Over the last year I spent a sizable sum on a personal multiplayer game project. I designed the idea until it was ready, contracted an offshore dev team, spent several months iterating on the production and then had the unfortunate luck to have the contracting company go out of business while the project was still in a pre alpha stage.

How should I rethink my problem space and move forward in this situation? Game dev is different from some trades in the sense that investment is heavily front loaded, which makes it difficult to start bringing in revenue while you’re still building out the MVP.

I firmly believe in the project itself, it already shows promise. The game is an online battle game, and what I currently have is a (rough) playable demo with placeholder art.

Professionally, I’m a dev, so I could keep building it myself, although it involves much more than just software hours. There is a huge amount of work that includes 2D/3D art, sound, music, networking, UI, onboarding, testing, etc. Without time constraints I would love to work on all of it, but I am trying to remain realistic.

For a production grade MVP I would still need: - production grade graphics and sound - that final 20% polish that it takes to make a game - more budget for the above

Thinking a bit brings me to these options: - finish the game myself (a few years?) - reduce the scope down into something else altogether? - open-source the concept

Is there a way I can break this into smaller problems that will allow some form of revenue to come in and reignite the project? Has anyone been through a similar experience that could offer some wisdom?