SQYD.studio

When we started SQYD.studio we had plans to treat is seriously as a business. There’s this romantic ideal version of capitalism that I’m fond of. Where companies compete to make the best product they can and sell it at a fair market price. I wanted to do that too. I wanted to make the best games I could and sell them to people. I think that this idealized version of capitalism still exists somewhere, or perhaps could again sometime in the future, but for now- for us- the idea of starting small with a good idea is grinding up against cold economic reality. Everything cost money, and if we want to keep making games (we do) we need the cash to do so.

Call me naive- I think it’s probably a good descriptor- but I do believe our games can and will find their place in the market someday. When? That’s the question we’ve been grappling with. If we had more dollars we could spend more time working on our games. We took a look at our principles. and we considered some options:

1. Look for a publisher – They might be able to help with funding, but we’d have to spend time competing with everyone else who has a great game prototype and is looking for a publisher (which is a lot of excellent people with awesome ideas). If we did luck into a deal it would put us in the position where we would have to work to a deadline and perhaps give up some creative control. Publishers are investors. Investors need to see a timely return. No shade, just facts. Honestly, everything I’ve learned about game dev tells me it’s not something that can’t be rushed without sacrifice*.
2. Arts Grants – I’ve written a fair amount of formal proposals in my career. Grant applications work similarly to an RFP process. There are arts grants available we could apply for. Really though, we end up with the same struggles as we would with a publisher. It takes time to apply, we’d have to get lucky, and whatever council provides the grant would want to see a product on a reasonable timeline.
3. Crowdfund – We could do a kickstarter? See if the interest is out there. Take cash in advance from the people who believe in our idea. But this has the same issues. It gives people who aren’t us a financial stake in work that still needs to be done. This puts pressure on the creative process we don’t want to work under.

So, after rejecting our funding options, we really only have one way forward. After talking it out, we agree it’s the best one. We push off our self-imposed release schedules, pick up more hours at our day jobs, and go back to treating game dev as a hobby- and not as a business (or even a side-gig).

This is going to slow our pace a lot. If you follow this blog, you’ve already seen post velocity drop like a rock. This doesn’t mean we are giving up on WOFG! or BACKFIRE or any of the as-of-yet un-started games we want to make someday. We love games as an artistic media. We have a lot of ideas we’d like to explore. Really though we like it most when we are doing it out of passion and not out of survival- and really we will make better games (albeit more slowly) when we have the financial stress sorted elsewhere.

With all that said- you’ll likely see fewer posts here, on our Steam community pages, or on our socials. From here out, we are changing every deadline we’ve set for our studio to “when it is good and ready.”

Nothing is being abandoned. We will share updates when we have them. We are still developing. We are just giving ourselves the cash, time, and creative bandwidth to develop games at our own pace.

Thanks everyone and anyone who’s been cheering us on. Your support has meant so much over the past few years. Hopefully, you continue to follow along with our work as SQYD.studio enters this new “super chill” phase.

We’ll catch you in the next blog (whenever that may be),

Conor & Joel Rochon

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* Maybe this is why the AAA industry seems to be cracking under pressure as budgets balloon. Cash isn’t often good for creativity. Could be a topic for a future essay, if I ever collect my thoughts long enough to write it.