10 Years of Icarus Games
Greetings gamers, last week marked 10 years of Icarus Games and I am feeling reflective, so I want to talk about it!
This was supposed to be a video (and may still be) but I have spent the last couple weeks sick as a dog, so I don't have the spell slots for a full production, but it is an important milestone that I want to mark!
The original version of this post spent ages talking about all the history of Icarus (which I am happy to share if folks are interested, but I suspect that granularity is going to be super boring for most folks), but we're just going to hit the action set pieces instead!
Before diving into this bizarre and wonderful job I worked in marketing for a food company here in the UK, but ever since I was a kid I knew what I really wanted to do was tell stories.
In my interview for my marketing job, when the director of the company asked where I saw myself in 5 years I said "owning my own company" 😅 and somehow I still got hired!
For years before striking out on my own I had spent almost every free minute writing and planning, building a world and a miniature skirmish wargame, which is how I got started when I first started Icarus.
Eventually I left the miniatures behind and switch to YouTube and TTRPG publishing, which is where we find ourselves now.
As anyone who has been self-employed will be able to attest to, especially in a creative field, I've worn a lot of hats in the past decade, and taken part in a lot of different projects. I actually started actively using LinkedIn again recently purely so I had somewhere to put the things I've done where I can refer back to them and not forget about them 🤣
I thought it would be fun to pick 5 highlights from the last decade and talk about them a little bit.
The First Miniatures
Late August - 2015
A few weeks after quitting my job and launching Icarus, the first of my products arrived, and I spent the morning packaging everything up. I had already been working on the world for this game through fiction for around six years at this point, starting in University, so this was a really special moment.
Lights, Camera, Awkward
Spring 2017
The growth of the miniatures business meant I needed an office, but between Kickstarters, the office was pretty empty and underutilized, so I decided to start making YouTube videos, filming myself making terrain and painting miniatures.
I've still never ironed the creases out of a backdrop. . .
The Video That Almost Broke Me
May 2018
This was the closest I had come to quitting YouTube up until that point and for many years after. I made a three-part series about making a diorama of Jedha City from the Rogue One Star Wars movie, and while I am proud of the end result, the road to get there was a slog. It was a miserable ordeal and I hated it so much and the videos performed so poorly that the following week I did something completely different and talked about how I was using OneNote to run my D&D game. . .
A Side Quest
Winter 2022
SIDEQUEST changed everything for me. It opened new doors and showed me what I wanted to be doing with Icarus, which was writing cool stuff and publishing books.
I am so deeply proud of everything that was published during the 'zine's 3 year run, and had my health not made circumstances unsustainable, I would have loved to have done one more annual!
Award Winner
Summer 2025
If you'd have asked me six months ago if I cared about awards I'd have replied with an emphatic no.
But winning the UK Enterprise Award earlier this year has re-framed the way I look at my entire creative purpose. Being recognized for my efforts in making TTRPGs as accessible as possible made me realize just how important that goal is to me, especially having found myself diagnosed with a variety of ailments over the last few years.
Getting that award helped give me context for my "mission" here with Icarus, and I think that everything I make going forward from this point on is going to be so much better as a result.
There's been plenty of struggles over the last decade, and I absolutely wouldn't still be here if not for any number of sources of privilege and support from so many people, but I am damn proud to be celebrating 10 years as an independent creative in the tabletop space.
Here's to 10 more!
Much love
Anto
