RE: All the talk of games funding. Trash Goblin ticked the box for pretty much everything publishers are looking for. An experienced team, with a polished prototype of a new twist in a popular genre. 76 publishers turned it down (Whilst wasting months of our dev time and all Spilt Milk's runway). - ThreadSky

simoroth.bsky.social • 89 days ago

RE: All the talk of games funding.

Trash Goblin ticked the box for pretty much everything publishers are looking for. An experienced team, with a polished prototype of a new twist in a popular genre. 76 publishers turned it down (Whilst wasting months of our dev time and all Spilt Milk's runway).

Comments

simoroth.bsky.social•89 days ago

So if you think you can take a design doc and some concept art to a publisher and walk out with a £750k cheque to go make your first game as a small studio or solo developer, I would very much reconsider your plans here.

tomnullpointer.bsky.social•89 days ago

Yup, after 9months of pitching through 23-24 (and getting generally good results but terrible offers) I ended up cancelling the project and pivoting to something that I could still finish myself if I got no funding. Luckily I did in the end <3 outersloth.. but boy it was not a fun time...

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

I remember when Andrew first showed it to me on his way into the Games Finance Market and I thought "this is getting signed today." Boy did I underestimate the rapidity of decline in funding.

caraellison.bsky.social•89 days ago

Everyone I spoke to about our game also told us we were getting signed on the spot. One pub told us ‘you’ll get the money somewhere else for sure’. One playtested our game internally, it got 10s across the board, they still didn’t sign us, continued to email us every month to ask if there was ‘more’

simoroth.bsky.social•89 days ago

The "more" bit really gets me. Has happened with every indie game I've worked for. Really insidious, and probably kills entire studios as they leech resources away from development to make yet-another-demo for publisher trying to keep their options open.

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

Yeah. I told myself to never make what they asked for knowing this trap. But ONCE they said the only issue was what it would look like polished and I fell for it and regretted it when it became polished and they were like "we don't like the genre." THAT DIDN'T CHANGE!

simoroth.bsky.social•89 days ago

Ah yes, the "We're not signing games in this area at the moment." After 6 months of back and forth.

caraellison.bsky.social•89 days ago

Yeah don’t do what they ask. Ever. We also changed our pitch deck according to feedback and we’d get feedback the next week asking for the thing back we just changed. They don’t actually know anything they just have to say something

caraellison.bsky.social•89 days ago

I also think it’s a studio killer. The problem is that it’s not the scouts with great taste that get to sign the things. It’s the finance and portfolio people, who look at raw numbers and I’m convinced don’t really care about quality as much. But of course I don’t know.

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

I generally read "more" as just "if this becomes huge on social media, we want to sign it so we'll keep a vague non-committal position, but we need to say SOMETHING." Again, maybe I'm too jaded.

samwrotedown.bsky.social•89 days ago

Back when I was pitching we had a gameplay heavy / dynamic demo, people loved it but said "we'd prefer a scripted / final art demo", but then bumped into another dev who had that kind of demo and they were being asked for a less scripted more dynamic playable demo. 🙃

caraellison.bsky.social•89 days ago

They want a finished game. Which is impossible to give.

samwrotedown.bsky.social•89 days ago

I came to understand that in the end, it was getting so silly.

chriswilson.dev•89 days ago

This. It's been very upsetting.

Them: 'We just need you to make X better'

Me: 'That's what your money is for!?'

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

Yeah. I came out of one meeting yesterday where they said "This is a no brainer, let's do it for twice the money" and I ran into Andrew immediately after and said "I'm pretty sure that's a no." That's how jaded I am now. I was right.

seraphell.bsky.social•89 days ago

You're saying they were just being diplomatic? Like they didn't want the awkwardness of a no? Or is it like, they were overselling the investment so they had an excuse to dip?

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

I genuinely think sometimes scouts get super excited about a game and they think it'll be an easy sell up the ladder. And then they try to sell it up the ladder and there are thousands of spikes (often unknown) that a game can get caught on before getting signed.

von.bsky.social•89 days ago

That's so cruel 😭

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

I cannot get over how traumatizing that could have been for a less experienced dev who took it as face value. Someone promising you every dream you've ever had and it just vanishing into nothingness.

oneofmoo.bsky.social•89 days ago

Oops. I have NO IDEA why I wrote "yesterday." It was not yesterday. It was a long time ago. Ha ha. My brain is not good.

thebenbot.bsky.social•89 days ago

It’s jarring how the same story happens with VCs too in startup land.

They have no incentive to be truthful, but every incentive to keep you liking them.

jagerbeast.bsky.social•89 days ago

Should have said, "yes, there is!!" Then make em pay to play.

caraellison.bsky.social•89 days ago

We kind of did say ‘without investment there is no further game’ but it’s not what they want to hear.

pasculator.itch.io•88 days ago

750K is a lot of Activisions to be honest. Where is Microsoft gonna find all that money? Between the cushions of their couch?

simoroth.bsky.social•88 days ago

I once watched some games executives spend the budget of an indie game on cocktails in London. 🥲

pasculator.itch.io•88 days ago

Did the cocktails taste well mixed with tears?

krriyo.bsky.social•88 days ago

Talk to https://www.joystickventures.com. They have signed concepts. I know that for a fact

sinclaire149.bsky.social•89 days ago

Pity you can't take the prototype and use it for crowd funding n try n publish on your own

simoroth.bsky.social•89 days ago

I the end we did! You can get it on Steam now! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2407830/Trash_Goblin/

sinclaire149.bsky.social•89 days ago

Dude I am so checking it out 😀

sinclaire149.bsky.social•89 days ago

That fking sucks sorry to hear that

jasmo.bsky.social•89 days ago

Just to highlight how hard it is, how many publishers did you pitch overall to get those 76 rejections?

cuirass.net•88 days ago

Once I finished a game and had secured sales etc I expected it would be easier to get a publisher to bring it elsewhere and, definitely not! Funding is a complicated thing.

onesneakycat.bsky.social•89 days ago

How so?

The game isn't a live service and isn't flooded with overpriced digital crayons.

Also, it's being developed to be a fully working game at launch.

Absolutely not what current publishers are looking for.

I feel for the team.

Game is definitely something I'd play... on console.

indiegameclinic.bsky.social•89 days ago

This is not true; there are publishers who focus on indie premium games and do not do GaaS titles at all. Everyone in this thread knows who they’ve pitched to and what games that publisher puts out.

onesneakycat.bsky.social•89 days ago

Don't read my reply as a game dev, but as a player.

This is what we feel. Publishers don't care about quality.

Not all, true, but you said it yourself: 70+.

That number is too damn high and you can't launch a game without a publisher, especially on console.

indiegameclinic.bsky.social•88 days ago

Dev vs Player is irrelevant in this situation; I responded to you because what you said was incorrect. You cannot generalise about what publishers want [different publishers take different sorts of games] and it's arrogant to assume you can tell these developers why their pitches weren't accepted.

themrx.bsky.social•88 days ago

Sounds like everyone needs to start charging 1k just to do the discussion meetings lol. Maybe then theyd stop fuckin around.

modicool.bsky.social•89 days ago

I mean, can't you publish yourself on Steam? Why go through one of these?

simoroth.bsky.social•89 days ago

We did. We crowdfunded and then went onto Steam. But before you can launch a game, you must make it. And to make a game costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or pounds up front.

hapiru-project.bsky.social•89 days ago

What's the process for self publishing on Steam these days anyway? Wondering because if it's as rough as it sounds out there we might end up having to self pub our VN too.

fuzzforce.bsky.social•88 days ago

You give steam $100 and they give you a store page. You fill in the assets for the store page and upload the game build and when they're both reviewed you can launch whenever you want

retrorich.bsky.social•89 days ago

What was the main feedback for publishers not signing on the spot? or signing at all?

deanoc.bsky.social•89 days ago

Sadly also true inside the 'embrace' of a big corp

Team leadership with *multiple* multi-million sellers under there belts with a demo.

Has been signed *3* times due to restructuring killing the last deal

3 complete IP changes as 'new IP won't work'

Finally a public demo is dropping in 2-3 wks

eternalskiestcg.bsky.social•89 days ago

This is why we need to band together and help each other. If indie devs helped each other out, we wouldn't need the publishers as much, and they would have to offer better deals.

I was trying to push that by making a feed of only major updates from self published devs:

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5nzwupiq4llplmgrbdfwehlj/feed/aaajmienijl4w

eternalskiestcg.bsky.social•89 days ago

Money we can't help each other with, but publicity we can!

downieseb.bsky.social•88 days ago

Walked out of Gamescom last year feeling confident something would happen (deck, trailer, playable, business case) and was just ghosted by everyone who'd been willing to go further.

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