This was really unexpected. After a day of working very hard over some stupid coding mistakes, I had that terrifying sharp pain in the head. It was like a sword stabbed throught my head. My girlfriend took me to the hospital: I had a cerebrovascular accident. My brains were bleeding. The thing was probably caused by to much stress and work but there was actually a reason to it: I had an extra vein in the brains that couldn't handle the flood of blood from other arteries.
I was told to stop and work and stay calm. So I did. I had many unsuccessful surgeries. Time was passing by when they decided they would open my skull. It was quite a risky business so I had to finish things before I had to go. I got to work again in april to finish the game in may, a few days before the operation. It was rushed but at least, it was completed.
Thankfully, the surgery was a success. I was broken but my brains were saved.
It took me quite some time to get back on my feet. I was tired, I had memory problems and many other little annoying medical things. In july, I went back to Death Pirate, polished it and released it. I didn't want to make video games anymore so, I didn't really care anymore. My only fear was that the game wouldn't sell. All this work for nothing, I couldn't swallow that.
Everybody says that it's easy to sell stuff on internet now but if nobody knows that you exist, nobody will buy your stuff. It's like throwing a bottle in the wide ocean. Releasing the game on this very website would be suicidal. I had to find a publisher. I tried Steam. Steam is pretty fair in term of royalties but the Greenlight system is just not for me. People have to vote for you. So you have to make a lot of advertisement, a lot of promotion and stuff. I talked to a guy who managed to get his game on Steam: it took him one year of harassment towards the video game forums, blogs and websites to get enough attention to be greenlit.
Personnally, that's not why I do this. I hate annoying people with my stuff and I don't want to spend my time doing advertising. I want to spend my time creating video games, drawing and making music! I don't want to waste my time on Facebook, Twitter and forums to get my game on Steam!!! Now, it seems like a good game maker or a good artist is mostly a good communicator or a marketing expert... And the Greenlight system is promoting this stance. That's not how it should be.
So I turned to Desura. I submitted my game and it was accepted. I was so relieved. They offered me a deal that I didn't even read. I was so desperate that I would actually have paid to sell my game! I just remembered that it was a pretty bad deal but I expected to sell at most 20 games so I didn't care. I was so tired I didn't care about much at that moment... Heavy Metal Death Pirate was released on the 3rd of September with no promotion...
In the beginning of October, I had a message from Desura saying that they had to pay me for my game. I didn't open the message... I was too afraid to see the ridiculous amount of money they would give me...
Then, in the november, I wasn't even thinking about video game making anymore and I saw that unopened Desura message... I thought, well, let's have a little laugh...
Heavy Metal Death Pirate had sold 2500 units and they gave me quite a bit of money. I was shocked.
Buma
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