6-FIGURE PUBLISHING DEALS Before Finishing Your Game (a chat with Zhenghua Yang)

hey guys my name is thomas brush and i make indie games for a living the reason i do it for a living or one of the main reasons i do it for a living is because of publishers like z and z's full name is it's zheng hwa yang i call you z but i think i said that right right no that's a perfect action okay that's creepily good so z zhang yang is the owner of serenity forge and serenity forge is the publisher for neversong z how are you doing man pretty good very tired a lot of stuff going on right now great great what's the hardest thing you're working on right now that's sort of stressing you out you know like i think the biggest thing as all people who run companies know is that when you start growing it there's a new set of challenges and for serenity forge we've spent the past couple years really growing our operations and we're kind of you know turning turning from you know a couple folks uh working in a room now to like 50 people working out of an official office and a lot of that growth has just

been uh it's just been it's been tough it's a very exciting and very fulfilling challenge yeah but but certainly a challenge nonetheless yeah i mean it's crazy you guys have grown so much um and you've i think you've learned a ton and so what we're going to talk about in this podcast is we're going to share the knowledge that you know specifically about what you're looking for with indie games because i know when i started working with you guys i was looking to make some money from you guys and a lot of indie game developers are looking for an advance or something like that or they're looking for a publisher to find and secure a deal with a platform for them because a lot of indie game developers like in my audience they don't know how to get google stadia they don't know how to get apple arcade they don't know how to get epic games to fund their project and actually give them sort of an exclusive deal so guys we're going to talk all about this he's going to give us his three secrets for how to get a publisher and then stick around to the very end of this podcast guys um all the way to the end of the hour because z is going to

give us his number one trick number one tip on how to get a deal with these big massive platforms so z i'm gonna run a quick intro here and then we're gonna get started [Music] and by the way guys i wanted to let you know that my brand new course easy 3d is totally free right now click below to enroll for free and you'll immediately be taken to the program where you're going to learn how to make your very first 3d game and here's the best part you're going to do it fast and you really don't need to know anything about unity or code or 3d modeling it's really kind of easy and it's totally free click below to make your very first 3d game i can't wait to see you succeed okay z i the first thing i want to jump into here is

can you tell us a little bit about your story personally but also building the company um building serenity forge because like i said at the beginning of this podcast you guys worked with me on never song and i mean you guys made that thing blow up it was amazing so i want to kind of know how you got here um and what your what's your studio is doing yeah for sure um i mean the the story is out there but a quick recap of you know how i got started is that when i was um when i was a kid growing up i was a huge gamer and to the point that i was spending a lot of my time gaming uh and really wasted away in my health when i was 18 years old i ended up being diagnosed with a severe and a fatal illness that caused me to be hospitalized for two years and during these two years it was extremely difficult i had to uh really change the way that i see the world i had to go to go through chemotherapy

and and ultimately i just felt alone and abandoned um however uh when i felt that way what was there for me were video games so i started playing all sorts of games games that are uh you know single player games like chrono trigger or fan of fantasy that made me feel like a hero i'm going out there saving the world i feel so good about myself um and then there's also multiplayer games where games like league of legends warcraft world warcraft my uh minecraft these games made me feel a lot more connected i made all these friends around the world that made me uh feel like oh i actually do know people out there i'm not alone out there and and these friends would you know check in with me make sure that i'm taking my medicine making sure that i'm getting the proper amount of rest and eventually i even met a medical researcher through uh online mmo that gave me really valuable advice and introduced me to hematologists that ended up you know give saving me um and you know uh eventually i was able to recover enough to go back to college and i thought to myself well you know these games that i

played like world of warcraft these games are not meant to help me but in the end uh these games saved my life so what if i start making video games with intention to help other people what kind of power can we unlock there uh and that's when i started serenity for and uh and interestingly enough this is the moment when i was introduced to coma uh when uh you know when when you when you were working on on the game at that time um and coma you know i i for for fans of thomas i'm sure you understand uh what kind of a game coma was uh and just kind of a deeply emotional the narrative elements of of that particular title and the styles that thomas has uh and that was hugely inspirational for me and i was able to take inspiration from that and continue to build on upon it and then eventually uh kept on working with other creatives and one day luckily got introduced to thomas himself and then we started working together and the rest is history so you know that's really kind

of how all of this stuff started uh and you know as time goes on we're continuing to find opportunities to partner with amazing developers uh and and work with amazing partners to release video games uh that are meaningful that are very emotionally impactful and we really want to create games uh that challenge the way that you think so typically the games you guys do release have thought about this is you you typically do like narrative games you'll publish like narrative story driven type games right yeah well our games are very narrative driven however they don't need to be you know like a strip because when people say narrative games they think about oh it's basically like a movie but you press some buttons once in a while or oh maybe maybe a visual novel which is basically a book with some you know digital pictures um the truth is narrative uh can come from a variety of places i mean pick never song for example never saw it doesn't actually have a lot of text but it is extremely narrative due to the unique atmosphere due to the not just the style and the visceral audio the music that you've

written um i think i think that's kind of our take on narrative a narrative doesn't necessarily mean that it has a plot a narrative doesn't necessarily mean that it has a lot of text or cinematography you know whatever shots or whatever i think i think ultimately it has to do with what kind of an emotion did it leave on you what kind of an impact did it leave on uh one of the ways that we measure our success as uh as a company is after you're done playing a serenity forge 10 years down the road you're looking back at that game what are you feeling like how long and how much did you end up carrying this game for the rest of your life that's how we measure our success okay um are you ever do you ever turn down it's okay if you say no yes i'm just curious do you ever turn down a project because it doesn't fit the mantra of serenity forge oh all the time uh so so to give you give you a glimpse of of what we look at we get a game pitch to us probably every hour or two like all the time we get so many games pitched to

us 99.9 percent of the games that we get pitched uh we just won't be able to do yeah um there i and when i say you know turning down the games yes a lot of it it was like yeah that's obviously not a fit if you're making like you know a mobile puzzle game that's kind of like a pick up and play generally not a good fit for certain forge um however there are certain games that are like wow this is there's something really interesting here we really want to do it but our bandwidth is too full and there's just too many great games that we're working on or there could be wow this is probably going to be the next among us and and this game is like wow this is this is unique it's probably going to be a game changer you're probably going to make millions off of this game but it's not quite what our brand is about right so so i think i think you know realistically we do we just have to you know we have our own priorities i suppose and our priorities is always emotions first uh narrative first and we want to make sure that players uh are you know players lives are are vastly improved after they're done playing this

game yeah that's that's that that sort of brings me to i guess the title of this video which is what are three ways that my audience can reach out what are the three like secrets or three like hacks the best to the best of your knowledge because after all you're you're at the top you're the tip of the spear in terms of your studio and what you pick to publish so my question is like you've got you've got a season of certain kinds of games maybe you're looking for you've got a certain budget you've got bandwidth so you you have all of these reasons to reject or approve a project and by the way just if everybody's curious when a publisher accepts a project what they do is my audience people like you guys making games they'll send a vertical slice they'll send a demo they'll send a pitch deck to people like z and he'll decide whether he wants to fund the project aka guys you can go full time before you even finish your game so my question to you is the do you have

sort of i guess i'll let you sort of ramble here for for a while three secrets on how to get funded like what are you guys actually looking for and what do you want to see from from people in my audience yeah i can give you i can give you i'll do one better i'll give you three secrets general secrets but i'll even give you three things that we look for in a page all right let's do that because three things are are very important and it's it's almost like if you don't have it it's almost impossible for us to reply to that email um number one a visual of what the game looks like before you pitch anything if you don't have something that that it's maybe an image maybe a trailer yeah you know the more precise the better but just something that could tell me what your final goal for this game looks like if if i can't visualize your game i can't get excited for i can't be emotionally attached to your game so there's no reason for me to care are you looking really emotionally attachment really quick are you looking for emotional attachment because i feel like a lot of publishers they're they're thinking is this going to make us money

i'm not necessarily attached to it emotionally but i'm going to make money so so i think i think this is a um it depends right like certainly uh some publishers won't care about emotional attachment okay um however those are not the publishers that would be interested at this stage of game pitches anyway right like you're probably talking about some mega corporations cfo who is looking at running numbers and looking at comps and seeing oh this game is kind of like fall guys and among us and fortnite so therefore yes this game will make money i don't need to be emotionally attached i only care about the numbers right like those are the people you're talking about um at an indie level most companies do like have to have that kind of visualization it's not necessarily a personal emotional attachment it's more of a um an understanding of what you're trying to do a clarity of vision if anything um so with that a visual is very very important that's number one um number

two budget um if you don't have your budget clearly stated within your initial pitch there's always something like even if you are a seasoned veteran there's always kind of like just this kind of like inkling in the back of the publisher's head it's like what is what is this person up to right like are you trying to like first of all is it that you don't know what your budget is so that you're still trying to figure it out so you're not even ready to pitch yet but you already pitched it so i guess you did it wrong or are you trying to play me are you trying to play the game of trying to negotiate more money right um because then it comes off as dishonest so you're either you're either don't know what you're doing or you're being dishonest about what you're doing that's kind of what it comes off when you don't have a specific budget okay from so can you can i ask a quick question there go ahead um there's a lot of questions really but yeah the first one is what if an idi developer doesn't need the money but they want the money because i've had conversations in the past with publishers where they're like i don't care if you go buy a house with

this money you know so i'm curious what and i didn't by the way yeah that's totally fine and that's that's completely that's completely reasonable and i would argue that you do need the money you need a house right like it's that's completely normal um i think the thing is you have to realize the publisher also isn't stupid right like they'll look at something and be like oh you're making an indie platformer you're asking for two and a half million dollars let's talk about it you know like yeah like if i'm interested in the game let's talk about it right like it's it's much better than you showing the public publisher the the platformer they're excited we jump on a call and then they ask you for a budget and then you say oh two and a half million and then they'll just be sit there and be like are you are you an idiot yeah yeah and then now it's like a totally a really awkward situation like i think i think i think there's a i think there's a middle ground you like you just have to be transparent i suppose like that transparency

because it opens up the conversation so here's a here's a question for me personally if i was seeking funding for for like a game like father um my next game it you're saying it's better for me to go this is my budget and seventy percent of it is just because i feel like i'm worth it is that is that a good thing to do i'm not saying that that's what i'm gonna say but yeah i'm curious what is that like i'm worth it i want the cash see you later yeah so there's there's two there's two takes on this um obviously which which is you know the two takes that you're already considering um i think ultimately you know like yes you can do that especially with what you have already done i think there's a lot of arguments there that you can make that hey look at the success that i've done before um check out the the games that i have released like having had a portfolio having a portfolio is a totally different story it's almost like a season like director who's right who's seeking who wants to work with a studio

he's like look you owe me one million because i'm me and i'm not again i'm not saying that's how i think i'm just saying like worst case scenario if my if my audience went to a publisher and did that if they were seasoned and they had three great games under their belt like for example team cherry i feel like team cherry could go up to i don't know uh curve curved games is what they're called now they used to be curved digital now the curve games they could go up to curve and say we want 10 million just because yeah of course okay of course i mean look at it like jj abrams is not going to go to a film company and be like oh i i want i want 10 million dollars for this film and uh and uh let me let me tell you exactly how i'm gonna spend it on my own life i really need an armchair i've been missing for a while so that's part of the budget yeah you know like he's not gonna do that he's gonna be like oh the five million goes to me because i'm jj [ __ ] abrams yeah like i think that's the that's just how it kind of works yeah um when a game like abzu gets signed you

know abzu got signed so simply uh because they worked on journey and they don't need anything they don't have to prove anything because they have already done so through the fact that they released a successful game they had the spreadsheets to show for it everything is already there they don't need to say a thing all they have to do is sit there and say well i made journey yeah the uh so so yeah i mean there there is that strategy however i will say that on the flip side that doesn't always resonate with every partner and also that certainly comes from a position where you have already had that portfolio if this is your first game that you're pitching uh if you haven't worked in a studio that launched successful games if you don't have a lot to show that is noteworthy then it's almost impossible for someone to come in here and and just trust you like that right um for example uh a lot there's a lot because of kovid i mean a lot of people are kind of leaving film to go into games right because you can't shoot and you know things things get tough um

so there's a lot of film people like flooding into the game industry and these film directors have launched films and you know have sold them to netflix and you know feel super successful and then they would put together this budget you know and go to these big publishers and pitch them and they get rejected every time almost no film direct like you you hear very little film directors actually successfully making it in the game industry uh and the reason is because they're just kind of they're assuming that they can use their credentials uh to transfer into games but that's not true at all and there's not a lot of strong overlap between the two industries so they and so publishers have learned to not really kind of pursue that line of business um so even though they have released a lot of really good films uh they're still they're still waiting for them to actually make some good game breaks before they're they're able to sign bigger deals okay okay so that budget really quick um do we put that on our vertical slice like on our pitch deck um like if i send if i let's say i sent y'all an email or i send an email to double fine

does the email say here's my pitch deck and then they click on the pitch deck it takes them to a web page and that has the budget breakdown on there like a generic breakdown and a trailer is that how you you propose it i've seen that that actually works really well um i've seen just a pdf you know like with with some links on there with some pictures and then some uh some numbers um i've seen it just typed up in an email as well with some embedded images i've seen i've seen it all um and uh and yeah where i think all of that works um at the very least just have that one number for the total budget and describe like what does that total budget account for like did you account for marketing in there did you account for porting in there and a lot of that stuff adds on to it so from a publisher perspective i would have to take a look oh you have you know three hundred thousand dollars there yeah and you know i'm i have to then dig a little deeper like does this include nintendo switchboarding does this include uh you know pr and and making a trailer you know a lot of these things maybe maybe

you could say like oh i will be making the trailer myself so you don't have to do it so now i can you know okay okay cool we can kind of cut a little bit more costs from our end um and then that's how that's how we're able to at least start the conversation okay so this this will help my audience a lot and it's going to be kind of a weird conversation but and we can cut this if we want to but you and i we worked on never song together i know how much you guys paid me for never song i also know what neversong made in terms of gross revenue so in retrospect going back in time and i won't blame you for this at all because i needed i needed other things besides money you and i hopefully remember that conversation so if it were you if you were me and and my audience knows what never song looks like it's like a four four hour game four hour adventure game what would you put down for the budget for that game if you were pitching it so so i think never song is slightly different because

typically when a game is pitched to a publisher this is the part thomas if you if you want to cut feel free to do so i know it has to do i mean it's really up to you i like leaving everything in but if you want it cut i'll cut it i'm thinking about keeping it but okay i'll just go ahead um so with never song we programmed the game that's that's a little different my audience knows that yeah yeah so that's a little different than um a typical game let's say y'all didn't program it then that would be a completely different story because because the budget is also very different right because because the amount of time and money that you spent on making this game is actually not the total amount of money that was spent making this right so so because if you're gonna account for all of eric's time all of me and kevin's time like doing the biz dev stuff and and like you know does any kind of design back and forth um a lot of that stuff is gonna essentially all shift into the game budget and it would be a much much larger number so it's like minimum half a million to a million i wouldn't go that far i don't think but you know like like it would

definitely be a six figure number um and you know because because the team behind never song is actually a lot bigger than than a single individual right so for one person uh jumping onto this project and being like a director for it yeah i mean it kind of makes sense and especially since you know you're you're getting a large you know cut from from the royalties as well yeah meanwhile you know the rest of the rest of the team supporting the project uh gets the smaller cut yeah um but but ultimately the the rest of the team initial investment was actually uh just just in general a greater number of man hours and and dollars you know right so minimum we're looking at like a six figure typical deal with any publisher now the conversation completely changes when you start involving platforms because then you've got a port for a specific platform with all their demands right so it like i don't know if it doubles the budget but it it might it just gets expensive so for example if like uh epic games

or or let's say playstation wanted to do some sort of exclusive deal that's when things change right yeah the the porting stuff well you know if you use unity uh it's a little bit easier uh it really kind of depends on the technology yeah but the console exclusive stuff that's that's the tougher conversation because it's really confusing waters to navigate and i i don't even know how to talk about it because it's kind of confusing yeah um but ultimately i think i think the number one advice that i have for platforms and this is the same advice that these platforms would actually give us when we talk to them is that if you as a developer make a certain game make your game that like that particular platform first you know if you're making a game that is just a switch first title that really uses all of the switches functionalities or a ps5 title where you know uses the motion controls the you know the

haptics uh the adaptive triggers 3d sound uh or if you're making it for you know xbox exclusive uh you know uh title um if you're just thinking about the audience for that platform and you're thinking about the functionalities of that platform as your number one goal for your game then generally you're a lot more you're seeing a lot more favorable for that one platform on you know because they're able to identify they see so many games they see hundreds of games every day being pitched to them so they're able to identify that as something that's very interesting yeah however regardless you're gonna have to have their email first and you're gonna have to have a relationship first um and it's just a lot easier to to strike up those deals when it's you know you're you're being represented by someone who have you know known them for years and you know grabbed lunch every couple months with each other so so you know you're still kind of regardless whether or not your game is perfectly made for the nintendo switch you're still going to be competing for those personal relationships okay okay cool so we got budget

budget uh imagery was was the first one budget's the second one yeah so so so the third one uh that i would give is um the the build which is it's pretty straightforward um i i think i think this one is probably a little bit looser than the other two um because not every game really requires a hands-on feel until uh you know like for it to sound good uh i'll actually be honest for serenity forge because our games are so narrative driven the build is probably the least important meanwhile if you talk to any other publisher the build is probably always number one wow um the reason is because we have a strong imagination for narrative so when we look at a pitch deck when we look at the imagery and then look at the budget we're able to kind of imagine okay how how does this game what kind of a story is this game telling without having to actually play the build with that said there were a couple of games that we have signed that we haven't announced yet that looking at the deck

yeah you know looking at the budget not super interesting not super you know there's no not not an obvious business opportunity uh and then we play the build and we're just like holy [ __ ] this is the coolest thing so you know you know i yes i'm saying that is the least important but it is still important uh so definitely make sure that if you're able to include a build especially if it's a game that is mechanics driven definitely include a build or else you know you can talk you can sit down and talk about celeste all day until you play the game you don't really know what that game is okay so so a couple questions about the build um and then also i have a question about these three things so the first question i have is does the build does length matter uh no okay well okay sorry let me let me let me redact that because because it heavily depends on what game you're making right like if you're making a 4x strategy game that's similar to civilization uh yeah like that's gonna matter i can't play a five minute demo of sieve and and know what i got

myself into i probably like took two turns and moved some units around and that was it uh so that wouldn't tell me anything about civ um so it really heavily depends on what um what you're selling okay the i think the the there are two ways to approach the build if you're if you're looking at your game you can either approach it as a vertical slice or really kind of a perfect picture is what we call it so vertical slice is technically something that's a little bit more lengthy um but uh but has has like the the kind of the main features but you're able to kind of dive into it for a longer period of time so like maybe spend an hour playing something and checking out the mechanics maybe the graphics aren't super polished maybe the story isn't fully written uh the execution isn't perfect but you know you can play for like an hour and and generally feel get a feel for the mechanics that would be a vertical slice and it's generally a better fit for something like a action based game a mechanics driven game uh something that's like celeste for example

so the other one the perfect picture one this is more of the really the horizontal slice which is uh you have a perfect picture of what the game looks like but it's very very short it is basically an entirely finished five minutes of your game so this is probably a better fit for something a little bit more narrative like if you're pitching something like either finch or you know like tacoma or something like that you're able to walk around talk to people hear the voice acting really get a sense of just the gorgeous surroundings and the music and feel like you want to be a part of this world and then now it's over and you want you want to explore more that's that's like another really good pitch so generally you want to go for one of those two okay that's that's super helpful so guys you don't have to make a full game you don't even have to make it halfway done um and what i'm doing i can tell my audience what what my plan is so for father um firstly my my the goal with father is find probably find just first person horror

publishers people who love horror or first person and then i'm gonna pitch to those um those publishers a 10-minute hyper-polished demo um with all the voice actors all the story elements that really hook the audience great ambience great feel um and then include that also in the trailer so instead of me and my team focusing on a 20-minute demo to really get them to hooked on the mechanics it's really trying to hook them on the inspiration like giving them the heartbeat of the game and also what you were saying z letting them know what the final product will look like so that's that's sort of my approach now my next question about the three things that you mentioned is what's the order in which they see these things my assumption is like okay some publishers who maybe in times of i don't know covid when things were really stressful they immediately look at the budget um or some people look at the trailer

first but i highly doubt that they're going to open up the demo first so can you give us sort of the order and maybe even go to like the the the more granular stuff like the subject line all that if you could sort of break down the order and the hierarchy of the pitch and what's most important right so so on the topic of subject line i'll just quickly comment on this subject line as long as you don't say something really pointless or stupid be like hey check out my game that would be the same thing you know it's weird as i answer those emails those are the ones i click on yeah because i never get them yeah like unless if you say something really dumb yeah you're going to get wrecked um because i mean like i said we get we get a lot of pictures we get a pitch every couple hours so but we still i mean that's if someone's job at a company is to take pitches for games that we publish that's their job they're not going to miss any emails in fact if they

missed any email at all that's that's bad that's like them doing their job poorly so any competent publisher will essentially read every single pitch um that that comes through and we certainly do i i in fact read every single game that's pitch this ready for myself um so so the subject line i don't know if it really matters um as long as you just do do a good one um do okay so that sounded weird but but like do like generally describe your game in a sense honestly dude that surprises me so much yeah um because i thought subject line was like everything because they're not gonna read every every page you i mean you get a lot of pictures we don't get that many pictures right like it's kind of like again there's dedicated staff and you know professionals sitting on the other side of the computer just sitting there waiting for pitches so so the subject like there's for for us is more like there's always well like we're always going to check out a pitch regardless of what the subject line is um we might not take it very long at it i'll get into that in a second but but that is um you

know regardless that's the email will get opened so um with that said really the most important thing is the visual uh if it's a screenshot or a trailer that's always gonna be the go the go tube just because it's the easiest thing to look at humans are very uh visual creatures you know like we judge things by visuals more strongly than anything else so um if you open an email and then there's an image right there that shows the most beautiful shot of your game um or explains what your game is about that's it you know that's that's the attention grabber that's the only thing that really matters i'm so glad you said that because i thought that images would sometimes i don't know why but like i was in in email marketing from my previous job and we actually stayed away from sending images at the time it was about 10 years ago so it's probably changed but i was always worried it wouldn't get delivered it would get sent to their spam or like their promotions folder um but what you're saying is a good rule of thumb is just your best looking image

maybe a screenshot with your logo and maybe they click on that and it takes them to the pitch in a website that could work or you could just have the pitch as a text underneath or you could attach the pdf of the pitch on the thing or maybe there's a google google uh sheets or not sheets uh slides um there's a lot of different ways you can do it but that image at the top it really matters and and to answer your concern thomas uh you you're right in a email marketing capacity because the person who is on the other side of the computer didn't want your email so you're kind of forcing them to read your marketing message right meanwhile you have to realize publishers are hungry for games we're always looking for games to to take on as a as a company so we're when emails come in we're excited like oh wow i can't wait to read this right and we have dedicated channels right like ours is publishing at serenityforge.com and we make sure that no email is ever blocked on that on that channel just so that we get those images into the emails uh and then lastly

you know like we uh we overall just like prioritize these emails in our own systems we make sure that it's all categorized correctly so that you know when the time comes to check to see all of the pitches that got in today or got in this week we're just able to go through it right you know right there so all of that system you know in a professional uh publishers uh you know back end it's all already taken care of you don't have to worry about ending it into the spam folder or whatever like that sweet yeah so so after the image it is the the number you know that's usually what i look for because you know sometimes people are like oh we need you know millions of dollars for this game even if it looks amazing or i'll be like okay yeah that's probably not for us just because it's too big um or if it's too small then that's also kind of interesting right like it's like oh this game is gorgeous and you're only asking for what how this much yeah that's interesting right but if anything that'll probably generate more conversation and you know that usually warrants a reply yeah i feel more times than not dude especially with my audience um just because i know they probably

think like me uh they're they feel like imposters they feel uh they're self-deprecating is that the word self-deprecating so they feel small and so what they do is they undervalue their project and again guys i'm talking about me i just know you guys follow me because we're all very similar and you know that the problem with that is obviously like there's a lot of publishers out there who'll be like sold i'll give you 20 grand for 60 you know and that's that a lot of people might fall for that because they're thinking well i can quit my job and i'll be able to work for six months uh barely making it by but at least i can make my game you know yeah yeah i mean it's it's important to price correctly uh and and it is it is an art pricing a game uh and pitching it to the publisher is is definitely art it is it is a lot harder than than it sounds but also you know it takes experience oh if i'm being honest i've been on the other side of the table

i still am on the other side of the table in a lot of ways we have a very large dev team internally and we're working with other publishers as well and you know from my experience you just kind of have to take it one step at a time you know it's kind of like your first game you you get some peanuts at best maybe just release it by yourself well for free uh your second game finally you you know you get noticed by uh something something small and then you know they're able to you know give you some ramen fun uh and i mean maybe the third game now you're looking at okay cool maybe i can try to like improve my style living a little bit you know by by your next couple games now you're now you're you know you're you're the director you're the creative you're an author that's able to go out there do the thing and and actually generate a profitable a strong value not only for yourself your family and also for the publishing partner and and they're able to now trust you and just you know throw you money because they know they'll be able to make that money back so it really is kind of a step-by-step process you can't get there overnight roman

isn't built in a day yeah so it's it's just a matter of knowing where you are on your career path and being realistic about um you know what your needs are as well yeah i mean i'll tell my audience guys i got screwed over the first time i worked with a publisher um and it screwed over is is probably not the right word because it wasn't illegal but that's that's the thing is it doesn't have to be illegal for it to be awful to in a lot of publishers will will screw you over and like for me we didn't have a schedule with the first deal i ever signed uh there was no schedule um and there was like not even a projected deadline and so i i had to buy that game back and and it was a big pain um so i just want to encourage my audience like you were saying z you've gotta you've gotta take it one step at a time and and and you know get as much resources as you can and this channel is one of them

um but ultimately it takes time to figure out exactly what you should price your game at and i'm still figuring that out because sometimes i'm like is this a million dollar game or is this a hundred thousand dollar game or is this a sixty thousand dollar game like i have no idea and so what i've learned to do is reach out to the people who i've worked with in the past so reach out to you on discord reach out to kevin uh who's one of your business partners um reach out to um the ceo at armory games hey man what do you think about the budget of this game so it's really it's guys it's just about building obviously a thick skin but also building up experience like actual experience and knowledge about how to price out your game and it's really hard to know it's and also another question i have is like like how do they know if if they're reaching out to a publisher that makes massive big budget games or they're reaching out to a publisher that does smaller games like do you do you feel like my audience should only reach out to certain publishers

that are within their budget in their head or should they reach out to all of them so so i have i have a complicated answer here and this is actually one of the advice that really i wanted to share so i'm glad that you brought it up um definitely recognize the fact that every publisher has their own business criteria you know like i mentioned earlier serenity forge is about doing meaningful values driven emotionally impactful games so you know know that however it doesn't mean that you shouldn't pitch the game as well i think the trick here is really to be realistic about it understand what they're looking for and also shape your pitch to fit what that publisher would be looking for kind of like how when you're applying for a job you know like you have a certain number of number of skills you have a you have a few different jobs that you would be happy with you have some jobs that are your dream jobs but you know you're going to be shotgun blasting your resume to a few different places different positions and you're going to have probably a rewrite your cover letter

your objective on your resume every single time right or or rather you're supposed to um and when you do that you know you'll be like oh i'm really excited for you know marketing specialists too at this company because my marketing background is very strong i have a strong passion for it and then for another one it's like oh i really want to do operations manager 3 because i really care about operations like you want to change it up a little bit so do the same thing also for when you're pitching games and it's not a lie what you're saying is i will craft this game to your benefit not only will i craft the pitch like because you're saying change up the pitch but you're also saying look if you guys want something to meet your needs i'll do that for you as long as you fund this game for me yeah so so that's that's that's definitely a part of it there's also um there's also a um i i'm guessing as all developers are uh there are certain parts of the game that you're also unsure about right like if you're absolutely sure that this is exactly the game that you want to make you don't want any words of advice or any feedback then yeah i mean you

probably don't want to lie right like to the publishers and tell them it's actually an mmo however there are certain parts of the game that you're probably like well i guess i could turn into so and so and and make it still work and still be really happy about it yeah if that's the case then don't be afraid to be upfront about it because then publishers are able to find ways to fit that project into their portfolio you know maybe a player is coming in here and they're like okay we need to fill one more mmo spot and this game looks really good but unfortunately the devs are insisting that it's single player so we can't sign it well we're gonna have to go some sign something else right and you just missed a huge opportunity so that's definitely true dude because when we were working on never song i mean we changed the name way down the road from coma to ever once upon a combat never song that game changed so many times so i want my audience to know just because you pitch your game as something doesn't mean it's not gonna change i don't even know what father is i i was talking to felipe my my 3d modeler and we were talking yesterday and i was like

dude i don't know what this game is like we really we really just have to keep making out the levels and playing it and playing it playing it build out that vertical slice or whatever you want to call it and then we'll figure it out and you know maybe the publisher will inform us of what they think it should be so that it's more marketable you know so it's really it's a conversation you don't have to lead that conversation yeah and also i'll give you another piece of industry advice and this piece of advice is actually um very kind of a veteran advice and this is something that i found all industry design auteur veterans do and that is they always have multiple pitches for multiple games wow so basically um what happens what you're supposed what you're supposed to do as an industry veteran you know someone who's worked in this industry for for decades uh when you're going around pitching a game with your connections you would have essentially have a flash drive that have like first of all like four folders each folder containing a totally different game and each of these

games are designed to be a totally different budget you know the first one would be like a 50k game the second one would be like a 200k game the third one be like a three million game the fourth one would be like a 20 million game and you have these four totally different games that you're very confident and very passionate in and then in each of those folders you have like five slide decks for each five versions of the slide decks for each game and it would be like this is the multiplayer mmo version for for pitching into multiplayer this is the single player narrative one this is the single player mechanics driven one this is more of the fps version and then you just have like five different versions of your exact same game and you never let anyone know based on which publisher you're pitching to you bring out that one like okay they are the two million dollar publisher that's about the range that we're looking to publish yeah and they're focused on the fps's so i'm gonna grab the fps version of my two million game yeah and you that's what all industry veterans do whenever i talk to my friends ask for advice this is what they tell me uh we did the same thing for a lot of the games that we pitched yeah and

ultimately like once you have gotten those decades of experience you'll realize that that's exactly why you should be doing it you know it's funny you say that because i think a lot of the people who are listening right now and guys this is no offense to you guys because i'm honestly i'm speaking to myself i was such a purist when i started out in the game industry where i was like well i'm going to change the world and this is how i'm going to do it and this this is the type of game i'm gonna make and no no gross publisher is gonna tell me how i'm gonna make my game but it's funny you say industry veterans because once you're on your fourth game and you're running a business and you also don't take yourself so seriously then suddenly you're like i'm actually open to making any type of game um within like a specific for me it's story like i need the story to be the same regardless of the pitch um which which pitch it is it's always going to have the same story so there's certain things that i won't bend on but i think the i don't know about yuzi

but like the older i get the more flexible i become about my games yeah and you know what's funny the older that you get the more flexible you become actually the better stories you end up telling you like when you're so pure on your first game you're like oh it has to be this way looking back at those stories they're often much worse than the new things even if you're like you feel like you're less passionate about the new thing but it's actually creating so much more tremendous of value for society for the fans right it's much more emotional impactful you know yeah i think so i think so i think that's probably because it's probably a pride thing like um my wife always said thomas you see your work is so much better when you're working with a team and that's why i don't really do solo game development anymore uh i think that ultimately like a story might make sense to me um but once you introduce it to a team or a publisher they can come in and you know for i i don't like the recent

star wars series uh star wars um trilogy i think is garbage that's an example of to me and i think most people in my audience would agree that that trilogy is a great example of what happens when you get too careful too careful about the business side of things about the marketability of a project but when you don't care about marketability at all and it's all about you then suddenly the story is only meaningful to you and this isn't always the case sometimes there's there's directors out there who tell a very personal story and it works but one of my great my favorite directors m night shyamalan when he did lady in the water lady in the water was a ridiculously personal story and it came across as pretentious and small and all about him so i guess my point is it's a balance and the older you get the more you figure out how to balance profitability marketability

with being pure and telling the story from your heart you know yeah and honestly i think thomas is really cool that you specifically is bringing this topic up because i think you're actually a really good example of an auteur who is stuck kind of between those two right like the two of us know each other very well right on a personal level you know something i've always observed about your personality is that you have very very strong creative vision the games that you create are extremely atmospheric very visceral and very emotional but then at the end of the day whenever we talk you're always like what would this sell you know what does this mean like how is the market going to respond what my fans like it will people spend money on it like a lot of these questions are not what our tours generally ask right like it's you you are such a great combination of these two because you're always thinking both sides of the story you're able to be holistic about that product i appreciate i think your pinpoint yeah i think you're pinpointing a lot of the issues with just entertainment not just video games entertainment in general where it feels

like you can only do one or the other yeah but honestly i think you yourself is the definitive proof that that's not necessarily true you can find a good balance you can find a healthy way to retain your creative integrity and still be able to make a really healthy and happy living off of it so yeah i mean don't be afraid to experiment with your own kind of business mentality as well yeah i think that's great dude so we've gone through a ton of tips here ton of tricks i think we definitely follow through on the promise of three secrets to getting your game funded could you give me like just a quick i think maybe for the next four minutes here quickly like what games what games i kind of want to get maybe bring in just another secret or two like what games get a good amount of funding like what makes them special as opposed to other games that don't get funded what are those secrets i have a fundamental creative suggestion actually and this is something that i've

observed over the over the years which is why i'm fairly confident in making this suggestion um and that is at the inception of your game idea and really like what what gets funded you know i'm trying to answer this question what gets funded is usually stuff that is new and hasn't been done before um with with strategies that have proven to work which is you know kind of more opposite of the spectrum like you have to have something to prove that it works but you also have to do something new that no one's done before so for example if you go and make something that is like halloween well hollandaise has already made holiday you like you you don't need to go make hollow knight again because it's already out so publishers will see that be like oh great it's just a holiday ripoff whatever it's already done um on the flip side you do something super weird as this big you know pong game on a projector in downtown l.a and you know a group of 50 people can play it you look at it as like well that's not a game like it's new it's too weird i can't fund this this is not a this is not a product

right two two different so now publishers won't touch that either you gotta have you have to find something kind of in between the two my number one suggestion for that type of creativity is always don't be inspired by other video games i actually think there's a really big problem with game developers starting game projects because they played a game that really inspired them so they want to make that again or if they played uh something that made them feel like oh i could have done this better or i would have done this differently yeah and then they go and do a different version of some existing game i think that's the most dangerous way to start a game project because because well first of all someone has already done that game so whatever you're doing is only a derivative or a washed down version of the original vision and usually these games are are very good games i think you know not not to not to pinpoint any particular project a game like limbo for example like really kickstarter limbo and braid it really kick started this 2d puzzle platformer kind of kind of indie space oh that's that's what essentially

for the past like you know 15 years it feels like the indie space uh was kind of like stuck in that 2d puzzle dude i participated in that like how could you not i mean those games were so inspiring but like absolutely everybody did yeah but ultimately i think if you look at a game like never song what made never song special i don't think every song was special because it was 2d i don't think never sound was special because it was a puzzle platformer right i think nevertheless special because you put yourself into it you put that you're into it you put the mood into it and it's totally unique and no one has done something just like never saw before yeah 2d puzzle platforming elements of never song is nothing new there's nothing new in there that is special to the game let me offer up my if you don't mind my i don't know if i fully agree with you because i'm i'm saving my own skin here because father is clearly inspired by a lot of games so maybe that's my pride coming in um but my my thought process is this maybe a way of interpreting what you're

saying maybe tell me what you think here is if you're inspired by something all the things that you have a weakness in keep the inspiration but the areas where you have your own unique vision and forte that's the twist that that inspiration needs right so here's a great example hollow knight hollow knight is it's a classic metroidvania game right but it's got a very unique spin and that spin is is directly correlated to the artists and the musicians so the the forte of that game is what makes it unique but the the foundation of it is it's inspired by classic metroidvania games right yeah i mean i think i think there's there's more to it you know like i i think i absolutely agree with everything that you said um and and like i mentioned i mean and you brought up father as well

you know i'm willing to bet i haven't played the game yet but i'm willing to bet that what makes father unique is not because because it plays like quake right like i think i think there are there are because if if what makes father unique is because it plays like quake then people will just go bike wait that's right that's right because we already did what made quick uh what makes school good i think i think what i i think a really good example that always inspires me is when miyamoto was interviewed and they asked him what inspired you to create zelda which is you know one of the greatest video game franchises of all time right and he said when i was a child you know my parents weren't always around so when i'm bored i would leave the house go to the local you know forest and go explore in the forest you know grab sticks and whack on trees uh and just explore and find little furry creatures and interact with them and it was so inspirational it was so fun to be able to explore this like woodland kind of feel that he eventually wanted to

create a similar experience of that childlike wonder exploring the forest right it has nothing to do with video games yeah like his entire inspiration for zelda which defined an entire generation of game designers yeah right never came from game design to begin with yeah so i think i think that's the kind of mindset we have to be in if you want to make a game that is truly unique and becomes the quote-unquote next thing you gotta have to go somewhere else because if you're inspired by someone by a game then you're already kind of behind the curve because that person has already released that game and is already working on something else i think it's such a hard conversation though z i'm not gonna i'm not gonna disagree with you i think you're totally right the problem there is that most people including me like i i appreciate you saying i have vision but even me i i don't i don't have everything i need like my the seed that i have for a video game the inspiration it's not enough

like i have to i have to get some sort of scaffolding so for me the way i i treat game dev is i treat it like a i find a template and then i i strip that template down to its necessary elements and then i skin it with thomas brush isms so atmosphere music story but like the scaffolding for example the scaffolding for never song is like side scroll or zelda right um that's kind of the scaffolding for that game i i couldn't i wouldn't be able to come up with just bear like scaffolding completely alone i have to find something out there because i just my brain doesn't work that way i'm not a game designer yeah and i i would argue that that's exactly kind of what i'm talking about okay for nowadays right like i would like to compare your approach to game design similarly to another really great company that i deeply admire super giant games um i i think hades recently became

a really big thing and everyone's talking about it if you take a closer look at hades hades literally did nothing new which which is hilarious right like the the isometric you know action game play was done by games like diablo decades ago you know the the roguelike nature of the game is it's like well not only as a diablo but also binding of isaac you know a lot of these games have been doing roguelikes again from decades ago and then you look at the dating sim elements which is well very traditional even before really gaming was happening there's 2-0 adventure dating books you know very much inspired by that and then lastly greek mythology hell that was thousands of years ago you know there's nothing new about the story either this these characters have existed longer than america did so so if you think about it it's it's almost like super giant games invented nothing and they brought four very distinct things which also have been brought together before and the only new thing that they

did was to inject their culture inject what supergiant games does like their their version of the atmos games you know like yeah the culture and putting it into the game and they decided they're just gonna make a perfect video game and then they did and then now it became the best game one of the best games of all time everyone loves it uh even though if you dissect the individual elements none of it was was unique at all right um right so i think you know that's a really good example that kind of follows what you're saying don't feel like you have to reinvent the wheel just to create something unique clearly you're able to be inspired in multiple different ways find what drives you you know for you thomas you're driven by atmosphere you're driven by narrative you're driven by art you're driven by audio right like these are the things you care about maybe it doesn't really matter if you're taking a mechanic that's already been done it's because it's it's been tried and true it's something that you can rely on and that's just a tool for you to really achieve the narrative that you actually want to tell yeah

yeah i think i think what you're i'm thinking back to your original point now that i've heard what you've said here thinking back to your original point i think what you're thinking of is you probably get pitches all the time where it's like there's no ins like it's funny this game is so inspired by limbo that there's no inspiration right it's like it's kind of a weird way to put it but that if something is so and you probably get these pitches all the time if something is so inspired by something else there's nothing here right whereas what what i think we've agreed on here is for for my audience they they really need to inject themselves into a project because ultimately what's going to make a project unique is is your your personality and your your lived experience and it's okay to keep the scaffolding of a game you like but dress it in your own personality um and sometimes sometimes people like that um my team members that i work with

they're brilliant game designers and they have some really cool ideas and if that's your forte then that's that's actually your personality you inject into your game which is you're a really good puzzle designer you're a really good um you're really good at making mechanics right and your game is mechanics driven that's injecting your personality it doesn't mean you have to make a moody game or an artsy game that's just that's my forte you know yeah well i think that um i think that that is really really good advice i think it's also really really hard to follow um because it means you gotta you gotta really be brave you know and stick your neck out there and be yourself and that's tough yeah yeah for sure okay well i think dude this is such such a great podcast this is one of my favorite ones i think we've i've learned a ton the last thing i want to cover here is um

this is the last thing we i wanted to cover was what was your number one secret to landing a deal and i know you guys have landed a lot of deals with with platforms and guys the difference between a publisher and a platform is a publisher is going to help you get a deal with a platform they don't have to but it's very very helpful right so for example serenity forge and i work together and we got to deal with apple arcade um so if you could think of like the number one tip for developers to secure a big deal with a platform like apple arcade epic games or stadia or playstation or xbox what is that number one number one tip yeah the the number one tip and i'll let me let me dive into some some context on why i would say this um like i said earlier in the podcast these these platforms are run by humans just like how publishers are run by humans and humans in order to do business you just have to have that

personal trust with people um these are not they're not robots it's not a software that's looking through your games and analyzing whether or not they should sign it it's always a person that's looking at it so ultimately what happens is that deals are just signed through relationships and that's why it's always really important to work with a publisher because publishers have been working with these uh platforms for years and they like i mentioned it's like you know we would grab lunch with all of our platform partners and you know executives from the different companies uh at every game convention you know every time we travel uh the other day uh uh mlb uh the um baseball game was in denver uh and uh and xbox reached out and was like hey you wanna you wanna hang out while we're out here because you know we're in town for for for the for the game yeah and we drove down and hung out and this is just like what people do as a publisher and then and we and we enjoy it because you know at the end of the day we really are friends you know we enjoy actually

spending time with each other so when it comes to signing these deals what ends up happening is that yes you know the relationship is is very critical there's also just a lot of talk and understanding of what they're really looking for if you look at a brand like apple arcade or epic you know you look at their platform you're like what what does apple stand for or what does epic stand for it's going to be really hard for anyone to answer that like if you open up epic game store and be like what do they stand for no one knows right there's fortnight that's on here there's a couple of indie games and there's like free triple a game going on right now right like you don't really know what they're looking for there's no way for you to decipher it however in my position i just met with epic this monday and i asked them what are you guys looking for and they're like oh yeah we're looking for this and this so they know what they want right and then now all of a sudden we're like okay cool let me look through our catalog and see what games we have right now that would be a good fit for what you're looking for and before you know it we're starting we're starting to look at term sheets we're starting to

negotiate deals um and then and then there it is right so i think if you don't have that person that's almost on the inside to vouch for you to look for opportunities for you to be like your eyes and years to to try to seek out those opportunities you're just always going to operate blindly so that's why my number one secret to landing these deals is to really find someone who really knows what they're doing who really has these connections that's able to go out there and passionately vouch for your game and those people are generally the publishers not always but generally the publishers who really believe in your game who are heavily invested in your game uh and are also you know looking to bring it to greater heights right um otherwise you're just you know sending cold pitches to nameless emails contact epic.com right and then and then you know it's gonna disappear into the void and no one's ever gonna care so in terms of the i mean that's that would be my number one uh secret to okay in terms of like the the hierarchy of power or something i don't know the right word of it but or the right phrase

it's it's kind of like publishers are going to be reading emails from developers like me but epic games might actually miss my email because they're probably looking at publisher emails because they have relationships with them right yeah oh yeah absolutely i mean i i send the email i send emails all the time to executives at all these platforms that we're talking to you know and and they would respond within the day meanwhile a developer sending an email to these platforms first of all you don't know what the email is right and even if you do it'll end up in a spam folder or you get blocked because they don't know who you are and you're probably just scammer yeah so so a lot of these things are just you just have to have that relationship first yep yeah well that's dude that's actually i was thinking about this last question i was like how is he gonna answer that but that's a huge that i think that is the number one

secret and it's it worked for me i mean because i was so blown away i was like wow like apple wants to buy up never song or at least get a license for it it's just incredible and it was because of you guys um and i think tell me what you think about this do you think it's the future like you think it's gonna this gonna stick around which is indies work with work with big platforms um there's a lot of ndas that i have signed um but without touching the gray areas uh what i can what i can honestly say is that there's a lot of exciting stuff coming from these big companies um i won't i won't exactly say which ones but you know there's a part particular couple of big companies that have very ambitious plans i think there's a lot of public information already out there that kind of indicates that um and i think

in the next 10 to 20 years we're going to see some pretty drastic shifts in how video games are delivered and played we're talking about the metaverse um you can't answer not quite not quite it's it's a little bit more concrete than that actually i think that's actually yeah the metaverse itself is a little bit more nebulous yeah um i think yeah the there are some specific road maps really all of these big companies have very specific road maps on where they want to be in the next 20 years and how they plan on taking over the industry and i think in the next you know that a couple decades we're really going to see a lot of this war take place uh within the industry to see what's going to happen okay um and as a developer i think really the best advice i can give you is to keep an open mind be flexible but don't be don't don't also don't be afraid to stick to your guns right just like how when free to play first came out a lot of people are like ah you know this is this is gonna this is gonna ruin the game industry maybe not

necessarily true there's gonna be a lot of things that will continue to come up vr ar right like there's a lot of technologies that will continue to come out so i think i think it's it's good to be adaptable but it's also good to stick your guns on what you believe in and doing the thing that makes yourself the most comfortable okay okay well i think that is our conversation z that was that was awesome that was so like this is one of my favorites i learned a lot um well guys thanks for listening z thank you for your time is there anything where can people find out more about you obviously i'll leave a link in the description um but where can people find out more about you guys and and you yeah of course um i think the easiest way to find information about us serenityforge.com uh just our website uh we're very active on twitter uh just at serenityforge if you want to reach out and say anything um you can reach out to me directly on twitter as well at jinghwa yang my full name

um and then uh you know we're also on all the different socials uh generally pretty pretty easy to to get a hold of we have a pretty active marketing npr team lastly if you're looking to pitch us games or if you're looking to just collaborate with us um reach out to us through uh if you're pitching a game publishing at serenityforge.com or if you're looking to collaborate in any other way contact at serenityport.com sweet all right guys thanks for listening leave a comment below about your thoughts any questions you have um and take it easy i'll talk to you later z cheers for having me yeah