WeThePlayers

2018 was a strange year; I had just left a very cushy job at the video game website NexusMods.com following their relocation to offices from home working and moved into an industry that I knew nothing about - precious metals. Yes, the job was quite good, and it paid well, but I yearned to return to the industry I love, video games.

I'd always wanted to create a video game database that was somewhat akin to Letterboxd; fresh, easy to navigate and fun. Compared to IMDB, the big player in terms of movie databases, Letterboxd seemed to focus on their community of film lovers, and that drew me in. NexusMods was built around the video gaming community, and I loved it, you create a product that you can share with people as passionate as you are. But money was a problem; I didn't know where to start or how to go about obtaining funding.

So my idea just sat there at the back of my mind.

Then we had a death in the family, my girlfriend losing her aunt to cancer. Following her passing, my girlfriend received some inheritance and rather than spend it on something for herself like a nice car, and some fancy holidays, she came to me one afternoon and said that she wanted me to pursue my dream of creating my website. To say that was a bit of an emotional afternoon would be an understatement.

Over the next couple of month's, I began to document every feature I would want in the website. As you can imaging, the list was huge and totally unfeasible for my budget. I code, but badly, so I needed to find a development company that could help me without blowing my budget out the water.

After a number of conversations with various people, we came to an agreement with an agency based in Porto, Portugal. Although they are not in the UK, they all speak fluent English and the flights and accommodation in their city actually worked out cheaper than if I was to have a developer in London. I sent them all my User Stories and the wireframes I had mocked up for the site and they came back with a quote and statement of work.

I signed on the dotted line.

We were going for it.