When we announced our new venture, Bad Plan Studios, most folks liked the name, and we do too! However, we had one interesting response, perhaps shared by others too:

Obviously this is a fair point. From the recent bloodbath in Australian gaming media, to threats from AI, to general doom and gloom, it's hard to argue that starting a game studio is a Good Plan. However, like most things, a lot more thought went into this naming decision than it might appear, so I wanted to work through some of that thinking.

Well, the inspiration might have been a bit random - Dan reports that the way he came up with the name was by looking around his office, seeing his medical plan pinned up on the wall, and thinking 'plan'. Then he saw a music poster or something, and thought, 'bad', which seemed to attach nicely. Then he threw that into the ideation mix and left it at that for a while. (Dental plan. Lisa needs braces.)

As we were going through ideas we came back to this one and Eli picked up on it. He liked it because it was not too serious, a bit tongue in cheek, and had a sarcasm behind it that really appealed to him. If you know Eli, you'll know that his sense of humour is legendary - it's not just a gimmick, it's a mode of being and key to his resilience, lifestyle, and mindset. That was good enough for me.

For my part, while it wasn't my first choice, it did grow on me the more I reflected on it. At the time we were all reading a great book for indie gamedevs by the inspirational Wlad Marhulets:

While the laundry-list-to-success subtitle turned me off a bit to start with, this book is very comprehensive, non-prescriptive, and has great insights on mindset and approach. As in many business books, there is some emphasis on planning, with the oft-mentioned line 'a bad plan is better than no plan'. So there's that.

But the more I thought about it the more I realised there was something deeply insightful in the idea of Bad Plan. My producer colleagues may know of Eisenhower via Sutherland: "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable". As complexity workers know all too well, a plan never survives contact with the enemy. In gamedev, directions, requirements and designs change so rapidly and fundamentally that if you are committed to a course of action without agility, you are in trouble. In this sense, every plan is a bad plan. Or maybe the only good plan is a bad plan. That's a bit Zen, I guess.

Drawing on insights from Adaptive Leadership, we might find others (or ourselves!) telling a story that we have a good plan, we know where we are going and the future is certain. Sure, this makes people feel comfortable and safe. But with enough experience in organisations, life, and creative industries, we know that these systems are fundamentally volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, so any story of having a 'good plan' is just that, a story. As always, different stories are possible.

So, perhaps we might as well just admit that there is no such thing as a good plan. And yes, maybe starting a studio in the current environment is a Bad Plan, but hell, let's give it a crack anyway because it sounds like fun.

To see a game being made with a bad plan, check out:

If you'd like to connect with us further, please go via https://linktr.ee/endofember

May your Plans all be Bad!

Chad Habel, Cat Herder