2023 was a Terrible Year to Look for a Publisher.... (and 2024 is Worse)

This is AMAZING to see publicly. So few devs can afford to publicly gripe about publishers as shipping games is tenuous enough as it is. It's insane the olympic levels of shittery that publishers pull, even once you have a deal, and it normally stays behind closed doors. Thank you so much for making this.

On the ghosting thing... I work for a video and animation production company in the UK. Ghosting is so commonplace with deals we thought we'd basically won, we've practically got a whole manual of processes on how to handle those cases now. It's been going on for years. I don't know if it's an exact parallel to the games industry, but it seems pretty typical in the business and marcomms world for whatever reason. The people we speak to are often trying to clinch multiple deals simultaneously, they may agree to one that makes your deal irrelevant, and not even tell you (either out of embarrassment, apathy or just being too busy). Sometimes they just get word from above and their priorities totally change, and sometimes they just move company and don't set up any automatic replies. This is all to say, don't be too disheartened by it. It's pretty normal as far as I know for these types of deals. It's best to just start building a system for dealing with ghosting instead and, like you said, making sure you're not putting all your eggs in one basket and still have other conversations open. I guarantee they're doing the same!

These videos, the dev journey stuff - they are completely invaluable from the perspective of an indie dev team. So, thank you for that, even if what you've found isn't, you know: a good sign. Gotta go lateral with it - heard, chef.... I'm not saying we're going to rob a bank, just to be clear.

I don't think Kickstarter is dead. It's not a multi-million dollar guarantee if you show a pre-rendered trailer like it was in 2012, but I've seen at least a handful of indie games break six figures with a good plan. My only critical note though is that you may want to have a more concrete plan for what singleplayer elements will be available though, because multiplayer-only games, especially in the indie space, rarely last long. I've pretty much stopped buying them because of how hard it is to get into them months or sometimes weeks after launch.

I worked in a small studio for about 10 years. One publisher in Japan ghosted us 80% of the way through the project. They stopped responding to emails, and pretended to no longer understand English on the phone. It was weird. We switched publishers. One who was interested, and who we eventually signed with, management had to request that they finally pay us the money they owed us for the previous game they'd published, before we'd sign for the new one... Yeah, that's right, they might just refuse to actually pay too. They have all the power.

I really wish more people who have a lot of opinions and influence would do what you're doing. Too many journalist talk a lot about games and give consumers the wrong impressions of how things are made or a false sense of knowledge. I feel it more people knew how much work goes into every game, they'd give more respect to the games that are made and the creators that created them.

Gamedev with 14 years in the industry, both working on games and in publishing - a few observations: Business culture sucks, straight up. The ghosting is awful, and unfortunately, I think it's sort of engrained in the culture. It's a known thing that sometimes deals just go sour. That can be because sometimes the lengthy back-and-forth gives investors and pubs cold feet or something else with one of their other deals blows up - literally anything that can introduce even the slightest bit of risk will make a publisher back out. That being said, I recommend if you're reading this and also trying to pitch a game, then your #1 priority should be showing why your game is fun, and #2 should be illustrating clearly why it's not a risk to sign your game. Second, it's important to keep in mind that a publisher is also thinking about how much they need to invest for marketing/PR/release management/community/key art/trailers and all sorts of other operating costs, so while you think your asking price is low there's actually a ton of other costs the pub needs to consider. Your asking price is actually the cost of labor + everything else you need support with. When a pub sees that you're a small team or a solo dev they may be making assumptions about how much support you need, so being upfront about exactly what your needs are (you don't necessarily need to estimate the costs for them, just list what you need) will prevent a publisher from making any assumptions. Again, illustrate why your game is low risk whenever possible. And last - please, please, please do not go to Kickstarter. I've seen other comments suggesting that because tabletop and comics still do well on KS - which is absolutely true - this is no longer the case for games and has not been that way for many years. From a public image perspective, there have been so many horror stories and burned backers that it can be difficult to get funding in the games category specifically. You're also up against years of declining Kickstarter goals in which devs are attempting to look successful quickly to gain the more realistic goal number they need through stretch goals, but then you end up with a lot of projects that ask for too little and can't complete their project, then burned backers etc. rinse and repeat. You also have goals that are too high, and in that case there's some sort of odd psychology around the goal number where backers show up to your page, assume you'll never hit that goal, and instead of pledging they just walk away. The worst part of it is that whether your KS campaign hit its goal or not, you've just introduced even more risk for a publisher who likely doesn't want to take on the burden of fulfilling the promise you've made to your backers, or now has clear evidence that your campaign failed and thus is no longer worth investing in. Not to mention the amount of time (weeks if not months) you're diverting from working on your game towards working on your campaign. There are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot with Kickstarter, and there's a reason why there are consultants out there who specifically work on setting up campaigns. Hope that helps anyone browsing through the comments. This isn't meant to discourage anybody, definitely the opposite - I hope it arms you with the information you need to be successful in an incredibly difficult market. Good luck out there! Edit: sorry, actually one last thing - Danny and Alex mentioned not knowing what 1.0 is for Stunt Derby. You should have a pretty clear picture of what 1.0 is in your pitch. Leave no questions unanswered. Open questions are risk etc. etc. you get it I'm a broken record now.

Ghosting is such a huge problem in a lot of industries. I work in music and the number of times managers or labels will full on ghost you after positive conversations is insane. One time talked to a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, was going great and they asked for stream numbers. Gave them it and immediately cut off contact DESPITE THEM LIKING THE MUSIC.

BigMode , just for funzies

Bless you, Danny. I respect that this whole thing literally started off as a fun light hearted goof, and now you're earnestly trying to get it fully made.

It's not just in biz dev relations that the one-sided power dynamics exist, it's there across most of the industry, even within first-party. Unfortunately incentives and rigid hierarchies, as well as a lack of transparency, create an ecosystem where this behavior can really thrive.

the dating comparison is on point there are few things as soul crushing as being an average looking guy on a dating app, i cant imagine what having livelihood on the line instead would be like

I love this inside look at the process. Talking about the game itself though... I don't think that game will sell well at all - even with the noclip/Danny O name attached to it. It does nothing unique, the gameplay isn't deep in any real way and its basically a very low tech/budget version of Trackmania which is already struggling - even while F2P and a 1000x more polished. I don't want to knock the effort and work that has been put into it, but it really feels like something that could've been done by a solo dev in a month or two - especially since the graphics are extremely basic flat shapes. Its a game that people would've loved to play back in the 80's/90's when there wasn't a quality game worth your time releasing every 20 seconds. It also feels like it entirely relies on multiplayer to be any sort of actual fun which is a big no-no for indie games. To ask for $200k is a tall order. I really doubt anyone would be happy paying more than $9 for this game, so you're expecting at least 20k sales to break even from funding alone. God knows what other costs have already gone into it. Basically I feel like the decision to go forward with this type of game was a really poor one as even with your extra publicity behind it, there's an extremely low chance its ever commercially viable.

FYI there's a typo on the "How Does It Play?" slide. Driving that just feel(s) right. ❤️

Ghosting even happens in published products: about 4 months ago, Oni Press did a Humble Bundle with Scott Pilgrim and associated comics with extremely low quality files provided. After customers complained, Humble Reached out several times but Oni Press completely ghosted them.

Thanks for posting this guys. We're working on the game Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends right now and we've experienced basically everything you talk about here, including the very weird power dynamics and the ghosting (OH the GHOSTING!) We had a successful Kickstarter in 2021 that got us some development funds that we've been able to use to get demos together for an upcoming "act 1" early access version. But we also kept our day jobs since (as you say) crowdfunding isn't what it used to be, even with a great game and doing all the best practices you're supposed to do. That all being said - everything is chugging along consistently and it will release (we just put out a new backer demo), it's just a slower process.

Thanks once again for such an honest and raw look at the messy, chaotic behind-the-scenes of trying to get a videogame made and released. I'm really enjoying every time you folks talk about Stunt Derby and shed light on the creation process. Regarding the "dating" analogy, I think it's slightly off. Having an asymmetrical relationship where it can fall apart at any second, they might ghost you and stop talking to you, and where the main thing you want is for them to agree to a contract to give you the money you need, that's not online dating...that's job hunting. What you're describing is trying to find a good job in today's climate.

Nooooooooooooooooooo, there's typos on a slide ("driving that just feel right", "fidelty" and "boundries")

It may be a bad year for publishing but considering you guys "don't really know what the game is yet" it may be too early to try and get a publishing deal.

Shoutout to Alex, me and a group of friends keep playing (and modding) "Hockey?" all these years later.