If you plan to make games for a living, then there’s a fairly good chance you’re interested in the technical, design or development aspects of the business. People get into the games industry to make videogames.
However, one side effect of this is that few people come to the industry excited about the creative business skills of releasing a game. Business models, revenue streams, marketing, live ops, data anaytics, and community management are skills that a growing number of developers are finding they need to know.
Even if you’re planning to work with a publisher to take care of all of the above aspects of launching and maintaining a game, you’re still going to have to be able to pitch a game, negotiate a contract and run your games business sustainably.
Build Your Creative Business Skills
Two new short courses have just been launched, which offer the opportunity for individuals, small businesses and frelancers, to learn more about the key skills they need to run a successful business:
- Developing a Data Driven Creative Company (University of Edinburgh)
- Raise Your Game (Creative Edinburgh)
Both courses are run online, feature some of Scotland’s leading experts in data, business development, project management, legal management, design thinking, digital marketing and more.
Developing a Data Driven Creative Company
Offered by the University of Edinburgh’s business school, this course offers the opportunity to develop your creative practice, business, or cultural organisation by harnessing the power of your data to develop insights and inform decisions, and maximise your creative service, product, or experiences for audiences.
This course is designed to:
- Build your data knowledge
- Develop confidence in handling your own data
- Create a self-directed action plan supported through the course
You can test your thoughts and emerging plans through engagement with your peer group and live Q&A with tutors, as well as learning from creative industry case studies. This is a guided process to allow you to confidently explore alone or with your teams the observations you have made, and move towards an agreed action plan you can implement at a specific time to suit your creative organisation.
What You’ll Learn
- How to recognise the different types of data in a creative business and the range of creative technology that uses or generates data.
- How well the data you collect aligns to your business objectives and supports their achievement.
- How to identify and address any data strategy gaps, and the skills and/or design development that may be required.
- How to manage data, processes and protocols, design interactions with other data sets, and data protection, ethics and governance.
- How to understand who’s who in data; exploring the various roles, demystifying functions, responsibilities, titles, skill sets.
- How to move from spreadsheets to dashboards and use data visualisations as a tool for decision making, and how to layer other data sources for greater insights.
- How to find out what else lies ahead in data driven innovation.
- How to use other resources, support, learning and research/innovation collaboration.
In gaming terms, it will let you use data to help you design, test and optimise your game concepts – and your whole business, with a focus on your players.
The course runs weekly from Wednesday 23 September – Wednesday 11 November, from 15:30 – 17:00.
Prices range from £200 for an individual, to £500 for companies with more than 50 x people.
Find out more about Developing a Data Driven Creative Company and book your place here.
Raise Your Game
Often wonder what the future of your career looks like? Like many freelancers, you’ve got your creative practice down, but have questions around what’s coming next, putting goals in place and finding the time to reach for them?
Raise Your Game is a digital skills programme from Creative Edinburgh aimed at freelancers, or people in the early stages of planning their own digital business. It’s been designed to provide the space, confidence and skills you need to envision and work towards the next stage of your career.
With a focus on digital tools, data and future-proof working models, Raise Your Game combines workshops delivered by expert partners, a Digital Space for peer support and a Mentor Yourself Toolkit for self-reflection between sessions.
Raise Your Game contains eight weekly sessions taking place between September and December 2020. All sessions take place online from 10:30 – 13:30.
Unlike the data course, Raise Your Game can be booked as a block, or you casn join individual sessions.
Sessions 1-3: Taking Stock
What are your goals? How do you envision the future of your creative business and are their alternative ways of working that can help you get there? These sessions will explore how data and digital tools can help you understand where your business is currently at, and where you want to go with it. Topics covered include:
- Business Planning & Modelling with Caroline Parkinson [Wednesday 23 September]
- Digital Online Presence with Blether Digital [Wednesday 7 October]
- Understanding Data with Effini [Wednesday 14 October]
Sessions 4-6: Making Moves
What are the fundamentals you need to know as a creative freelancer, sole trader or small business to operate effectively? These sessions will provide you with the skills, tools and confidence needed to help you work efficiently, so your energy can focus on the creative process, rather than the business admin. Topics covered include:
- Project Management with Jessica Armstrong [Wednesday 21 October]
- Money Management with Barclays [Wednesday 4 November]
- Legal Management with Anderson Strathern [Wednesday 18 November]
Sessions 7 + 8: Thinking Forward
Be inspired by what the future of creativity can bring. These sessions are for future gazing, emerging technologies and blue skies thinking which can inform where you are at right now. Topics covered include:
- Open Sourcing with Morvern Odling [Wednesday 25 November]
- Design Thinking with Alex Durussel-Baker [Wednesday 2 December]
Booking the whole block of sessions will cost £100 for all participants, while individual sessions will cost £15 each.
Go here to find out more about Raise Your Game and book your place on the course.
