Hey there!

[ajacksified]

Hi! I'm Jack Lawson, a UI Engineer. I've been developing since I learned BASIC when I was 11, and I've been building games ever since. I've been running an online game that started in 2001 (I took over in 2007) called Neflaria (don't judge me - it's an old game!) and I've been working on building some games with a couple friends at Olivine Labs. Our history goes something like this:

• Start playing free browser-based multiplayer RPG called RWK
• RWK play style changes to cash-for-gold, people get upset, a free game called Shimlar is born (2001)
• Shimlar goes down (early 2007), Mattias Ottosson and I release a game called Gevalum
• Clone Shimlar (with permission), rename to "Neflaria" (mid 2007)
• Matt and I get too busy, shut down Neflaria (early 2010)
• Drew Ditthardt starts cloning Neflaria, Matt and I transfer him the old code and set him up as admin (late 2010)
• Drew and I decide to make Neflaria Version 2, create "Chrysellia" (later open-sourced)
• Form Olivine Labs to hold IP / donation money
• Build and release Alchemy Websockets, a really efficient C# websocket engine
• Build (close to release) PHP web framework

So now, we're working on a PHP web framework that encourages RESTful APIs and the principles of progressive enhancement; we need to finish an upgrade to the templating system and write documentation, but it should be out soon. We plan on building a "real" Neflaria version 2 using this framework, with Backbone.js and perhaps some neat stuff from Crafty.js.

Unfortunately a lot of our older games don't really showcase what we've been doing lately (mostly because of 10-year-old codebases), but we'll be open-sourcing our frameworks and code, likely under MIT licensing. We're doing some interesting things with Websockets and MongoDB.

So, that's me! Looks like an awesome community, and I'm looking forward to taking part in what's going on.

[andrewjbaker]

Welcome to the forums dude.

Also, +1 on open-sourcing your code. The community defo needs more examples to learn from.

[edmazur]

Welcome!

• Form Olivine Labs to hold IP / donation money

Would you mind sharing some more about this?

I see you're also from the US. I began collecting revenue from my game this year and still need to figure out what I'm doing for taxes and stuff next April. Right now I'm just transferring all the money from PayPal to my personal bank account, but I suspect if I got on top of things it'd be possible to do stuff like write off part of my apartment rent as an expense of the game company or something.

</taxnoob>

[ajacksified]

• Form Olivine Labs to hold IP / donation money

Would you mind sharing some more about this?

Sure! The first goal was to make sure that the other developer (and eventually developers) and I both had equal ownership in the intellectual property. We met and started working over the internet, though a game we both played - so even though we trusted each other, we had that to rely on. Plus, it was cool having our own company anyway, right?

The second goal was to put all donations / sales (and ownership of the bank account) into the company name. This means that you can use things like computer equipment and rent as partial tax-write-offs; it's a bit complex, but there's provisions in the tax form that allow you to write off percentages (like, 75% of your phone bill, or 40% of your rent, etc.) It also keeps you, as an individual, from having to pay taxes on all of that income. It's taxed on the business, and if your business is doing things like investing in hosting, advertising, and other costs, all of that means you'll pay less taxes on the company's income.

I use TurboTax for my taxes, which helps out figuring out the personal taxes. This will be the first year we've filed as a business, so hopefully as we get closer I can help. I also suggest filing for an LLC by yourself; you can find services online that will help you found your LLC, but it'll cost you $250 or more. You can do it by yourself for $50. We filed in the state my co-founder lives in (Georgia) because it was cheaper and the taxes were about the same as where I lived previously (Ohio), but I hear Nevada's a good and easy state to incorporate in, as it can hide more of your personal info. YMMV, but I'd just pick your home state unless you have a good reason to look elsewhere.

Hope this helps!

Note: I'm not an accountant, and I don't have a financial background; my co-founder has some contacts who are accountants, so this is what I understand from what he's told me that he understands from them.

[edmazur]

Cool, thanks for the info. That gives me some good starting points to look into more.