Hello there! My name is Khalid and I am the founder of Bit By Byte Studios. This company has been a dream of mine to start and today is the first day I am taking charge of that. In this blog, I want to introduce you to the company (what we do, our plans, etc.) and why we are doing what we are doing. I promise not to make this too long but if you read this all the way through, I appreciate it!
A little about me
This is me, as a first year, sitting on a couch, on a bridge that overlooks the E7 building at UWaterloo, where I study computer science. I love what I do because no matter what field I end up in, the things I learned in CS are always applicable. Outside of school, I'm a huge gamer (obviously!). I love board games and video games alike, and always want to try new and exciting things in those areas. Some of my favourite games are F1 2021, The Witcher, Tellstones, and D&D.
What is Bit By Byte Studios?
This story starts during the pandemic of 2020. I was lucky to land my dream job at Shopify as an intern, and I loved what I did. Flash forward to the Fall of 2020, and my mentor told me that it was important for us as developers to have hobbies. It doesn't just give us a break from work, but it also gives us new knowledge to improve our craft. The skills we learn from our pastimes and hobbies often translate into the dev world, whether they be more tangible skills like design, or softer skills like management and focus. At the same time, I was taking a few courses to advance my degree, including a game design course. I realized that inadvertently I had created a perfect storm to start this company. I was given an opportunity to design a game, along with the understanding from my job that this is beneficial to me. In the last 2 years since I made a promise to myself to start the company, I dealt with a lot, from insane work schedules to insane school schedules, along with various other commitments. Yet in spite of all this, I wanted to pursue game design, and did through various other projects. Today, as I send out this first blog post, it marks the start of Bit By Byte Studios, yet also a new era in the company as we begin to delve deep into what we want to do.
So, What's the Plan?
I know it may not seem like Bit By Byte is ready yet, and by no means is the current state of the company even close to where we want to be. However, we must start somewhere and our hope is to begin with some small stuff. We have broken down our work into 3 core streams: Content Creation, Consulting, and Design. We have ordered these streams based on difficulty of them. Some work is easy, but others are hard.
1. Content Creation
Content creation, in this day and age, is one of the most important things a company can do. It allows them to gain traction as a company by creating an online presence. That is our goal, to expand our online presence. We plan on doing that in various ways, the 3 being streaming, blogs, and social media. In the coming months we will begin streaming some of our favourite games, along with some other streams on game design, development, and really any topic the studio wants to pursue. Our blog, "Matters of Design" will be the major point of focus for the content, but don't worry we have a ton of plans for other forms too!
2. Consulting
Over the last two years, I have taken on the job of consulting on other people's projects. I have found that it is not only a great way to grow your skills, but also that I love it and want to continue pursuing it. Bit By Byte will continue our consulting gig, and I can't wait to share some of the big successes we have.
3. Game Design
When I say the last is the hardest, I truly mean the hardest. People underestimate how much time, money and effort goes into building a quality board game. Our hope is to build and manufacture our own games, but also provide a platform to sell other games on. We have big ambitions for this, including game drops, and collaborative experiences.
Over the next few weeks, I will be prepping a lot of new content for our first work stream, and am hoping to further drive this experience. We are ambitious, but we are also realistic, and our world is never constant, so bare with us as we grow.
With all that said, we look forward to showing you what we are all about, and cannot wait to get started. Until then, this has been Bit By Byte Studios!