Producer and game director of Petit Depotto, Toru Kawakatsu, shared his harsh experience working in the indie industry in an interview. According to him, the balance between creative impulse and business acumen is the key to success.
As I gained experience, I began to realize that idealistic beliefs like "if you make something good, it will attract people's attention and sell well" almost never correspond to reality. In reality, it is difficult to achieve success without a certain level of financial understanding and business sense.
He emphasized that you can't escape the "business side":
Dreams alone are only enough for a certain period – you need to face reality.
At the same time, Kawakatsu admits that this approach can distract from pure creativity. In his opinion, the creator must first have a dialogue with the inner world, and the task of the producer is to make this "raw" idea understandable and high-quality for the audience.
Frankly speaking, I believe that if a creator simply expresses their pure creative vision, the result may be too elitist, which prevents others from understanding and empathizing with it.
Given that developing an indie game takes 3-4 years, commercial success is necessary for the studio's survival.
Gnosia is available on Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox, and PC. Also, from October 2025 to March 2026, an anime adaptation of the game was released.
