Dunkey calls famous YouTube publisher: ‘I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines’

Popular content creator Jason Jastrow, better known as “Videogamedunkey” or just “Dunkey”, has announced that he has launched a game publisher called Bigmode.

Speaking in a video ad, Gastro said he’s “sick of watching from the sidelines” and believes he’ll be able to use his reach and video game critique experience to help bring promising indie titles to market.

However, many industry critics and developers have questioned his qualifications to run a game development company, and have suggested that Dunkey’s ad is reductive to the work that goes into the modern field of publishing.

Jastrow, who founded Bigmode with his wife Lea, has over seven million subscribers to his YouTube channel Videogamedunkey and over 1.3 million followers on Twitter.

“I’ve been on YouTube for 11 years now, and one of the core themes of my channel has always been throwing soulless cash in the trash and raising and paying tribute to truly inspiring artwork in this medium,” he said.

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“For years and years and years, I’ve always been looking for the best indie games out there and trying to do them justice, setting millions of eyes on games that really deserve attention.”

He added, “There are a lot of games out there that understand how to emulate the look of your favorite games but don’t really do what’s important. A lot of the real games out there are drowning in a sea of ​​mediocrity. You need someone who can help you show up.”

“I want Bigmode to be my seal of approval, something I don’t apply lightly. I’m not looking for creative control over your games, but I want to get involved. I’m tired of sitting on the sidelines waiting for great games to come out. Now I want to get in there and help out. achieve that.”

Jastrow claimed that his company put a lot of effort into making contracts “more developer friendly,” and argued that it would “bring crazy value to the table.”

After Bigmode’s announcement, some responded with skepticism and questioned whether Dunkey had the right credentials to lead a video game publisher. Some even questioned whether the ad itself was a joke.

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Danny O’Dwyer, founder of Noclip video game documentaries, hung: “We must abandon the naive trick that having opinions about games is qualified to understand anything related to development.”

He added, “It also raises many ethical questions, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt for now. I will just say that I don’t know a lot of India who want a co-publisher without experience or a representative in the industry.”

Flambert Developer Ramy Ismail He wrote that he was happy to see a new publisher appear, but urged any developers considering signing with Bigmode to pay attention.

Listen, I’d support anyone who wants to spread money on indie games, but indies, if you’re going to take a bargain from someone whose publishing credentials ‘played a lot of games’, make sure your upfront is 130% + a comfortable, well-paid budget.

“Good publishing is a relatively complex organization: selection, branding, marketing, production support, platform contacts, translation communications, quality assurance communications, and version management — and to take the pressure off developers who all need to fire right at the right time. “

However, Noel Berry, a programmer behind popular Celeste, said he thinks Dunkey might surprise his eye for a fun design.

“I really think Dunkey has a good interest in fun design, and if he wants to throw money at indie devs, why not? Sure they might bump into some hard realities in the game industry but like… that’s how you learn,” he wrote.

“I can’t speak for the other games he mentioned in his video, but he also found Celeste’s way before it came out, and he followed it up for a year after that, and made a video for the first day on it because he loved our demo… I didn’t think it was weird He used it as an example.”