Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Would We Ever Publish Games?”.
This one’s from Miles, uh do you cons? Have you ever considered becoming a game publisher, uh, helping small Studios and Indie developers with funding and Publishing? Technically we did. You did yeah. There was a game called Linus jump um, which was a part of the verified natural gamer program, um, it’s very similar to a lot of other games that are like this. Where there’s it’s, it’s vertically scrolling! You start at the bottom and you have to jump on these different platforms and there’s a high chance that you fall and you lose a bunch of progress and you have to try to keep climbing and eventually get to the top. And you win a thing um. So we we made a game, it didn’t cost anything. We didn’t really publish the game in the yeah in the sense that you’re asking yeah um. So, with the with the spirit of your question more in mind, it’s the sort of thing that I feel like would be it’s kind of like what we talked about with Elon jumping into Twitter, like he’s going in probably thinking that the solutions are easier than they Are and um that is fun, and I think what I would discover running a game publisher is that it’s actually hard and a lot of work, and I don’t have any relevant experience and I’d really rather more experienced people do it who know what they’re doing I I have ideas in my mind for what I think would be cool games and, like you know, obviously I I’d love to like I don’t I don’t really have a ton of Investments. Obviously we own real estate, like you, know the building, I’m sitting in right now and stuff like that, but I don’t have a ton of like pure investment Investments.
Really I’ve got the framework investment. I honestly have no idea how that’s going like I don’t know what, but I don’t know what the shares are worth. I have literally no idea whatsoever, but that’s that’s. That’S it um, and so you know from from like an investment standpoint, I think it might be kind of cool to like find a game that I really believe in, and you know help it get built and yeah and maybe make money like that would be. That would be super cool. I think right, that’s what you’re supposed to do when you have some money um, but I just how on Earth would I know how to pick that horse? I mean and you’d have to hear about it so early in development yeah like it’s one of those things: okay, okay, if the development cross code, for example, came to me and was like, I need a million dollars, I’d consider it. I don’t think they do, though.
I think that they made pretty good money from their first title and they’re probably self-funded at this point. Then again, maybe this just shows my ignorance of the game, development and Publishing it’s world it’s hard, because when you’re, not when you’re, not a publisher, who’s, doing very um annoying modern tactics of like season passes and microtransactions and all this type of stuff, when you’re in Old School Style Style publisher, where you launch a game like cross code, and then you work on your next game until you can launch it. Those pits right between your releases are scary. That’S fair um and development setbacks due to complications or needing to rework things, or whatever else can literally kill your entire company. So I’m trying to remember there was actually a game that looks sick uh.
Here it is yeah the uh, the I think, he’s the head of the project uh, but it’s called Sanctuary shattered sun and it’s um, it’s kind of a spiritual successor to a supreme commander. Oh okay, it’s been in development for a number of years. At this point, I think and the the idea behind it is that uh here you go, here’s their site, uh every projectile, laser beam and missile is simulated in real time. Making things take on a much more real and tactile Dimension Grand scale strategic Zoom. They literally use the same wording as Supreme Commander to describe a camera that can go all the way from a single unit to the entire Battlefield, with one scroll on the wheel, uh flux economy that mimics, that of real life, adds more depth to the RTS. No spending limits no speed limits, just the cold hard reality of income minus expenses very much like Supreme Commander. These guys have actually reached out to me for investment in the past because they know I’m super passionate about the genre and the reason that I ultimately said not right now is that when they approached me, it was at the time that I was completely like neck Deep in screwdriver and backpack, which, as you guys know, thanks to our amazing Community, is no longer the case.
Cash flow is significantly looser. Uh we’re able to make some some big investments into building out the lab on Crater Warehouse just sent me a wish list of new equipment. They want like a new SLA printer and like a bunch of other cool stuff like that.
Thank you guys so much for. For believing so much for your support, we’re just shy of a hundred thousand total screwdrivers now, which was the entire first like. Will we ever sell through this order and we haven’t even shipped them all yet, which is yeah unbelievable um? So I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe if uh, maybe, if Tatsu, maybe if Tatsu reached out again, the answer might be a little bit different. But the thing is like I don’t like investing in what I don’t understand and I don’t understand game development very much. I know I understand that I like to play video games, but I I don’t know anything about because, like okay, let’s say, let’s say I got behind it, I invested in it or, like I, you know, I decided to become a game publisher or whatever and like I published it: what can you bring to the table of them in cash yeah? What can I add, nothing and two: what happens if they ultimately go, and I don’t think they will from talking to these guys, but what, if they go super toxic micro, transactiony, predatory or something and all of a sudden that stains my brand? That was actually one of the reasons that I pulled out of an investment detail on detail, an investment deal that was given to me a long time ago was – I was just like yeah, I I don’t have any control over what you guys do. I think I know what you’re talking about and that’s something that I talked about a fair bit with the framework investment is if they go bad, it makes me look bad um, but – and I’ve said this very publicly in that case, if they do that, I’m going To roast them right back because at the end of the day, I I do want their mission to succeed and the truth is I don’t really care if it’s them who succeeds or if it’s someone else, and I consider it a pretty small price to pay for More repairable laptops, so I have, I have skin in that game, no matter what win or lose.
I I win from my point of view, whereas here it’s a pure cash play, the only way for me to win in this investment is for them to make a bunch of money, and I don’t necessarily, as a player, want them to do the things that would Like maximize the profits out of this game, so I’m super conflicted right. .