As I write this, I'm in about the most privileged position I could ever imagine myself. I'm in a remote house on the Isle of Skye. I've spent almost an entire month here. I guess you could call it a vacation. But I'm not really spending any money. I bought my ticket on miles, I'm not going anywhere outside of this house, or walking distance from it. I didn't pay for my stay here. I'm house sitting and watching the owner's kitty. They even paid to stock my groceries. But even though I didn't have to pay for any of this, it's all built on my privilege. Which is especially hard to accept when I look around at how much pain and suffering is going on in the world (everywhere, of course, but especially in Gaza).
During my time here, I've written almost 65,000 words. Much of it for the next Coyote & Crow book. It's good work that I'm proud of. I've managed my business remotely and navigated C&C through all of the Native American Heritage Month events we had planned. I work every day, from sun up to sun down (Which, to be fair is about eight hours right now in this part of the world.).
I'm dealing with the production and shipping of Wolves, and leading development on two other games. All of which are going to hopefully be releasing or crowdfunding next year.
And then, there are upcoming conventions: OrcaCon, GAMA Trade Expo, IndigipopX, Gathering of Friends, GenCon, PAXUnplugged, UK Games Expo, and Essen Spiel are all either confirmed or on my radar for 2024.
That's... a lot.
Looking back, since the launch of Coyote & Crow on Kickstarter (3 years ago in March!), I'll have had three successful crowdfunding campaigns, done dozens of interviews, released a long list of merchandise and expansions, designed and published a game, won four awards(including the Diana Jones Award!), and been nominated for a Nebula Award for game writing.
While those are all awesome acheivements that no one can take away from me, I can't say it's all been wine and roses. Every attempt I've made at bringing someone onboard to help take off some of the weight of running a daily game publishing business has been met with failure. Some of those failures amount to "it didn't work out like I'd hoped" while others have been more in the category of "this person stole time, money and products from me that I will never recoup".
That's left me in a position where I don't feel like I can hand off even the most trivial of duties to anyone. It means that I can't run traditional convention booths because I don't have enough time or labor or people to organize the labor...and on and on. I still get customers through my web store who are shocked that the owner of the company is responding to customer service emails. But really, who the fuck else would it be?
If you haven't picked up what I'm putting down yet, I'm speeding headlong toward a likely burnout. And that feeling of being Sisyphus is compounded by the fact that I know damn well that I volunteered to push the fucking boulder up the hill. I could have fulfilled my initial Kickstarter and just walked away and called it a day. But I chose to do this.
To make matters worse, we live in a 'publish or die' era of gaming, an ongoing Cult of the New, that lives alongside the same world where Hasbro just laid off 1100 people. Produce more, produce faster, produce better, charge less, be more environmentally friendly, be original, be familiar, be edgy, be family friendly, be hobby friendly, be retailer friendly, offer solo play options, offer things for free, offer things on all the platforms and sites. In short, late stage capitalism. (See the music video below if you need this information in a beat driven format - warning, it gets tough to watch)
And I haven't even touched on all of the issues around being a Native-owned business and the pressures that entails.
Like most of us, I'm doing the best I can. I'm trying to be kind, to be fun, to give more than I take. Unlike many, I'm doing it from a position of relative safety and comfort (although I'm starting to think that any safety or security is far more illusory than many of us would want to admit). And this post isn't leading up to some big revelation or announcement. Because that would just be marketing. No, instead, this is just me, wanting to vent. Nothing's changing, because nothing does. I'll just keep plugging along, doing the best I can, making games that I'd want to play. I'll try to focus on the phrase "be the change you want to see" rather than the phrase "pissing in the wind".
This post probably isn't a great look for a game publisher, but ...here we are.
