Game development can often be a hard road, especially for smaller indie studios, and now Devolver co-founder Mike Wilson, who is also Chief Creative Officer of Good Shepherd, a publisher aiming to bring new capital to indie devs, has spoken out about how those challenges can affect those kinds of developers.
"There are plenty of people out there selling pie-in-the-sky lottery tickets to the uninitiated investors; we do not wish to be a part of that," Wilson explains when talking about Good Shepherd and Devolver. "Both companies look at any pitch as its own unique business opportunity, and have different tastes and metrics in deciding which ones to get behind. Even though Devolver is a major investor and supporter of Good Shepherd, the game submissions, greenlight processes, and publishing teams are completely discrete from one another."
Wilson also added that Good Shepherd will "work to keep the IP in the hands of the creators, and keep ultimate creative freedoms and decisions in their hands, as these are their babies."
He then went on to explain why this is so important. "Honestly my biggest concern with indies is that they learn how to take care of themselves," he said. "Even with some of the most successful teams we've worked with, isolation and depression are running rampant among indie creators, with ever-increasing competition for attention and the unprecedented access to the artists that their critics (who is now everyone with an internet connection) now have. Gamers can be a notoriously rough bunch to deal with online, but with these small teams and the consistent demand that they interact directly with their 'community,' things have become much harder to manage, and very very personal."
"This is something Good Shepherd is committed to working to figure out how to best address, as we've seen the problem up close and personal with both Gambitious and Devolver in recent years, and it matters deeply to us. These people are our friends, and we want them to be able to live healthy, happy lives doing what they love to do. We're not sure that this is a problem we can solve, but we are very eager to start the larger conversation."
How can they address this?