I'm not a game developer. But this is true for all business. In the earlies of my business I made a ton of mistakes. I borrowed a lot of money I didn't need because I didn't know what I was doing. Now that I know what I'm doing I get investment offers constantly. Now that I know what I'm doing... I don't need investment. If you want to be successful you have to spend time learning how to be successful. Read books. Talk to people who are successful. Most importanty, DO THE WORK. If you have to work at Burger King while developing your game. GOOD. If you aren't confident enough that you will know what you're doing and be able to demonstrate it, nothing will change that. No amount of seed money, investments or loans will make you successful. Once you can make that demonstration of your business case though, the money is really the easy part by far.
@@oraz. In the beginning truth be told, investment probably isn't what you need. by the time you actually need it you already know where to find it. You can look into state and municipal small business grants. They are a hassle to get at first but they help you put your house in order and prepare the stuff you actually need to run a business.
In essence, get good at game development and the money won't be a problem. Then the challenge is to get good at game development before you can pay the bills doing it
@@fringelord How the hell did my statement even provoke this response is beyond me however fact of the matter is ... I .... would be a nervous wreck.... borrowing money... for a game....
I handle social situations with nervousness as a superpower. Any time I feel like I should be doing something and get nervous, I do it. Any time I promise I’ll do something, the nervousness makes it easy to do it. Any time I take money and promise to do something, nervousness makes it easy to do it. Ideally I’ll one day not need the nervousness and get the job done without it. But it’s fun. “We feel anxious because we care” - Dr. Eddie O’ Connor
Taken everything he said into account, getting funding is hard because even if you're good, you still need to find the people willing to fund you and convince them that they should fund you, as he said, "the problem". So no, getting the money isn't easy in the end even if you're good, especially because the surest way to prove your merit is by previous projects, which would be better and more successful if you had the funding for them. There's a lot of truth in what he says, but there's a lot of survivorship bias too.
"It's the kind of thing you when you tell people this they scoff at you and go back to talking on Twitter about how awesome Antifa is and how we need to destroy capitalism." ROFLMAO The more I listen to this guy the more I love him! Man, nobody talks like this in the game industry. They're all shrinking violets afraid of upsetting anybody, unless it's one of the prescribed groups that's socially acceptable to hate on.
I'm what you might consider a Blow fan, but this one is a little... silly 😛 Question (basically): How do you pitch your game at an early stage? Jon: Getting money is really easy and this is why... The hard part is just knowing how to pitch your game at an early stage which you won't know how to do until you're already successful. 😂
he says that you have to have something to pitch with, basically. I mean, its like going to kickstarter with a project that is actually interesting vs "this is my dream sidescrolling platformer".
JB is a pro veteran!... and he's just a fountain of wisdom.. it's just his wisdom isn't click baity or easy 'lowest common denominator' BS that's online these days.. I love how he's coming out anti-woke too!
Oh yeah, there's nothing reactionary or lowest common denominator about being "anti-woke" or "anti-anti-fascist." Also nothing click baity about advice on how to get funding when your advice is "be good so your begging is effective." Like... yeah, that's kind of just how asking for things works. If you're good and reliable, people recognize that.
In his world, everyone is connected with endless Californian techbro multimillionaire developers/venture capitalists. Needless to say. Thats not the case for 99.99% of the rest of the world. The being said, the general message of "to get money you need to have a proven track record, but if you have a proven track record, you most likely dont need the money" makes sense of course.
I think the idea is if you are a professional who could actually get the work done, you probably are. The reason Blow could make braid and the witness is because he spent decade(s) working behind the scenes in game and corporate development. Yes, their is a possibly you became a programming god locked in a basement with some textbooks and no internet connection. But their is only like a 50% cahnce even 1 person on the earth meets that criteria. In actual reality, become competent and you will know other competent people. Spend the time and work necessary to be competent enouhg to run your own game development studio and produce amazing games, on time and on budget, and you will have those acquaintances.
I understand Blow's initial dismissal of people who think capitalism is the problem and that it's easy to get funding if your willing to put in the work to make connections with people and ask for money. However, if I didn't have to worry about being able to pay for medical insurance or rent, I wouldn't need to borrow money or the amount of money I would need to borrow would be significantly less. If my taxes were being used adequately and not just for maintaining military bases in countries we haven't been at war with for 80 years *cough* Germany, Korea, and Japan *cough* or for bombing civilians in the middle east or for bailing out other large corporations when they are caught scamming Americans via the housing market. If Capitalism was perfect people wouldn't need to borrow money. If they came up with a good product it should just succeed because the free market is "supposed to" reward innovation and hard work. But that is just not how the world works. Every time a Large or small business fails they feel entitled to being bailed out by uncle Sam and more often than not they are bailed out. Tesla technically wouldn't be a company today if it wasn't bailed out following the 2008 financial crash, but they were bailed out. So in my opinion it is very dangerous for someone of Blow's caliber to just say be good at what you do and you wont have a problem with money. Just know that the Government would probably bail out EA before they would ever consider bailing out you. More often than not they are bailed out, Tesla technically wouldn't be a company today if it wasn't bailed out following the 2008 financial crash. If the government backed the average American person as much as they dick ride large corporations the world would genuinely be a better place and more people would be able to pursue creative endeavors that might not generate massive amounts of profit and not have to worry about becoming homeless because of it.
At some point we will still need some kind of organisational body to sort out large scale projects. Also, capitalism has its place if it can be a little more decentralised somehow.
This video reveals for me what's "off" about much of Jonathan Blow's "perspectives." Using "ANTIFA" and "woke" in this space as labels for people who hold a difference of opinion and experience levels outs him as someone who can't process context or who just assumes his perspective is the only valid one. To the point, I agree with much of what he says here, but his vision is clouded by his own biases. Just remove the political BS; the info is (mostly) solid.
