Game dev waxes philosophical about how his weary soul would haunt his associates if his 5+ year endeavor had gone unfinished. It's a $15 2D brawler that would have been outdated on Kongregate ten years ago.

He didn't do it for the money though. However, the financial toll is so debilitating that he is considering therapy for his now hollow soul.

https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1girefs/who_to_talk_to_after_failed_launch/

>I put everything into my game. If I died before it launched, my ghost would have remained, haunting people, my "unfinished business" getting them to publish the game.

>My goals were modest, I wanted just enough sales that it could get into the "more like this" of bigger titles, and have a slow trickle of income while I added more content.

>I could not get the "big viral spike" needed. I made a game for fun, not for the market. I realize one should make a game for the market, not try to force a game into the market. I wasted alot of time and money on marketing, my sales lasted about a week, and now are flatlined to zero. Without additional funds, and no skill in marketing, I won't be able to revive it via visibility.

>The answer to reviving it may lie in polishing the demo, in adding leaderboards, in adding new content. But I've been wrong so many times before, that I'm having troubles trusting myself.

>How does one reconcile with their passion being the fault? If the force that drives me is what misleads me, how can I trust any future strategic decision or passion? If it was just me, I could handle it. But my hype and confidence dragged my friends into the sunk cost fallacy for years... I could live with continuing to make the wrong decision and hurting myself, but not them, but the lack of success means I cant even atone for that... I tried to accept and move on, and it just felt.. hollow. Once my mind latched onto ideas that maybe it could be saved, I felt alive again. But how can I trust myself, this sounds like classic grasping at straws of hope.

>Because I hermited myself, I have no one to talk to about this, other than the friends who I dragged into this and are in the same boat. Im afraid if I speak my current distress, they will be even worse off. If I state it could be saved erroronously, I will drag them in further.

>I understand psychologists is probably the answer? But I don't quite get it, how is a stranger suppose to know what direction I should take my life after half a decade of work. I hold all the context. I'm old enough to know we are all just winging it, and they probably are too.

>Is anybody here not winging it? Has anybody spent 5+ years on a project isolating themselves and watched it release to a whimper? What came next? Does anybody know how to tell when they are following their dream, vs being weak and following the comfort of their sunk cost fallacy?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1219800/Galactic_Thunderdome/

Man, he should not have spent five fricking years on this. Jesus christ. It doesn't even have networked multiplayer, where did all that development time go? Normally I'd be more snarky. I knew it would be bad based on the title since this genre of post hits /gamedev every month but I just feel kind of bad about this one.

Anyone could have told him that this wasn't financially viable if he'd pitched the concept before burning away five years of his life. He's clearly not completely inept though. If he'd spent 5 years making something marketable he might have had some form of financial success.