Proof of Life

This morning I logged on to the site to do the requisite backend updates. I suddenly realized the last time I had posted a blog was in May. Before that was literally last December. Whoops! So here I am like Uncle Moe to serve you a basket of fries on top of my head… er, to deliver a long overdue rambling on what’s been happening with us and in the game industry at large.

I’ll admit it’s been a very quiet year for Lantana Games… externally. A few weeks ago marked our 15th anniversary (!!!) and there’s a goal to do something public-facing every week. This could be a blog post, a sale, a video, just… SOMETHING. The holidays are an easier time for doing this kind of thing, oddly enough, since everyone is itching for the next Steam sale. 2025 is going to be the real challenge to keep up with this. I’m half tempted to make a chore wheel and let the fates pick what gets posted week to week. In the meantime, you can follow our brand new Bluesky account! We’ll still be posting on Twitter and Instagram as we always do, but it never hurts to branch out.

What’s been going on with the studio itself though? Well, in a word, working. In three words, working and learning. One year ago we adopted the Godot Engine for upcoming projects, diving deep into learning GDScript to make some great things happen. Why Godot specifically? Well, for one, we’ve always made high fidelity/low requirement games, IE we target 1080p 60fps on potato quality laptops. Technology like Unreal Engine is overkill for what we do, but Godot’s capabilities are a perfect fit and can even push us into 1440p (or POTENTIALLY 4k) territory.

Second, Godot offers us a greater level of multiplatform compatibility than Clickteam Fusion does. As much as we will always love Fusion, it’s hampering in terms of where we want to go with future projects. Our last game really pushed the engine to its limits, but its real limits still held it back. Hopefully with the engine upgrades, and some more forward-thinking, some of our old conversations throughout the game industry will even help us branch out even more. It’s always important to hit new platforms and markets. At the very least, we’ll be able to directly target Steam Deck and Linux platforms going forward, and we won’t need Proton to emulate Windows.

Finally, based on the direction technology has been heading lately – rising subscription costs, legally capricious terms of service, always-online requirements, etc. – Godot’s open source and more traditional nature feels like a better fit for what we do. Plus it has been an absolute joy to work with and we can’t wait for you to see what we’re cooking up.

Wait wait wait. Cooking? New game?! Well, yes. That was the implication of talking about working with Godot for the last year. What is this game? Can’t say. But you’ll know when the time is right.

This might also be a good time to address the state of the game industry itself. Things aren’t looking so good for us purveyors of interactive digital entertainment. Billion dollar projects are being pulled from proverbial shelves after a couple weeks. Investment opportunities have dried up. Layoffs are posting bigger numbers than some AAA releases. Job postings are being discovered to be, well, completely fake. Indies though? WOW what a year for indies, and I mean like really small indies. Tiny Glade is pure art. Content Warning is social commentary silliness with friends. Balatro just… Good God Balatro. With 200 games released on Steam every week, it’d be impossible to name every single one and list the reasons why you should play them. Needless to say, small games with zero budget are CRUSHING the big-name competition this year. The AAA industry should be taking notes.

Meanwhile, gamers are getting paranoid. They see forced messaging in the most mundane of artistic decisions. They think that every single developer is out to brainwash them. Recognizable patterns in modern storytelling, and how the game industry treat their audiences, are sending players into a spiral of seeking out deception. Often they do this before it’s even been confirmed the developers had bad intentions or dislike their players. Gamers want to escape from work, school, the news, or life for an hour or two and just be engrossed in another world. Ultimately, gamers still want games, but the trust has vanished.

Barriers to entry like launchers, logins, and anticheats do more to keep players out of games than deliver great experiences. Technological bloat is taking its toll on experience stability and even visual quality. Indies suffer none, or at least very little, of this because we do not have the budgets to justify implementing this level of tech bloat. On the one hand, that’s a huge benefit to gamers. On the other hand, we still struggle to pay the bills without consistent sources of funding. About 1 out of every 1000 game pitches actually get signed to a publishing deal. Not only are we broke, but so are our audiences. With them thinking games all have nefarious actors writing the story and managing their Discords, now is probably not the best time to follow the “charge more for your games” advice.

I do think the industry is starting to get the message that monstrous budgets are unsustainable. Personally, I think they’d be better off hedging their bets with 500 $1mil games than a single $500mil game… hypothetically speaking, so please don’t take this as a plea to flood the market. Fifteen years ago, a game was deemed successful if it sold 20,000 copies. Nowadays, most games are lucky to sell 200. Studios need to quit trying to make the next “forever game” and go back to hooking players for a weekend.

The game industry is in dire need of regrouping and refocusing. I think 2025 needs to be the year big studios scope their projects way down. Investors, meanwhile, need to seriously consider funding more like 4-5 games out of every 1000 pitches than just 1-2. Otherwise they risk missing out on the next Lethal Company. No matter what, there is one major problem to be solved next year. We, as gamers, need to support developers who actually LIKE games, like MAKING games, and like GAMERS. It’s not a lot to ask.

Needless to say, 2025 is going to be a very interesting year for game development. At this rate, I think we will see indies continue to grow, regardless of external funding. Whether or not the AAA industry has learned any lessons from this past year remains to be seen. Never underestimate the stubbornness of high tech artists.

As for Lantana Games? Well, with any luck, you’re going to be seeing a LOT more from us in the coming months. More blog posts, some videos, and hopefully some new downloads, tools, and of course, even games. Things are happening and we’re excited to be getting back to work.

Don’t forget that if you’d like to support our game development efforts, we’d greatly appreciate it! You can buy a copy of our games or pick up some merch over at our Shop page.

Have a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, and a safe and cozy New Years everybody! See you in 2025.

– Danny