Welcome to Friday Fun, the blog where this week I need to share some difficult choices I’ve had to make regarding the future of Smiling Cat. I have some really exciting news, and I have some bad news that will probably disappoint some people. I will start with the bad news first.
The Bad News
It’s not really a secret that I have been struggling to raise interest in both Prepare For Warp and Dehoarder 2. It’s also no secret that a business needs revenue to survive, and Smiling Cat is no exception. Over the months since April, I have made a lot of efforts both to try to build fan support for these games. My efforts have not panned out over the spring, summer, and autumn.
In order to try to address the situation, I met with some wonderful publishing and marketing folks who were willing to take a look at Dehoarder 2 and see what potential it had. They really loved the game and thought it had a lot of niche appeal and a lot of potential with streamers, confirming what I had thought about the game.
However, the sales projections that they provided, compared with my spend over the amount of time that I would need to reasonably complete the game, would have left very little to show for my efforts once everyone took their cut. If everything went according to plan, with me releasing on-time and 100% of sales projections reached, I would just about break even.
So, by proceeding forward with Dehoarder 2, I would be taking on a significant amount of risk, but the returns for that risk would be low or nonexistent unless Dehoarder 2 got real lucky. There is also the matter of bridge funding for that development. I must look at the overall picture: the spend over the last eight months, very little revenue over that time, several more months of development before I could really start expecting some revenue from Dehoarder 2, the sales expectations for Dehoarder 2, and the level of cash reserves remaining. When I take all of these things into account, it is clear to me that proceeding forward with Dehoarder 2 is not a smart business move at this time, and would have a better-than-even chance of ending Smiling Cat for good.
So unfortunately, I must pause development on Dehoarder 2 again. This decision comes with significant anguish. I have put so much of myself into this game over its development, and if I were in a position where I could just continue working on it full-time with no financial considerations, I would. But I am not in that position.
Does this mean the end for Dehoarder 2? I hope not. The game does have potential, but something would need to change to make it a fiscally viable project – a shorter development cycle, appeal to a larger market, or some other lever pulled that changes the equation. Perhaps I can have a better plan ready by the time I have seen this next phase of Smiling Cat through, which brings me to…
The Good News
Luckily for me, I am not an all-the-eggs-in-one-basket kind of person. In addition to working on Prepare For Warp and Dehoarder 2 over the last eight months, I have been pursuing various contract opportunities for game development. One of those opportunities finally came to fruition and is now moving forward very quickly.
I am unable to say much more about it other than I am working full-time on something, I am very excited about the opportunity, and this will allow Smiling Cat to continue forward.
Other Impacts
Of course, this does mean that I will have much less time to devote to my indie development. I’ve already paused my Daily Standup posts, and since I will not be able to discuss what I am working on, I’m not going to have much to say for the duration in Friday Fun posts, so those will likely be sporadic.
I will be withdrawing Dehoarder 2 from Steam Next Fest in February. In light of these changes, it doesn’t make sense to participate, and since a game can only appear in Steam Next Fest once, I want to keep that powder dry in case I can manage to shake something loose with Dehoarder 2 allowing me to proceed with the project.
Duke the family man needs his Saturdays back. For the last 12 years, I have been working a six day work week. While employed elsewhere full-time, Saturday was my main day to do Smiling Cat work. When I switched full-time to Smiling Cat, I continued working six days a week to help get things moving. Before, this schedule served me well as it made sure I put in the time to learn and practice game development all of these years, but it serves me less well these days as other demands on my time appear and game development is now my actual full-time work life.
I will be working on indie stuff on some Saturdays, especially in the morning when the rest of the house is asleep. But I will no longer obligate myself to put in a full eight hours or any time at all on any particular Saturday.
Since I will be working much less actively on my indie games, I will be pausing my Patreon and refunding for December. I’d like to give special thanks to my one Patreon supporter, Руслан Садуаров, who has been with me from the start of my Patreon page and long before as a fan of Dehoarder. I know you have been anticipating Dehoarder 2, and I am sorry to have let you down by having to pause work on Dehoarder 2 yet again. I extend that apology to all Dehoarder fans that may be lurking on the sidelines reading this.
I’ll still continue to support Prepare For Warp, Vintage Pachinko, and Breaking Block.
That’s about all I can think of. This is a very emotional post for me since I am so vested in Dehoarder 2, but also very vested in reality. This is a very exciting post for me as I look to the opportunity ahead. So I’m going to go and decompress for the weekend, enjoy my second Saturday in a row off, and prepare for the holidays.
Until next time, have fun, and be good to each other.