, Joakim Achrén, former co-founder of Next Games, draws on years of experience in gaming startups to provide clear and honest guidance on how to found and build a thriving games company.

Building a games company is usually thought by trial and error. But in the real world, this isn’t an effective way. It causes lots of misery and needless pain for entrepreneurs, whom all go through the same mistakes. They all are suffering from failures that are so common for gaming startups.

This book was created, so that gaming entrepreneurs would have a resource, a guiding manual for finding clarity in their quest to build a games company.

The author of this book, Joakim Achrén is the Founder and CEO of Elite Game Developers (https://elitegamedevelopers.com), a Helsinki, Finland, based company that helps gaming entrepreneurs in starting their first games company.

Joakim is an entrepreneur, with fifteen years of experience in founding and running two venture-backed gaming startups, including Next Games, the company behind The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land and The Walking Dead: Our World mobile games.

Joakim has gone through the venture capital fundraising process several times and has raised over $50 million in venture funding over his 15-year career as an entrepreneur.

THIS BOOK IS INTENDED FOR people who are interested in founding and building a games company. The book covers aspects of putting together the idea for the company, the founding team, raising capital, validating your assumptions, and details on everything that can go wrong in the games business.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction

187 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 18, 2020

Reviews

[CP · Rating 4 out of 5]

the work Joakim is doing with elite game developers cannot be praised enough. his blog and youtube channel are a gold mine. also this book offers valuable insights for aspiring game’s entrepreneurs - especially in the second half.
unfortunately it feels somewhat unstructured, has quite a few typos and offers few new insights if you explored Joakim’s other resources before (or work in mobile f2p gaming). recommended if you are just getting started.

[Sander Vanhove · Rating 3 out of 5]

So let's start with the good, there is a bunch of wisdom in this book and it comes from a place of true care.

Unfortunately it is badly formatted, the content is kinda all over the place and a little shallow.

This book is more of an introduction to different topics surrounding game companies, but it will not teach you a lot of practical things.

My favorite chapter was the one about validating your games.

[Joakim Achrén]

I read it more than once :)

[Alper Yılmaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like how to-the-point and candid the book is about both good practices and risk factors, but some standout bits, like the tips on leadership, notwithstanding, this was not for me.

Though it's good that all this info is presented in a neat package, there's not enough "meat" here, not enough information that can't be found online, and the small page count coupled with the MASSIVE font size make it feel like I'm being scammed even when I'm learning something. Adding to that feeling are the fact that there are heaps of typos and that included links to external resources sometimes don't work.

Additionally, the author is clearly out of their depth when it comes to making non-mobile games--or, more broadly, companies seeking project-based funding, which would be the vast majority of indie/AA companies. The focus on quick-and-dirty development practices/corporate procedures can alienate those who are more passionate about the games themselves than the entrepreneurship side of things, since much of the info here won't help them. (Especially egregious are claims like "all smart developers are market validating their games nowadays", which in actuality only applies to mobile games and systems-driven indie designs.) None of this would be a problem if the book was more clear and focused in its scope.

I still found it an adequate book for whoever stands to benefit from it, so I won't rate it lower, but I felt sorely underserved by it.

[Juha Toivonen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combines important fundamental topics in easily digestible length (2h30min with sped up audio). Definitely recommend for students and to-be entrepreneurs.
You could also make your worried relatives read it, in case they want to hear thoughts of an industry expert.

[Yury Popov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Небезынтересная, но довольно поверхностная книга об игровом бизнесе. С фокусом, как это было принято несколько лет назад, на мобильном f2p. Ужасно сверстана и средне написана, из чего делаю вывод, что автор просто рекламирует себя.

[Sindi Breshani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative, I listened to it on audible and it was very easy to digest! I didn’t like it ended on (what seemed to me) a negative note.