Philip Tibitoski ( Bugsnax/Octodad, pictured below) noted: “We worked full time day jobs from 2010 until Octodad made money in 2014. My partners worked on it full time by living off of money they saved from working in AAA… Once we had… demos we secured combined ~$500k in funding from a platform deal and investors, and used that to launch Early Access.” Then I worked on it during evenings and weekends as that's what I could afford. And the replies really illuminate how tricky it is to get your project going, and how many studios have been gradually bootstrapped.įirstly, here’s some folks from multi-million $ grossing games weighing in on how they did it:Īdam Bromell ( Astroneer) said, in part: “We each put $10k in to the company. There’s no doubt that built-in privilege - whether gender/racial, financial, or other, plays a significant part in this. So many marginalised devs in my timeline and DMs rn who are baffled by how you do it.” The Twitter conversation was started by Loveshark’s Rosa Carbó-Mascarel, who asked, simply: “How did you fund your first prototype BEFORE getting publisher funding or investment? Especially interested in hearing candid answers from studios led by white men.
how on Earth do you get your prototype funded? Can’t do game discovery if you don’t have a game. (It’s a high-concept idea that took a relatively short amount of time and money to put together.)īut wanted to feature a notable prototype/vertical slice screenshot, since an excellent social media conversation expanded on a recent conversation on what game publishers could be doing better. Perhaps starting this section with a screenshot of the game jam version of Baba Is You is missing the point.