CHAPTER 1: SETTING THE STAGE
Why Game Startups Fail (and Why You Should Try Anyway)
In the gaming world, success can feel like a lottery ticket. One title goes viral, earning enough for years of development; another flops in a week, leaving its creators deep in debt. Despite the odds, new teams launch every day, hoping their app or hidden-object concept might be the next big thing.
In 2009, I found myself in that same hopeful crowd. I had taught myself C++ using tattered textbooks—no formal education, no video tutorials. By the end of the year, I released a simple iPhone puzzle game that, to my astonishment, earned $1,000 in its first month. That sum doubled my monthly expenses at the time. If one puzzle can pay my bills, maybe gaming could actually be a career, I thought.
Early Hope, Swift Failure
Buoyed by that initial success, I joined a friend to co-found a small studio called There Is No Spoon Games. We hired four junior employees—no one owned drawing tablets, so we scanned pencil sketches into Photoshop, coloring them with a mouse. We launched three $0.99 puzzle games on the App Store. One, Junkmobile, earned a brief feature from Apple and a mention on Pocket Gamer, which seemed like a golden ticket. However, recognition did not translate into sustainable revenue. By March 2010, we had to close our doors, and my co-founders left the industry entirely.
Suddenly, I was alone. The dream that once felt so achievable was evaporating. Should I give up, too? A little voice inside insisted otherwise: If a single iPhone puzzle can net $1,000, there has to be a bigger opportunity lurking around. That conviction drove me to sell my apartment for $35,000—a radical move in my hometown of Simferopol. I used every dollar to start a new studio called Komar Games, renting a small office and hiring five inexperienced team members to chase a bigger dream: hidden-object games on PC.
The Office That Became My Home
To save money, I lived on-site—literally sleeping in that cramped office for six months. The couch was lumpy, the hot water limited, and the furniture often half-built. But that near-constant proximity to my project forced me to code or check art assets first thing in the morning and last thing at night. It was stressful, but it gave us a fighting chance. And as you’ll see throughout this book, extremes can sometimes spark creativity—or at least keep the lights on long enough to iterate.
A Lean Approach to a Tough Market
My next hidden-object game, The Secrets of Hildegard, was designed in haste, pegging unrealistic hopes on a big launch. When it earned a fraction of our target, we were back on the brink of failure. That triggered a desperate pivot toward free-to-play on mobile—a pivot that, ironically, saved us. By reusing art assets and limiting scope to a two-month prototype, we validated a new revenue model quickly. When JoyBits offered to publish our hidden-object F2P, monthly revenue rose to $30,000.
The pattern was consistent: every time I tried to make a grand leap—banking on a single big product—I nearly sank. When I tested smaller ideas, gathering data fast, I spotted which concepts could be tweaked for success. That was when the gaming business started making sense.
Why Your Game Deserves to Exist
This book will walk you through a process akin to “Build-Measure-Learn,” a cornerstone of lean principles—applied specifically to the gaming industry. It’s for anyone who’s dreamed of launching a game, pivoting an existing one, or scaling a small studio without losing their soul (or their life savings). You’ll see my own missteps—from a PC hidden-object misfire to a massive but doomed MMO—and how I adapted each time.
The takeaway? You don’t need a huge budget or a perfect plan. You need a system for testing assumptions, adapting to feedback, and knowing when to pivot. In the chapters ahead, we’ll explore how to:
Define and track key metrics like retention and ARPU.
Rapidly prototype game concepts without blowing up your budget.
Determine the moment to pivot or push forward.
Attract the right publisher or investor by showing real traction.
Survive external shocks—political upheaval, market shifts, or personal burnout.
What follows is a guide to iterating in the gaming world—combining the lean philosophy with the real ups and downs of building hidden-object titles, hyper-casual apps, and beyond. Like me, you may start with a tiny puzzle that earns $1,000 in month one. But if you keep refining and learning, you could end up working with major studios, signing million-dollar deals, or even launching your own gaming empire. Let’s find out how.
Next Up (Chapter 2): We’ll dig into the why behind making games and outline how to identify your core audience—essential steps before you build a single feature. Just as the lean startup starts with a vision, your game needs a clear direction if you want to validate it efficiently. Let’s get you there.
