Ask HN: I spent personal money on game dev. How to turn stalled project around?

Over the last year I spent a sizable sum on a personal multiplayer game project. I designed the idea until it was ready, contracted an offshore dev team, spent several months iterating on the production and then had the unfortunate luck to have the contracting company go out of business while the project was still in a pre alpha stage.

How should I rethink my problem space and move forward in this situation? Game dev is different from some trades in the sense that investment is heavily front loaded, which makes it difficult to start bringing in revenue while you’re still building out the MVP.

I firmly believe in the project itself, it already shows promise. The game is an online battle game, and what I currently have is a (rough) playable demo with placeholder art.

Professionally, I’m a dev, so I could keep building it myself, although it involves much more than just software hours. There is a huge amount of work that includes 2D/3D art, sound, music, networking, UI, onboarding, testing, etc. Without time constraints I would love to work on all of it, but I am trying to remain realistic.

For a production grade MVP I would still need: - production grade graphics and sound - that final 20% polish that it takes to make a game - more budget for the above

Thinking a bit brings me to these options: - finish the game myself (a few years?) - reduce the scope down into something else altogether? - open-source the concept

Is there a way I can break this into smaller problems that will allow some form of revenue to come in and reignite the project? Has anyone been through a similar experience that could offer some wisdom?

[dead]

This sounds like you could look into kickstarting so you can get the money to develop it. You kind of already know what stages and milestones you would need to go through to build the project. It would be a matter of breaking it down into stages and prizes.

One of the reasons that has caused hesitation in deploying the idea early is the possibility that the mechanics might be instantly swallowed up by a publisher who could replicate it in a matter of a few months.

However, if player's don't care about the gameplay, no publisher will either. So that's a very practical piece of advice in your comment. Building the audience to validate the idea should take a higher priority.

On the positive side, the studio showed enthusiasm across the team while working on the project (biased as it may be)

figuring out the bicycle version of a fully featured online multiplayer battle game is the reason I am seeking advice on HN :)

I had not thought about the learning cost of the experience. I have been trying to avoid the sunken cost mindset and looking to wise up before the next round of decisions