Gareth Fouche

By 30, I'd managed to save up enough to a year and a half on my own, making a game. It had always been my goal to make a game, but the game I'd been trying to make in my spare time, an ambitious RPG, I'd realized I'd likely never finish without more resources.

So I chose a game I thought would be small in scope (card game), without a lot of competition in the genre at the time (hah!), and set off. By the time I'd be done, Hearthstone, Gwent and a number of MtG games would be on the market and popular.

I was able to do this because I was a young dude, plenty of disposable income to funnel into savings, particularly since my hobbies are cheap and I'd stayed in my poxy little flat with little furniture for a few years to save money. I also inherited a small amt from my gran.

I worked in that little flat for more than a year, alone, with twitter to keep me company, although I went out once a week to stay social. By the end of the year, I realized I wouldn't be done before I ran out of money, so I started panicking.

I had 6 months runway left, but the anxiety starts eating at your focus. I tried to find freelance, got one gig that flubbed, and then eventually went looking for a job. I found one fairly easily, thanks to some mates, but yeah, last say 4 months were not productive.

I then worked for 2 and a half years to finish what would have taken 6 months full time. Between a day job and the game, 60 hour weeks, for over 2 years. I burned out hard. More than that, I broke my body.

Your body can take a lot of punishment when you're young, but it eventually catches up with you. Working that many hours at a PC gave me tendonitis in my hands and arms, along with foot and Achilles heel tightening problems.

I could barely walk for 3 months a few years ago. Just hobble around, living on anti-inflammatories. I lost 10kgs in 3 months, pain made it that I didn't feel like getting up to fetch food. My doctor worried I'd gotten TB, it was so rapid.

I had to be quarantined from my pregnant wife for 2 weeks while tests were done to make sure I wasn't infectious with something nasty. It's kinda funny in retrospect, not funny at the time. Oh, my neck also locked up, I couldn't turn it left.

I've eventually mostly better. I have stretches I need to do everyday, or I start tightening up and getting pain again. And, worst of all, I've 90% given up my art. :/

Anytime I use my computer too much for two or more weeks, the tendonitis in my hands starts coming back, and I have to cut back until it stops. I looked at my passions, and they were all on the computer/use my hands - work, gaming, art. I decided art was the least essential.

I miss painting and sketching. :( I will still occasionally do a drawing for fun, but it's infrequent. I've mostly come to terms with the fact that I won't get much better at it. Meh. At least I can walk properly again, although I have persistent problems with my tendons.

Anyway, game was released after 4 years. The delay had seen a bunch of high quality AAA card games take over the market, the indieapocalypse had come, and big review sites were swarmed with submissions. I never heard anything back from a big review site.

System Crash was on the front page of Steam for like 6 or 8 hours, I remember. When I woke up the next day, it was off the front page, sales had cut to 1/10th, and I had a sinking feeling. I wasn't going to make my money back, it seemed.

I was exhausted, burned out, just empty. I tried drumming up press for a few months, but it mostly led nowhere (and of course that is too late to start building marketing momentum!), and after a while I kinda gave up. It was done, I'd failed, bah, whatever.

I worked my day job, took time off, tried to recover. Took months. SC sales ticked over slowly, but not enough. I tried a few sales discounts, made little difference.

I'd had big plans for continuous expansions of new cards and story content for SC after release. After the flop that was release, seemed pointless. So I just let it kinda drift along.

After a year it was about 1/3rd of breaking even. I figured sales would totally die in year 2. One thing I did right, though, was be disciplined with discounts. I didn't deep discount immediately to try drum up sales to recover a bit of cash. I tested. 10%. 15%. 20%...

By year 2, I reached 40%. That turned out to be a significant threshold in the minds of players, where those who'd wishlisted but were holding off thought "ok, this is a good enough deal now". And since I hadn't underpriced my game, 40% off was still $9, around avg indie price

I got a sales spike. A nice spike. Still not enough to live on, but in the ballpark. If I got that every month, which it wouldn't, obviously. And it continued like that. Barring the release month, year 2's sales were better than year 1's. Due to discount spikes.

My spirits had recovered enough by then (and I'd gotten past that health issue patch), so I was wanting to get back to making indie games. Breaking even with SC was within reach. It looked less like I'd failed, and more like I had a cashflow problem.

In other words, my games could eventually turn a profit, but I needed money to tide me over while that ticked over. I didn't have it. My expenses had increased, I was a husband and new father now. Close to doubled, in fact. I didn't see a way to do it.

But my wife is braver than I am. Her whole family are entrepreneurs. She convinced me to jump, that we would take on a bit of (manageable) debt to fund the attempt, and that I shouldn't give up. So I jumped.

First thing I did was try DLC for System Crash. I'd wanted to do that, I estimated 3 months, it was quick turnaround to hopefully get a bit of cash. If it failed, not a lot of time/money wasted.

I got Underworld out, it hasn't made back its money. But it did catch the eye of a big streamer, who did a video on SC, which sent sales rocketing for 2 weeks, for the best month in sales of SC since launch month.

Counting it all as a package, SC got boosted by the DLC release and is now in the black, making profit. The DLC isn't yet in the black, but is 75% of the way there. Like I said, it's a cashflow problem. How to survive long enough to cross the line.

That was last year. My savings ran out a few months ago. So I'm living on debt and the small trickle from SC sales. I'm hoping the last few months of this year coming up, starting at Halloween, will be as good as they have been the last 2 years, for a nice boost of cash.

Cults is taking longer than it should have because of unforeseen complications. But it should be out next year Feb. Hopefully, that injection of cash + continued sales from SC will put me close to sustainable. Then I'm going to do Cults DLC.

And possibly System Crash 2, to follow up. I should note, I was burned out with card games when I released SC 3 years ago. I've recovered a bit, but a large factor in my choices here is leveraging my existing tech, looking for quick wins.

I can't afford another 4 years. Which is not a very romantic marketing pitch, honestly. Why are you making this game, Gareth? Because it's the best I could do with the resources I had available. :P