As far as I understand it, the vast majority of ‘successful’ indie studios are in the same boat. You need to continual decent hits to keep afloat in an ever turbulent and flooding market. Even if the next title is successful, they already mentioned the other looming problem, burnout. You might be able to push yourself through one game, two is a struggle, and very few make it to three.
To me, and maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but this feels like a very foreboding article.
Shovel Knight is one of the most successful indie games ever released. We’re not talking of a “moderately” successful game that sold a few hundred thousand copies, like Hyper Lighr Drifter or CrossCode: SK sold over 2.5m copies back in 2019, and I’d wager at least as much since then. How do you go from there to almost bankruptcy?
They did a lot of extra work on it without charging for it, and it’s been a long time since they put out a hit. California salaries and real estate are expensive.
I would ordinarily put my top-level thoughts in the “Body” part of the link submission, but I’ve found that a lot of people here only read that box without reading the article, so I’ll put them in a comment here.
“Your company is only as strong as your last game,” says Celia Schilling, marketing director at Yacht Club.
This is true when you’re a single project studio.
By 2024, Yacht Club finally acknowledged that the two-team structure wasn’t working. It laid off some employees to cut expenses and paused development on the Shovel Knight sequel so everyone could work on Mina the Hollower, with Velasco taking over as director. What was once considered a less ambitious side project is now the company’s largest game ever.
My read on this is that the the two-team structure wasn’t the problem, but scope creep was, not to mention the bad fit for initial project direction that they acknowledged elsewhere in the article. I’m quite sure Mina the Hollower will hit their sales target of 200k copies. Hopefully they scale back up responsibly after that.
Great article, but a very painful one to read. Mina the Hollower was one of my most anticipated games this year, and it sucked that it got delayed the same month it was supposed to release in.
What was once considered a less ambitious side project is now the company’s largest game ever. “We basically had to redo everything,” D’Angelo says. If they’d all stuck together from the beginning, Gordon says, “we would’ve finished it two to three years ago.”
So it sounds like the game got delayed because they were split into two teams. One was working on a 3D Shovel Knight sequel, and one was working on Mina the Hollower. The person directing the latter was struggling and slowed down the project, so they fired a bunch of people, focused on Mina, and basically restarted its development.
The good news is that if things go to plan, they said they’ll revisit the 3D Shovel Knight game. I’m really looking forward to that.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
As far as I understand it, the vast majority of ‘successful’ indie studios are in the same boat. You need to continual decent hits to keep afloat in an ever turbulent and flooding market. Even if the next title is successful, they already mentioned the other looming problem, burnout. You might be able to push yourself through one game, two is a struggle, and very few make it to three.
To me, and maybe I’m being a bit cynical, but this feels like a very foreboding article.
Shovel Knight is one of the most successful indie games ever released. We’re not talking of a “moderately” successful game that sold a few hundred thousand copies, like Hyper Lighr Drifter or CrossCode: SK sold over 2.5m copies back in 2019, and I’d wager at least as much since then. How do you go from there to almost bankruptcy?
They did a lot of extra work on it without charging for it, and it’s been a long time since they put out a hit. California salaries and real estate are expensive.
I would ordinarily put my top-level thoughts in the “Body” part of the link submission, but I’ve found that a lot of people here only read that box without reading the article, so I’ll put them in a comment here.
This is true when you’re a single project studio.
My read on this is that the the two-team structure wasn’t the problem, but scope creep was, not to mention the bad fit for initial project direction that they acknowledged elsewhere in the article. I’m quite sure Mina the Hollower will hit their sales target of 200k copies. Hopefully they scale back up responsibly after that.
Great article, but a very painful one to read. Mina the Hollower was one of my most anticipated games this year, and it sucked that it got delayed the same month it was supposed to release in.
So it sounds like the game got delayed because they were split into two teams. One was working on a 3D Shovel Knight sequel, and one was working on Mina the Hollower. The person directing the latter was struggling and slowed down the project, so they fired a bunch of people, focused on Mina, and basically restarted its development.
The good news is that if things go to plan, they said they’ll revisit the 3D Shovel Knight game. I’m really looking forward to that.