Tag Archives: andrew hlynka

Why My Indie Game Company Isn’t Incorporated

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I’ve made “Dust Scratch Games” over two years ago. This was and still is a “sole-proprietorship,” a special type of business label. When I started, I also considered the idea of incorporating this game company. This is still something that eats away at me from time to time.

While I fully intended to jump into incorporation this month, I decided at the last minute to cancel and stick with what I have now. I thought a lot to reach my current decision. I suspect many other startup entrepreneurs are in the same boat, and not many resources online give a point of view appropriate for my situation. This article outlines my logic and reasoning, and I hope it guides other game developers when they decide what to do for themselves.

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End of 2015, Looking Into The Future

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I haven’t made a blog post in over a month, which is probably the longest I’ve gone without one. And these breaks will be even longer in the future. But make no mistake: a lot of changes happened for me in the last month, and even more are expected in 2016, but Dust Scratch Games will still be active, and you can expect exciting announcements and developments in the months to come.

The biggest change is that I am no longer officially a student. I am thankful that I have a job position starting soon, but before then? The job searching process was painful…

When you're finally ready to begin your job search...

When you’re finally ready to begin your job search…


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Game Conventions In Ontario & Beyond! A Helpful Guide For Local Indie Game Developers

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One of the best parts about indie development is the ability to participate with the community. There are many conventions and events every year throughout the world that celebrate video games, anime, comics, television, and geek culture in general, perfect opportunities to promote yourself. However, I noticed that most major game events in North America are on the West, East and South sides of the United States, central North America (specifically Ontario, Canada) has very little for indie games. Comics and tabletop games, sure, but indie games don’t really have much to be at. Its also really difficult to find any reviews or information outside the events’ homepages, so its hard to know what to expect.

If I Want To See Indie Games in this "Dead Zone," Where Do I Go?

If I Want To See Indie Games in this “Dead Zone,” Where Do I Go?

The following is a list of events I’ve been to, with my impressions of what type of atmosphere they provide. I hope the following information will be useful to developers in the Ontario area. This comes from me being in Windsor, Ontario, depending on your location you might have other better options.

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Special Thanks To Some Press That Covered Me & My Games!

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SOME COOL ARTICLES THAT MENTION ME BEING AT CONVENTIONS:

(A shout-out to a handful of the awesome people who wrote about me and/or my games, this list also gives a fair representation of how much “press” going to such events gets you. Generally, very little: larger events may have larger press representatives, but its still a lottery as to whether they even see your work, let alone care about it. Sadly, small press will also garner little to no business, but small press is better than no press. The dates give a vague idea of where the writers/bloggers saw me. For a detailed list on what conventions I’ve been to that correspond to these, see my next blog post.)

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Retrospective By The Numbers: One Year After My First Game, One Week After My Second

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For several months I’ve promised to write a retrospective about the release of my first game “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth.” But then it was released on Steam, on IndieGala, and available during the Steam summer sale.  Then I was working on my second game “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament,” which took longer than expected, but has now officially been released for one week. This gave me a lot more perspective to write about, and a year after the first game, I think now is the time to write about it from a functional point of view. This summarizes in-depth time and money spent and made for my first two indie games as an indie developer, which were not necessarily successful, but hopefully helpful for others wondering how their experience in game development may go.

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