Diary Page #4: Boards and Metrics

Dear Scholars,

There is something satisfying in bringing an imaginary world to life in a physical and tangible form. Although it doesn't beat the joy brought by the sole process of the world's conception and development, the sensation of touching baroque style furniture, wallpaper, and decorations makes it seem like Selenwald is no longer confined to a program.

Selenwald has recently seen the light of day for the first time. It was shown at Poznań Game Arena - a gaming expo in Poznań, Poland. One of the major things I was focused on in September was bringing the rough demo to a somewhat presentable state so I wouldn't feel bad showing it publicly. Luckily, despite having many flaws and requiring a lot of assistance and explanation, it has made a much better impression on players than I had anticipated.

If you were there, thank you for visiting and playing - it was nice to meet you! If you weren't and you feel like you missed out on playing the game, no worries - there will be more opportunities in the future. On top of that, remember that the demo was still a very early version of the game that's not fully indicative of the final experience so you didn't miss that much after all!

One step closer

As some of you might already know, I'm actively looking for a publisher and/or an investor. It is imperative that I partner with one because I need to hire over a dozen of people to finish Selenwald in reasonable time and I am in no way capable of covering such costs all by myself.

In case you're wondering - crowdfunding is not a viable option for the project yet. It would require an enormous following for it to actually work and cover the entirety of development costs. Don't get fooled by crowdfunding campaigns that aim for sums like $50k. Games are much more expensive to make unless they have a tiny scope and can be done entirely by one person in a short period of time. If developers of more ambitious games run campaigns with small goals like this it probably means one the following scenarios:

• the game is already fully funded and crowdfunding is only used as way of marketing

• the game was funded but the studio has run out of money before finishing the game so it's looking for some additional cash

• the developer or the publisher wants to sell pre-orders (for example, Steam rarely allows indie games to sell pre-orders directly on the platform so crowdfunding might be an alternative)

• the developer is inexperienced and runs a crowdfunding campaign before realizing how expensive the development is really going to be which may lead to some bad things

Anyway, back to the topic. I'm already in contact with a lot of publishers. But what is it that prevents me from moving forward and signing a deal with one? Publishers and investors typically require several things in order to consider funding and/or publishing a game:

• vertical slice

• development schedule

• budget breakdown

A delicious pie

What on earth is a vertical slice, you ask? It is part of the game development jargon and a metaphor for a playable demo that feels like a short excerpt of the finished game - a single slice of a tasty pie with all the layers. Now that's a bit of a problem. In the case of a system-heavy game such as Selenwald, having an actual, true vertical slice would mean being probably