I’ll explain myself here, but for me, after years of pushing in the indie game industry, the most difficult part has never been creating the game during my free time until midnight while having a family life and a job, or talking with publishers about it. The hardest part has always been waiting with hope.

Let’s say a publisher refuses your game for reasons you don’t have control over, like, your game doesn’t fit our catalog, or we are searching for bigger games, or we don’t know how we could market it… Anything is fine as long as the publisher sees in your (my) game what it is supposed to become and sees something that doesn’t fit them.
I can accept that, and my response would always be to transform this into strength, work harder or differently, search for a publisher where it could fit better and just continue creating the game I envision and I enjoy playing.

Now, when a publisher gets interested and tells you that it could eventually fit their catalog, that the price and scope are not really a problem, and asks you to wait as the whole team will try it and they will come back to you.
That moment is harsh…

I am someone with imagination, a lot of it, and it is not difficult to already think 2 years ahead with all the details that can be imagined. From how we would work, what process, deadlines, type of game structure, to the release of the game.
Giving me hope opens a whole new perspective in my mind where I’ve almost already created the game and gone on to start the next one.
I guess it can be unhealthy, but that is also the same imagination I use to CREATE the game in the first place, seeing the game finished and playable and well balanced. Then the creation process is just an adjustment to reach that vision. Why is it simple for me to do so then? Because it is in my own hands and therefore it only depends on my own will to do better, more or different.

NOW, when I have this hope, I am given the vision of the game having a publisher, and a good one, and my head starts spinning and seeing the future, it is NOT in my hands.
Not at all. And the difficulty of telling my imagination “wait, maybe, but maybe not, be ready for another NO”.
That voice is at the same time necessary, protective, but I wonder sometimes if it is not this voice being careful that actually creates a timeline where the publishers finally say no…

So, yes, the most difficult part is really to wait for an answer when you know you can’t do much on your side to push it in either direction. Just waiting and hoping. It can make a man go crazy, I assure you.

What do you think? Does your mind have such power, or do I have way too much wild imagination, and is it healthy to be prepared for a NO each time?

Note: All the images are old illustrations from around 2007–08, when I first thought about starting a career in animation and video games in Japan, with the hope I needed to carry me to today.