most publishers dont give money without seeing a fairly elaborate demo. And making games is something that can be done with zero budget unlike endeavors in many other industries.
Outer Wilds was in production for 7 years. Practically nobody can fund years of full time work without some external funding. I don't have any proof, but I am confident that Annapurna poured some amount of money into that venture during those 7 years.
IIRC Mobius Digital got their initial money for Outer Wilds from crowdfunding after a much more limited demo of what they wanted to achieve, then I assume Annapurna came on the scene later when they went professional and needed support for multi-platform. The period where kickstarter was more commonly accepted for game projects is over, and fewer projects could get a similar starting point that lets them spend years on their first release
Most games aren't good. If we don't talk about the outliers we'll be stuck talking about roblox maps, king.com games, or assassins creed. Everything Annapurna interactive funded was an outlier, that's what made it interesting.
