This week, Aaron chats with Des Gayle in the first of a two-part interview. Des is a Senior Partner Relations Manager at Unity (day job), Studio head at Altered Gene (his company), and does “production stuff” for a couple of indies. He describes himself as having “Produced one game that won a BAFTA (Life Is Strange) and plenty more that didn’t.”

In this episode, we talk about game publishing and funding, and answer questions about how and why games with narratives focused on diverse protagonists and situations are or aren’t funded. We also briefly discuss Des’ short film, “There’s a Last Time for Everything,” for which he’s running a Kickstarter campaign.

00:00 Introduction

02:13 Square Enix and Life Is Strange

04:35 Publishing Indie Games At Fellow Traveller

08:37 Why Don’t Publishers Publish More Diverse Games?

11:34 The Current Funding And Publishing Landscape For Indies

17:54 Funding Tips and Tricks

22:24 Des’ Short Film Kickstarter

24:37 Wrapping Up

Links:

“There’s a Last Time for Everything” Kickstarter campaign. (Ends Sunday 29th March)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alteredgene/taltfe?ref=9odmgb

Des Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/kid_desimo/

Des Bluesky

https://bsky.app/profile/kiddesimo.bsky.social

Des Twitter
https://x.com/Kid_Desimo

“Kidd Copter” Playdate game

https://play.date/games/kidd-copter/

Altered Gene website

https://www.alteredgene.co.uk/

You can find the podcast at:

http://www.makegamesdrinkcoffee.com 

Questions? Comments?

makegamesdrinkcoffee@gmail.com

Make Games, Drink Coffee is produced, edited, and just generally all-around made by me, Aaron Nemoyten. Please email the Make Games Drink Coffee email address, I’m tired of only getting podcast SEO spam at that address!