Sometimes you read a story that's really hard to believe it's true but probably is. In this case it's Raymond Doerr of SixtyGig Games doing something absolutely nuts to secure funding for their games.
They are the developer of Rise to Ruins, a brutal godlike village sim that melds the god game, management, and tower defense genres. A game I'm actually pretty fond of, written in Java and with Linux support it's a fun way to spend a number of hours. It's a successful game too, going on to sell at least a few hundred thousand copies. After releasing Rise to Ruins out of Early Access, eventually updates slowed down even though many more along with another game are planned. As Doerr outlined in this rather personal post on Steam, there was a good reason for that.
Doerr goes into a little history about how Rise to Ruins (previously called Retro-Pixel Castles) got started and it's quite surprising. Doerr did the "totally rational" thing of giving up a well paying job at Lockheed Martin to "change career paths into a job with an extremely high rate of failure that you have literally zero professional experience what so ever in doing". They're just very lucky it all worked out…
Fast forward to 2020 and COVID hits, however, this isn't the expected issues of COVID causing major problems though. Rise to Ruins is still a success and fully supports their livelihood but not enough to fund a second game. So, what would any clearly sane person do? Jump head first into the stock market apparently. Yes, not a publisher because Doerr isn't a fan at all and not Kickstarter because it might not raise enough and "an already successful company running a Kickstarter for funding is bad optics in my opinion".
Doerr ended up managing to turn "$200k into $2.5 million dollars", even higher before a recent "tech crash" and now work will be refocusing back on Rise to Ruins continued development and work on the next game code-named "Project Mary". Sounds like it was pretty exhausting too as Doerr mentioned how it "impacted everything in my life, including my own mental health, that I'm still recovering from as I write this".
The post ended with "Funding Secured.".
Absolute madness. Always nice to get some insight into the behind the scenes of what some people go through though and Raymond Doerr is clearly very dedicated.
You can buy Rise to Ruins on GOG, itch.io and Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Important footnote :
(EDIT/Update: No you ridiculously awesome goofballs, I didn't yolo into $GME. :P)
slaapliedje Mar 16, 2021
YOLOing all your family saving because you hate the industry so much doesn't seems like an amazing story in my opinion.You didn't read the article, then.
Stock market isn't gambling or YOLOing - those who invest a lot of time and effort to learn it and stay on the pulse can make a lot of money with it.
Problem is, you really have to invest A LOT of time into doing that, which Doerr did by apparently sacrificing his health for a while until the goal was achieved.
Which is honestly a relatively normal story for people passionate about something and pouring their all into it.
It's basically a story of a series of massive all-in gambles that somehow all worked out. This man is an absolute mad lad and a credit to the industry.
slaapliedje Mar 16, 2021
It.s all fun and games but when you hurt your mental health and gravely endanger the your (or worse, your family's) financial security, it's really NOT something that should be praised and be proud of.Dude chased a dream and caught it, what isn't to like about this story? Sounds like he took the current profit of the game and invested it wisely until it made him enough capital to fund future development. Where is the gambling here?
Lucking your way in life is not something that should be praised and advertised.
What happened there was a gamble, the money acquired is not really "deserved" as they are not a reward for something you've produced or offered.
The fact that they say fundraising is bad but yoloing and basically gambling is not is just making things worse and triggers me. At least with fundraising the money would have been the reward of your hard work.
Also advertising it in such a way that makes it cool/laudable/heroic is irresponsible and just promotes this kind of reckless behaviour that most often ends in serious losses or even bankruptcy.
PS: I've got nothing against responsible and productive investment (which I actually think it's really good thing). But this does not to seem to be that at all.
Last edited by slaapliedje on 16 March 2021 at 5:31 pm UTC
Arehandoro Mar 16, 2021
YOLOing all your family saving because you hate the industry so much doesn't seems like an amazing story in my opinion.You didn't read the article, then.
Stock market isn't gambling or YOLOing - those who invest a lot of time and effort to learn it and stay on the pulse can make a lot of money with it.
Problem is, you really have to invest A LOT of time into doing that, which Doerr did by apparently sacrificing his health for a while until the goal was achieved.
Which is honestly a relatively normal story for people passionate about something and pouring their all into it.
Rather off-topic, but stock market IS gambling. https://theconversation.com/the-financial-sector-is-professional-gambling-in-action-93102
Arehandoro Mar 16, 2021
Dude chased a dream and caught it, what isn't to like about this story?
Because achieving a dream by any means isn't ethical, nor safe for those around you.
Saying everyone who study the stock market hard enough can turn 200k into 2.5M is survivor bias.
Seriously, you just said a 10x return in less than a year is normal story for anyone studying the stock market like Doerr did.I did not say any of that and seriously encourage you to improve reading comprehension before putting words into other people's mouths.
What I did say is that people putting their health on the line for their passion is a normal story.
Or at least one heard relatively often.
Just like the now-famous guy on reddit who made millions with GME. He could have lost it all with GME going bankrupt.THAT is indeed luck and no serious investor on the stock market would have invested into GME.
Those who do understand the stock market and the companies and fields they invest in are not just randomly gambling like in a lottery as you seem to think.
Of course there is always some luck involved in success on the stock market, but that is true for almost any business.
That's also why you diversify instead of just investing into a single company (which Doerr correctly did, even if he apparently kept within the same sector).
Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 16 March 2021 at 9:14 pm UTC
slaapliedje Mar 17, 2021
Yeah so at the end you agree with me ? It was a risky move. A whole sector can crash because "reasons". Note that it did at the end of his investment. And apparently he didn't study enough to see it coming right? Just casually losing 500k (3M to 2.5M), no big deal.To be fair... when you're going from 200k to 3m then to 2.5m... I seriously would still consider that a win, and not care about that extra 500k... It's like when Google loses a billion to a lawsuit. They're probably like 'meh, we'll earn it back in less than a year anyhow.'
Sorry, I don't get it. Not using KickStarter or a Publisher is mad? He is indie, that's nothing special or am I missing something?I think the thing is that he basically said "My grubstake to make this game isn't big enough, I'm going to dump my savings into the stock market and play it until I can parlay my winnings into something big enough to make the game with" and yeah, that's kind of mad. He pulled it off, so kind of awesome, but it's like a friend of mine who once patted a wild bear--she's still alive to tell the tale, but that doesn't mean she wasn't nuts to do it.
To be fair, it's not as mad right now as it would be under normal historical conditions, because the world's central banks currently seem to have a consensus that they are going to consistently dump so much money into the markets that there can never be another sustained bear market until they stop doing it. So while you can totally lose big on one stock if you mistime whatever pump-and-dump schemes are going on, you pretty much can't lose on the stock market overall. On the gripping hand, he was trying to make a lot of money fast--that still entails risk.
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