Hello Resonance Games fans and itch community. I'm back, and with a pretty big studio update!

It's been a bit of time since I did an update here, but with everything that happened in April, it felt like an appropriate time to go over some of the changes and initiatives we've been pursuing.

First off, the game is still chugging along - and the 0.11 build should be coming out soon! There are some noticeable updates and QoL improvements, though I do want to emphasize that it will still very much be the Vertical Slice in terms of content. We'd still love for everyone to play it and give feedback however, especially the people that have already experienced earlier builds! Be sure to join us in our Discord Channel to directly share any feedback with our development team~

Among the updates you can expect, we've fixed a lot of general bugs and issues that existed in the 0.10 build. Our programmers have been hard at work at addressing support tickets at a fantastic rate! We've also made updates to the visual feedback in combat - hopefully making it easier to keep track of the beat. Lastly, there are some nice feature changes, including a complete overhaul of our 2.5D movement and how the player interacts with the Z-Axis as well as some improved cinematic moments and more! Be sure to stay on top of all our updates as the 0.11 build rolls out by following us on our socials.

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Now onto the studio announcements!

For those that have followed us on our socials, you may have already seen that we officially incorporated a couple weeks ago! This was a huge push forward for our studio, as up until that point - we were basically acting as a sole-proprietorship. Now that we're official - we can do everything from creating contracts for our developers and receiving funding into a company bank account. But there's something special about our particular incorporation: we decided to become a workers' cooperative!

So (legally), we are now Resonance Games Cooperative - an official business of BC, Canada. We're really excited to share our journey as a proud Canadian cooperative as we move forward, but some of you may be asking: why a co-op? And some more of you may ask: what's a cooperative? Great questions - let's unpack them.

To the latter, a cooperative is an alternative form of corporate structure; not dissimilar to a traditional corporation, but with a much stronger focus on labour and community. Whereas traditional corporations (most game studios) have a top down structure: CEO, CFO, etc..., and will often "go public" - trading stocks and, ultimately, being beholden to their shareholders and yearly profit - a cooperative functions under some small but significant differences. As a workers cooperative, we have a group 'members' - who are more often than not our employees/developers. These working members act as the shareholders for the studio instead of external stock buyers, and as such, Resonance Games is beholden to our community (as a normal studio would) and our developers (our members). This also acts as a democratization of the workplace. Large company decisions can certainly be made by the elected Board of Directors (often members themselves), but can also be brought before the workers as a whole, in what's known as an Annual General Meeting (or AGM). In this way, one member gets one vote - and the studio can move forward in a way that best represents our developers and the games we make.

I could go on and on about the merits of cooperatives. But in the interest of time, if you're still interested, I highly recommend checking out the resources of Cooperative First - the partners we worked alongside with on our incorporation journey. They were absolutely incredible - and while they're mainly a Western Canadian organization, they have plenty of resources to cover cooperatives in general.

Now as to the first question: why the co-op model?

Well, in short, it fit Resonance Games' values and beliefs better than a traditional corporation. To read more about those values and beliefs, we detail them on our website HERE. But in short - we believe in worker-first policies that benefit game developers and reward the hard work and art that they craft. Cooperatives have a natural profit-sharing structure built into them in the form of "Patronage Dividends". Our developers will get a cut of the studio's total profit based on the work they've put into our games (seems reasonable, right?).

We also believe in democratizing the workplace - however, it's worth dispelling a common misconception. Game development requires strong structure and leadership to be done effectively (even at the smallest levels). Some might think that democratization of the workplace means democratization of design or development. While Resonance Games will always value the opinions of our developers and welcome feedback, both positive and critical, this doesn't mean we have to design-by-committee as a cooperative. We will still have the equivalent of directors, leads, seniors and juniors - each with their own responsibilities and decision making power, as this is essential for keeping on schedule and to our vision.

What being a cooperative means, now and in the future, is a real voice for our developers in the workplace they've chosen to invest their time and energy into. When a large decision that could effect all our developers needs to be made, we believe that those same workers deserve a say. When it comes to electing our board of directors - our workers will get to determine who has best shown the leadership to do so. We are because our developers are - and that ultimately drove our decision to become a workers co-op. We truly hope we can assist in proving this method (we're certainly not the first cooperative studio!) and show that it's the best way forward for the creation of games as an art.

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Lastly, Resonance Games Cooperative (or just Resonance Games publicly) has been actively searching for publishing partners and funding! This is the natural, challenging and necessary step for us to finish Resonance: Rhythm in You - and we hope we can share more good news soon~

We've already reached out to nine publishers + funds to showcase our game and find a partner who shares our values as a studio. I won't say who - but we've certainly reached out to some of the biggest indie publishers out there. Fingers crossed!

In addition, a large chunk of April was dedicated to applying for the Canada Media Fund (CMF). We applied for their largest funding program-stream, in hopes that we can work with them to achieve our funding goals and kick-start our game into production. If we receive the funds, we will still be actively looking for a publishing partner - but this would give us the jet-fuel to launch into production and bring people onboard, both part and full time. It was a challenging application to be sure, and a short-notice one to boot, but we're confident in our documentation and vision for our studio and game. Hopefully they feel the same (toes crossed too)!

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This was a wordy update (as usual) - but I wanted to make sure we let you, the community, know about where we are and where we're hoping to get to. We couldn't be more excited about the future of Resonance Games, and we hope that you'll tag along for the ride.

Can you hear the music?

- Kurin Laing (founder/designer)