Balatro publisher Playstack is undoubtedly thrilled with the success of the poker roguelike phenomenon, which recently zipped past five million units sold, and head of discovery Patrick Johnson has some advice for other publishers looking to support indie developers.
Inverse recently rounded up a group of winners from the Game Developers Conference and Independent Game Festival Awards and asked them what they think publishers could be doing to help the indie scene flourish. Johnson's answer was simple: give indie devs more money, and don't expect to make a fortune every time.
"More easily accessible funding, that isn't based on making a ridiculous amount of money back," he said. "Reasonable budget, but more access for the people who need those reasonable budgets."
Again, there's no doubt that Playstack is looking for its next Balatro, but there was never any guarantee, or even strong indication, that a poker roguelike hybrid was ever going to do the kind of numbers Balatro has. More to the point, Playstack has previously said the game was a "pain in the ass" to market, with communications director Wout van Halderen saying the publisher maintained its confidence in it because "we couldn't stop playing it internally."
Ideally, more publishers will see Balatro and other quirky indie hits as evidence of the value in investing in creativity instead of proven number-drivers, but considering that we live in one the most volatile times in game industry history largely because of corporate greed, I'll hold my breath for now.
When starting development on his hit roguelike, Balatro creator set out to recreate a made-up card game he played "thousands" of times with his friends.
