I had a reasonably successful company company but made the stupid mistake of trying to make a medium game, one time without a publisher, and the second without one. The publisher decided my game didn’t live up to expectations and fined me. I started trying to create a bunch of game with my outdated engine because I din’t have the money to update it. I eventually found myself bankrupt and though, this is it isn’t it? But the bank offered me a deal. They give me about 900,000 dollars to get out of debt and I have to pay them 6 million dollars. I took the deal, not sure weather I could pull it off. Out of choices and Ideas, I decided to update my engine and make a sequel to the very game that got my company popular and called it “Rebirth”. I had made several sequels to that same game but none lived up to Rebirth. I went through development, sinking money into it the whole way thinking “This could be my last chance. Why not?”. I watched the level up screen, dreading the moment when the reviews would show up and… I got three 10/10’s and one 9/10. The critics loved it! They said I had made gaming history. The game reached 1,000,000 units sold in 4 months! I earned 12 million dollars, gained a huge # of fans, was able to buy a top level display for myself at the next G-3 with insane amounts of money to spare! And most importantly, I was able to pay the bank and truly made a name for my company.
Congratulations! You lived the way Squaresoft did way back when they made the first Final Fantasy game then.
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I had an experience like this recently. My current top-scoring game studio (79M) actually teetered on the edge of bankruptcy through the entire second office. It was horrible. It was great! Digging myself out of that pit meant I really had to weigh my decisions and pay attention to the details.
I have gone through the same period, but now I have 40M of fans and 4500M … no more debt 