The video game market doesn’t seem like a good market for raising venture capital - there is a ton of competition, and it seems that the folks who can raise money have a track record of previously successful games. With the 5% interest rate, you’ll very likely need to bootstrap your first game to break into the industry and then you could raise for a future game.
This would be my plan C. Although I already have a track record of being key to the development of many successful games, I never published one by myself. I do have something I could finish relatively quickly alone (few months) that would be good for this but it's not where I think I should focus my efforts yet.
However, I found myself often in a role detached from the specific releases, helping on many at once, focusing on the bugs others couldn't fix, on reviewing designs early to pinpoint what could be a problem or done better, jumping in early to establish some solid base to build on, etc. This means my name isn't even in 90%+ of the projects I worked on since I wasn't directly affiliated on it at the time credits were written and for the others, my role is probably nonsense. Those teams remember me, those credits do not. Might not be best at a glance for showing to potential investors but as far as knowing things inside out, I've been involved at nearly every part of developing many different types of games, at least once. I can easily demonstrate that.
I don't have a doubt there that I can build what I intend to and that there's a large market for it, also got various plans on how to reach that market. I'm also aware of how much work that is, how long that could take, places where I can use help that can do things better than I could, who that help could be, and more but I'm also unaware of a lot of things beyond developing and publishing, that there's a lot more I'll have to learn on the way and probably a lot of extra things to do I'm not even thinking of yet.
Starting with pretty much all the stuff that has to do with starting a business with more than just me
One of the options I'm considering is to straight up send emails to some of the business owners I've worked with that are aware of my impact and ask if they want to give this a shot-- but not sure under what terms I could present that
Still, if the goal is showing I can build the thing, easy. Showing it can be profitable? I can back this with numbers. Having plans on how to reach that market? I've got many before even considering involving a publisher. Will everything in there work perfectly as I planned? unlikely but I'll ramp up, adapt AND seek the help I can.
I'm currently refining the pitch and well, it definitely leaked into this answer
