Dun Dun Duuuun!

Jokes and clickbait titles aside, Exploring all Roads to Survival, is a conversation that we have quite often in the studio. We have been around for so many years now while slowly grinding away at our flagship title Ravenwood. This process is not without its challenges, including financial constraints, resource limitations, and the ever-changing landscape of the gaming industry. These challenges can drain money, energy, and motivation, so what keeps us moving?

I could say something inspiring like "Dedication to the craft!" or "Commitment to our (potential) audience!" Perhaps something more pragmatic, "Planning and communication keep us moving" or "A shared vision of a sustainable studio."

Reality though? That's a bit more simple and lackluster. We are committed to Exploring all Roads to Survival. For us, that means we have our core product, our guiding line, so to speak, but we explore everything that could provide us the ability to make it happen. For us, this means taking contract work, co-development work, and exploring UGC via Fortnite.

When we embarked on Ravenwood a few years ago, we said, "We are stepping away from contracts! We will seek investors or publishers and bring our game to market. Leveraging all our gained experience and refined workflows to fight for sustainability in Michigan." I have always been aggressively optimistic, but we had run the numbers and worked with the consultants. We were "good to go," then most of the investment funding and publishing funding disappeared in April of 2023. As a founder and team dedicated to weathering the odds, we continued to pitch and stayed hopeful. We ran our runway and hoped to get more funds. That's the thing about runways; they all have an end. When it's either pivot or crash; we pivot.

We got lucky but we were able to go back to what we knew! Contract work and co-development, we had friends who needed help and they had funds. We jumped on and skipped the wave of new studios that started looking for contract work and co-development. So many talented people got laid off in 2023, and they formed new studios with massive ambitions; I got so excited. Scared for them but excited! As they discovered the challenges of funding they turned to the rapidly evaporating contract work and co-development. This cycles me back to the original question, how do you survive bootstrapping for years?

Lately, I have found myself recommending developing Micro Games, games under $100k, to provide some sort of quick turnaround revenue. We have been doing that with an Unannounced title we are co-developing. Target development cost sits between 60 - 90k.

Another thing we recommend is diving into User-Generated Content (UGC); they tend to be quicker to develop and significantly cheaper than traditional development methods. In our case, we recently released Dodgeball Blitz, our first major foray into UGC with Fortnite. Realistically, it took us about 150 hours to develop, which is substantially less than any other experience we could create, and in my opinion, it was pretty fun for the amount of time it took. We found a ton to improve on, but the data alone was worth the dev hours.

I am absolutely not saying to abandon your main title or flagship game. We sure as hell are not. I am saying Explore all Roads to Survival. It won't be easy, and for many, it won't be possible. I won't sugarcoat it or lie to you. That said, if you and your team both agree to chase after this indie dream, then be ready to explore, try things, fail, and repeat. Hopefully, by the end of it all, you will come out alive and sustainable.

No big secret or reveal; sorry about that. You might feel cheated or inspired by this blog post. For us, we have a mantra we repeat, "Keep Moving Forward." It's easy to drown in the stress and pressure of it all, control the controllable, build a good game, and Keep Moving Forward.

Thanks again for reading, and if you enjoyed this post, let us know in the comments below. Make sure to connect with us on our socials, and until next time, best of luck!

- Corbin John Reeves, CEO & Creative Director