08 Jun Betting The Farm?

We run a succesful business these days, and are currently turning it upside down. Here’s why!

Early 2009, things were not going so well with Paladin. We had a great team, but too little projects, and the crisis started to kick in. It turned out that this would be our worst year ever. Even though we worked almost full-time on EnerCities, we developed it at a loss and had to prefinance a whole bunch. In the third quarter of 2009, we had a huge debt. Our promising clients of 2008 cut their budgets, and we were out of credit. To survive, we had to fire half of the team and seriously cut back on all types of expenses.

It was then that we decided to stop chasing clients and follow our passion instead: Make Awesome Games. At heart we were a product company instead of a sales & account management machine. It was time to take some risk and start building our own games. But first we had to get out of debt.

Flash forward to early 2010. With EnerCities finished, we needed cash immediately. We pitched hard and desperately, because we knew it was all or nothing. We had been dangerously close to our credit limit for a couple of months, and the clock was ticking with the bank. While we were explaining the situation to the team, Dylan took the phonecall of a big prospect. There were shivers up my spine and all kinds of explosions in my brain when he gave me a big smile and a thumbs up – they told him we could start straight away. The company was safe, and it would be the turning point.

It turned out that 2010 would be our best year so far. We took on two huge projects and several smaller ones. We had the highest profit ever, and were completely out of debt. Not bad, considering the loss of the previous year.

This is where we are now, and it’s the perfect position to be in as a company – I know I sleep a lot better these days. BUT, the cash is coming from B2B projects, and we have learned that it will not sustainable in the long run. So in the past months we have created the Game Pipeline (I will share that later) and have prepared the design documents and prototypes.

We now have the time (and budget) to chase our dream, and we will invest it all in (drum roll please for the working title!) Project Momonga. It’s a bit like betting the farm at this point, but we know it’s the right thing to do.

So here we are – the first week of production, and our biggest investment yet. We will share the whole creative process with you right here.

What do you think? Is this a good move or have we gone insane? Let us know in the comments! And stay tuned – we will post our updates right here on the blog, on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

See you around, and have fun! 🙂

-Derk

PS: That little furball up there is Momo, our hero! You’ll be able to read all about him soon.