Costikyan Founds New Game Company

Curmudgeonly multi-medium game designer Greg Costikyan is a pretty polarizing guy. Over the past few years he's become something of a games industry agitator, with increasingly bilious and explosive addresses and rants about the state of the industry. He has yet, however, to really act upon his calls to arms to break down the prevalent business model. Well, until now, apparently: a matter of days ago, Costikyan quit his job to co-found a company with Dr. Johnny Wilson (a games journalist, novelist, and ordained minister), whose goal is to create "a viable path to market for independent developers, and a more effective way of marketing and distributing niche PC game styles to gamers."

So I'm pulling the trigger. At this point, I have no funding, other than a little money myself; nothing ready to launch, either. But I do have a partner, the offered support of some other companies, a clear sense of what I need to accomplish in the next few months, and a draft (not a final one) of a business plan and financials. This is, of course, terrifying; I'm leaving a nice comfortable job for an extremely early stage startup, with the prospect of no income for possibly as much as a year (or more). But there does come a time when you have to stop whining about things and try to change them.

He aims to increase awareness and distribution for PC games which otherwise would have little or no chance of seeing a successful retail release. With companies such as Valve pursuing similar goals through Steam and digital distribution becoming something of a popular topic in general lately, it's looking like an endeavor that might have a chance. Costikyan plans to document the entire endeavor (save some inevitable financial bits his investors request stay confidential) on his blog. The company, called Manifesto Games, has a placeholder site up at the moment, containing a press release and some background information. Manifesto hopes to bring products to market by early next year.