A Foolproof Guide to Approaching a Publisher - PocketGamer.biz RoundTable

look pretty interesting I was pretty happy I got a snus pad one game bit of ratcheting clamp thank you sir can't complain and there we go we are now on YouTube so just a thank you for everyone's patience we're going to start off properly now so I'll introduce my panel so start off with Martine if you wanna just introduce yourself tell us a bit about yourself what you do any connections publishing sure my name is Martina spawns located in the Netherlands and for last eight years I've been hosting publishing label called Tama lucky and we focus on publishing games for women 30 plus that's like he didn't object much three time animals and puzzle games and we've been doing that's incorporation without partner FG oh great Simon Yam I had to publishing for qwali we're one of the leading publishers in the world we've in the last two years we've done over 400 million downloads founder David darling founded the

company back in 2011 for that include masters Bobby hi everyone I'm Bobby I'm with Sega Sega Europe I'm in a team called searchlight which is Sega's incubation arm and what our team does is we look to work with external indie development studios and create new original IP and my job is to generally speaking when it's not when the world is not in lockdown earliest its life around the world meeting developers finding that next partner for Sega yeah I am yeah that's right so I'm Karen we've got media observer for seven half year we are a fairly large European based publisher and distributor I've been in the business for 25 years my relationship addition is that I've been doing that my whole life and I'm part of

the stakeholders at Cross Media who evaluate in sign of body products we own a bunch of IPs and I see you internally but we work also extensively with third-party developers our focus is many on PC and console premium games Annie hi so I'm new again for my crazy labs one of the top five publishers for hyper casual worldwide I'm there for quite a time now they're doing consulting especially around the publishing managing and new Studios from around the world great stuff so as said the talk is about a foolproof guide to approaching a publisher so I just wanna start off by asking you all what are the most important steps to take before even think think about approaching the publisher will go to Simon first for this I think it depends on you John rrah

and the sort of market urania we shall whichever genre or marking your own research its compiled a short list of the best publishes in that area they've done had the most success and I think the other things I would say is do a lot of ideation and brainstorming get a list of concepts in the things that you want to do and prototype the best ones and this is especially relevant in hyper casual where we do a lot of fast prototyping and and once you've got that start thinking about approaching the best publishes in your syllabus and because you will need to cultivate a relationship with them in order to progress past the first stage yeah but anybody like that I don't think that I just would like to you know sort of advice think of all the things that a publisher might ask about and prepare

your answers for words not to kind of you know be caught unaware for example you know common questions are of course like you know how is your team what's your timeline you know what's your what are your monetization plan so you previews experience and things like that and just make sure you have an answer ready yeah like it's a good yeah word add to it it's just a just a nuance right it's just a bit more detail to Martin and already said but the research aspect is really important right and really understanding who you're talking to so like find articles that they've talked about what the activities are really understand what their languages and kind of regurgitate that back to them to really make them see but you you really are aligned in terms of where you when I go right and also it'll be good especially now that we're doing everything online before meeting like prepare right make sure that everything's working that you've got the

tools downloaded whatever the tool is whether it be zoom or whatever and rehearse with a friend and have someone hear you pitch it so you can actually like fail before the actual meeting anyway and just practice and polish right and I just get that pitch like really really well polished I think that like preparation and research that's a big signal thing I think I would have two things to add to what you guys said and I fully agree with you I think timing is really important and you should ask yourself as well okay am I really ready to start talking to publish oh you know do I need more preparation time as well and often a third party opinion is is always good and I maybe ask another studio who had experience before if you didn't have yourself and and really make sure that this is the right time for you to to go ahead with a pitch because first impression always counts and another thing in but I think sometimes as well is ask yourself like what are your expectations what do you want from this relation that only funding so is that maybe you know on the

marketing side and so on and I think if you as part of your process to pitching it with the publisher know exactly what you want you will get better results as well in the end well yeah sure I pre casual it's a it's a different business model we don't need you to be too ready we want you to have many ideas they took in a pitch or even just send us a video with a short gameplay we don't need the menus you know then the final out just send us ideas if we like him we can take you forward and guide you and mentor you until it becomes success we don't need you to waste too much and to get frustrated about building big games when in the end after a few hours we can already know that this game have a chance of not even chance it's not like a casual or hyper casual or a triple-a game when you move for monsters you can work one day make a good video and we can notice it very fast so with

that what study should my game be at before I even think of approaching a publisher and I mean I'll go to Pierre for this first I think it really depends on this in you know the situation you're in I mean if I here near its it's a very different business model as well and for us you know maybe more premium or in the console and PC publishing I would say that you know if a publisher has already rapport with us someone we know that's maybe a concept that we've seen before we don't necessarily need much you know very detailed information to start the conversation and be interesting partnering as as publisher whereas maybe if it's completely new studios we would seem that we don't necessarily know there is a bit of know your partner job to be done on both sides of of the relation as well so I think there is no one-size-fits-all and so on on my side but yeah if you know again ask yourself

is that the right timing for you and what do you expect from the relation for me I think our other two keys a questions you to ask yourself and prepare yourself for I mean if for the likes to say like quali and Sega what stage of the game just if somebody comes to you what stages they have to be out for you to like considerate so for coyly we will look against anything from a video taken from the unity or bill box editor and all the way up to a fully playable prototype or complete game and I dearly want to see it as early as possible because we we guide our developers and give them a lot of advice in order to get it into a shape where we can sign it and then make it into a hit game and so I one level or two levels demo is is the right stage to start a potion culture I think that in over in

publishing the console and piece PC publishers as well as how to cut your publisher which I'm with now and it's always that that stage when you've got the first idea of the core gameplay that's when you can start approaching publishers and show them this is what makes this game fun for me it really it's kind of what POS say right it really depends like there isn't like this is when it depends and the the dependency is on how credible you will be perceived to be to deliver that vision so let's say you're an established studio you've been running as a well-oiled machine you've already shipped a couple of games in the same genre and the new game that you're pitching is essentially a sequel right or it's in the same kind of your users game knowledge and experience to deliver it then we will view your previous game as a prototype practically right and just go you know what this is totally in your wheelhouse you don't need a vertical slice or even a prototype to

pitch to us so we'll look at things really early so to give you an example like two-point Studios when they were pitching to point Hospital to us the team wasn't formed they didn't have a line of code they didn't have a postcode or zip code for the studio yet and we find the game right because they're really credible on the other hand if it's a team that newly formed or it's not in their wheelhouse in any way right so let's say they used to make shooters and now they're pitching I don't know my gosh anything else like just not a shooter then we'll be like can you really deliver that like you're great at making sure you just but can you make this thing but you're now pitching right in that case I'd like to see a prototype so but also talking like kind of Charmian on what Simon said we'd like to see things as early as possible and it does take time for publishers to sign games so it doesn't hurt to reach out early and if if it's like look this is perceived to be too early in this case then we'll let you know right so I'd say reach out early and and just gauge the temperature and then you'd

know what to do next yeah there's no harm in reaching out early basically yeah and massing near in your experiences and I don't have that much to add to it since that you know I completely agree with with the statements before and let's say it's it's about building a relationship so you know again also what we said there's nothing really a point for reaching out too early you know it's not just like a contract that you're hunting for it's also like a long-term relationship that you're looking to build up so yeah earlier you start talking the more chances that by the time you do have like something that I'm really interested in and that's sort of ready for for contract signing let's say the more familiar you already are the better your chances well I think my pre casual it's like hyper relationship and we start to build something first at a relationship to test one game to see what's going on and then it's becoming more like tinder so us throw it if we like it we take it we don't like it go

away no one you know nothing to take personal you know together laughter yeah yes left right let's move forward it's also good a good mechanic for a game but this is the idea we want to do it first rest don't take it personally if the game is not good it's not because of us it's because most of the player don't want to play it let's move on to the neat to your next idea so bring a lot of perfect pictures and we will check every one of them that's good I really like the description game developed is basically like tinder so I click the lates it's the long terms yeah because so and for you all what would you say are the most common mistakes while trying to get a publisher to invest go to Matty yeah and I would say asking too much or too little you know for example having you know someone who is pitching a full-fledged RPG Meghan unreal and they asking for

50k or something you know you kind of know that's not going to work and it shows that the developer probably you know just fully understand what's what's all involved and on the other hand you know like pitching something that looks like a hyper casual and asking for $100,000 you know so if you complete opposites but those are things that you know I've seen pictures of that so I've seen it happen so you know the ask for something realistic budgets that kind of shows that you did your research and you know what you're talking about and you know previous titles that you worked on so a lot of teams are just newly formed you know like fresh out of college and a team they're teaming up to you know to start an indie studio that's you know it's wonderful but it's gonna be really hard to then find an investor who you know we're really sort of you know put money on the table for that if you don't have a proven track record yes so it's always good to have flex it's sherry if you don't live long yeah just

open up to the group um I think believe in your game right because you need to believe in your vision but do not be blind to the advice especially with the publisher because they will see hundreds maybe thousands of games and you need to have some conviction because that's what we're looking for we're looking for a lot of passion and drive in the developer but they they will know better generally because they've seen they've seen so many games has seen so much data and they generally will know the market a lot better than than you do and one that most common mistakes is is a new developer trying to tell a publisher that they know better and then it's fine to do that if you can explain why and back it up with you with data but yeah just don't don't don't lock horns with a publisher reason don't agonize them in

the first meeting that's probably good and it's not just about the game publishers are buying into a team especially I mean even with hyper casual games that we do we're looking for a long term relationship we're looking for teams that can produce not more not one game but several games so we want to be out all when we find really good developers to work with them for the years of possible PME it's all about planning as well and you know Simon said you know you you need to know what you know but she also needs to admit what you don't know and that's also why probably you you reach out to a publisher rights it might be funding but you made me it very well that's okay I don't have the capacity of marketing and selling my game as a publisher would do and I'm and I think that overall you know I'd rather share a piece of the cake and make this cake bigger and then just did it myself and and that's what you should focus on when

you when you talk to publishers and I think again I would come back to that but building what PO is also very important it's maybe not that easy when it's the first time but it takes your time to do that I think it's always paying back at the end well first in application we don't invest in a game we make like partnerships with the developer you can look at it more like it's not Kickstarter it's more like a patreon we try to help them cover the cost along the way to bring them to tonsure as long as the game becoming more and more promising we will deliver more and more money but they have a lot of milestones that means they can check we both checked the situation if it's look promising let's go bigger and bigger if it's not good looking promising we can cut it go to the next game so come up with like a list of games list of ideas preferably with videos of those ideas like

gameplays ideas and choose the right team if the theme could not walk to the top child to be number one it's not good we want number one so sometimes people bring a good idea a game that if it will be casual idea or hype or in the game could be great but the niche is too small so look for something that a lot of people will want to play exactly the low the local commodity between all of them oh what's that one common mistake you seen the market the I think everyone's really covered it I'd say be confident don't be arrogant don't don't badmouth other people right on other people's games you know heaven forbid the person that you're talking to work that game in their past just generally speaking try to be positive and talk about how why your game matters and what you're looking to improve and why people

should care about your game rather than bad-mouthing other people's games and I'd make sure that I know what I'm talking about right that you are the subject matter expert if you've got a slide talking about the competitors landscape and what the other kind of games are that's in the same space play all of them make sure you really know what you're talking about yeah I think that sums it up very well and it's got a couple of questions here one from anonymous attendees been popular here how do you protect your IP when giving the pitch is there any legal advice you'd give to independent teams anybody once a this nothing yeah sometimes - you asked me to sign an NDA before I viewed a pitch and it's fine with me you know I see no harm in signing an NDA but overall I'd say you know don't be too cautious here for example at a conference like

when live conferences are like possible again and you run into someone you're not going to like on the spot ask them to sign this NDA right here before you show it right I mean it might be like the right opportunity for this right publisher to show it let's say just you don't be too protective because an idea is not really worth that much it's the execution that is really really really worth it so you know you're yeah I mean your idea might be brilliant but as long as you don't have the right team and the right sort of thoughts behind its duty to execute it and yes you know and and you know that's what you got so that's your assets so it's saying it's safe to show it to potential publishers don't waste them and the feedback is super valuable as well sorry Simon yeah Marty knitted on the head a lot less experienced you are in the business the more you think ideas other thing that's worth worth the money and but it is the execution and being able to deliver that

idea in a way that everyone fit everyone likes to play with deals film and when it comes to protecting your IP at that very early stage it's you've got more to lose by trying to protect it then you have like pitching it to the right person so always always try and try and pitch it there's I don't know have any publisher that will take an idea and rub it from you we see lots and lots and lots of ideas all the time so we may see it seen something similar and I will always say from our source something like this two weeks ago I let them know that we have seen something similar if we have looking but just so they know that whatever games are hmm I mean you just mentioned there as well and make sure you speak into the right people everything on that and obviously is a very common thing because people say make sure you tell us the right people who are the right people depends

on it I guess what are you looking for if you're looking for strong market ears or you know maybe people should I specialize in in some sort of games as well and copy Jews and so on I mean the answer can be very very broad I guess and that comes back to your asking yourself okay what do I really want from this relationship and and you know starting doing some research and yeah a list of potential candidate for for publishing relations and and talk to them and get feedback and that will help you decision them yeah I've actually got quite a good question here again from mr. anomalous how do you break catch-22 so have a game with KPIs that's interesting for publishers without releasing the game first as an indie developer I'm soft launching a game to try and get the 50% day 1 retention required by publishers to become interested but without the experience to acquire the right users during a soft launch and it's expensive to try there

have any thoughts on that most publishers will test the game for you well especially not because your world so I took from the perspective of quali we will test the game for you and we'll spend our money to acquire those users in my yet the initial test results may only require a few hundred users and then if that's encouraging them we'll spend more and get a few thousand users and keep ramping up as in here was mentioning earlier initially our thresholds are fairly low you know we went look for 40% we'll be looking for 25 or 30% or high we'll start working with a developer once it's above 25 or 30% um and as long as this CPI which is the cost per install is below about 40 in the u.s. 40 cents then we will start working with development yeah anybody

else want into that we happy yeah of course it's different between hyper casual and other models so I think it's very very important to understand which publisher we are approaching and what game do you want to test but as the Simon Says it's it's about it's easy it's very easy for us to test the game and it's cheap it's not so expensive to test an application or game in the beginning and the price is going up only when the game is becoming more promising so again for our model it's not even a problem you can come to us with no data at all we will test it we test a lot of games the first test is our eyes you know the publishing manager eyes we can see something and very quickly to decide if we want to test it or not other than that it's like going to elections you know it's there it's the players who choose which game to download or to click so it's not exactly like in the other models well you need a lot of

money to approach a publisher so what tools would you all recommend developers to utilize to help convey their ideas you know the business models and more across the publishers I'm gonna come to Bobbie first for this let me know if I get the wrong end of the stick with the question but yep like I'd at the moment I think like Scotty zoom all of that right that's what you need to use and then these kind of b2b networking events are great to find potential investors or publishers I would make sure you've got like a PDF version of your pitch right because like powerpoints can be quite heavy and hard to email and PDFs like much lighter and kind of keep the formatting and fonts or whatever generally speaking and always have like a short video of gameplay we've got it not like an hour long just like really long thing right just keep

it short tight that immediately gets across what the vision of the game is if you've got a video that's great yeah PA yeah like ooh Bobby and again I think it depends on at what stage of the pitch you are if you know you maybe it's a second business and publisher need to show more is maybe different than the first time we're on what I found personally quite useful is a double documentary as well when you get a full walkthrough you not necessarily available although the first person that gets contacted at the publisher to review this pitch but also to have a feeling from the developer himself and you know ourselves like what is the game about and what are we doing why do we believe and so on and yeah in general I think it's good to go so propose feedback from the developers and make it frictionless so you know if you're like I don't know Google Drive where you store all your stuff and people can come in directly it's quite useful you can also get data yourself out here is I

pitched actually being reviewed or nuts and I find I find that useful as a publisher yeah anybody else like that stuff sanim definitely use Google tools like Google presentations do dogs do Google sheets you is what we were saying about one do your presentation being heavy with all of those you can just send a link and you can share so it means it you can easily send in with the email limit use demos and prototypes depending on what sort of game you're building with because we've built in very fast prototypes use the tools available like Bill box and unity boom box especially is very good but super fast prototyping you don't even need to make fully playable games get something up and running that looks like a playable in the editor and then video it that's a great way of pitching

to publishers if you can capture the core moments of gameplay in videos and on that note we recommend hitfilm express which is a fully specs video editor which is free and it's great way of putting together videos and then if you've got large amounts of menus and UI and you need to pitch like things like wireframes use something like something like that and then diagrams there's great free tools like diagrams doctor net or any diagrams and flowcharts and then finally so the business models and any finance stuff Google sheets yeah definitely useful stuff they're not in there anymore or do you think we've covered it up I think it's sorry yeah you go ahead first I think at least in the beginning the simple as it could be it's the best three slides and Google slides short video animated gif could be

enough you know the business model is very clear we want to put more ads in your game so we don't need to think about complicated things maybe later we relate we will add in app or something else but for now just the simple simple thing we don't want you to be frustrated by trying again and again so you want the trying to be very fast and easy for you for the developer so you can try more and more without getting frustrated I think anything no we good you know just come in from like a slightly different angle kind of in addition I mean we always appreciate a vertical slice and art samples because I mean it might not be so so relevant for example you make a casual games and it's all about the mechanics but for in at the type of the games that we do it's polished hidden object games and match three games there's a lots that goes into the aesthetic of the game you know basically just the looks so it

will be great to see also with your our team ski willows oh can I just add something today yes Simon was talking about you know you could just provide a link and that might trigger the thought and when I'm using like a tool like meet too much like during these events right sometimes I just get like blank meeting requests with nothing really in them and then I'll like look at the profile of the person that sent me the request and see if there's anything there before I decide whether I accept or reject and generally speaking investors and publisher I think only accept around 30% of meeting requests or less right we get a lot of meeting requests so when you do send that meeting request through the tool definitely try and provide a link to your pitch within that meeting request it makes it easy for the person to know is this a good match or not because basically if I don't see the information I'm gonna automatically reject it right because it's like well I don't know what this is why would I accept it so yeah every try provides links to your pitch when you use these meets and match systems and customize

your meeting request right well that's what I do as well when I said and developers meeting request I write them a message right and say why I want to meet them generally speaking yeah some very useful information there so I'm gonna skip a little ahead just cuz I'm moving on and are there any tips you can share so developers know when they're getting a raw deal or being taken advantage of any particular steps or tells from a publisher but suggest that this isn't as good as it seems and I don't know if any of you have any examples anything I've gotten it well again I professional is different than the others crazy labs is working with partners so we are always talking about 50/50 revenue share app or feature after of course or the UAE and other stuff so when we approach we want both sides who have the same interest in the deal if you feel that you are not being appreciate appreciated all the other

side is doing something you know fishy it doesn't happen the big publishers usually but the small as one or they they known that know not known ones it could happen when you feel that you don't understand something find someone else that already did it hundreds or thousands of developers that already walk to his publishers check with them but is who was honest who was you know clear with you about all the terms the the our agreements are usually so so short a few few lines just to be clear about what we want to do together and maybe later if you're going to into a publisher publishing agreement then it will be bigger and still we want to do it as clear as we can from my perspective as I've been I've run development companies as well as publishing so the key thing is obviously that there's headline financial terms the revenue share your advances and mgs

but look at what is deducted look at and look at that publishes track record and because yeah a smaller share of other other the top hit is much more valuable to you than a big share of something that didn't didn't have any success okay so you need to balance that out it's not just about pure financial terms you shouldn't be making judgments just you need to also feel that you can work really well with that solution closely with the solution if you've got similar qualities between two different publishers and you get on well with both for them that's when it comes down to just yeah with maybe some financial details but you need to look at the bigger picture always yeah Bobby yeah I yeah just network like mad right you

don't you want to network as much as possible and because we're you know to understand if something is good or bad you need something to compare it to like there's got to be a baseline and to do that you just need to network just talk to people understand what the landscapes like what's what is a good deal right just get like a good feeling of what a good deal is within yourself and like what you know some of the other people have been saying like do your research understand what the track record of said partner is how they've been treating their partners how well their games have been doing what their portfolio if I do they support the game post-launch do they continue to work with these partners do they actually do what they say they they you look at what they found what they might differ and yeah like I completely agree like it's you don't get caught up on some little KPI like oh this percentage is feels low or whatever right it's not really about that I think it should be more about if I'm going into a long-term relationship with these people

what is that relationship going to look like are they actually going to add value to my project in the way that I want right and and then think about okay when it gets down to the nitty-gritty if you've got like two or three offers and they're you know it's like Oh which one should I go for I think that's when you have to really go yeah that's a tricky one when it gets there nothing not much and you know we're not one thing you can also ask for to kind of you know you showed a bit more that you absolutely know what's going on just you know ask for insights you know a lot of these sort of analytics tracking tools and stuff have good options to sort of you know share insights in how your game is performing and you know the publisher might not sort of think of giving you access to that straight off the bat but therefore miss to ask yeah anything else I'd ask them for the other developers

that they've worked with ask them if you can speak to some of them because sometimes that's the best way is just going talk privately to developers that work with a publisher considering and if the publisher is good they'll give you their contact details yeah I agree well of that you know that's something you can do yourself you know due diligence you know you take the list of recently released at all something that fits with your project and you go talk around and and see what's being successful or not and again it's a question of expectation as well and don't hesitate to ask questions early enough rather than you know too late menu when it's time and the two parties are the different understanding and maybe the language in the agreement is is not covering that that can be also sometime problematic yeah and as always a communication is key when a publisher

this is a question it's quite a good one when a publisher agrees to take your game well I know that they will guarantee to boost it to ten million downloads since I can't take it back anyways and I want a shared values to my company anymore since the game is given away note nobody can guarantee a number of downloads unless they want to make the only the only publishers that can do that are ones that are wins make a loss if even if the game does the word so as the game scales you need to as a publishing you put more and more money into it and it will your audience to begin with acquiring users is quite cheap because you're acquiring the users that really like that game but then the cost of acquiring those users will climb over time and as it climbs unless the game can scale then you won't achieve 10

million plus or whatever the threshold is the way we we do it is we have cut you know constant checkpoints and we and share all the metrics and caicos with our developers so that we can make decisions on whether the games making enough money to go on to the next stage but once it's gets passed to sort of a global launch level which is around about the 10 million downloads mark then usually is supported for at least two or three years which is quite longer than most people would imagine for allocation of title and any continually a be test and introduce new features over time to keep it fresh and keep keep the tail on yeah speaking about happy casual and got another one our profits from hyper casual games usually one-off or can they rely on it to get an income for like a follow the long term I'm gonna continue

for this I thought you'd be the right answers thank you well because we are making a lot of tests and we are helping the developers to cost to cover some of their costs along the way so you can say you get an income out of it of the tests but it's not something that will make you rich if you want to get rich or if you want to get successful inside work as well you need to search for the hidden gem in your pile of ideas and it takes time sometimes sometimes you know life could be surprising and you know the second try you get a hit but usually not so in this time we try to help to cover the cost but when the game becoming promising as I said before you can get a very good income even before the game is really profitable and start to to deliver a good amount of money so we try some of the publishers the other other publisher do to try to help the developer go through the phase between

the time we have a good game to the right time when this game becoming big money and we will not you know the test on the way in showing us the publisher that this game I'm going to make a lot of money otherwise we will not go to the next steps so you know for sure that if you will cross all the tests and got into this developing publishing deal usually it will be profitable in the end so it's just about what you need to how can you live to get enough financial solutions until the time that this money will come yeah and if here if if you with us when you get past the Bible launch this written to Nate what saying you are then usually in a profitable sort of state and is that

point where you get long-term long-term large sums of money which will ya which wish will finance your lifestyle yeah and we touched on this a little bit but I want to try and get em might be a bit difficult to get a a proper firm answer but we'll try anyway and does having a publisher on board always ensure a better chance of success I'm gonna go to Martine for this first you know I think that's one of those things that you cannot a be test you know it's not like you can have two versions of the game that one you lost yourself and the other one you launched with a publisher you just you know compare those it's not possible and at least on the mobile scene so that is like a really difficult question to answer straightaway but what else do say is the added benefit of having a publisher on boards basically it's like an extension of your team so it's like you're basically a sort of higher you

know marketing publishing team to to help you with making a game successful so you know that stuff's all kind of the approach that's that kind of we go with it's when we go into a partnership with a developer o me I'd like to think so and in fact it yes for me yeah and the reason being is you don't have to wear so many hats you can focus on what you're passionate about and what you're good at rather than trying to do something you're you're not an expert on whether that be marketing PR you know even if you like when you're in it innovating quite often because I work in PC console right mobile and you're working on these projects that sparing two years or more and on paper an idea might sound really cool and you try it it doesn't work you need to scrap it and do something else right and as you go through this process maybe you run out of money and then you just have to ship something whereas if you were with a publisher maybe they could have really no and what's been going on and support you throughout and

and you can't ship a game that's actually really good so I think it does impact quality in terms of you know making sure that you you do have the cash flow to deliver your vision but you can focus what you want to do and what you're good at and obviously the publisher will come with a lot of expertise and knowledge and skills there and provide you lots of insight your development about how to maybe you know ensure that it is something that really resonates with audio through testing and research so yeah I think absolutely it does help yeah yeah that's really cool but beyond that and I think you know if you want to be successful and to be good at three things which is you know I guess every time the same whether you and I professional or in premium console and PC to be good at developments that marketing your game and not selling it and if you're not good in the marketing and business overall you most often done better off working with a publisher that

can help you on on those topics as well and the last thing is also maybe the the velocity at which you wants to release your game you know I think a publisher can really accelerate that as well and if I assume this is even more true than in infinium and I Pro casual than it is an on pc and console but you know if you can afford like you know waiting and paying funding your your studio and your project of you know a couple of years and marketing it on your own then maybe that's the best choice but sometimes it isn't and I think publisher are not only funding partners but very much also accelerators and and can do your marketing and business most likely better than then small team can do it on their own if they don't have the time for it Simon what's turn analogy with when you're running your own house you might have the time and money yeah within for time money you could do the

gardening you could do the cleaning you could do you and plumbing you could do all of that but is that the best use of your time I I dog you know so same with developers concentrate on what you're good at basically farm out everything that else the way where you don't have that specialist knowledge and a good publisher is finding someone that complements all of your abilities so should do everything that you can't find difficult to do so that can the other things are sales and marketing but but we're yeah like with quality we have a sophisticated game analytics we have really sophisticated a/b testing you know we will do all the monetization ad side or you will even provide some additional programming resources to help you implement all of that all of that so so the developers can just concentrate on purely on the gameplay and that is where most developers want to concentrate and that's where they excel

and that's how you move the game forward to put as quickly as possible and sort of echo Pierre was saying and acceleration from finding a really good game to globally launching it especially in the hyper casual market is key because you get lots of people trying to clone and a good idea and so you want to be able to move in weeks from from you know a successful testing of a prototype to globally launching him and being able to do that requires a lot of investment and a lot of people and that's usually outside of the capabilities of most developers yeah sound says this is a hyper casual is different again so I need to repeat it all the time but you cannot succeed as a developer with your game in hyper casual is just impossible you need millions of dollars to take the game forward it's a multiplying of the

CPI costs multiplied by money and to take it forward you need a lot of money so the money is not a thing but today there are a lot of publishers in this game of fiber casual so the developers also have the strength is this like equilibrium and we want the developer to do what he can do best we can mental we can help with game design we can help with marketing of course we can help with you a all the data a lot of stuff that usually developers want to my games I don't want to know how it's complicated to embed try to understand the data later on you know it's just not your job so we can do everything around it and let the game designer make the game and the developer developed the game and to bring the money to the table and still keep this 50/50 deal both sides doing the the best

to take to take it to the top good stuff got one more question before we open up to audience something we've done a bit throughout but and I just want to ask be a bit more positive note to end on I think and can you share some success stories and possibly anything you or somebody else you've witnessed do something out of the ordinary possibly took even a risk that paid off very well just open it up anybody I can start if you want yeah go ahead salmon I've been alone really long career over 38 years in the games industry so I'll pick one old one and one new one and when my first big hit gangs was Alamein manager on PlayStation one PlayStation 2 and Xbox before that football management gangs were sort of interactive spreadsheets and we took her like I thought we could make an exciting console game out of a

football management game and that's what we did this was back in the day of codemasters and we produced it so the leading console management game and called Alamein manager and then more recently I think we we were dabbling in sort of I because you'll for about a year and then we discovered some really good tech to do with drawing and machine learning and we built gang draw it and around it and it was it was quite a big technical challenge and we put a lot of effort into because we believed that it would be the over the next big hyper casual trend and it worked out in the end it's gone on to do 80 million downloads definitely a success story anybody else

yeah anybody go for it hey Topher well I think one of the amazing stories of the last few months was our game a soap cutting which became which started as a pitch we caught in a Google sheet as we stole before like four pages in a pitch and they took less than one and a half months for my team it wasn't my job at for my team to take to take this PDF to take these four slides slides and to became a top number one game on the charts and it was very because it was a Christmas and we want to do it before Christmas and you know the Apple store is getting closed a few days before Christmas so we had this deadline like a real deadline and we need to do everything fast to put it there in time and it was a great feeling of

satisfaction if I can use the hypergate your words to see it on the charts like be coming from a paper to a game in a few weeks so this I think one of the best interesting exciting stories that I have from last three months yeah but wait did you have anything not sexy really Oh like I didn't the audio and I think that is a good success story of two point Studios right where we find the game really early like if early as it could ever be and managed to get the whole company behind the division and and its really paid off like it's been super on hospitals be really successful and it's got onto console it's doing really well there too and I mean you know within a year of the release of the game we acquired the studio and you know we've got like really exciting clients with with the team and so yeah like that that was great I think generally

speaking Sega is a company that likes to take a bit of a risk right I'm nice to innovate and and delight and surprise and I think the how it's - to survive over the years cuz it's it's it's celebrating at 60th birthday this year Sega I think is that it's got this mentality of wanting to always learn right and it's it's all right to make a mistake I don't keep doing it as soon as you learn from your mistakes that's the key thing and so yeah I think sorry it's not my a glamorous one no no no that was good that was good and we'll go to questions now because we've got a few minutes so why do we need to spend millions of dollars in marketing hyper casual games why not just spend 50 to 100k a month towards growing it well just don't work like this hyper casual game need if we want you to be successful you need to take it to the top as fast as you can and let it stay

there as long as you can and then keep it live as much as you can so if you spread it along a long period of time you will see a lot of clones coming in you will see in other other games that make a twist on your game coming in you see different trends changing all the time and you can see today that most of the games don't survive in the top charts for more than few weeks weeks even if it's number one so you have Astro time to make the best out of your game put as much as money as you can in this time and try to take it to the top for a long it's not you can this is the only way to go with it's not like we usually will not see secrets to games we will not see a you know prequels the DLC it's not this kind of business so if we have a chance we do whatever we can to

to make the most out of it yeah it's a publisher partner essential to compete in any meaningful way as a mobile developer nowadays apart from being picked up by Google directly it seems that it's very tough without deep pockets so we didn't answer this a little bit about anything else I said oh really I mean when I first got into iPhone games they did a title which did a nearly 10 million in organic downloads I think it's almost impossible to do that now and so you do need fairly deep pockets in order to push again and get you get the exposure and you need through user acquisition advertising a bit weak and I know most of us don't have those deep pockets unless they've had a lot of big big hits behind them and so you that's where I think you do need to go to the publisher that has access to those millions of

dollars of advertising Marteen gonna give us the final answer yeah you know as the person asking the question or any states it's doing difficult but it's not impossible you know I have seen in d-team who really spent a lot of time building up a community around again pre-launch and have been quite successful with that strategy and well I mean pre-launch the pre-launch part of this is very important because they probably like spent a year like building up that community and constantly spending time and reinforcing what they're I'm sharing what they're working on so it is basically like you're taking on an extra job but by sort of building up that community in that fan base before you launch that gives you a good chance of a good alternative to sort of trying to be successful in publishing all right stuff

yeah that's all the time we've got unfortunately and but just first of all I want to say thank you very much to all our panelists Martine Simon Bobbie Pierre and you thank you so much for taking time at your busy schedules to give some very useful advice thank you to everybody viewing today and there's obviously many more talks going on throughout the day I'll be next up in about 5 p.m. UK time for publishing and developers exploring the core relationship now I believe Pierre will be joining me for that there we go cool so yes thank you again and have a great day thanks my thank you thanks you you you you