An overview of the best case scenario
Plans for the future
Game Dev Space is a service that I have developed alone over the last few months. While I will continue improving the product, it is at a point where most teams would already benefit from it.
Having users on Game Dev Space will validate the need for such a service and therefore facilitate fund research. These funds would enable the creation of a proper startup with a team of developers instead of a single soul. This will mean a better user experience, more features out of the same product and even a more affordable community-driven business model.
So if you want to enable this best case scenario for the game developers around you and massively improve your work environment, the first step is to try Game Dev Space for yourself.
Roadmap details
Vertical slice
Today
Game Dev Space has enough features to already be a huge leap in work environment quality and developer experience for a lot of gamedev teams.
That's why even though the product can be pushed much further, it should be made available for teams that can benefit from DevOps and automation.
This would help validate the concept of Game Dev Space and start iterating with game developers to tweak the product to their needs and budget.
SGDA support
By 2025
The pricing of the service, while barely enough to cover my expanses, might still be overwhelming for some teams that already struggle to find time and money for their own projects.
That's where the SGDA can help. If enough teams can't afford the Game Dev Space service, then the association could pay the service for its members.
For this to happen, the SGDA needs to know that there is a need for Game Dev Space among its members. So if you're part of the SGDA like me and would like to benefit from Game Dev Space, make sure to contact me so that I can agglomerate and forward these requests to the SGDA when appropriate.
Growing the service as a team
2025
If the vertical slice is successful, then it would be a good incentive to gather funds from different sources.
With the funding, a company could be created with a small team of developers to continue improving Game Dev Space, making it a proper Software-as-a-Service.
Letting users create their trial environment by themselves, setting up a dashboard for them to manage their needs, automating deployments and updates through Infrastructure-as-Code, using Kubernetes for users that need better scaling, etc.
All these features would take me many more months and even years to learn and develop by myself which I can't afford.
A team of developers would bring this to life way quicker for a better result. This would allow me to start working as a team again, but with equal pay and 4-day weeks as an additional benefit.
Pay what you want
2025
A better business model would be to let users pay the product as much as they would like to.
This would allow everyone to profit from Game Dev Space freely but the teams who can afford to support the project do so as much as they can afford.
In other words, a bit like with the SGDA, wealthier teams would sponsor the service for smaller less fortunate teams.
While I would love to enable this payment model from the start, I unfortunately cannot since it requires a wider userbase to have enough sponsors to sustain the development.