Dunkey Wants To Be A Publisher. As A Dev, I’m Concerned
Hi, I’m an independent games developer, and recently, I’ve been seriously considering what a partnership with a publisher would look like for me, so you might think that videogamedunkey’s new publishing company, Bigmode, launched at a perfect time for me. However, I’m sceptical. Before we get stuck in, I just want to be clear: I have nothing against Dunkey personally. I enjoy a lot of his videos. But when I’m trying to figure out whether I want to partner with a publisher, I need to know what value that publisher provides to developers. For any publisher without a history, that’s tricky, but I worry Bigmode is more focused on hyping up players than it’s interested in being good for developers. First, let’s look at the launch video.
Early on, Dunkey names a bunch of indie games he’s featured on his channel, many of which are undisputed greats, as evidence for his ability to see games that other people aren’t seeing. Cuphead, Rocket League, Celeste, Undertale, Hades, and other games like that. Almost all of the games he names are incredibly successful; they didn’t need him to find their audience. Also, many of them are self-published, so why do I need Bigmode?
Related: Dunkey's Indie Game Publisher Is Arrogant And Short-Sighted - I Hope It Works
On top of that, judging finished products is very different from judging unfinished or barely-started products. You might think that by playing so many games he “knows what ideas always work”, but the truth is that so much more goes into a game than just the ideas; arguably, that’s the least important part. Researching what games are out there that have ideas similar to yours is an important part of game development; it’s called market research, and it’s fairly straightforward to
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