The serious business of making games

Ya, I’m not sure what makes this guy qualified to do any of this stuff.

Playing games, or criticizing games, is very far away from MAKING games.

I suppose, but the games journalist critic to developer pipeline is pretty well established at this point.

I think they have a pretty noble goal. They want to fund small developers to get their games and ideas published. It seems like they want to get the “qualified” people in to make the games. They are a publisher, not a developer.

Yogscast has done basically the same thing, and I would assume it has been successful for them, as they continue to fund and publish games.

He’s not making them, though, is he?

I imagine the most he’ll be involved in making them is giving his opinion on stuff, maybe some suggestions like so many idea people.

I mean, like any publisher would do.

But he’s saying that as the publisher, he wants to be involved in development, and he’s claiming that he knows what works and what never works, etc.

I’d argue that he doesn’t actually know those things.

Probably not. But then I think it would leave him in good company, haha.

I’d say he probably knows as well or better than any “I don’t play games” executive in traditional publishers, and those executives I’m pretty sure give their opinions.

Very true.

He’s going to be the money and marketing guy. Not much different from any other indie game publisher.

I’d trust his opinion on what works as a good game over some businessman that’s doing it only because his kids told him how much money Roblox makes. That said, who knows how good his advice will be for the actual business side of making games?

Dunkey is that dude that wumpus kept going on and on about, isn’t he? Like the only video game reviewer he trusts. Which immediately made him suspect, in my eyes.

John Riccitiello had his finger on the pulse of gaming!

Ya, that’s another thing…I’m not sure why a youtuber should be considered an authority on literally any of this stuff. He doesn’t have technical development experience, and he ALSO doesn’t have any business experience.

I dunno know about that. He probably makes a pretty good living from streaming and posting videos - enough at least, to start publishing indie games!

Dunkey’s opinions are usually pretty good, he has shifted towards a bit more “critical” content lately, putting out reviews of games in more serious videos.

A long way from LOL meme videos of the past.

I think it is probably a great opportunity for an indie dev with similar tastes and ideas to him, to partner with someone who “gets” what you are trying to do.

It was a little “cringe” that he mentioned he wanted to be hands on with the dev, which is what a lot of indie devs don’t like about most publishers, but I guess we will see how that works.

This is untrue. Any person making a living on Youtube has business experience. You have to create your own LLC or some entity, he sells merch on a website, he definitely has some practical business experience.

Even if all he does is give “make it more like the games that I enjoy” advice, if he also provides publicity and funding, hey, why not?

Hope you like Mario games.

Eh, maybe. I feel like that’s a very different type of business.

Either way though, I don’t wanna sound real down on the guy. I applaud him giving it a shot. Who knows, he might pull it off.

One thing that kind of bugged me, was that he was listing all these games that he liked, kind of like he was saying, “I totally discovered these games,” but they were all pretty much indie games that were universally acclaimed. So it made it like, “I’m gonna make games which are like the good games everyone likes!”

That can’t be worse than “I’m taking this franchise you all love and shoving RMT/lootboxes/whatever in it because I love money!”.

Yup, I was just coming to whisper the name Bobby Kotick.

This is true… anyone who pushes back against the industry monetization practices is good.