E41 How a Toxic Relationship Between Publishing and Game Dev is Hurting Us All with Joel McGinnis

2023-07-17

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There was an unusually high number of low-quality games released in 2022, and we think we know why. The disconnect between the money and development sides often lead to rushed deadlines and games that don’t live up to their promises, resulting in an oversaturated market and subpar products in competition with each other. That’s why we have Joel McGinnis on this episode to help us discuss this topic, and why business and creative need to start communicating better. Joel shares his ideal relationship between money and production, including what questions should be asked, and necessary alignment around product and operations. We also talk about issues of sunk cost, disin...

There was an unusually high number of low-quality games released in 2022, and we think we know why.

The disconnect between the money and development sides often lead to rushed deadlines and games that don’t live up to their promises, resulting in an oversaturated market and subpar products in competition with each other. That’s why we have Joel McGinnis on this episode to help us discuss this topic, and why business and creative need to start communicating better.

Joel shares his ideal relationship between money and production, including what questions should be asked, and necessary alignment around product and operations. We also talk about issues of sunk cost, disincentivized transparency, and more.

As Joel says, “people want to put a $60 million game in a $20 million box.” Tune in to find out how game dev can start to solve this problem!

Topics discussed in this episode:

The disconnect between business and development in game dev
Conversations that should be had ahead of projects
Getting on the same page on project size
Examples of mismanaged projects
Sunk cost and low-quality products
Why it’s hard to be honest in negotiations
Why it’s hard to tell people “no” in development
Dealing with companies that won’t negotiate
How Joel likes to spend efficiently and manage burn rate

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Content Editor: Jonathan Singh

This episode was produced by Podcast Boutique https://www.podcastboutique.com

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