I would've loved to be able to launch this endeavour before Cohost closes, but I also would've really loved to have launched it at any other point over the last 18+ months, and would have done so if not for multiple payment processors making it incredibly difficult for me to process money, to the point where my day-to-day is spent worrying about what trivial purchase might send my account back into purgatory. (The ETA date I keep throwing around is based on what I'm hoping will be a final resolution of certain Pxypxl issues come December, but it's not like I wasn't already given multiple assurances that my problems were over...)
As of right now, I'm not prepped for a formal reveal, but I didn't want to leave this place without giving yall something, so in addition to the follow-and-forget links found above, I figured I could at least bash out a synopsis for what I'm trying to do, the services I'm trying to provide and the community I want to foster. This'll all go on the website once I go fully public, I guess, but I'm happy to leave it to Cohost for now.
tl;dr: I'm starting a DIY game publishing label that's focused on providing devs with a venue for low-intensity, low-stakes projects, helping veteran devs reintroduce their games to new or international audiences and cultivating an ecosystem for niche subgenres beyond the morass of Steam; I have a few games lined up, and I'd like to sign more.
The DIY games space needs more "demo deals": I've recently seen a lot of people decrying how the indie scene's dead because nobody's willing to fund "cheap" two-million-dollar projects anymore... and yeah, I understand that $2M isn't going to stretch very far in the hands of a salaried multi-person studio, but do yall understand that just 1%, or even 0.01% of that budget would be literally life-saving to a ton of solo devs? Moreover, do you know how many small, weird, experimental or otherwise niche game ideas are being shelved due to the commercial pressure on devs of all sizes to only spend their time on safer, more conservative, "polished" games that stand the best chance of recouping (and still might flop, ain't no safe bets)? Not only do I want to directly support the production of smaller games that can be made quickly, recoup quickly and aren't burdened with the responsibility of ensuring the long-time livelihoods of dozens of people, I also want to dispel whatever sentiments exist around people making small games for small audiences and turning a small profit—forget "prestige", forget whatever aspersions one might carry against games not sold and marketed a certain way to certain people in certain places and forget the corporate play-acting from indies whose idea of independences only stretches as far as who gets all the money when they're done. Compelling, inventive, intelligent games can be made by tiny teams on tiny budgets, and those projects ought not be corrupted or snuffed by commercial pressures.
Niche games can and should thrive outside of the mainstream: I've seen so many folks in niche communities tie themselves in knots trying to figure out why their tastes aren't being shared by wider audiences, or how to best sell their games to newcomers, or whatever, and I think many of them are just unwilling to accept that some things aren't unpopular for lack of awareness but for lack of interest, and that a lot of the rationales people might share for why they or others are turned off by something are ultimately just eight hundred slightly-more-polite ways of saying "idgaf". Nowhere is that more evident than Steam, where the overwhelming majority of games are not only buried but the algorithm but outright subsumed by current fads, and thus condemned to sink with them through no fault of their own, and very few of the big-pants "realist" arguments about ~install base~ or ~mindshare~ are able to pave over the myriad other burdens placed upon small devs to contend with Steam and only Steam. To that end, I'm not interested in publishing on Steam, and my intent is to work with people who are also looking to forge paths away from Steam, be they via existing DIY platforms like itch, direct sales, physical/in-person opportunities and any or all alternatives that might arise. (I can't imagine many people browsing Cohost right now are going to disagree with the notion that sharing something with a small community of supportive, informed and passionate people is incredibly enriching, both emotionally and in terms of tangible solidarity—I certainly wouldn't be anywhere without communities like these, and I'm sure many of you feel similarly.)
There are old games out there that deserve their just due: Most of the games I'm working on right now are by Japanese devs, and among them are games that received some level of global recognition in their day that their creators weren't able to fully enjoy, or even comprehend—they might see a youtube playthrough with tens of thousands of views and then lament their game having only double-digit sales or download numbers, or stumble across a forum thread or blog comments section with hundreds of posts about their game but not be able to discern the tenor of the discussion, or observe some other indicator that their game is being played by people and/or making an impact that they're not fully privy to. I'd like to introduce and reintroduce these games to the global audience in a way that gives them a direct conduit to the original creator, facilitates discussion and feedback between the creator and players, lets players financially compensate these creators (which they might not have been able to do back in the day, even if they wanted to) and allows the creator to fully appreciate the impact of their work.
Games should be made by people, actually: The rise of AI has unfornately encouraged a rise in DIY devs resorting to AI abuse in order to quickly produce assets, or to cover for their own insecurities as artists; some conflate the use of AI to that of free-license/public-domain assets, and some are just broke (or just cheap). Fuck that: we all know plenty of capable, willing, talented folk who can provide whatever service one might need, and I want to give devs the resources and the connections to bring in pinch-hitters to enhance their games wherever possible, and to spare their games from being tainted with AI art or MTL'd nonsense or whatever. You, and your community, deserve better.
Some of yall need to put up or shut up: I've been a part of niches whose games of choice were primarily proliferated and shared by a mix of preservationists, crate-diggers and cheapskates, and those communities have traditionally housed a subset of folk with a long list of purportedly ethical stances against commercially-available games that ultimately amount to just not wanting to pay for stuff, and wanting to complain over all else. Being the petty fucker that I am, I want to cut off the escape routes for those people: if I make [game x] available on an easy-to-find, easy-to-use platform, with no DRM, no [insert obnoxious bugbear about corporates or indie gentrification or whatever], conspicuous financial compensation to the original creator (with a higher cut than if they'd self-published on Steam, even) and extremely flexible pricing that may or may not include the option to pay absolutely nothing, will I be able to get you assholes to finally shut up and play something?
None of the devs I'm in talks with right now want me to talk publicly amount figures or percentages, but what I can say is that I am by no means promising them massive returns or offering huge advances—they're working with me on the strength of the vision, and for that I remain both grateful and determined to ensure their works are greeted with the reception they deserve. I should also mention that I'm not just in talks to handle games but also books/zines (both translating and producing from scratch), music etc so stay tuned for those, too.
To be completely candid, I'm staring down the barrel of having to assume carer duties for a family member from next year and I have no idea how that's going to affect my livelihood or my already-tiny amount of disposable income... the sales targets for the games I've secured are very modest, and yet I'm more worried than ever that I won't hit 'em, so this feels less like a now-or-never moment and more of a two-years-ago-or-why-bother misstep. We'll see, I suppose.
I don't intend to share this post anywhere else, nor to talk about my plans until I'm fully able to pull the trigger: the next time you hear about ALL CITY SLOP SHOP, it'll come with at least one game announcement, and if you don't hear about it again, or you see me flailing on all those other SNS that I insisted I wouldn't touch, it'll be because I've completely given up and have resorted to trying to spin being a news source for low-hanging game news aggregators into some sort of side-hustle. Until we meet again...
