Paul Kilduff-Taylor

INDIE GAMES // MUSIC // WORDS

Mode 7 // nervous_testpilot // _ensnare_

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@DUSKdev Proteus mentioned!

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@GreyAlien the "add horror to game" thing is almost a joke at this point and I think you've really shown just how much of that is about execution

[Jake Birkett - Veteran Indie @GreyAlien]

LAUNCH ANNOUNCEMENT

Forbidden Solitaire is out now!

We are immensely proud to release this awesome game made by two veteran indie studios and we hope you really like it.

Steam: https://t.co/UJ53iYSVxo
GOG: https://t.co/sjwSdxAReE
Itch: https://t.co/f6XHUEBBdG

Plz share, thx!

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

Because they are dumb

[Daniel Bromfield @bromf3]

Why do people think Tomorrow’s Harvest is worse than Boards of Canada’s other albums

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

Have people on this website actually read any Land or Fisher

[GamesIndustry @GIBiz]

The Big Debate: What role should AI have in video game narrative? A games writer and an AI game creator sit down for a serious talk. https://t.co/X4XDtQGe5f

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@PandabeeStudios Yeah but I think there might be clearer ways to go about that which aren't just "wow so many deductions"

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

Stuff like this always bothers me for a bunch of reasons - one is always "your gross and net revenue were the same in the period for some reason, also your business has zero tax planning"

[Ichbinhamma ⚒️ Hamma Studios @KakapoCalypse]

Here is a (theoretical) run-down of what a solo-dev gets from $1.000.000 gross revenue on Steam:

Gross: $1000k
Chargeback, VAT (~20%): -$200k
Steam Cut (30% of 800k): -$240k
Publisher (~40% of 560k): -$224k
Taxes (Austria, ~45% of 336k): -$151k

Result: $185k (18% of gross)

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

Also again....what is anyone supposed to DO about this? Just make more money? I don't understand the action you're supposed to take

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

Where are...any costs? Where are the pension contributions? Where is the reinvestment in more content? Did the game recoup already (if so yay, surely you had a budget which was paying you for development with that level of publisher royalty) etc etc etc etc

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@DaveOshry @AndrewHulshult @MikePortnoy I thought my own situation of "publisher writes the soundtrack" was cursed but "publisher tells you where to put ride bells" is somehow worse (complimentary)

[Christian Allen @Serellan]

From my experience a lot of indie devs decide they never want to go through that ever again after they ship their first game and leave the industry forever.

I’ve seen it a bunch.

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

That's not what introspection means though, is it?

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

It is 100% true that great men and women of the past were not sitting around moaning about their feelings. I regret nothing.

[GamesIndustry @GIBiz]

The rush to embrace generative AI is damaging the games industry's reputation, and obscuring the genuinely useful applications of machine learning, says Dr Tommy Thompson. We need to take the narrative back. https://t.co/fb6c6bDanm

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

So this is deeply nonsensical, especially given David's recent Founders episode on Roger Federer which gave extensive play to his introspective work on improving his mindset as a young player

[David Senra @davidsenra]

Great men of history had little to no introspection.

The personality that builds empires is not the same personality that sits around quietly questioning itself.

@pmarca and I discuss what we both noticed but no one talks about:

David: You don't have any levels of introspection?

Marc: Yes, zero. As little as possible.

David: Why?

Marc: Move forward. Go!

I found people who dwell in the past get stuck in the past. It's a real problem and it's a problem at work and it's a problem at home.

David: So I've read 400 biographies of history’s greatest entrepreneurs and someone asked me what the most surprising thing I’ve learned from this was [and I answered] they have little or zero introspection.

Sam Walton didn't wake up thinking about his internal self.

He just woke up and was like:

I like building Walmart. I'm going to keep building Walmart. I'm going to make more Walmarts. And he just kept doing it over and over again.

Marc: If you go back 400 years ago it never would've occurred to anybody to be introspective.

All of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy, and all the things that kind of result from that are, a kind of a manufacture of the 1910s, 1920s.

Great men of history didn't sit around doing this stuff.

The individual runs and does all these things and builds things and builds empires and builds companies and builds technology.

And then this kind of this kind of guilt based whammy kind of showed up from Europe. A lot of it from Vienna in 1910, 1920s, Freud and all that entire movement. And kind of turned all that inward and basically said, okay, now we need to basically second guess the individual.

We need to criticize the individual.

The individual needs to self criticize.

The individual needs to feel guilt, needs to look backwards, needs to dwell in the past.

It never resonated with me.

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

Impressive balancing act where you have to deny the existence of ROI positive (tax revenues, employment, GDP contribution) grant programmes, elide that conversation with some innuendo about "the wrong stuff getting money", then also wilfully misunderstand the incentive structure

[Smash JT @SmashJT]

And this raises that SAME much bigger question with this stuff happening.

WHY ARE TAXPAYERS dollars being used to fund video games ...at all?

When a studio receives hundreds of thousands of euros in government subsidies before the game even releases, the incentive structure changes completely. They have ZERO incentive to sell any copies.

Normally, devs have to convince customers to buy their game.. I mean, before commies started taking over the planet. That’s the natural market feedback loop. If players don’t want it, the studio loses money and learns from the mistake. At least they used to...

But when governments step in and start subsidizing projects under these ridiculous vague labels like “cultural value,” suddenly the studio is already partially paid before a single copy is sold.

That removes a HUGE amount of normal 'pressure' to actually make something players want.

Instead of designing for customers, the real audience becomes grant committees and cultural review boards deciding which projects qualify for funding. This explains so many wokie style games that are constantly being rejected by the gaming community at large continuing to release.

That’s how you end up with situations like this.

Developers chasing government approval instead of player demand.

...And this isn’t just an Italy problem. Europe and Canada have been pouring tax money into game development for years through cultural subsidy programs, among many other countries. It is becoming a serious problem.

The result is exactly what you would expect: projects getting funded bc they satisfy the same old bureaucratic rules instead of because gamers are excited to buy them.

Games should succeed or fail based on whether players want them, not whether a government cultural committee signs off on them.

If a game is truly great, it shouldn’t need taxpayers to bankroll it in the first place.

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@Demruth Thanks dude!

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@OmeySalvi Loool

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

I don't care how many games are coming out on Steam and neither should you

[Paul Kilduff-Taylor @mode7games]

@OmeySalvi Ok but this is paradoxical as the process will likely cause your death