| Hi everyone. Today we're telling the sad story behind a game that went viral last week, but first... This week's top gaming news: "Skyrim meets Stardew Valley" is the pithy pitch for Hawthorn, a new game from a small team of independent video-game makers. The promise of a "cozy" fantasy roleplaying game featuring animals and crafting has been effective in attracting attention. Hawthorn is not yet out, but since its announcement last week, the game has been covered by major gaming websites and been wish-listed more than 112,000 times on Steam, according to its developer. But the sudden viral success has masked the struggles that the team has faced, according to Heather Cerlan, co-founder and chief executive officer of Near Studios, the bootstrapped company behind the game. Despite the surge in interest, the dozen staff members responsible for making Hawthorn are not yet getting paid for their work. "The fact that we are developing this game from our personal pockets was completely lost," Cerlan told me in an email. "We have the ambitions and the visions; we don't however have the funding yet." Behind the cozy trappings of Hawthorn is a tragic backstory. En route to last week's announcement, Cerlan struggled with the departure of co-founders, a collapse of investment opportunities and the loss of a newborn child. In a recent interview, Cerlan shared the story of her company's creation and the trials she's faced along the way. Cerlan was first inspired to start her own outfit while working at California-based studio Naughty Dog, where she was an artist on games such as The Last of Us. During the development of that game's expansion, Left Behind, director Neil Druckmann took her out to lunch for a series of meetings about the romantic relationship between the game's two female protagonists. Cerlan, who is gay, shared her personal experiences and offered some reference points that she felt were strong examples of lesbian representation. "I was able to give some feedback and bounce ideas back and forth with him," she said. "That was a really cool experience." At the time, she had thought she might stick to art and perhaps stay at Naughty Dog for the rest of her career. But the meetings with Druckmann inspired her toward loftier ambitions. As the years went on, she began itching to start her own company, and in 2016 she registered a domain name for Near Studios. But she needed more experience, money and connections. In 2018, she moved to Maryland, where she spent three years working at Bethesda Game Studios on the roleplaying game Starfield. Then she had short stints at two smaller studios before finally making the leap to independent development. "I had a general idea for a game, but it was never about the game," Cerlan said. "It was about building a culture, building a team I was excited about essentially retiring at." In the summer of 2022, Cerlan incorporated Near Studios, working with two partners to get the company off the ground. But her plans were derailed the following year when her wife, who was pregnant with twin boys, began having complications that led to a premature birth. Both of Cerlan's sons, born at 25 weeks, were sent to the neonatal intensive care unit, but only one survived. "That just turned our world upside down," she said. "I had to pause everything for several months." (Her surviving son is expected to be "perfectly healthy neurologically," Cerlan said. "You'd look at him, you'd never know that he was born at 25 weeks.") As she tried to recover from the tragedy, Cerlan's two business partners both departed — one because of a disagreement in direction; the other because he couldn't get out of a previous contract. The upheaval left her scrambling to find another game designer who shared her ideals. She eventually started talking to a former coworker from Bethesda, Jason Richardson, who had been envisioning Hawthorn for many years. But by the time Cerlan and Richardson had built up a small team and put together a pitch for a video game, the landscape had changed. Funding had dried up across the video-game industry thanks to an economic downturn, a post-Covid correction and some bad bets. Throughout 2024, Cerlan and her team have tried and failed to secure funding — a dire situation for their company that they hope will change following the game's announcement. If they can't find any investment soon, they plan to launch a Kickstarter, buoyed by the positive attention they've received from influencers and potential fans. "We're pretty determined to get this to market one way or another," she said. But for now, nobody on Cerlan's team is getting paid, no matter how many people have added the game to their Steam wish lists. Even the announcement had an unfortunate hurdle. Their gameplay trailer, for which they licensed music from a composer, was inexplicably flagged for copyright infringement on TikTok — a last-minute setback that may have cost them views. "Now we're focusing on the game and the community," Cerlan said. "Our hope is everything else will come." I'm nearing the end of Metaphor: ReFantazio, the fantasy roleplaying game in which democracy comes to a medieval kingdom, and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you haven't checked it out and you're into big, stylish turn-based RPGs, at least go play the demo. | 
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