“I am in the valley of death. Help me get out!”

This was the exclamation from a game developer five minutes into a conversation last week.

As I explored this further, it came to light that back in 2020 he had sold a game that achieved moderate success.  This had allowed him to work fulltime as a game developer.  However, as the money dried up, he had to leave what he loved to work in a job he did not care about just to pay the bills.  He was well and truly in the valley of death.  This is a brutal place that had shrunk his vision from looking forward to where he was going to obsessing over what needs to happen just to survive.

The good news was that a publisher was interested in his latest game under development.  The bad news: he was paralysed with indecision around the choices required to effectively negotiate that sale.

We spent the rest of the conversation exploring what success looked like beyond survival.

By the end, his thinking had shifted from surviving the next few months to being excited by what the business will look like in five years.

When he started thinking in terms of years instead of months, everything changed, he walked away with the following:

• An understanding he did not have to figure it all out alone — there are people in his network who have already built what he was building towards, and they will be happy to share their experiences.
• He had to stop doing everything himself — there are contractors who can help.
• Betting everything on one project is the trap that created the valley in the first place. He must have multiple games under development.

The bridge out of the valley of death isn’t a tactic. It’s a time horizon.

If you are stuck in survival mode, stop asking “How do I survive the next few months?” Start asking “What do the next five years look like?”