it’s because of money. for one, it takes a lot of money to hire someone to do something full-time if it is something they aren’t already obsessed with doing. but it’s true that i could probably afford to do so after selling a game that made a lot of money. the other issue is money.
when developing and designing a game myself, for myself, my motivations are so transparent as to be tautological. i make games because i want specific games to exist so i can play them. that’s the top and bottom of it. i make games in order to play games i want to play. this entirely informs the design process. if some feature more makes the game into a game i want to play, it goes in the game. if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. hiring someone to be a part of this process creates an incentive problem. they aren’t necessarily contributing to the game because they want to play the specific game that comprises the specific elements they contribute. their contributions may categorically be those which the contributor doesn’t actually want to experience themselves, where mine cannot. this is fatal. once money is involved, i can only know that they are contributing because they want to make money. between me and this person, there is always a layer of distrust. they are incentivized to do as little as needed to meet perceived expectations and further their own career. whether or not they choose to act differently is an artifact of their personality, but the incentive structure doesn’t change. this is the unavoidable compromise of creative, commercial, hierarchical projects in capitalism, and the results are unavoidably inconsistent.
of course there are many great games that are great because of a team’s shared commitment to a greater vision (most in fact). even if the specific ideas among individual contributors differ, the predominant attitude in these teams is of co-operation toward realizing a work of high quality. but these circumstances are hard to come by. my game made a lot of money, but it didn’t make enough that i can keep churning through teams until i happen upon a selection of weirdoes who A) share similar motivations to me, and B) have good taste, and C) have the skills to match. i could only cycle so many times before wasting too much time and money and creating ruin for myself. otherwise, i could continue working for free, alone. witness my decision in effect.
i suspect it is getting harder now than ever for anyone to find a group of people to make great games with. it’s getting harder to merely survive for most people, and it was already more than hard enough. the games industry is falling apart. my dream to command a crew of like-minded obsessives seems fainter than ever. it felt easier when i was poor; to suggest a suicide mission is a lot simpler when the stakes are the same for everyone. now there is a power imbalance. i can no longer ask someone who barely lives off their paycheck to work for free, even though i, too, would be working for free. the circumstances between me and this person are fundamentally different now, despite my attitude and approach being more or less identical to the way they always have been. it’s a bit frustrating, but i don’t have much room to seriously complain when my peers are on food stamps.
so it seems then that my last option outside of solo dev is to keep searching for other well-to-do creatives hiding in their own lofty towers in hopes i might convince any of them to waste some time with me. i haven’t had much luck. if you are a highly skilled craftsman with good taste, no monetary needs and lots of time, and for some reason you want to make a game with me, please email me at ivysly@protonmail.com