Hello! I'm a 32 year old gamedev from Europe.
Looking to find a long-term partner/co-founder to create games with.
My Philosophy
The more I do solo gamedev, the more it dawns on me what a massive constraint this is on what is possible to accomplish. No matter how skilled a person is, they still only have the same 24 hours in a day as everybody else. Time is such a massive factor that can only be overcome by teaming up.
I believe that the results from a good partnership don't have to be linear either. It can be exponential. 4x or 8x. So to me it seems like a problem worth solving.
So why doesn't everybody do this? It turns out this problem is so hard to solve, that if your goal is just to build some specific game you're currently working on, it will probably be faster and easier to just do it yourself.
It's actually a lot like looking for someone you want to marry. In order for the marriage to work, there is just a huge list of things that have to align between the two people. This is someone you'd be working with every single day after all.
I know my current project will take a massive slowdown hit because I've decided to commit to this search. But my strategy is very longterm. I'm not here to make one game. Or two. Or Three. So I'm willing to take the hit.
My Deal-breakers
Here's some of the things I need us to be aligned on right from the start, otherwise I don't think we're a good fit.
- I'm from Europe. If you're not, this will create a lot of problems for both of us. Due to timezones and legal matters.
- I'm 32 years old. If you're much younger than me, this is very unlikely to work out. Chances are we won't align on life priorities, philosophies and many other things.
- I've been using Unreal Engine for a long time. I'm also a C++ programmer. Which makes it the perfect engine for me. I don't plan to switch at the moment.
- Even though I'm familiar with all the hats a solo gamedev must wear, my primary strength lies in programming. It would be great if you could cover my weakness, which is art. However I will say that this one is not a complete deal-breaker for me. I think it could also work with us both being generalists.
- I do it fulltime, every single day, 365 days a year. Yes, I will be doing it on Christmas Eve. Yes, I will be doing it on New Years. I have a lot of projects I can show that I've worked on. You will see some of them at the end of this post. I have nothing against people taking a more casual approach to gamedev, but that's not me and it would make for a poor match.
- I'm only interested in building games people want to play. In other words commercially viable games. I'm not looking to make my dream game. I'm looking to serve others.
- I plan to be in this industry for a long time, my reputation matters to me more than money. If you want to use shady tactics to squeeze more money out of a project or build a game you know from the start is shit just to cash in on a trend, then it won't work. My primary focus is building a quality product.
- I have a habbit of doing games market research and I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that even with a tremendous amount of effort from our side, if we're lucky, we MIGHT make 50k gross revenue within the 1st year. After steam cut and other cuts, that would be closer to 25k net. I just want us both to be on the same page that the goal is not to pump out one game and then quit when it makes you less than minimum wage at McDonalds. This is to be expected and the subsequent games we make can be a lot better.
From Strangers to Teammates
We're not going to team up the first day we meet. Trust is not built overnight. This is going to be a long process. The first step would be to simply have a few casual chats to quickly determine if it's worth going forward.
After that, the ideal scenario would be if you're working on a project of your own - we could start with a few days a week I switch to helping you with your project with anything you need, and then a few days you switch to help with mine. I think we could spend a lot of time in this stage. Both of our projects are benefitting already in this stage, after all. So no need to rush it.
Finally if we're both happy with how well we work together, we could start discussing more serious future arrangements and joining forces fulltime.
Next Steps
If you think we would make a good fit, then you can message me on discord developinghermit telling me a bit about yourself and what you've been up to.
Examples of My Work
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2484140/Wicked_Brawler/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3566790/Too_Many_To_Kill/
https://papacashew.itch.io/ (gamejam submissions)
I'm currently working on a PVP multiplayer physics based game. The elevator pitch is "Getting Over It, but PVP".
