AN UPDATE

Weds 8 May, 2024 - post by Jono

Hey peeps,

Another month, another blog post, but this one is a little glum, unfortunately.

I was hoping that this blog post would be the announcement that we were recipients of CODE NZ’s National Funding round, but after making it through multiple assessment rounds, we fell at the last hurdle and were ultimately unsuccessful. Not gonna lie, it was bit of a bummer but the process was extremely valuable - so if you’re a NZ game developer, I would highly recommend applying for funding through CODE. 

But that’s game development, isn’t it? There are ups and downs and it’s a tough time out there for everyone. Jobs being slashed like a year-long horror movie, publishers tightening their belts and everyone ‘trying to survive til 2025’. Just this week Take-Two took an axe to Roll7 and Intercept and Microsoft went Red Wedding on Arkane (Austin), Tango Gameworks, among others. Seriously. WTF.

Back on topic… First off, we want to congratulate the teams that were successful on gaining funding — here’s a list of the successful teams if you want to read about them. We’re looking forward to seeing these games in future (personally, I’m excited for “Burger Bois”).

I definitely enjoyed the process of applying for the CODE grant. We were given access to all sorts of marketing and pitching workshops and we also received a detailed feedback session which told us why we were unsuccessful. As disappointing as it is to hear why you’re not successful, the feedback was very useful and has given us a lot to think about.

So that’s kinda why we’ve not been blogging for a bit. We’ve just been putting our heads down, focusing on building our demo and reducing some of the scope. We’re still confident we have a great game -- sometimes good things just take time. See you next time!