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Things seem to be ramping up for us (in the best way). We’re about to launch our first game, we’ve signed our second and well underway with development, and now there’s a third.

When does this start to become too much?

When you see opportunities come your way that you don’t want to pass up, the only option is to double down… somehow. We adore the games we sign, and taking on more means that each child inherently gets a little less love.

And that’s the hard thing we’re coming to terms with (yes, lower down is the announcement of our new game).

Balancing a Business

We’re in this for the love of the game, literally. We chose to dive into publishing because we really do believe we can make an impact. Not just for players, but for devs. And we naively thought that we’d be able to keep this small and dedicated to handful of games. And whilst it is, there’s an incredible amount of work — both the creative and paper kind — that we didn’t see coming.

The business part of this all is real. We want to make games that stick with people, but every person involved is also hoping to make enough money to fund their life, and their next game. Almost a year in (wild, we started working last September on Feed the Scorchpot), and right now is where we are getting the accounting set up properly.

The agreements, the store fees, the taxes, reporting, region-locking, the list goes on…

Look. No-one really likes dealing with that stuff, but it is part of what makes a business run. And to bring this back to the point I’m wanting to make is: when you take all of this into account, whatever % you sign in a deal is not what you take home once you do the accounting. It’s far less that you imagine. From a $15 sale on Steam, Indieformers nets (after the accounting) about $2-3 per sale.

We want most of the money to go to the developer. We see it as our job to make sure the developer can make their next game. But where a developer gets to focus primarily on their game, we need to split ours. Unless we get a huge volume of sales (which is entirely possible), betting on one game to keep us in business is risky. And it is making more sense to us each day why publishers are on the lookout for their next game. Publishers work with volume. Both in sales and in games they have in their catalogue.

And although we don’t ask for this, we can also see why publishers out there go for a 50/50 split. This stuff is expensive, and at the end of the day it’s business. With where we want to go, and how we want to support games, making sure we have enough cashflow is top priority.

And so, how do you keep it all going?

Well, right now we just suck up the extra hours and make it work. But we are hoping we can see enough sales that allow us to expand our team to give our developers an even bigger push of support. But… time will tell if we can do this.

NOW. Onto the next game we’re announcing!

Spin or Die

Sounds harsh, and it kinda is. Spin for the cards you want, hope that your D20 allows you to go first, and survive the area.

Josh posted on reddit about the Kickstarter learnings, and got absolutely roasted in the comments. Always a fun experience when you essentially roast yourself, and then people double down. The internet can be a wonderful place, no?

One person, Matus, saw the post and looked up Indieformer. He liked the vibe and got in touch. We had a couple of chats, played his game, and now we’re here — publishing it. It’s got awesome bones, great art, but a little way to go in bringing it all together. We’ll be working with Matus closely to get his game in great shape, and in the mean time you can join the Discord for it and say hello. We’ll need testers soon!

We’re getting pretty full right now with games, but if you do have one you want to slide by us, we’re all ears!

Josh & Clem