Game investor consultant says budgets are tightening for VCs
We here at Joystiq have a long history of making unsubstantiated claims about games we're absolutely, 100 percent, without a doubt not making. Unfortunately though, it seems that Joystiq Publishing™ is going to have to close its doors, as Develop's Nick Gibson tells us that fewer and fewer venture capitalists are shelling out dough on fledgling developers these days. More specifically, he says, "in the last four or five months there has been a collapse in venture capital," meaning less money is out there for small developers and publishers -- not to mention newdevelopmentcompanies.
The problem with this, he argues, is that innovation will be stifled (or at very least slowed) as funding drops out for potentially "risky" games. "There will be considerably fewer start-ups able to pick up the innovation baton and continue to evolve the market," he says. We're hoping that the lack of money forces big publishers to reconsider wasteful spending and instead focus on making the best possible games they can with the resources alotted. We're also hoping for unicorns to land on the moon and find the sattelite's creamy center actually full of an unlimited energy source. So there's that!
