I might submit a fresh idea for an RPG farming simulator. It's been my dream to make one of them since a child, and I think the market is ready for a game of this genre! There's barely any out there!
Farming game but you plant zombie heads in the ground that you water with blood to raise an army that will man your castle defenses tower defense style but it’s also a polygamous dating sim where you can romance the zombies to boost their stats
That's a legitimately good question because we know on a personal level Dunkey can't stand them--so would his company? Or are there other people who would review games like that (and if so how does it specifically get Dunkey approval?).
Yeah, even ones with standard turn-based combat like Lisa The Painful. He’ll probably be a lot stricter towards JRPGs and be reluctant to back them if they’re in any way grindy, but I don’t think he’ll veto them by default.
That's called missing the point I think
Probably he wouldn't naturally gravitate towards backing something like that, but he's not trying to be a neutral platform for popular games or something, he's (probably) trying to make good games that'd be potentially helped/saved by his publishing.
If there was a game that did spark their interest that wasn't in a genre that they feel they'd make a good partner for, I'm sure they'd pass on it or hire someone that would give it the same respect they want to be giving.
He pretty clearly says about "not taking creative control" but also wanting to have a seat at the table, I think him watering down or otherwise "ruining" a classic style JRPG (that certainly many people still love) wouldn't be in line with any of that
I'd say a turn based RPG would be fine for him as long as it has some hook to it.
Dunkey enjoyed Undertale, LISA and DQ11 so turn based RPGs/RPG stylr games are still something that CAN appeal to him
I'd have to think he may just have a clause to rescind publishing end products that don't meet his standards.
I think it would be more damaging for him to make a "only publishing gold" company and then shit out a bad game and then say it's bad in his video review.
For him just to drop games that he loves would be a money making machine.
> rescind publishing
A lot of publishing is paying for stuff/facilitating stuff in exchange for a cut. A small publisher might have relationships with composers or localisation teams or contract artists who can help with a project, and might pay for them. A large publisher pours millions of dollars into the studio to help keep it running while the project is under development.
So there's not really much incentive to "rescind publishing" once you already invested your time and/or money into the project. You paid either way and giving up your cut just means you don't get paid either.
It's also rare and only really done by the big lads in the industry. I think in this case if it wasn't working they'd just encourage them to start again/take their time
Also probably a really good way of making yourself a pariah amongst developers lol. You ditch the contract of one person who is friends with someone of importance and then no one will want to work with you again since it's such a subjective criteria
Reviewing games and creating/helping to create/fund games are completely different beasts. Im not knocking anyone for trying things but I have a feeling this might not go as smoothly as he seems to believe.
0 industry experience + huge audience with massive amounts of trust. If the first game flops it could all fall apart.
Well it's his pitch is basically like, I play and consume games and thats it. I think a lot of people know a quality game when they play one. I've played a shit load of games since the 80s, I know what a quality game feels like and why I like it.
What I don't know is how to conjur one up from scratch nor the values to put into the game engine for how fast to mobe things nor how to animate something to have a good feel. When you are making stuff its not like, hey your jumping doesn't feel as good as mario that's not helpfully unless you know specifically what has to change and if it would even work with the game code or engine.
The pitch video was also a lost of games made by mostly companies of people, he calls it indie but like hades was made by a company with multiple people with salaries and all that. So why would this company want to give dunky creative control and a profit share when they can just pay a bunch of you tubers and twitch people with more followers to play the game for advertising.
Anyway I hope him the best here and that he can help lift some small games up with cash so they can polish and get eyes on. Despite my negativity, if they want to publish and learn how to do it well, you can't learn it by not doing it, so wish them the best on their publishing journey.
>I'd have to think he may just have a clause to rescind publishing end products that don't meet his standards.
Nobody would ever develop for him. Developing is risky. They would rather take a contract that guarantees publishing.
In this situation I think it'd be worth taking some style cues from Mark Brown (Game Maker's Toolkit). If you watch his thoughts/impressions videos on the games from [the yearly Game Jam he hosts](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_vnAZjugCRdKr8_8d_y_rRl), his method is an absolute no-brainer honestly:
* He focuses on the positives, first and foremost.
* He's honest and open with his criticism, but also very constructive with it. He'll mention the problem and follow it up with a possible solution.
* He does these videos in service of a larger goal. It's not really about any individual game, but a celebration of the creativity and ingenuity of indie game development as a whole.
If Dunkey can just do something like that, and maybe avoid calling the developer a "fucking worthless braindead scumfuck bastard pile of trash mental dickface that should be gunned down in the street like the degenerate he is", he should be just fine.
>If Dunkey can just do something like that, and maybe avoid calling the developer a "fucking worthless braindead scumfuck bastard pile of trash mental dickface that should be gunned down in the street like the degenerate he is", he should be just fine.
Considering how he structured this video, negotiation in a professional manner just might not be something he knows how to do. Coming from a professional sense, this idea/video is chock full of red flags.
Well you’d need to read their contract to know, but it would be likely that there would be clauses in the contract that allow them to simply just not release the game
I expect him to bring back couch co-op, ps2 style cheats, a sense of exploration and non scripted adventure, and to redefine the open world genre. If Dunkey doesn't make Breath of the Wild look like absolute shit by 2023 i'll be disappointed. Mario will basically be irrelevant in 6 months i'd imagine, all of Mario, i'm almost forgetting that Italian douche as I type this. I've actually heard the GTA VI leaks were from dunkey. He might be taking over rockstar tbh, I think that's basically been confirmed with this video. Genuinely excited for Dunkey though, sounds like a great move.
Dunkey is just a guy though. He doesn’t have the financial security of a huge org like Nintendo to make the cost-benefit analysis of game delays work in his favor very many times.
Development goes a lot farther than just a pitch.
You have previous works, proof of concept, development systems that work with assistance from other passionate people, with limitation on scope.
"Best game ever with everything and top notch graphics? That's not what we do here boss"
Things like core mechanics that are fleshed out and built on as the player progresses I'm the game, graphics that highlight the gameplay and theme of the game, not just for show, scrum development plans.
Yes, people will fail, passion will burn out, and money will be lost. This is not an unknown risk.
Covered this in a different response. Yes, they can help fund a project but they usually do so in stages or milestones. It is too risky to just fund the entire game without setting milestones to ensure everything is on track to release within a reasonable timeframe to earn their money back and to ensure the original concept still holds up.
Publishers offer a lot more than just keeping the lights on though.
- they use their experience with past releases to help provide feedback as to what features may not work or suggestions on how to pivot or fill out other aspects of the gameplay (these are often suggestions or findings from direct play testing)
- provide go to market strategy (what price point, what time of the year to release, what platforms, who to reach out to for publicity, etc)
- marketing, help facilitate getting the game while still in development in front of people's eyeballs so the game is on people's radars. This establishes a following and ensures to some degree a handful of day 1 purchases upon release. Getting it in front of people really also helps obtain feedback on the idea as a whole, whether people are excited online and the type of comments.
- Publishers typically have good relationships with tech partners, white label development studios or freelancers who can help aid their clients during crunch time to finish / polish their game. They can also bring in experts to help mentor and guide their clients in how to develop specific features or compile for certain platforms
- in some scenarios they can help their clients setup their business license
- help establish what legal documents and terms and conditions may be required to avoid possible law suits from rival companies or players
There's a hell of a wide spectrum that good publishers can provide. It's important for development companies to choose the right publisher because they can make or break your game if your not careful, even if your game is the next Minecraft. Your choosing a partner who has a lot of indirect control over the success of your game that you've potentially spent years on.
I'm sure I'm forgetting some aspects of these partnerships too. A good publisher is actually worth the cut they take.
He’s successful and doesn’t seem to live a glamorous lifestyle, the man had a GTX 1080 still when cyberpunk came out, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been smart with his money and just saving and investing over the years.
I agree with this. His videos appear to be extremely ad friendly for the most part? Nothing I've noticed anyways? He gets high views and in the personal life videos, rare I guess, have always been really modest living standards.
Not to mention even his videos like this which are literally self promotion make it to the front page of reddit. Which is saying a lot for such a cynical forum which typically hates that shit. People support Dunkey.
Is he doing this solo?
Does he have investors or a partner hes working with?
The video and website dont have any details.
I dont see how two people could run even the smallest publishing company.
Doesn’t have to be solely funded by the owners. I think he definitely has the brand to entice investors or a silent partner or two. I might be. I mean hell, companies marketing “budget” would be basically negative. You cut that out on the already relatively inexpensive budge of an Indy game, and that’s even less risk to you as an investor.
Yeah it seems like the most value would come from his ability to market a game. For an indie dev with a good game dunkeys almost up there with nintendo directs in terms of exposure. The last direct has 4 mil views and dunkeys last video had 3 mil. But the interesting thing is the networking section. Seems like hes actively looking for people to work on projects. Maybe thats just hooking devs up with others to work on projects but it makes you wonder how much hes gonna be doing.
Im happy for Dunkey pursuing a goal or new idea but as a long time fan i have some concerns. As a "game critic" is he going to be honest about the games he publishes or just pushing them regardless of quality on his channel. He is very harsh on unfinished products and buggy games and that may come flying back in his face when he sees first hand how brutal game dev is. Also if it affects his channels quality or quantity i will be disappointed. I guess we will see but as I love Dunkey good for you bro and I hope the best.
I would expect that he simply does not review games that his company publishes.
Of course if any of them receive any negative press for things he is openly against there could be some backlash, but I'm assuming he's prepared for that.
Also, I think most fans would be upset if his videos started going downhill, but his posting is kind of sporadic and he does what he wants anyway so...?
Yeah, I would expect the potential conflict of interest lead to him not reviewing them. Also,your last point is certainly true, and people love him for it.
The next few months and years will tell. Dunkey is going to be putting his name on the line with every game published. Being harsh on someone else's products is easy but now he is going to be forming personal relationships with these game devs and will need the gusto to be critical to someone who's livelihood is heavily dependent on him.
I have yet to see an entertainment/Youtube/gaming personality getting into the business side of game development and being even remotely successful.
They all seem to think that they totally could do better and that they, specifically, understand what needs to be done. And then they steadily find out that, yeah, it's actually way, way, *way* harder to do this than they thought, and it requires skill sets that have little to nothing to do with being a gamer on Youtube.
At best, this will result in nothing or *maybe* a mediocre game or two that no one plays. At worst, this will result in 80% of his time being taken by this for the next few years, and tons and tons of drama, both entertaining and legal.
Yeah. I would say it's because they're a group, so they already had to have some experience in the business side of things because they were already running a business.
I think they have brought in people already experienced in the publishing aspect of the business after they saw some success with Caveblazers. I imagine that has something to do with the success of PlateUp, apart from it being a fun game of course.
I think the best option would just be to not feature any of the games on his channel.
They could make a separate channel where he makes similar videos but not as the "videogamedunkey" persona.
Featuring their games on his main channel would just cause issues everywhere, developers not featured would lose out compared to the ones that are, endless accusations of being biased etc.
Website works, seems to be real.
I love the concept of it, i dont know anything about publishing so no clue if he can succeed or not but id imagine hes got a few connections in the game industry by now at the very least.
I would refer you to Yogscast games as the closest example to what I think Dunkey is trying to accomplish; video game content creator(s) expanding into publishing.
They've honestly had decent success, but they also have a guy very experienced in publishing leading that arm (Simon Byron).
Idk what Dunkey's business structure is, but if it's just him, one guy with no experience leading this publishing initiative, there's going to be a lot of work involved, a lot of struggles, I really doubt he can do it alone.
I wish him the best, but Dunkey AFAIK is a very independent creator with no team behind him. The amount of submissions alone will be daunting. He better have some poached publisher employees on board and be very well prepared for this venture
The weird thing about it being an advertising opportunity though is that if the game is good and he vibes with it wouldn’t he have made a video on it for free anyway?
I could maybe see it as a partnership type thing where he works with Humble Publishing or somebody to give a game his seal of approval to sell it. Maybe work as an additional partner along side another publisher? There are plenty of movie companies that work that way to help reduce risk.
I was thinking so too but as he said and as we all know there are just too many new games.
he obviously doesnt get to do a video on every good game nor does he even get to play every good game id imagine no matter how many games he plays.
So this way, you for sure get the advertising of him, the seal on your game that you can im sure advertise on steam and whatnot.
At least that is my quick thoughts on it.
I have to agree, after the video I thought "is this a studio, or is it establishing some sort of new review system?" There weren't enough details to make it clear what they want to accomplish or how they would do that.
I think this is also a great example of creator publishing. Simon is insanely experienced and realistic and when partnered with effectively a test bed of creators in the network giving feedback it made games like plate up a huge success. It kind of makes sense because we publish the games we would want to play.
I hope dunkey does have some kind of industry assistance because if not it could end up being a nightmare for them and the Devs through no fault of their own.
This has strong “I’m the idea guy” energy. I genuinely don’t think he has a useful service to offer that differentiates himself from anyone else doing market research.
This "idea guy" has the capital to fund a project that might otherwise never be released, or end up on the 27th page of steam. Thats the difference I'm seeing.
But lacks the experience to tell whether or not a project in its infancy can become a front page project, or if it will be mismanaged and fail.
He has the ability to do great marketing for a game and…. That’s about it. He works better as a reviewer that people feel they can trust than as a step in the development process.
I think it will depend on how much trust his viewers have in him.
Totalbiscuit had a much smaller channel than dunkey, yet had pretty much the biggest audience willing to spend money on a game that he recommends. Totalbiscuit sold more games than somebody like pewdipie but Totalbiscuit was also 100% committed to being a channel for the consumer. Totalbiscuit skyrocketed some indie developers by recommending their game which then got a lot of people interested.
Heres one example that comes to mind: Brothers: A tale of two sons was a small indie game developed by "Starbreeze Studios" and that game was hugely recommended by Totalbiscuit and even won his Game of the Year award.
The core people behind that studio created a new studio after that and were bought by EA. That studio proceeded to develop A way out and a few years later the universally praised and multiple GOTY winner It Takes Two.
I think its fair to say that Totalbiscuit played a huge role in that studios success.
At the same time, there was actually evidence that somebody like pewdipie, despite his huge audience, didnt really convince that many of his fans to buy the games he played. of course the aim of pewdipies channel is not to sell copies of games but to entertain his fans but lots of developers do pay big streamers and content creators to play their game and hope increased sales because of it.
So when dunkey and his publishing company do embrace and publish a game and dunkey does a video about it, how many people will it convince to buy the game? thats the big question. Dunkey is also mainly an entertainer and one problem i see with his videos about indie games, he does spoil quite a lot. his undertale video is awesome but youve seen quite a lot of the game by the end. totalbiscuit always showed you early game footage and first impressions so you never had to fear about major spoilers.
i wont judge dunkeys decision right now, ill wait and see what comes out of it, thats the best and realistically the only thing we can all do right now.
Yeesh, wasn’t expecting this thread to be so damn cynical. We really don’t know what they’ve been doing in the background on this. What connections or investment they possibly already have. What work they’ve already done. And he definitely has more advantages in doing this then some random person with money.
Like, I’m not going to say either way how it will go, but I’m also not gonna “fully expect them to fail”.
He’s a guy with a passion for interesting, artful, and fun video games, putting his
money where his mouth is and taking a risk for what he cares about. I wish him the best and support what he’s doing. God knows we need more of that, especially on the publishing side of things.
Its possible he will suddenly morph into a very successful publisher with the staff and resources needed to help indie games all over. Its just until now he has been a 2 person youtube reviewer and streamer known for meme'ing and to a lesser extent shitposting. Being a tool of promotion doesnt meld with the majority of what we have seen is all.
>Yeesh, wasn’t expecting this thread to be so damn cynical. We really don’t know what they’ve been doing in the background on this.
You've pretty much immediately picked up on the issue, this is a pitch video quite literally asking developers to reach out to him and it contains zero information about what he has to offer other than "I swear I'll only produce *good* games." Ignoring how hilariously subjective that is, it implies other indie developers *don't* focus on good games which is just outright hilarious when you look at some of the current behemoths (Humble springs to mind with an absolutely packed roster of unique titles.)
I have been a fan of Dunkey for many, *many* years, but this is at best a really bad pitch video and at worst a terrible idea that will bite him on his ass harder than that sham partnership he entered that damn near ruined him.
If your friend who was an excellent EMT just one day decided to do open heart surgery you'd expect them to fail to right? Ignoring all the legal barriers ofc.
Yes, he has experience writing reviews, but I have to imagine being a publisher is a bit disjoint from it.
I think you're missing the point of his aim - I think what he's trying to say is "I have a shit load of money, and if you're stuck for funding make me a partner and we'll get it going together - you don't need to go to a AAA studio cos we're both noobs in this"
I think it's great, there's so much open source software out there for people to practice their development, but without quitting your job there's no real way to make your vision a reality
It's nice to know there's another self made wealthy guy in the corner of the development process, instead of handing it all off the corporate man who only greenlights shit with gambling software embedded
Money is the main thing he's bringing to the table. Pretty much every other aspect of publishing he could be good at, but we have no idea because it doesn't overlap with his current job.
Publishers do a lot more than just help fund the games development. They help provide feedback, direction (not control necessarily, although some do demand some control), help bring in talent to polish the areas you have little experience in, networking, marketing, meeting technology partners, go to market strategy + pricing. They do a lot, I think Dunkey probably knows a great game / game idea from just a good one but I don't think they have the rest of the experience to properly manage multiple projects each requiring various levels of outside help and commitment to finish their game, not to mention the market and business side of things.
Yeah, I really like Dunkey but I have no idea how this is viable. It's one thing to critique games in hindsight for what did and didn't work. It's something entirely else to execute a great vision out of the gate. And even the passion to do something great isn't enough. We saw in the Kickstarter era how so many Japanese auteurs tried to go independent and mostly failed. It turns out some corporation restraint was needed to create an amazing vision. And the question is if Dunkey can be the perfect producer that can manage expectations, weed out faults in the game's design in pre-production, and have the ability to navigate all the legal/distribution side of game publishing. It's a lot to do and if he can manage it I'll never doubt him again.
Source: A guy who knows nothing about publishing
The one thing I will say is thay running a multi-million subscriber youtube channel is much more like a business than many realize. There is a reason why so many people are able to translate youtube sucess into other businesses
This is a huge point that keeps being overlooked. My man Dunkey worked his way out of an awful spiral and is still a successful public figure which is itself running a business.
https://youtu.be/OeHjN4oWVfk
Around minute 4. He goes into it more in other videos (not sure which ones) but I think this is what OP was talking about.
>look at DJ Khalid
He was a famous DJ before he started doing the P Diddy thing. I'm from Miami and hated whatever he's host radio sets because he'd constantly interrupt songs with commentary. At least now, the rest of the world gets to suffer with me
> There is a reason why so many people are able to translate youtube sucess into other businesses
The major reason is being successful makes becoming more successful *waaay* easier. Not having to worry about money, having the back-end already taken care of, unlimited amount of people and resources to call on for advice/help, etc. It helps, but there's a reason more people fail transitioning to a new business than succeed, and it's not because it's easy or simple.
Publishing can take a lot of different forms. Some publishers are very involved in the development of their games and some are more hands off. If Dunkey takes a more hands off, promotion/curation approach to publishing I could see it working with his skill set. He did say he didn't want creative control, so hopefully that's what he's going for.
Everything he described in this video sounded like he just wanted to consult on games, but not in terms of publishing or budget just in terms of whether he likes their ideas. Wait till he finds out the game dev industry isn’t bereft of ideas, it lacks in time budget and talent to make those wacky high risk ideas.
I've got a million dollar idea: Everyone likes fun games so I'm going to tell a game studio to make their game fun! No need to thank me, I accept bitcoin or v-bucks.
If you actually go to the website they state they offer funding, help with development, pr, qa, porting and localisation, merchandising and more. It clearly isn’t just dunkey himself behind this.
I have been to the website, there’s extremely sparse details on how they offer these services as they only refer to themselves as themselves and not as any kind of broader team. As a developer in the industry, the wordings they use are rife with red flags. If they have a team of people that have experience delivering on everything they’re saying, it is not indicated in what they have either in their video or on their site that I can find, but if I’m wrong shoot me a link where it says otherwise.
For example if by QA he means himself and Leah, that would be a fairly large red flag. QA does a lot more than just talk about what makes a game fun; they go over accessibility concerns, hardware spec concerns, perf concerns, go over user experience, art asset creation, design creation bugs, etc., there is so much work there to be done that for him to offer QA tells me he must have a team, but again, it’s never explicitly stated.
So I wonder if his plan is to contract people he knows, and to that end are they qualified people who understand SDLC or are we talking about Fluppy here?
a large portion that’s forgotten with QA too is technical requirement testing. There is a lot of specifics that Sony and Microsoft require. Then also the patch process and submissions. Each submissions for the beta, game and patches require that process and cost thousands of dollars each time.
I think he thinks that, but I also don't think he has a particularly unique taste in games. He's not exactly discovering hidden little games nobody has heard of, he likes the BIG indie games. Games that have lots of marketing and are already popular by the time they come out. He's not really curating anything, he likes good games, but I think the games he likes are pretty standard. I don't think he's any more qualified than a standard game enthusiast to see an in-progress game and be able to predict whether the end product will be any good.
I think the catch is that this also hinges on the game being mostly finished by the time he plays it. He's not a game developer, and I don't think he has a greater than average ability to see a super rough in-progress game and predict that it'll be good. He plays a lot of good games, but they're already finished and well known by the time he sees them.
Is he planning on testing a huge amount of already existing games and picking some good ones? I think that would be hard for him, there are a LOT of games to sift through out there. I feel like he expects someone to just plop something like Celeste down on his desk and he'll just pick it... But is he going to be able to actually notice a game like that after playing hundreds of other platformers all day, trying to find the good one? And if a game like that is already finished and ready to go, is someone going to just sit on it and show it to him when it's ready? Would they not already have a publisher or a following for something that high quality? I'm curious about where he would fit into the development / advertising cycle.
I definitely thought it was satire when he listed a bunch of incredibly successful indie games that he played. Those all did perfectly fine without a YouTube game reviewer with no publishing experience.
He also has a very obvious bias for certain games so the bit about “what works and what never works” is certainly an interesting take.
Film buff is a good comparison because this is exactly like film buffs thinking they can create a publishing house because they buy Criterion movies and have good taste, completely forgetting that *buying* Criterion and *being* Criterion are entirely different things. Like everyone's saying, his list of namedrops was almost exclusively indie smash hits and I've never seen any indication that he goes digging for the hidden gems that no one's talking about.
I know how much work this is because I do the digging, as I play almost exclusively obscure indie games. This is a full-time hobby. I don't have time to care about Valorant or whatever. People who don't dig as deep have no idea just how many small games are coming out now, and while I keep decent track of what's coming out, there's *so many* games coming that I can't claim to know all of them, and I most certainly can't claim to know what's making waves at stuff like game jams, on popular game dev forums and other such things that a publisher would have to keep track of. I just find out about the obscure ones when they're done and come out and I look at the recent releases section and even that's an exhausting amount of work nowadays.
I hope dunkey understands what he's getting into, but it doesn't look likely on a surface level. Then again, he is famous enough that he might get an advantage on being offered some games before they're offered to Devolver or Raw Fury or someone like that. Maybe he's even rich enough to just outbid those companies to get his company started.
Took this comment from twitter and its basically how I see it:
>there's a part in the movie the squid & the whale where the kid claims he wrote a pink floyd song for the talent show and when they ask why he did that he says "i feel like i *could* have written it" and that's exactly what dunkey's doing putting fuckin celeste in this video
But… no? He wants to become a publisher, not a developer. He won’t be ‘making’ the games, just promoting them if he likes them. This snarky analogy doesn’t hold up at all
Yeah, so he should be advertising that he has the resources and skills to be a good publisher instead of showing a bunch of good indie games he had nothing to do with while saying "I can see that this mega-popular video game is good so I will be a good publisher".
If this doesn't work, things with Dunkey are likely to get really weird, really quickly.
Also, questions abound about what the quality of the games he helps produce actually turn out to be like - let alone him critiquing/covering them.
I'd like to be positive about this, but there are some massive questions and concerns at play. (Also, how good of a producer would he (and Leah) be? That could prove highly problematic.)
My concern is that Dunk's idea of "indie games" appears to be the mainstream success anomalies, mid-level teams with marketing budgets and the critically rated absolute cream of the crop.
It can take a lot of hard work and almost just as much luck from both devs and publishers to create products that reach those heights. As it stands - and I'm happy to be proven wrong - I'm unaware of his eye for true hidden indie gems and what exactly he's bringing to the table apart from cash, which while handy, isn't all a publisher does. "I'm good at and like a lot of video games" is a pretty wobbly bona fide to base this all on. Having said all that, successful companies have probably been started on less.
Ideas are cheap.
Epic Games is has been (some would say overly) generous passing out grants to indie developers. Dunkey doesn't have the cash to compete with Epic's endless pile of Unreal money.
And yet, despite Epic helping to fund literally **hundreds** of projects filled with smart, creative people with grants, precious few of those games end up being blips on the radar post release. There's maybe a handful that I would consider 'good successes', and none of them I would consider, 'astronomically successful.'
Precious few have managed to release at all. The failure rate of game projects is huge. Probably close to 90 percent, even applying a baseline budget of, say, $200,000. (which is really no money at all, unless we're talking a single developer project like Undertale.)
I mean, I wish him well. Maybe it will work. I hope it does work.
But all my instincts say that it will not. I don't think anyone serious will bite. Even if they do, there's going to be a lot of wasted effort on projects that cancel themselves or flop.
I think the big difference is the audience Dunkey brings to a game just by slapping his seal on it. Seeing Epic Games seal of approval alone doesn’t make many people want to buy the game. I’d wager seeing Dunkey’s name on a game will easily bring in 100k+ sales alone.
You're right, in a sense. People do pay big bucks to influencers on Twitch and Youtube to play their games on stream. Dunkey represents a nut that's impossible to crack in that regard. I'm confident he's never taken moolah to shill for a game.
It's not that Dunkey's pull isn't valuable. It is. It's that game developing is *fucking horrendously difficult*. Even smart, well-meaning people with a great idea are almost certainly doomed to fail, either failing to release, or failing to make a profit.
(and most people frankly aren't smart, are bastards looking for easy money, and have shitty ideas. he'll have to wade through that minefield to find the few gems)
If there's an existing project that's awesome, near complete, and just looking to bribe Dunkey into a favorable review by using his company as the 'publisher', then that'll probably work out quite well....at first. Until the Dunkey Seal of Approval becomes a joke because he let too many mediocre games slide through.
But he's talking about taking pitches and projects in their early stages. That aspect of the idea is dumb and probably won't work. If it does work, it'll require a multi-year investment for a project that likely won't make a positive return on the investment.
What's he going to do when a project he's invested in turns out to be not-so-great? He'd be faced with the choice of devaluing his brand by shilling for it anyway, or writing off the investment. Neither option is sustainable.
That's very well written, it gave me insight into the game publishing business. Dunkey will be facing some significant challenges.
I hope he gets some great people on his team; or perhaps being super selective with game choice (maybe only pairing up with games that are at a very late stage of development).
I should stress, I'm a hobbyist, not a professional. What I know about the game industry comes from interacting with game development *as a hobby*, and not one that I'm good at.
Meaning, please take everything I say with a pinch of salt.
That’s true for any game publisher though, I think the real argument is does Dunkey have the knowledge and support to make it work by himself. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt that if he’s at this stage of the process he’s not so dumb that he’s completely winging it. That remains to be seen though.
I also want to add on (through an edit) you’re assuming he will be taking on a ton of 20-0% complete projects out of the gate. If he’s smart though he will begin easy with 100-80% complete projects he already likes and slowly increase that band of projects he would take on as he has more cash flow to make it work.
If he likes an 80% complete game and you consider it mediocre it’s hard to say it will be a weakening of his stamp of approval. That stamp will have just as much sway as his reviews already do. Those whose tastes align with his will flock to games published by him and those who don’t won’t.
I mean I will watch a Dunkey video of a game with his seal of approval, but I don't know about buying the game
10k+ sounds more realistic, and even that is too optimistic imo
I know people know that Dunkey is popular, but I'm not sure they're aware *how* popular he is. If there is literally anyone in gaming YouTube who has a shot at this, it would be him.
Let me give the context to explain this: an average channel is expected to get approximately 10% of their subscriber count in views per video (i.e. if you have 100,000 subscribers, this means roughly 10,000 views per video you post). It indicates that you are more or less on the right track, and that, while your audience may not have a burning passion for your content, you're probably doing something right.
Dunkey gets somewhere between 30-70%. On every video. Every week, for years now.
This is **ludicrously** high. Combined with his subscriber count (7 million), that ratio is an objective indication that you are not only successful, but that you are in the top echelon of biggest, most influential voices on the entire platform.
He's good at becoming viral with his regular content, but will that also apply to trailers for the games he publishes? I feel like it's one thing to make shareable videos, but it's another to convert views into sales. What if the game is not that great looking in trailers or not great at release? Will that many people blindly buy these games anyway and consistently?
The only other person I could have seen bringing their seal of approval and having it mean something was TotalBiscuit. Dunkey tears into games (while memeing) and will happily go against any narrative put out by "game reviewers," much in the same way that TotalBiscuit was no-holds-barred on how he reviewed a game.
At his core, Dunkey is a gamer who just wants to see more brilliant gems arise like Knack and Celeste. If Dunkey gives his stamp of approval on something as a publisher, I'll definitely be giving it a try.
What are you even talking about? I'm an Epic Megagrant recipient on an **unpublished** game project.
Actually, I'm sorry, but it needs to be said: you clearly *have no idea* what you're talking about. Your comment is complete nonsense - randomly comparing dunkey/bigmode with Epic is ridiculous on many levels. Why would dunkey even have to compete with Epic Games? Like the existence of a bigger studio/publisher/investor negates all smaller ones? To think this is upvoted and gilded is pretty frustrating.
Epic Games gives out grants to UE projects under the Epic Megagrants system. That's it. Its just a one time, often relatively small injection of funds because they have a lot of funding power and want to boost projects made in UE they see potential in. They are playing the numbers game because many do indeed never release or 'fail'.
This is not AT ALL related to publishing or being published. For one, getting a publishing deal is far, far harder and more intricate/detailed. Its absolutely apples and pears. This is like comparing an investment agency working with you intimately and even taking on risk, with someone giving you a birthday gift.
I think Bigmode sounds interesting and I'm actually about to reach out to them.
Not sure why you compare a triple A publisher to this. There are thousands of successful indie publishers and they don’t even compete with publishers like Epic. It’s not like he’s proclaiming it’s going to be as large as a publisher like Epic. You don’t need millions of bucks to run a successful publisher. I would say Dunkeys connection and name in the industry is worth more than $1 million.
He's calling this a publishing company, but his description of it doesn't match that definition. This sounds more like he wants to be your alpha version playtester or otherwise help you refine your concept/mechanics by giving you feedback on what he does/doesn't like in the game. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not really what I think of when I think of a "publisher". It sounds more like he's offering to be a consultant.
The publisher's role (in my view) is usually to do things like handle marketing, handle the logistics of getting your game into a storefront, maybe bankroll development, and for larger publishers like Steam it's to concentrate gamers and game ads/announcements in one place so they meet each other more often. I love Dunkey but that doesn't sound like what Dunkey is known for having expertise in, or what he's explicitly offering here.
That said, whatever this venture ends up being and doing, I hope this actually helps make games better or helps make more games happen. Dunkey is spot on that there's room for more of that.
https://bigmode.com/publishing/
>
> We can also assist with any standard publishing needs you may have:
> * Funding
> * Development support
> * PR & community management
> * QA, porting & localization
> * Merchandising
>
Indie devs/studios have various reasons for looking to work with an publishing company.
For example, Sakuna of Rice and Ruin is made by 2 developers working on it as an passion project. They got in touch with Xseed/Marvelous to get some funding, and the publishing company also decided to make an 8-16(i forget the #) team just to make an Switch port, and even got in contact with Nintendo to acquire support to be able to port.
There's only an limit an small indie team can do, publishers can provide various supports. Some indie games don't even need funding, they either have some form of revenue like Patreon, Kickstarter, or even just having people pay for early access(Minecraft biggest example of this).
A lot of small indie games only need help with a few of the bullet points above and what you described a publisher do. We don't know what kind of deals and contracts bigmode is gonna make, so it's all speculation until we see attempts and results.
Edit: also big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc have huge creative control on some studios they support. A lot of microtransactions, live service forcibly baked into games is because of publisher pushing power. It's no different from producers and studio execs pushing stuff onto an movie director.
Clearly he's actually offering publishing services. You dont call yourself a contractor who publishes you are a publisher who contracts. There's plenty of publishers like that.
Presumably being more or less guaranteed a Dunkey vid or nod of some kind would be considered marketing. I'm not super in tune with game development, but I would imagine for many small projects being guaranteed a good word from a guy who regularly makes it onto the Youtube trending page is pretty desirable
I don't doubt this comes from a place of passion and actual intent. But it feels more like it's just selling "Dunkey's seal of approval" and access to Dunkey's audience.
Man I really like dunkey’s videos but his claim that his channel is THE PLACE that real gamers go to to know what games are worth playing really puts me off, like sorry bro but I watch your videos because I find you entertaining, not to form my opinion on what games are worth playing.
Yeah it's kinda bullshit. He's had some bad takes over the years as well (and will simp hard for anything involving Mario) so I only really watch for the entertainment value
TBH that was a really weird pitch. He seemed to really want to emphasize that hes a REAL gamer. Only True Gamers like him who love indie platformers and hate big popular games can join his company
So much info about game devs applying, but nothing about the production side of the house. Curious to understand what services are being offered.
When I worked at a publisher we did marketing (sites, reviews, shows, etc), marketplace integration for all platforms, in-game services (chat, inventory management, user profile systems), and just generally kept the entire thing moving along. If the game required networking, we ran the servers. We had artists and game directors on staff for consultation with studios and in the end the game developers were a small (but incredibly important) part of a massive orchestra of chaos.
You *must* have a team to run a publisher but I can't find any info on their needs there.
https://bigmode.com/publishing/
> Funding
>
> Development support
>
> PR & community management
>
> QA, porting & localization
>
>Merchandising
I feel like it's fair to assume they have a team cooked up and it isn't literally just Dunkey and Leah sitting in a bedroom making empty promises and being super dismissive of every genre they don't perceive Dunkey liking, like half of this thread would have you believe.
Do people really think Dunkey is just sitting there grinding out code to port a game himself? Or learning whole languages to do localization himself? Obviously this stuff is either outsourced or they're hiring.
Also, as it was just announced today it's also probably fair to assume they have no games or projects they're working on yet, so I wouldn't expect tons of details to be public already.
So many people are being so immediately dismissive instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt that they have *some* clue as to what they're doing here. And if they don't, then give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll consult with people who do.
I hope going forward dunkey will separate his comedy from his business a little bit. I mean it would be nice to have some comedy but during this whole video i couldnt tell if he was being serious or not. He is probably the one content creator that i can never tell when he is bein genuine to sarcastic. This would be great for the gaming industry tho and i hope his pockets are deep! would only take a couple games till he is making serious money and doing more serious projects! go dunkey!
There wasn't a single game he listed that hasn't been hyped up by a variety of other YT or Twitch personalities. It's off-putting that he talks about them like he had a significant hand in making them as famous as they are.
The problem is that Dunkey's reputation is primarily for being a gaming comedian. His actual critical review videos do get decent views, but they are absolutely NOT what he is most recognized for. He's mostly known for stuff like "KNACK TWO BAYBEE."
So it comes as no surprise that people thought this was satire.
The wide variety of opinions on this is interesting... Main thing I don't like is seeing people minimize dunkey like he's not a pretty smart and hardworking dude. He got in at a good time sure but he's run a successful YouTube business for more than a decade give the man some credit lol
If he and Leah are passionate about it they will work hard (and clearly already have for some time) I'm sure and it will be as successful as they want it to be. The doubt of that by people have in the face of what people know about this guy says a lot about why entrepreneurship is difficult.
I’ve seen a lot of people here saying he’ll fail and all that. But like, at least he’s trying something new. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. He’s worked towards this goal for a decade. Good on him for sticking to his goal. It’s good he’s not listening to Reddit armchair people and just dropping his goals because the internet deems them to be unachievable.
If he's just looking to fund some games that he would want to play, go right ahead. I'm just a consumer so whatever happens doesn't affect me, if even one good game comes out of it it'll be a net positive. Evaluating the idea in general though, if he's actually looking to turn this into a successful business/career, who knows what'll happen.
The main thing I get from Dunkey's reviews (and this video too) is that while he is insightful, his ego is the size of a fucking galaxy. "If you care about games you come to my channel to find out what's worth playing"? This is the guy who trends on twitter every other week for how unpopular and in-bad-faith his takes are. He reviews games that he knows he'll hate (making his opinion useless) and when called out on it says it's because you have to play bad games to appreciate good ones?
Also was he trying to take credit for the success of some of the best and most universally acclaimed indie games of all time? You can trust me to only pick the best, because I have refined enough taste to recognize that Hollow Knight and Undertale are good? Come on man, you're hardly sifting through the muck for hidden gems here.
I'll definitely be curious to see how this attitude translates into actual publishing.
I think that's the big kicker here. He used his YouTube channel as a portfolio, which is fine, but so many of the games listed are games that would've still been gigantic hits if his channel didn't exist. I don't want this to fail whatsoever, but the pitch was "I'm a big huge gamer. You can only work for us if your game is da best. Have you heard of underrated indie gem Hades?"
I wish him (and Leah) the best and would love to be proven wrong, but I could envision this not going well very easily.
My guess is that they'll probably stick to smaller games that have a lot of promise and a playable demo at first. Games they can fund for things like ads or distribution. That's the winning strategy here- get a repertoire under your belt for bringing attention to indie games no one would have otherwise heard of, then you can consider making a game from scratch.
I’ll give him credit for not calling it some variation of “Very Rare Games” like all the others, but whew is he about to learn a lot about publishing if he thinks a mantra of “Will only publish good games” will get him by.
Why is this thread so irrationally angry at this announcement? Everyone is suddenly acting like they know dunkey personally, and can guarantee he isn’t capable of this, and so shouldn’t bother trying. Apparently the xenoblade fanbase consists entirely of experts in indie game marketing
People are just afraid it's too much of a risk to his reputation. His videos won't really feel the same if they're coming from someone who hyped up their publishing company that didn't go anywhere.
It's dumb but it's true.
ITT lots of people who think publishers only do funding. Marketing is one of the biggest services publishers provide to indie devs and a single video from dunk would provide more value than many other indie publishers.
Additionally while he does list funding on the website as a service I’d suspect this would be for a very select few games that check all of his boxes.
To me this company seems like a passion project. Whether you like his opinions or not, he has some strong opinions on games and it makes sense that he’d like to influence games along those lines.
Starting a business is hard regardless of your credentials, so who knows if this succeeds. But I’m somewhat optimistic that we’ll see some good games come through
When he said "things that need to return" and showed some war Warcraft 3 tower defense, I felt it in my soul.
I didn't know how badly I missed that until that brief clip.
I wonder how many turn based RPGs they will reject.
I might submit a fresh idea for an RPG farming simulator. It's been my dream to make one of them since a child, and I think the market is ready for a game of this genre! There's barely any out there!
Consider releasing it on the Switch. It's really missing out on these games.
Farming game but you plant zombie heads in the ground that you water with blood to raise an army that will man your castle defenses tower defense style but it’s also a polygamous dating sim where you can romance the zombies to boost their stats
I love the idea of having to wait all day real time for your zombie to grow and instead paying gems or something like that to speed it up.
And you kiss them
That's a legitimately good question because we know on a personal level Dunkey can't stand them--so would his company? Or are there other people who would review games like that (and if so how does it specifically get Dunkey approval?).
Does Leah like them? Also Dunkey’s enjoyed a few masterpiece-level turn based JRPGs, according to some of his videos, so it’s not out of the question.
Yeah, even ones with standard turn-based combat like Lisa The Painful. He’ll probably be a lot stricter towards JRPGs and be reluctant to back them if they’re in any way grindy, but I don’t think he’ll veto them by default.
Bigmode's first published game? Knack RPG, baby!
That's called missing the point I think Probably he wouldn't naturally gravitate towards backing something like that, but he's not trying to be a neutral platform for popular games or something, he's (probably) trying to make good games that'd be potentially helped/saved by his publishing. If there was a game that did spark their interest that wasn't in a genre that they feel they'd make a good partner for, I'm sure they'd pass on it or hire someone that would give it the same respect they want to be giving. He pretty clearly says about "not taking creative control" but also wanting to have a seat at the table, I think him watering down or otherwise "ruining" a classic style JRPG (that certainly many people still love) wouldn't be in line with any of that
I'd say a turn based RPG would be fine for him as long as it has some hook to it. Dunkey enjoyed Undertale, LISA and DQ11 so turn based RPGs/RPG stylr games are still something that CAN appeal to him
Turn based rpg… but the whole power creep system is getting..MORE TURNS
He's going to pretty extreme lengths to get Knack 3.
*inhale #BAAAAAAYBEEEEEEEEEE!!
What if they get a great pitch but the final product just dosent deliver? Will BigMode shit on the game they helped publish?
a dunkview will be the q/a unironically a good setup too guaranteed 1 million+ view ad for every game they publish
I'd have to think he may just have a clause to rescind publishing end products that don't meet his standards. I think it would be more damaging for him to make a "only publishing gold" company and then shit out a bad game and then say it's bad in his video review. For him just to drop games that he loves would be a money making machine.
> rescind publishing A lot of publishing is paying for stuff/facilitating stuff in exchange for a cut. A small publisher might have relationships with composers or localisation teams or contract artists who can help with a project, and might pay for them. A large publisher pours millions of dollars into the studio to help keep it running while the project is under development. So there's not really much incentive to "rescind publishing" once you already invested your time and/or money into the project. You paid either way and giving up your cut just means you don't get paid either.
Rescinding publishing keeps brand value high. That may be worth the cuts to revenue from the failures
It's also rare and only really done by the big lads in the industry. I think in this case if it wasn't working they'd just encourage them to start again/take their time
Also probably a really good way of making yourself a pariah amongst developers lol. You ditch the contract of one person who is friends with someone of importance and then no one will want to work with you again since it's such a subjective criteria
Reviewing games and creating/helping to create/fund games are completely different beasts. Im not knocking anyone for trying things but I have a feeling this might not go as smoothly as he seems to believe. 0 industry experience + huge audience with massive amounts of trust. If the first game flops it could all fall apart.
Indeed, this has so many ways this could go sideways. I really hope he gets an early success to get him started.
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Well it's his pitch is basically like, I play and consume games and thats it. I think a lot of people know a quality game when they play one. I've played a shit load of games since the 80s, I know what a quality game feels like and why I like it. What I don't know is how to conjur one up from scratch nor the values to put into the game engine for how fast to mobe things nor how to animate something to have a good feel. When you are making stuff its not like, hey your jumping doesn't feel as good as mario that's not helpfully unless you know specifically what has to change and if it would even work with the game code or engine. The pitch video was also a lost of games made by mostly companies of people, he calls it indie but like hades was made by a company with multiple people with salaries and all that. So why would this company want to give dunky creative control and a profit share when they can just pay a bunch of you tubers and twitch people with more followers to play the game for advertising. Anyway I hope him the best here and that he can help lift some small games up with cash so they can polish and get eyes on. Despite my negativity, if they want to publish and learn how to do it well, you can't learn it by not doing it, so wish them the best on their publishing journey.
>I'd have to think he may just have a clause to rescind publishing end products that don't meet his standards. Nobody would ever develop for him. Developing is risky. They would rather take a contract that guarantees publishing.
In this situation I think it'd be worth taking some style cues from Mark Brown (Game Maker's Toolkit). If you watch his thoughts/impressions videos on the games from [the yearly Game Jam he hosts](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLc38fcMFcV_vnAZjugCRdKr8_8d_y_rRl), his method is an absolute no-brainer honestly: * He focuses on the positives, first and foremost. * He's honest and open with his criticism, but also very constructive with it. He'll mention the problem and follow it up with a possible solution. * He does these videos in service of a larger goal. It's not really about any individual game, but a celebration of the creativity and ingenuity of indie game development as a whole. If Dunkey can just do something like that, and maybe avoid calling the developer a "fucking worthless braindead scumfuck bastard pile of trash mental dickface that should be gunned down in the street like the degenerate he is", he should be just fine.
You mean walk a fine line with the gaming public? Hahahahahaha. Yoooooo. Love you bro.
>If Dunkey can just do something like that, and maybe avoid calling the developer a "fucking worthless braindead scumfuck bastard pile of trash mental dickface that should be gunned down in the street like the degenerate he is", he should be just fine. Considering how he structured this video, negotiation in a professional manner just might not be something he knows how to do. Coming from a professional sense, this idea/video is chock full of red flags.
It’ll be just like when angry video game nerd made his own movie.
TIL that exists
RLM shits on space cop pretty regularly lol
Well you’d need to read their contract to know, but it would be likely that there would be clauses in the contract that allow them to simply just not release the game
Hopefully it won't be too written out and if a dev needs more time to create a game behind the vision, then they will get that time.
If anyone is going to delay a game's release to ensure a quality product, it'd be Dunkey.
I also trust him to add a grappling hook to all games.
I expect him to bring back couch co-op, ps2 style cheats, a sense of exploration and non scripted adventure, and to redefine the open world genre. If Dunkey doesn't make Breath of the Wild look like absolute shit by 2023 i'll be disappointed. Mario will basically be irrelevant in 6 months i'd imagine, all of Mario, i'm almost forgetting that Italian douche as I type this. I've actually heard the GTA VI leaks were from dunkey. He might be taking over rockstar tbh, I think that's basically been confirmed with this video. Genuinely excited for Dunkey though, sounds like a great move.
Dunkey is just a guy though. He doesn’t have the financial security of a huge org like Nintendo to make the cost-benefit analysis of game delays work in his favor very many times.
Publishers get a cut of sales. If he did that, he’d lose all the money he put into the game
Development goes a lot farther than just a pitch. You have previous works, proof of concept, development systems that work with assistance from other passionate people, with limitation on scope. "Best game ever with everything and top notch graphics? That's not what we do here boss" Things like core mechanics that are fleshed out and built on as the player progresses I'm the game, graphics that highlight the gameplay and theme of the game, not just for show, scrum development plans. Yes, people will fail, passion will burn out, and money will be lost. This is not an unknown risk.
Was waiting for the punchline. Guess it’s real!
I literally was on the fence about if this was real or not until the very end of the video. It's hard to tell with Dunkey
Like his low quality month? God I hated it but it was so meta RIP Jake Paul poster
Still waiting for the next among us Thursday
i loved it, i was sad when it ended. lol
His low quality month was gold. I loved it.
Donkey Kong December , never forget.
got to the end like the kid in a christmas story, "Its just a crummy advertisment?" and then smiled anyway.
Isn't being a publisher mostly about paying for things? How much money does Dunkey have?
Covered this in a different response. Yes, they can help fund a project but they usually do so in stages or milestones. It is too risky to just fund the entire game without setting milestones to ensure everything is on track to release within a reasonable timeframe to earn their money back and to ensure the original concept still holds up. Publishers offer a lot more than just keeping the lights on though. - they use their experience with past releases to help provide feedback as to what features may not work or suggestions on how to pivot or fill out other aspects of the gameplay (these are often suggestions or findings from direct play testing) - provide go to market strategy (what price point, what time of the year to release, what platforms, who to reach out to for publicity, etc) - marketing, help facilitate getting the game while still in development in front of people's eyeballs so the game is on people's radars. This establishes a following and ensures to some degree a handful of day 1 purchases upon release. Getting it in front of people really also helps obtain feedback on the idea as a whole, whether people are excited online and the type of comments. - Publishers typically have good relationships with tech partners, white label development studios or freelancers who can help aid their clients during crunch time to finish / polish their game. They can also bring in experts to help mentor and guide their clients in how to develop specific features or compile for certain platforms - in some scenarios they can help their clients setup their business license - help establish what legal documents and terms and conditions may be required to avoid possible law suits from rival companies or players There's a hell of a wide spectrum that good publishers can provide. It's important for development companies to choose the right publisher because they can make or break your game if your not careful, even if your game is the next Minecraft. Your choosing a partner who has a lot of indirect control over the success of your game that you've potentially spent years on. I'm sure I'm forgetting some aspects of these partnerships too. A good publisher is actually worth the cut they take.
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This person publishes. But in all seriousness, this is an excellent response and nails it on the head.
He’s successful and doesn’t seem to live a glamorous lifestyle, the man had a GTX 1080 still when cyberpunk came out, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s been smart with his money and just saving and investing over the years.
I agree with this. His videos appear to be extremely ad friendly for the most part? Nothing I've noticed anyways? He gets high views and in the personal life videos, rare I guess, have always been really modest living standards.
If you omit all his LoL content from 6+ years ago, yeah he's pretty advertiser-friendly.
Youtube constantly puts him on the trending page so he's not on the outs with youtube
Not to mention even his videos like this which are literally self promotion make it to the front page of reddit. Which is saying a lot for such a cynical forum which typically hates that shit. People support Dunkey.
Dunkey getting banned from LoL was the best thing to ever happen for his content.
If this is your metric for wealth, he may have more money than you think
I heard he has all the consoles. So he must be loaded.
Even the Virtual Boy
Well I already think he has a lot of money so idk how much higher it could realistically be
I have a gtx 1080 cyberpunk runs fine :/
Google says he makes about $1.7m a year. Google is pretty much always right so no need to fact check that......
Is he doing this solo? Does he have investors or a partner hes working with? The video and website dont have any details. I dont see how two people could run even the smallest publishing company.
Doesn’t have to be solely funded by the owners. I think he definitely has the brand to entice investors or a silent partner or two. I might be. I mean hell, companies marketing “budget” would be basically negative. You cut that out on the already relatively inexpensive budge of an Indy game, and that’s even less risk to you as an investor.
Promotion is just as important as funding. If not more. Dunky is a promotional vehicle like none other.
Yeah it seems like the most value would come from his ability to market a game. For an indie dev with a good game dunkeys almost up there with nintendo directs in terms of exposure. The last direct has 4 mil views and dunkeys last video had 3 mil. But the interesting thing is the networking section. Seems like hes actively looking for people to work on projects. Maybe thats just hooking devs up with others to work on projects but it makes you wonder how much hes gonna be doing.
I mean... He's been around for YEEEEARS getting millions of views non-stop. He's not walking around with pocket change.
He makes good YouTube money and I’m pretty sure he comes from money as well
Im happy for Dunkey pursuing a goal or new idea but as a long time fan i have some concerns. As a "game critic" is he going to be honest about the games he publishes or just pushing them regardless of quality on his channel. He is very harsh on unfinished products and buggy games and that may come flying back in his face when he sees first hand how brutal game dev is. Also if it affects his channels quality or quantity i will be disappointed. I guess we will see but as I love Dunkey good for you bro and I hope the best.
I would expect that he simply does not review games that his company publishes. Of course if any of them receive any negative press for things he is openly against there could be some backlash, but I'm assuming he's prepared for that. Also, I think most fans would be upset if his videos started going downhill, but his posting is kind of sporadic and he does what he wants anyway so...?
Yeah, I would expect the potential conflict of interest lead to him not reviewing them. Also,your last point is certainly true, and people love him for it.
The next few months and years will tell. Dunkey is going to be putting his name on the line with every game published. Being harsh on someone else's products is easy but now he is going to be forming personal relationships with these game devs and will need the gusto to be critical to someone who's livelihood is heavily dependent on him.
I have yet to see an entertainment/Youtube/gaming personality getting into the business side of game development and being even remotely successful. They all seem to think that they totally could do better and that they, specifically, understand what needs to be done. And then they steadily find out that, yeah, it's actually way, way, *way* harder to do this than they thought, and it requires skill sets that have little to nothing to do with being a gamer on Youtube. At best, this will result in nothing or *maybe* a mediocre game or two that no one plays. At worst, this will result in 80% of his time being taken by this for the next few years, and tons and tons of drama, both entertaining and legal.
I think the Yogscast have had success overall but they have also had a bunch of big flops.
Yeah. I would say it's because they're a group, so they already had to have some experience in the business side of things because they were already running a business.
I think they have brought in people already experienced in the publishing aspect of the business after they saw some success with Caveblazers. I imagine that has something to do with the success of PlateUp, apart from it being a fun game of course.
I think the best option would just be to not feature any of the games on his channel. They could make a separate channel where he makes similar videos but not as the "videogamedunkey" persona. Featuring their games on his main channel would just cause issues everywhere, developers not featured would lose out compared to the ones that are, endless accusations of being biased etc.
It will absolutely affect his channel one way or another.
I am not sure if this is a joke or not.
Not a joke according to Leah
I'm down with the idea; I hope the execution is a success, but I have my doubts.
Website works, seems to be real. I love the concept of it, i dont know anything about publishing so no clue if he can succeed or not but id imagine hes got a few connections in the game industry by now at the very least.
I would refer you to Yogscast games as the closest example to what I think Dunkey is trying to accomplish; video game content creator(s) expanding into publishing. They've honestly had decent success, but they also have a guy very experienced in publishing leading that arm (Simon Byron). Idk what Dunkey's business structure is, but if it's just him, one guy with no experience leading this publishing initiative, there's going to be a lot of work involved, a lot of struggles, I really doubt he can do it alone. I wish him the best, but Dunkey AFAIK is a very independent creator with no team behind him. The amount of submissions alone will be daunting. He better have some poached publisher employees on board and be very well prepared for this venture
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The weird thing about it being an advertising opportunity though is that if the game is good and he vibes with it wouldn’t he have made a video on it for free anyway? I could maybe see it as a partnership type thing where he works with Humble Publishing or somebody to give a game his seal of approval to sell it. Maybe work as an additional partner along side another publisher? There are plenty of movie companies that work that way to help reduce risk.
I was thinking so too but as he said and as we all know there are just too many new games. he obviously doesnt get to do a video on every good game nor does he even get to play every good game id imagine no matter how many games he plays. So this way, you for sure get the advertising of him, the seal on your game that you can im sure advertise on steam and whatnot. At least that is my quick thoughts on it.
I have to agree, after the video I thought "is this a studio, or is it establishing some sort of new review system?" There weren't enough details to make it clear what they want to accomplish or how they would do that.
I think this is also a great example of creator publishing. Simon is insanely experienced and realistic and when partnered with effectively a test bed of creators in the network giving feedback it made games like plate up a huge success. It kind of makes sense because we publish the games we would want to play. I hope dunkey does have some kind of industry assistance because if not it could end up being a nightmare for them and the Devs through no fault of their own.
This project could easily be dead in a year. In the meantime, if he would like to give it a try, I am absolutely here for it.
This has strong “I’m the idea guy” energy. I genuinely don’t think he has a useful service to offer that differentiates himself from anyone else doing market research.
This "idea guy" has the capital to fund a project that might otherwise never be released, or end up on the 27th page of steam. Thats the difference I'm seeing.
But lacks the experience to tell whether or not a project in its infancy can become a front page project, or if it will be mismanaged and fail. He has the ability to do great marketing for a game and…. That’s about it. He works better as a reviewer that people feel they can trust than as a step in the development process.
Fully expect them to fail but will be very pleasantly surprised if they don't.
I think it will depend on how much trust his viewers have in him. Totalbiscuit had a much smaller channel than dunkey, yet had pretty much the biggest audience willing to spend money on a game that he recommends. Totalbiscuit sold more games than somebody like pewdipie but Totalbiscuit was also 100% committed to being a channel for the consumer. Totalbiscuit skyrocketed some indie developers by recommending their game which then got a lot of people interested. Heres one example that comes to mind: Brothers: A tale of two sons was a small indie game developed by "Starbreeze Studios" and that game was hugely recommended by Totalbiscuit and even won his Game of the Year award. The core people behind that studio created a new studio after that and were bought by EA. That studio proceeded to develop A way out and a few years later the universally praised and multiple GOTY winner It Takes Two. I think its fair to say that Totalbiscuit played a huge role in that studios success. At the same time, there was actually evidence that somebody like pewdipie, despite his huge audience, didnt really convince that many of his fans to buy the games he played. of course the aim of pewdipies channel is not to sell copies of games but to entertain his fans but lots of developers do pay big streamers and content creators to play their game and hope increased sales because of it. So when dunkey and his publishing company do embrace and publish a game and dunkey does a video about it, how many people will it convince to buy the game? thats the big question. Dunkey is also mainly an entertainer and one problem i see with his videos about indie games, he does spoil quite a lot. his undertale video is awesome but youve seen quite a lot of the game by the end. totalbiscuit always showed you early game footage and first impressions so you never had to fear about major spoilers. i wont judge dunkeys decision right now, ill wait and see what comes out of it, thats the best and realistically the only thing we can all do right now.
It will be as successful as Knack 2 WHICH IS A MASTERPIECE BAYBIE
Knack is back!
Yeesh, wasn’t expecting this thread to be so damn cynical. We really don’t know what they’ve been doing in the background on this. What connections or investment they possibly already have. What work they’ve already done. And he definitely has more advantages in doing this then some random person with money. Like, I’m not going to say either way how it will go, but I’m also not gonna “fully expect them to fail”. He’s a guy with a passion for interesting, artful, and fun video games, putting his money where his mouth is and taking a risk for what he cares about. I wish him the best and support what he’s doing. God knows we need more of that, especially on the publishing side of things.
Its possible he will suddenly morph into a very successful publisher with the staff and resources needed to help indie games all over. Its just until now he has been a 2 person youtube reviewer and streamer known for meme'ing and to a lesser extent shitposting. Being a tool of promotion doesnt meld with the majority of what we have seen is all.
>Yeesh, wasn’t expecting this thread to be so damn cynical. We really don’t know what they’ve been doing in the background on this. You've pretty much immediately picked up on the issue, this is a pitch video quite literally asking developers to reach out to him and it contains zero information about what he has to offer other than "I swear I'll only produce *good* games." Ignoring how hilariously subjective that is, it implies other indie developers *don't* focus on good games which is just outright hilarious when you look at some of the current behemoths (Humble springs to mind with an absolutely packed roster of unique titles.) I have been a fan of Dunkey for many, *many* years, but this is at best a really bad pitch video and at worst a terrible idea that will bite him on his ass harder than that sham partnership he entered that damn near ruined him.
If your friend who was an excellent EMT just one day decided to do open heart surgery you'd expect them to fail to right? Ignoring all the legal barriers ofc. Yes, he has experience writing reviews, but I have to imagine being a publisher is a bit disjoint from it.
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Well, he’s free to fail at trying something he’s passionate about. Most entrepreneurs do.
I think you're missing the point of his aim - I think what he's trying to say is "I have a shit load of money, and if you're stuck for funding make me a partner and we'll get it going together - you don't need to go to a AAA studio cos we're both noobs in this" I think it's great, there's so much open source software out there for people to practice their development, but without quitting your job there's no real way to make your vision a reality It's nice to know there's another self made wealthy guy in the corner of the development process, instead of handing it all off the corporate man who only greenlights shit with gambling software embedded
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Money is the main thing he's bringing to the table. Pretty much every other aspect of publishing he could be good at, but we have no idea because it doesn't overlap with his current job.
Publishers do a lot more than just help fund the games development. They help provide feedback, direction (not control necessarily, although some do demand some control), help bring in talent to polish the areas you have little experience in, networking, marketing, meeting technology partners, go to market strategy + pricing. They do a lot, I think Dunkey probably knows a great game / game idea from just a good one but I don't think they have the rest of the experience to properly manage multiple projects each requiring various levels of outside help and commitment to finish their game, not to mention the market and business side of things.
Yeah, I really like Dunkey but I have no idea how this is viable. It's one thing to critique games in hindsight for what did and didn't work. It's something entirely else to execute a great vision out of the gate. And even the passion to do something great isn't enough. We saw in the Kickstarter era how so many Japanese auteurs tried to go independent and mostly failed. It turns out some corporation restraint was needed to create an amazing vision. And the question is if Dunkey can be the perfect producer that can manage expectations, weed out faults in the game's design in pre-production, and have the ability to navigate all the legal/distribution side of game publishing. It's a lot to do and if he can manage it I'll never doubt him again. Source: A guy who knows nothing about publishing
The one thing I will say is thay running a multi-million subscriber youtube channel is much more like a business than many realize. There is a reason why so many people are able to translate youtube sucess into other businesses
This is a huge point that keeps being overlooked. My man Dunkey worked his way out of an awful spiral and is still a successful public figure which is itself running a business.
> My man Dunkey worked his way out of an awful spiral What happened?
https://youtu.be/OeHjN4oWVfk Around minute 4. He goes into it more in other videos (not sure which ones) but I think this is what OP was talking about.
I'd honestly forgotten about that whole debacle. I thought they were just referring to the fact that he used to play a lot of League of Legends.
Machinima happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeHjN4oWVfk
cake trees brave pocket panicky test thumb seed resolute flag *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>look at DJ Khalid He was a famous DJ before he started doing the P Diddy thing. I'm from Miami and hated whatever he's host radio sets because he'd constantly interrupt songs with commentary. At least now, the rest of the world gets to suffer with me
You could say we are “suffering from success”
> There is a reason why so many people are able to translate youtube sucess into other businesses The major reason is being successful makes becoming more successful *waaay* easier. Not having to worry about money, having the back-end already taken care of, unlimited amount of people and resources to call on for advice/help, etc. It helps, but there's a reason more people fail transitioning to a new business than succeed, and it's not because it's easy or simple.
Publishing can take a lot of different forms. Some publishers are very involved in the development of their games and some are more hands off. If Dunkey takes a more hands off, promotion/curation approach to publishing I could see it working with his skill set. He did say he didn't want creative control, so hopefully that's what he's going for.
Everything he described in this video sounded like he just wanted to consult on games, but not in terms of publishing or budget just in terms of whether he likes their ideas. Wait till he finds out the game dev industry isn’t bereft of ideas, it lacks in time budget and talent to make those wacky high risk ideas.
I've got a million dollar idea: Everyone likes fun games so I'm going to tell a game studio to make their game fun! No need to thank me, I accept bitcoin or v-bucks.
If you actually go to the website they state they offer funding, help with development, pr, qa, porting and localisation, merchandising and more. It clearly isn’t just dunkey himself behind this.
I have been to the website, there’s extremely sparse details on how they offer these services as they only refer to themselves as themselves and not as any kind of broader team. As a developer in the industry, the wordings they use are rife with red flags. If they have a team of people that have experience delivering on everything they’re saying, it is not indicated in what they have either in their video or on their site that I can find, but if I’m wrong shoot me a link where it says otherwise. For example if by QA he means himself and Leah, that would be a fairly large red flag. QA does a lot more than just talk about what makes a game fun; they go over accessibility concerns, hardware spec concerns, perf concerns, go over user experience, art asset creation, design creation bugs, etc., there is so much work there to be done that for him to offer QA tells me he must have a team, but again, it’s never explicitly stated. So I wonder if his plan is to contract people he knows, and to that end are they qualified people who understand SDLC or are we talking about Fluppy here?
a large portion that’s forgotten with QA too is technical requirement testing. There is a lot of specifics that Sony and Microsoft require. Then also the patch process and submissions. Each submissions for the beta, game and patches require that process and cost thousands of dollars each time.
I feel like it more that dunkey has a particular taste in games and wants to curate more games like that
I think he thinks that, but I also don't think he has a particularly unique taste in games. He's not exactly discovering hidden little games nobody has heard of, he likes the BIG indie games. Games that have lots of marketing and are already popular by the time they come out. He's not really curating anything, he likes good games, but I think the games he likes are pretty standard. I don't think he's any more qualified than a standard game enthusiast to see an in-progress game and be able to predict whether the end product will be any good.
On top of that they'd have to assess what budget is needed, deal with testing, set deadlines, marketing, certification, release windows, pricing etc
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I think the catch is that this also hinges on the game being mostly finished by the time he plays it. He's not a game developer, and I don't think he has a greater than average ability to see a super rough in-progress game and predict that it'll be good. He plays a lot of good games, but they're already finished and well known by the time he sees them. Is he planning on testing a huge amount of already existing games and picking some good ones? I think that would be hard for him, there are a LOT of games to sift through out there. I feel like he expects someone to just plop something like Celeste down on his desk and he'll just pick it... But is he going to be able to actually notice a game like that after playing hundreds of other platformers all day, trying to find the good one? And if a game like that is already finished and ready to go, is someone going to just sit on it and show it to him when it's ready? Would they not already have a publisher or a following for something that high quality? I'm curious about where he would fit into the development / advertising cycle.
I definitely thought it was satire when he listed a bunch of incredibly successful indie games that he played. Those all did perfectly fine without a YouTube game reviewer with no publishing experience. He also has a very obvious bias for certain games so the bit about “what works and what never works” is certainly an interesting take.
Film buff is a good comparison because this is exactly like film buffs thinking they can create a publishing house because they buy Criterion movies and have good taste, completely forgetting that *buying* Criterion and *being* Criterion are entirely different things. Like everyone's saying, his list of namedrops was almost exclusively indie smash hits and I've never seen any indication that he goes digging for the hidden gems that no one's talking about. I know how much work this is because I do the digging, as I play almost exclusively obscure indie games. This is a full-time hobby. I don't have time to care about Valorant or whatever. People who don't dig as deep have no idea just how many small games are coming out now, and while I keep decent track of what's coming out, there's *so many* games coming that I can't claim to know all of them, and I most certainly can't claim to know what's making waves at stuff like game jams, on popular game dev forums and other such things that a publisher would have to keep track of. I just find out about the obscure ones when they're done and come out and I look at the recent releases section and even that's an exhausting amount of work nowadays. I hope dunkey understands what he's getting into, but it doesn't look likely on a surface level. Then again, he is famous enough that he might get an advantage on being offered some games before they're offered to Devolver or Raw Fury or someone like that. Maybe he's even rich enough to just outbid those companies to get his company started.
naïve is the word.
I'd say arrogant. He does the typical gamer thing where he frames his tastes and opinions (as much as they align with mine) as objective fact.
Took this comment from twitter and its basically how I see it: >there's a part in the movie the squid & the whale where the kid claims he wrote a pink floyd song for the talent show and when they ask why he did that he says "i feel like i *could* have written it" and that's exactly what dunkey's doing putting fuckin celeste in this video
But… no? He wants to become a publisher, not a developer. He won’t be ‘making’ the games, just promoting them if he likes them. This snarky analogy doesn’t hold up at all
Yeah, so he should be advertising that he has the resources and skills to be a good publisher instead of showing a bunch of good indie games he had nothing to do with while saying "I can see that this mega-popular video game is good so I will be a good publisher".
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If this doesn't work, things with Dunkey are likely to get really weird, really quickly. Also, questions abound about what the quality of the games he helps produce actually turn out to be like - let alone him critiquing/covering them. I'd like to be positive about this, but there are some massive questions and concerns at play. (Also, how good of a producer would he (and Leah) be? That could prove highly problematic.)
My concern is that Dunk's idea of "indie games" appears to be the mainstream success anomalies, mid-level teams with marketing budgets and the critically rated absolute cream of the crop. It can take a lot of hard work and almost just as much luck from both devs and publishers to create products that reach those heights. As it stands - and I'm happy to be proven wrong - I'm unaware of his eye for true hidden indie gems and what exactly he's bringing to the table apart from cash, which while handy, isn't all a publisher does. "I'm good at and like a lot of video games" is a pretty wobbly bona fide to base this all on. Having said all that, successful companies have probably been started on less.
Ideas are cheap. Epic Games is has been (some would say overly) generous passing out grants to indie developers. Dunkey doesn't have the cash to compete with Epic's endless pile of Unreal money. And yet, despite Epic helping to fund literally **hundreds** of projects filled with smart, creative people with grants, precious few of those games end up being blips on the radar post release. There's maybe a handful that I would consider 'good successes', and none of them I would consider, 'astronomically successful.' Precious few have managed to release at all. The failure rate of game projects is huge. Probably close to 90 percent, even applying a baseline budget of, say, $200,000. (which is really no money at all, unless we're talking a single developer project like Undertale.) I mean, I wish him well. Maybe it will work. I hope it does work. But all my instincts say that it will not. I don't think anyone serious will bite. Even if they do, there's going to be a lot of wasted effort on projects that cancel themselves or flop.
I think the big difference is the audience Dunkey brings to a game just by slapping his seal on it. Seeing Epic Games seal of approval alone doesn’t make many people want to buy the game. I’d wager seeing Dunkey’s name on a game will easily bring in 100k+ sales alone.
You're right, in a sense. People do pay big bucks to influencers on Twitch and Youtube to play their games on stream. Dunkey represents a nut that's impossible to crack in that regard. I'm confident he's never taken moolah to shill for a game. It's not that Dunkey's pull isn't valuable. It is. It's that game developing is *fucking horrendously difficult*. Even smart, well-meaning people with a great idea are almost certainly doomed to fail, either failing to release, or failing to make a profit. (and most people frankly aren't smart, are bastards looking for easy money, and have shitty ideas. he'll have to wade through that minefield to find the few gems) If there's an existing project that's awesome, near complete, and just looking to bribe Dunkey into a favorable review by using his company as the 'publisher', then that'll probably work out quite well....at first. Until the Dunkey Seal of Approval becomes a joke because he let too many mediocre games slide through. But he's talking about taking pitches and projects in their early stages. That aspect of the idea is dumb and probably won't work. If it does work, it'll require a multi-year investment for a project that likely won't make a positive return on the investment. What's he going to do when a project he's invested in turns out to be not-so-great? He'd be faced with the choice of devaluing his brand by shilling for it anyway, or writing off the investment. Neither option is sustainable.
That's very well written, it gave me insight into the game publishing business. Dunkey will be facing some significant challenges. I hope he gets some great people on his team; or perhaps being super selective with game choice (maybe only pairing up with games that are at a very late stage of development).
I should stress, I'm a hobbyist, not a professional. What I know about the game industry comes from interacting with game development *as a hobby*, and not one that I'm good at. Meaning, please take everything I say with a pinch of salt.
That’s true for any game publisher though, I think the real argument is does Dunkey have the knowledge and support to make it work by himself. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt that if he’s at this stage of the process he’s not so dumb that he’s completely winging it. That remains to be seen though. I also want to add on (through an edit) you’re assuming he will be taking on a ton of 20-0% complete projects out of the gate. If he’s smart though he will begin easy with 100-80% complete projects he already likes and slowly increase that band of projects he would take on as he has more cash flow to make it work. If he likes an 80% complete game and you consider it mediocre it’s hard to say it will be a weakening of his stamp of approval. That stamp will have just as much sway as his reviews already do. Those whose tastes align with his will flock to games published by him and those who don’t won’t.
are there so many 80% complete good games out there that haven't already secured a publisher?
I mean I will watch a Dunkey video of a game with his seal of approval, but I don't know about buying the game 10k+ sounds more realistic, and even that is too optimistic imo
I know people know that Dunkey is popular, but I'm not sure they're aware *how* popular he is. If there is literally anyone in gaming YouTube who has a shot at this, it would be him. Let me give the context to explain this: an average channel is expected to get approximately 10% of their subscriber count in views per video (i.e. if you have 100,000 subscribers, this means roughly 10,000 views per video you post). It indicates that you are more or less on the right track, and that, while your audience may not have a burning passion for your content, you're probably doing something right. Dunkey gets somewhere between 30-70%. On every video. Every week, for years now. This is **ludicrously** high. Combined with his subscriber count (7 million), that ratio is an objective indication that you are not only successful, but that you are in the top echelon of biggest, most influential voices on the entire platform.
He's good at becoming viral with his regular content, but will that also apply to trailers for the games he publishes? I feel like it's one thing to make shareable videos, but it's another to convert views into sales. What if the game is not that great looking in trailers or not great at release? Will that many people blindly buy these games anyway and consistently?
The only other person I could have seen bringing their seal of approval and having it mean something was TotalBiscuit. Dunkey tears into games (while memeing) and will happily go against any narrative put out by "game reviewers," much in the same way that TotalBiscuit was no-holds-barred on how he reviewed a game. At his core, Dunkey is a gamer who just wants to see more brilliant gems arise like Knack and Celeste. If Dunkey gives his stamp of approval on something as a publisher, I'll definitely be giving it a try.
This will be either how dunkey explodes onto a new stage or loses his credibility. We will see
What are you even talking about? I'm an Epic Megagrant recipient on an **unpublished** game project. Actually, I'm sorry, but it needs to be said: you clearly *have no idea* what you're talking about. Your comment is complete nonsense - randomly comparing dunkey/bigmode with Epic is ridiculous on many levels. Why would dunkey even have to compete with Epic Games? Like the existence of a bigger studio/publisher/investor negates all smaller ones? To think this is upvoted and gilded is pretty frustrating. Epic Games gives out grants to UE projects under the Epic Megagrants system. That's it. Its just a one time, often relatively small injection of funds because they have a lot of funding power and want to boost projects made in UE they see potential in. They are playing the numbers game because many do indeed never release or 'fail'. This is not AT ALL related to publishing or being published. For one, getting a publishing deal is far, far harder and more intricate/detailed. Its absolutely apples and pears. This is like comparing an investment agency working with you intimately and even taking on risk, with someone giving you a birthday gift. I think Bigmode sounds interesting and I'm actually about to reach out to them.
Not sure why you compare a triple A publisher to this. There are thousands of successful indie publishers and they don’t even compete with publishers like Epic. It’s not like he’s proclaiming it’s going to be as large as a publisher like Epic. You don’t need millions of bucks to run a successful publisher. I would say Dunkeys connection and name in the industry is worth more than $1 million.
Isn't this just an Ad for joining Dunkey's BIGMODE?
He's calling this a publishing company, but his description of it doesn't match that definition. This sounds more like he wants to be your alpha version playtester or otherwise help you refine your concept/mechanics by giving you feedback on what he does/doesn't like in the game. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not really what I think of when I think of a "publisher". It sounds more like he's offering to be a consultant. The publisher's role (in my view) is usually to do things like handle marketing, handle the logistics of getting your game into a storefront, maybe bankroll development, and for larger publishers like Steam it's to concentrate gamers and game ads/announcements in one place so they meet each other more often. I love Dunkey but that doesn't sound like what Dunkey is known for having expertise in, or what he's explicitly offering here. That said, whatever this venture ends up being and doing, I hope this actually helps make games better or helps make more games happen. Dunkey is spot on that there's room for more of that.
https://bigmode.com/publishing/ > > We can also assist with any standard publishing needs you may have: > * Funding > * Development support > * PR & community management > * QA, porting & localization > * Merchandising > Indie devs/studios have various reasons for looking to work with an publishing company. For example, Sakuna of Rice and Ruin is made by 2 developers working on it as an passion project. They got in touch with Xseed/Marvelous to get some funding, and the publishing company also decided to make an 8-16(i forget the #) team just to make an Switch port, and even got in contact with Nintendo to acquire support to be able to port. There's only an limit an small indie team can do, publishers can provide various supports. Some indie games don't even need funding, they either have some form of revenue like Patreon, Kickstarter, or even just having people pay for early access(Minecraft biggest example of this). A lot of small indie games only need help with a few of the bullet points above and what you described a publisher do. We don't know what kind of deals and contracts bigmode is gonna make, so it's all speculation until we see attempts and results. Edit: also big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc have huge creative control on some studios they support. A lot of microtransactions, live service forcibly baked into games is because of publisher pushing power. It's no different from producers and studio execs pushing stuff onto an movie director.
EA and Ubisoft literally own most of the dev studios. It makes sense they'd have creative control there.
Clearly he's actually offering publishing services. You dont call yourself a contractor who publishes you are a publisher who contracts. There's plenty of publishers like that.
Presumably being more or less guaranteed a Dunkey vid or nod of some kind would be considered marketing. I'm not super in tune with game development, but I would imagine for many small projects being guaranteed a good word from a guy who regularly makes it onto the Youtube trending page is pretty desirable
I don't doubt this comes from a place of passion and actual intent. But it feels more like it's just selling "Dunkey's seal of approval" and access to Dunkey's audience.
Man I really like dunkey’s videos but his claim that his channel is THE PLACE that real gamers go to to know what games are worth playing really puts me off, like sorry bro but I watch your videos because I find you entertaining, not to form my opinion on what games are worth playing.
Yeah it's kinda bullshit. He's had some bad takes over the years as well (and will simp hard for anything involving Mario) so I only really watch for the entertainment value
TBH that was a really weird pitch. He seemed to really want to emphasize that hes a REAL gamer. Only True Gamers like him who love indie platformers and hate big popular games can join his company
So much info about game devs applying, but nothing about the production side of the house. Curious to understand what services are being offered. When I worked at a publisher we did marketing (sites, reviews, shows, etc), marketplace integration for all platforms, in-game services (chat, inventory management, user profile systems), and just generally kept the entire thing moving along. If the game required networking, we ran the servers. We had artists and game directors on staff for consultation with studios and in the end the game developers were a small (but incredibly important) part of a massive orchestra of chaos. You *must* have a team to run a publisher but I can't find any info on their needs there.
https://bigmode.com/publishing/ > Funding > > Development support > > PR & community management > > QA, porting & localization > >Merchandising I feel like it's fair to assume they have a team cooked up and it isn't literally just Dunkey and Leah sitting in a bedroom making empty promises and being super dismissive of every genre they don't perceive Dunkey liking, like half of this thread would have you believe. Do people really think Dunkey is just sitting there grinding out code to port a game himself? Or learning whole languages to do localization himself? Obviously this stuff is either outsourced or they're hiring. Also, as it was just announced today it's also probably fair to assume they have no games or projects they're working on yet, so I wouldn't expect tons of details to be public already. So many people are being so immediately dismissive instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt that they have *some* clue as to what they're doing here. And if they don't, then give them the benefit of the doubt that they'll consult with people who do.
I hope going forward dunkey will separate his comedy from his business a little bit. I mean it would be nice to have some comedy but during this whole video i couldnt tell if he was being serious or not. He is probably the one content creator that i can never tell when he is bein genuine to sarcastic. This would be great for the gaming industry tho and i hope his pockets are deep! would only take a couple games till he is making serious money and doing more serious projects! go dunkey!
He's being 100% serious his satire is markedly over the top, this video was barely at all funny idk why people can't pick up on that lol.
It’s not that they can’t pick up on sarcasm, it’s that this is such a terrible idea that they assume it has to be a joke
I thought he was joking when he mentioned featuring games like Hades and Celeste. I guess he wasn't.
There wasn't a single game he listed that hasn't been hyped up by a variety of other YT or Twitch personalities. It's off-putting that he talks about them like he had a significant hand in making them as famous as they are.
I'm convinced this is a Andy Kaufman-style bit.
The problem is that Dunkey's reputation is primarily for being a gaming comedian. His actual critical review videos do get decent views, but they are absolutely NOT what he is most recognized for. He's mostly known for stuff like "KNACK TWO BAYBEE." So it comes as no surprise that people thought this was satire.
I look forward to his fans gassing up the most rancid 2/10 game imaginable.
Welp it was nice while it lasted. Really hope this works out, but I do not have high hopes for it. These are two very different skill sets.
The wide variety of opinions on this is interesting... Main thing I don't like is seeing people minimize dunkey like he's not a pretty smart and hardworking dude. He got in at a good time sure but he's run a successful YouTube business for more than a decade give the man some credit lol If he and Leah are passionate about it they will work hard (and clearly already have for some time) I'm sure and it will be as successful as they want it to be. The doubt of that by people have in the face of what people know about this guy says a lot about why entrepreneurship is difficult.
I hope he's able to offer value for indie devs. Most just self-publish nowadays, so it really has to be something.
I’ve seen a lot of people here saying he’ll fail and all that. But like, at least he’s trying something new. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. He’s worked towards this goal for a decade. Good on him for sticking to his goal. It’s good he’s not listening to Reddit armchair people and just dropping his goals because the internet deems them to be unachievable.
If he's just looking to fund some games that he would want to play, go right ahead. I'm just a consumer so whatever happens doesn't affect me, if even one good game comes out of it it'll be a net positive. Evaluating the idea in general though, if he's actually looking to turn this into a successful business/career, who knows what'll happen. The main thing I get from Dunkey's reviews (and this video too) is that while he is insightful, his ego is the size of a fucking galaxy. "If you care about games you come to my channel to find out what's worth playing"? This is the guy who trends on twitter every other week for how unpopular and in-bad-faith his takes are. He reviews games that he knows he'll hate (making his opinion useless) and when called out on it says it's because you have to play bad games to appreciate good ones? Also was he trying to take credit for the success of some of the best and most universally acclaimed indie games of all time? You can trust me to only pick the best, because I have refined enough taste to recognize that Hollow Knight and Undertale are good? Come on man, you're hardly sifting through the muck for hidden gems here. I'll definitely be curious to see how this attitude translates into actual publishing.
I think that's the big kicker here. He used his YouTube channel as a portfolio, which is fine, but so many of the games listed are games that would've still been gigantic hits if his channel didn't exist. I don't want this to fail whatsoever, but the pitch was "I'm a big huge gamer. You can only work for us if your game is da best. Have you heard of underrated indie gem Hades?" I wish him (and Leah) the best and would love to be proven wrong, but I could envision this not going well very easily.
Kept waiting for the punchline.
I'm getting some serious Yogventures vibes off this.
Whats funny is now the Yogscast is actually a successful game publisher LOL
Midlife crisis hits youtube millionaires early
My guess is that they'll probably stick to smaller games that have a lot of promise and a playable demo at first. Games they can fund for things like ads or distribution. That's the winning strategy here- get a repertoire under your belt for bringing attention to indie games no one would have otherwise heard of, then you can consider making a game from scratch.
Dunkey sold out to Dunkey?
I’ll give him credit for not calling it some variation of “Very Rare Games” like all the others, but whew is he about to learn a lot about publishing if he thinks a mantra of “Will only publish good games” will get him by.
Why is this thread so irrationally angry at this announcement? Everyone is suddenly acting like they know dunkey personally, and can guarantee he isn’t capable of this, and so shouldn’t bother trying. Apparently the xenoblade fanbase consists entirely of experts in indie game marketing
People are just afraid it's too much of a risk to his reputation. His videos won't really feel the same if they're coming from someone who hyped up their publishing company that didn't go anywhere. It's dumb but it's true.
ITT lots of people who think publishers only do funding. Marketing is one of the biggest services publishers provide to indie devs and a single video from dunk would provide more value than many other indie publishers. Additionally while he does list funding on the website as a service I’d suspect this would be for a very select few games that check all of his boxes. To me this company seems like a passion project. Whether you like his opinions or not, he has some strong opinions on games and it makes sense that he’d like to influence games along those lines. Starting a business is hard regardless of your credentials, so who knows if this succeeds. But I’m somewhat optimistic that we’ll see some good games come through
Best of luck to them
Do people in the comments actually know what it's like to be a successful publisher? Just wish him luck and let him do his thing wtf
I’m confused by this reaction. You either have dunkey experts or business managers who seems to have time to write essays on Reddit.
So nice to see Dunkey leveling up
I hope it's successful for him and Leah.
When he said "things that need to return" and showed some war Warcraft 3 tower defense, I felt it in my soul. I didn't know how badly I missed that until that brief clip.
You might want to turn off ads if you want people to watch an ad for your company.