itch.io

"As an artist, I  want good art."

As an artist, I also want good art. I also want to live in a house, eat food and have access to medical care, which requires money. If you end up bankrupt and unhoused because you gambled your entire existance on a project whose success chances you vastly overestimated, you will not be happy about that.

I'd also argue that being housed, fed, medically cared to is a prerequisite for making art - especially video games. If you freeze to death under a bridge, you will not be able to make art afterwards.

If you dump 11k of money you just have lying around somewhere and don't need for anything else into your passion project, that is one thing. But from what you describe, it sounds like you do not have any income stream and are selling off vital items because it is your only way of funding your passion project, and that is a dangerous path.

Not to pile onto the diversion, but there are some concerning comments in this thread.

I know as a perpetually starving artist with an idealistic lean that working on creative projects while physically hungry is painfully difficult. Passing out messes with the flow, you know?

I’ve had to live outside permanent housing unwillingly, and the only random human corpse I’ve seen up close was an unhoused man who froze to death.

Being poor in the US, where I live is dangerous. Rich people here aren’t arrested for existing in public or hanging around their (one and only) home (when they have one). The rich are rarely killed waiting around in jail for months for a slow and unjust trial. But that happens to the poor at distressingly high rates.

Anyhow, with $11k, I’d repair my bathroom and food garden in hopes it will all endure the next weather disaster, replace my digital drawing devices and switch to solar, or I would take a much needed medical vacation to get the healthcare I’ve had to put off for years.

Your situation might be very different. If you had an extra car and no need to avoid the brink of your destruction, then it’s great that you’re helping with the cashflow to other artists. I hope your game development goes well.

But also… I’d like to point out that quality and cost are not equivalent.

To answer your question: I haven’t put in any money to my games. The cost has been whatever the increase in the power bill has been since I started running animation and audio tests late at night. That’s paid by my spouse’s hard labor while struggle to come out of chronic disability.

Actually, I feel bad about that… the extra energy use….