Developing Games in the Philippines with Ryan Sumo | Game Dev Unchained Episode 228

I [Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchain I am your host Brandon fam this is the number one game development podcast about game development in the lifestyle of era I am here with a special guest this week Ryan sumo how you doing Ryan hey guys I'm doing good doing good thanks for having me yeah man sorry for the technical difficulties but I'm glad to have you and finally get it to to talk to you this is a part of the podcast we're actually asked guess which is yourself how about yourself to introduce to our listeners and viewers out there who you are where you're from where you're headed sure so again my name is Ryan sumo I'm from the Philippines so yeah I've been in the been in the industry for ooh

that's uh it's a little hard for me to think about how long it's been yes over 15 years kind of on and off yeah yeah but so I started out as an artist for like mobile games before like before there was an app store like when like the telco companies were still the ones releasing games and then Nokia was like the big dog of like the mobile phone industry and yeah I just kind of bounced around from like company in the company here until I became a freelance artist around me like 10 years ago and yeah I just kind of built up my freelance career from there and like the biggest biggest game I've worked on as a freelancer was called person architect and I a lot of people I think have

played the game so like last year it was bought by Paradox Interactive and yeah but I was I was just a contract artist for the company that made it but after that came out in 2015 I I decided that um like maybe it was time for me to run my own studio you know like try to get my own games out there and so a couple of my friends and I decided to open a studio and we've released two games so far a strategy game called political animals and kind of a builder like tycoon management sim called academia school simulator and and that's that's still in early access right now and we're still working on that but we're also like working with like another local studio here in the Philippines to like to publish their game called ruin art and that one's like

kind of like a evil overlord simulator we can talk a little bit more about that later on yeah man like yeah whenever we have international guests and I apologize again for first staying absolutely so let's try to see if I can keep you interest interesting conversations yeah yeah what I would like to start off with this what's the game scene like in the Philippines is it especially with Asian culture I feel like game development still like very new especially trying to explain to older generations or parents they don't sure sure and yeah except maybe in China I feel like other and maybe Japan and maybe Christian I guess the I'm prepared on yeah so I feel like it was lesser developed countries where weren't the the career is not really a well-known track how do you it has it changed in the recent years has it already seeing

like a huge potential upswing in the next few years because of yeah I I mean I think it's definitely different from like when I was in college and there weren't really any there weren't really any companies maybe like one or two companies were around when I was in college but when I got out of college so that's like maybe 2003 and he said you you you were born there you're obviously still there what what what kind of outside influence or outside interests have you been seen with with especially starting your own company now are there a lot of venture capitalists going through the Philippines for game development right now in that in that sense I think we're still very very immature I mean I think

even in broadly speaking like in terms of like venture capital so I come I'm friends with a couple of of like tech browse very different landscape right like the Internet has changed everything steam is changed everything the App Store is changed everything so there's like all sorts of different marketplaces now where you know you can you know even even just on your own you can make a game release it into the world and you know cut fingers crossed my murder or whatever so yeah there's a lot more companies I mean there's a this is small in this year and this is a proper industry here right now there are a bunch of larger companies most of them do like outsourcing but like for example Ubisoft recently opened a studio here and like they're aggressively like ramping up like even even during like

even during the kovat like nineteen crisis like there was the this ad like Facebook ads like saying that they were looking for for for four people to staff up and yeah and there's like small companies like ours who are putting up their own IP there's a couple of us out there and it's just gonna you know it's gonna keep growing as the industry in in general keeps growing mm-hmm and he said you you were born there you're obviously still there hmm what what what kind of outside influence or outside interests have even with with especially starting your own company now are there a lot of venture capitalists going through the Philippines for game development right now in that in that sense I think we're

still very very immature I mean I think even in broadly speaking like in terms of like venture capitals like I'm friends with a couple of like tech browse like there's also small tech industry here like FinTech is it's kind of big here and yeah like it's it's not you know there's always like there's always every every like smaller countries always like trying to be like the next Silicon Valley of whatever region that they're in but in terms of that I think it's still it's still very immature and like in terms of like funding let's say like I think you'd struggle to like say like get a loan from a bank or something and try to explain to them that you're you're trying to run a game studio so like in

terms of funding I don't think it's very mature like we you know there there are some like small like regional publishers which which are providing funding like for for studios and for games and you know like where we're starting to we're starting to notice like like some people like asking questions about the Philippines but yeah I think were it's probably the one of the biggest issues for us is like access to yeah like access to funding for sure hmm and you you've been in industry for a while now and just recently Creed you don't studio congratulations on that and should gains thank you right which is a huge feat in whatever country he her from because a lot of that has to do with like this determination

the up swings down swings and surviving through all that what has been the the the hardships and the least expected things that have happened for you and your partner and your company that you did not foresee but overcame that said it's a pretty difficult question yeah I think well like I said like funding is is a big problem so if like for us we were kind of like before we started the company and we all had you know we all had our regular day jobs and we were just working on our game on the side and I had the opportunity to go to this conference in London called egx because

I was invited by introversion software the creators of prison architect to fly over to like celebrate the launch of the game and yeah so while I was there I had like a demo of our game and I just yeah I took advantage of the fact that they were publishers there and so I I just went to like publisher boots and and presented the demo and and luckily someone someone picked up the game in terms of like being in the Philippines I think one of the probably the the more difficult things for for us is that the there's not like a huge pool of talent here you know like compared to like like game dev mecca's like like like San Francisco or maybe even like London or Japan or like you know places that have an established industry and they're like

establish companies there and like there are people that kind of always you know like kind of learning the process of making games and then like moving to different companies and and maybe like striking on your own there's this there's not big a pool of talent shear and and so like a lot of companies it's like the competition for portal and is is it's it's pretty it's pretty hard F for us I think though like what helped us out there was I'm also I used to be like the head of the local IG da here and I kind of before we started the company I was also like a community organizer like in terms of game developers and so like I've kind of built up a network of people here and so so that really helped out so I could ask like hey like who's interested in you know like making these

kinds of games and I was kind of plugged into like what was going on in terms of the the industry and so that that definitely really helped out the fact that I was come there actively trying to build up the local game developer community like help me put help put me in access to you know like people who'll be interested in making the kinds of games that were making mm-hmm a lot of it is like you said the pool of talent is definitely difficult to come by and it is very restricted to your locale but with the recent events with kovat I think there's a huge push for remote working and opening up a lot of those doors for our future of the game industry as a whole and even though I don't think 100 percent of us will fully convert to that format because I think their executives are racing back to the

office as fast as yeah but I think a good percentage like it average will stay with some kind of hybrid approach how do you see that kind of helping with with the problem that you're seeing in the Philippines where talent isn't as openly available and and and you know I know you guys are working on your own gains but like also having companies being able to be external developers from for assisting other other companies in other countries now opening up that network of communication do you see this being a huge impact to to what you guys are doing yeah I know I I don't know like it's it is very it's it's it's tough like we're actually so we weren't super affected by like the current crisis because excuse me we're uh we're

mostly working from home anyway so like what we would do is like we didn't have like two-week Sprint's and so we would work for for most of the week and then we just meet up once a week till I have a face-to-face and discuss issues or whatever and then like like have pizza and and end board games and yeah like right now like we we've transitioned pretty well to working like completely offline I'm sorry completely online and although like I think like having maybe like a wide wider access to I guess like a wider pool of talent so like even just within the region like with in Southeast Asia would be pretty interesting it's still a little bit difficult like I'm not I'm still not sure like how that would really work for us even just in terms of like contracts or like like figuring out those kinds of things and

like one of the major issues for us is that like our internet is super it shoots really bad like we spend like at least 15 minutes like during our like our weekly or bi-weekly meetings now just like you know like checking can you repeat that you're kind of choppy like we're yeah so like the Internet's really really bad here so that's kind of one of like the main issues keeping us maybe from doing that more embracing like the the work from home process more yeah online' connectivity is huge if your remote working for sure yeah I know I feel slow just talking about how my internet hiccups once in a while but like in other countries you know you guys are facing real real issues with that that's why I think like you know with stuff but Elon is doing with the star links that's going the beta and stuff is very promising where it's not

based on landlines anymore and up for connectivity it's just if you have a satellite pointed to the sky you can yeah that would be high split that would be nice yeah yeah so aside from that though like you guys are pretty much pretty much used to this I think that any scene have a lot more training and I always see them a community with you guys are kind of like the pioneer of what gain of Emma actually will look like in a few years and a lot of that has to do with working from home communicating online and and the ability to not always have to be physically next to each other that get things done and we're seeing that at least across the industry in a forceful way that we have to be able to operate like this to progress as industry and open up opportunities were there a lot of trial and error to get to a point

where you guys were efficient aside from the internet problems where you kind of kind of met up and hit a rhythm to finally get stuff done yeah and not want Rapala meetings all the time [Music] yeah I think one of I forget there was a there was an article going around a couple of months ago like by the the Basecamp guy I think like there's something about like levels of like working from home or something I think that one of the like one of the major issues for people who are used to like working in office to working from home is just like kind of like mmm forgetting about the idea of you know I just walking over to someone's table and like pointing at the screen and chatting about this or that or the other thing

so like this there's a lot of like face-to-face communications and like body language communication that you know obviously can't happen as well online like even it even if you're on a video chat like it's there's still a lot of stuff that it's just like that we're able to express to each other like when we're trying to explain things when you're face-to-face in an office and so like I think like for me like maybe the biggest like maybe like the linchpin of being able to work from home really well is like to have a good like producer or project manager and like kind of having like very good like processes where like okay like this is how you should communicate like when you assign a task like you should have this that and the other thing kind of streamline that process so like there's so there's less there's less just like asking each other

questions back and forth like yeah and it's the they're kind of in the middle of building a game you don't really have the time to really step back and look at like your communications processes and so we kind of just try to improve on the fly yes like really better better communication and like a having someone like keep an eye on the edge oh and keep an eye on like how how we communicate with each other so that we're not we're not losing time by asking each other too many questions I think that's that's it's a pretty big deal what's it let's talk about the the two games process right that you guys won his room so the

first game obviously feels like usually would be the toughest to tackle it's the first time working together like a team first time setting everything up there's a lot of like first times I can you kind of talk about those challenges in developing your first game yeah I mean there's obviously so like my co-founders and I we actually didn't we'd never work together before then so that was kind of tricky you know like you're kind of getting to know each other and like kind of understanding your your strengths and weaknesses or even like it's like even even like just understanding each other's like sleep schedules because like so like one of our one of my co-founders has like yes sleep apnea and so like he so he has trouble he can only

like really sleep very well at certain times of the night and so like he wakes up like like pretty late I wake up maybe usually around nine o'clock and say he's usually off one and so just kind of find figuring out a like p.m. rhythm we're yeah yeah oh like yeah yeah that's you so like I keep having to like we have to adjust to each other and so like like at the start like I would feel there's some work on guilty she gets up at 1:00 and he's working until like whatever like 11 or 12 and like there's sometimes like it feels like I'm being dragged along because like I don't want to leave him while he's still working but then like you kind of get over that eventually and you just have to like you know talk to each other and say okay look I'm up at 9:00 and I'm kind of working already so we can communicate

with him like these these windows of time so let's make sure that we're talking to each other then and then like when I'm out I'm out I need to rest and you know like I'm married and like you know you kind of have to tend to your relationships you can just like work all night like he used to yeah I always compare to you know you gotta as a man right or for me myself gotta tend to the first wife before the second one I always see a partnership as a marriage because a lot of it is that it's a lot of it's just finding each other yeah yeah and more than just writing the high times of success it's it's the the failures that actually test the relationship like any relationship right where it's like can we really yeah definitely worst-case scenario and yeah the sleeping thing is sounds pretty mundane and simple but it is a huge yeah because you only have so many at a time to actually talk to each other and you

know III think see people you in the office see glimpses of that where people show up early and then leave around 5:00 and people shoo show up late stays later and usually gets a better impression because they're later in the office but we did the same 8 out right all right yeah so it's it's funny to kind of hear that on indie side which makes sense it's like there's more accountability with lesser people also you're feel more guilty of anything if you're like disappear yeah exactly behind a desk so was so that that was the biggest challenge and of course how long did you get anticipate the first game coming out versus to your plan to to it actually coming out yeah I mean like there's like this there's a joke right like if you if you plan for like if you plan for a year just expect it to come out like a year and a half so

always add like always add like fifty percent more to whatever your estimate is we like for our first game I think it's hard to remember now but I think we were we're planning on working on it for nine months but we definitely went a few months over I think we think we got it out within a year so it was a political strategy game and like you were hoping to get it out like a little bit like sometime during the US elections because the idea was like okay like we can kind of market it that way unfortunately like we released it like right at the last week of the US elections and I think that's not really the best time to do it because like by that time people were kind of just like sick of sick of the elections and so that's that yeah so partly I didn't do very well but yeah

like you you kind of also learned that like you know just always give yourself a little leeway when it comes to development time because like even even in the best case scenario and like the best case you know almost never happens anyway there's just gonna be something that pops up then bites you in the ass like like a bug or or whatever that really really kind of sets back your your schedule mmm in the first game that we're talking about political animals correct that's correct yeah yeah so that that's a very unique theme yeah and it seems like both of your games kind of surround around education was it's always like a passion of yours and your teammates for us I mean at least so for political animals

it was definitely the idea was I'm interested in politics in general like the act of like running for politics like winning elections partly because of so the Philippine political system is yeah I don't want to go down to rabble Hall but it's it's it sort of messed up pretty crazy but the idea was like yeah so yeah the idea was kind of like okay this is what it's like and there's no there's never gonna be an easy way to like keep your paws clean if you're if you're going to politics so the idea was like this is like only like what it's like and should they ever want to run you know just to kind of like mentally prepare yourself for for what's gonna happen but like we kind of like made it so it's still like approachable and kind

of you know like we beta tensions like having good game mechanics and like different like different characters that you can hire and and stuff like that and so that even though like political animals they didn't do very well in terms of sales it's had a bit of an interesting life in terms of local education because like one of my co-founders like former professors like he's like really big in in terms of like studying game based learning and so like he was really interested in the game and like we've done actually a couple of workshops with him where like he would ask like high school students like teachers who like to split up into groups and download a game against each other and then like they would have like a discussion afterwards about if you live off the political process and like kind of using it as a like a

like like a a means to discuss like these larger ideas and so that's been pretty that's been pretty nice to do to have you look even again like even though it didn't then sell very well at least we feel like it's it's like it's useful to two people before we continue this week's episode let's have a word from our sponsor more and more companies are working remotely but parsec for teams let's game makers break free from the CDO and work from anywhere you can use parsec for professional and personal use to connect computers X 60 frames per second Ultra High Definition video streams with super precise inputs for mouse handling and controller support working together is as simple as sharing a link with a teammate you can then share files review work or even work together in a single program it's the closest thing to being in the same studio I actually use parsec for running

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go check it out at parsec gaming comm forward slash teams it seriously is one of the easiest and fastest and reliable remote desktop applications I reviews and it's perfect for gamers and game developers alike so go check it out in the link description below now back to this week's episode yeah I mean I was about to say it seems like this type of game would work the best in educational system like for me I don't understand politics at all and I don't even pretend but I would love to I am interested enough to know or at least want to know how it works you know a lot of it again is not very approachable textbooks on it and I yeah I think the subject that you're taking on feels like such a original space that not a lot of people try to tackle that it feels like you guys will have a lot of success in

the educational system I'm just running it through now because I researched the game wasn't really that sexy it was Oregon Trail right yeah sure sure last room yeah and now that was it was fun and I loved it and over those math type of games yeah and I think a lot of people kind of dismiss that III feel like there has been a resurgence in the educational games or learning type of space but when we talk about game development we don't really think about that space as much yeah but I feel like it's just even more important than you know less of us - yeah like I I played those games - like I love like the Carmen Sandiego games and yeah like the Oregon Trail there's something like I we actually looked into this a little bit because I was trying to see if that's like a like an alternative like revenue

stream like for us right like educational games but it's it's it's really difficult is what I found how it like is you know like when you're selling when you're selling like games like on Steam or on the App Store you're selling directly to the consumers and you know that that's difficult in of itself but like you there's like there's like no gatekeepers basically like you put it up on Steam and if people like it they'll buy it and you make some money whereas if I remember correctly I forget the details but like at least in terms of the u.s. it's not the consumer that's going to like buy your game and integrate it into the system right it's like like the local school board or like the look I like the state like Department of Education or something and so like there's a lot of like different hoops that you kind of have to jump through and a lot of people

that you you kind of know like I mean I I don't even know like where where you begin like maybe you need to hire like a lobbyist to like approach like local school boards and like pitch the game to them or something and so yeah that's very interesting like market like educational games will like it's it's very I think it's it's sort of impenetrable unless you really have like those those kinds of relationships at the local school level and I think that's what always interested me about the entity community is that it's very self driven and a lot of the lessons that you learn are kind of lifelong lessons that you carry for future projects it's just something that you learn I come from the triple ace based for most of my career hmm and you know in the span of the podcast I've learned more about the industry than I've been in sitting on my desk just working on these games that I've always wanted to work on and a lot of that a lot of what

I've learned on the podcast and from you guys is carries a lot more weight because of that because now that I I'm I feel like I'm building up my RPG character kind of take on the world so like oh you know when you develop a game you don't unless you're like a super visionary person you have a faint idea that actually - to the very end becomes what you see in your head but a lot of times a lot of self-discovery and navigating and kind of getting a feel for what the game is and what yes tell you I feel like marketing is another phase of that as well as like you're all now the game is out like what's where's the audience what's the audience and you go down this path of of unconventional ways like I'm talking to the school board now I'm talking to lobby right right it's like what a weird way to market games but it's super reliable because if anything that's actually probably where all the money's at where it's like stable income you know yeah I'm always interested to kind

of hear like this other side of game development which political animals totally see is like it looks awesome it's actually a subject that I've always been interested but never really found approachable unless I'm going through Wikipedia actually looking through it's just not right inviting for me to kind of want to learn it through that way but yeah it's also cool to kind of hear that you guys already are now getting through that path because it feels very validating to kind of see that kind of effort on that side so that you know after talking about the first game and you guys doing what most I feel I call the graveyards of indie developers they never get past the artists game or maybe shortly after you guys had enough to to go on to working on the second game so can you talk about a bad path was it more like yeah it's something that you had in the back pocket of what you

wanted to do with the second you know I'm we so we launched political animals November 2016 and it was a flop and so like yeah it's sort of like the like the stages the depression thing but like the first stage is like okay like maybe we still have a chance let's put out an update let's see what happens but like yeah you know everyone like as almost any any game developer that's that's been through this will tell you there's if you're if you're launch is bad there's like almost the zero percent chance that like somehow it'll rise again and I mean that's just the way for better for worse that's just kind of the way that the steam algorithm works it's like if you don't launch well it's it just assumes that people won't like your game so like it won't show it to to to

to the players anymore so yeah so we had like so we had a month we were trying to figure out like okay like can we still salvage this and then in some December of that year we're like yeah okay this is not um it's not gonna work so we need to like pivot and you like something else we have a little bit of money left we like we slashed our salaries and we yeah so like we did we did like a brainstorming meeting so like okay like like it was very very much like what do we think has the best chance of of making us money and like keeping us alive and so like the internal pitch was like personal architect was a pretty famous like a

pretty you know it made quite a bit of money and not everyone's been to prison but everyone's been to school mostly um so we figured like that you know like having a like a builder or like management game but the school theme seemed to us like a pretty good it had a good chance at least of you know making us enough money to keep us afloat and so for most of early 2017 we were just working on a prototype we in three months we had like a very very basic prototype that we though we could share and like I started sharing it on YouTube and people were no people were signed you to respond to it and like every month we would build it up a little more and then share it on YouTube and then yeah we kind of you know we realize okay so there's this a little bit of just a

little bit of momentum behind this and anyway we didn't really have much of a choice trap like that so we already started it so we just needed to keep on going until our money ran out and so on September of 2017 we launched it on early access and yeah like it did you know I didn't didn't like sell like gangbusters but it it sold us its old enough so that like we could continue operating for for a year and so that was that was a huge load off of our shoulders and yeah like with with every update of the game it's just you know it's been getting better and better and people like up to this day people are still buying it although sales are starting to like kind of slow down as as we you know as we enter like our third year of development so we started in 2017 this is 2020 now so like this is

like yeah bass is basically um we're entering our fourth year development now and we're starting to wind down actually do a version one release this year mm-hmm I'm always interested in what I like about staying spot it actually helps kind of gather all this data and kind of see in an average what what how games do in their lifetimes all right yeah I don't know if you're a math guy you look like it's you know like looking at stats and tells you or how I'm just gonna see where Asian that we kinda I'm sort of interested that uh do you see a pattern there were is there any anywhere big in the lifetime I know you guys are in third year about your fourth where you you know the up ticks are probably the steam sales but like have you seen surprising things that you guys done and

then are able to see the output of it pretty immediately you know were you guys able to repeat that tell more about that side of marketing or like after a game launch how much impact you have yeah I mean yeah most of like most of the peaks I've like I actually did a couple of I did a couple of articles about this like on gamasutra and and I mean I can share them with you later so like you can share to your community but like basically the the peaks really center around like the the steam sales there were a couple that were generated by like really big streamers like like this guy jacksepticeye dantdm so we got a couple of yeah we got a couple of youtubers were like so they made a video of the

game and they had like 2 million 2 million views or whatever and so that generated a lot of peaks but like I will I will say that like the I forget the I forget the exact conversion rate but it was like like like views - like views - dollars it's like I don't know like one view is like zero point zero zero zero zero eight two cents or something like that I forget like but it's a ridiculously small conversion rate but like it did generate peaks for us like you kind of have like when you're selling within steam like which would you sort of just have to work within like the confines of their ecosystem so like you know they have a couple of ways that they that they use to share the game - to their players so you kind of just have to take advantage of those things and try to use all of the ways

which team encourages you to share your game so that you have a better chance of of being seen mm-hmm and and this is a constant curiosity of mine because we've had many guests on where I think the amateur onlooker for for what constitute into an actual game sell views streamers or youtubers as a gateway to success but a lot of the reality isn't it you know people just watch it for the personality and maybe yeah thirdly about the game Oh as still through uh even though it is somewhat of a viable if there you get a lot of them going but yeah what has been the most effective way that you've seen in terms of conversion to sales if you can share a little bit of it I mean honestly like outside esteem

there's really nothing that that I'd seen like outside of like you know like YouTube streams there's really nothing that has had a significant impact on on our sales in any meaningful way like you know kind a couple of like press outlets right about us I actually forget I forget who specifically but a couple of big like press outlets heard about us um when we launched and there wasn't really a a lot of impact from that really like it's just like within steam like how do you can like you can cuz you can you can sometimes like make your own sales and they have this thing called like disability updates and so you like my advice has always been like you know you kind of try to stack the hose like you do a sale and then you do an update to

your game and then you do like a visibility update and like you like kind of you know you combine those things and you stack them up and hopefully that generates enough interest and then maybe someone at steam will notice the game and say hey like like you know they'd have like internal metrics I think it's theme that like tell them like you know what an X game is doing well like let's offer them a a daily deal and that's something that's happened to us like twice so far where we were generating enough interest where steam just automatically gave us like a deal and like once once you're on like the the front page of steam that's definitely it's definitely a big deal all of like on the flip side should say that like political animals actually we were able to because we had a publisher that had worked in steam before we were able to swing like front page on steam for political animals and that still

didn't save us so so that's just something to keep in mind that like it's it's really kind of kind of crazy one thing that like might be of interest sort of a sort of off topic but even within like like YouTube streamers there's like different conversion rate so I guess like depending on a lot of it depends on like I think that basically the country of origin so like you know like like UK or American streamers like fairly comparatively speaking pretty good conversion rates but like we had like one time there was a pretty big like Mexican Games I think he's Mexican different like Latin and like so he had like two million plus views but like compared to compared to

other streamers there wasn't a lot of like uptick in like South America or like Mexico in terms of game sells and that might have to do with like demographics like how many people are on Steam in South America but yeah I just thought I was interesting that like you can have the same number of views but like maybe different people are watching those those streams like who like it was funny like after after after we had that stream like that the latin-american streamer like we had a bunch of people like emailing us in Spanish like asking like where do they find the game like how do you buy the game and so like which gives me an inkling that like you know like maybe steam has a really penetrated that far into into those markets and so on like there's just no there's no like that that consumer habit of like oh I I see I see this game like being played by my streamer and then

I'll check this game out on on Steam yeah it's a constant reminder how powerful or I wouldn't say monopoly anymore but pretty close yeah and it does make sense like people who are in the steam storefront or more likely wanting to buy things because they're in the store I know we just go back to physical stores you know so the reach and the likeability of them purchase something is huge of course with epic games story they're only going for like certain games for now I mean maybe years down the line they'll open it up more and more which I I don't doubt they the that they're gonna not gonna do that so so if we're just waiting a few more years for those guys gonna be a likely competitor which helps any developers get shiny more right yeah because right

now yes this is um it's a tough thing like I always I always feel like they can do more at valve yeah then I'm always reminded like there's only like 200 people over there something like that they have such a small group of developers you think they could hire some more people right I know right but the profit margin is too good I guess gave up cent but III for I don't know it feels like the the the lion has woken over there because since epoch they're making games again the half-life Alex yeah VR centric announcing three more like that they're so only doing things again valor n't you kind of like stealing counterstrikes thunder a little so I like where valve is what valve is doing well I do not like what they were doing like for four years or five years surplus like yeah she's pretty much nothing and I always felt they they

would be the champion for the little guys but they haven't been that one with their still front maybe they yeah as much as I as much as I complain you know I'm like every other developer on seemed I like to like I like to whine a lot I like the honest truth is that like if there was no steam we wouldn't exist right like yeah this is no marketplace like it gives us here like access to the world basically like we can just put our game there and like we reckon so to the entire world which is a huge deal like 10 years ago we wouldn't exist we like but we there's some there's like one local indie studio but that was alive and like 2005 or something and like the lengths that they had to go through to like you know like make their game and

then find a publisher like find someone who was like able to like willing to spend the money to like to like print their game on like on CDs and print out the boxes and then like ship it to like stores and stuff like it's it's kind of saying like how how complicated retail games were just like 10 or 15 years ago so you know like for all the steam deservedly like takes a lot of flack there's there's no there's no question in my mind that like I yeah like we wouldn't have our studio we wouldn't be able to make games and sell it like to the world if it wasn't for Steam or maybe maybe epic would have stepped up like in an alternate universe epic would have been the the the storefront to the world mm-hmm being number one is definitely a tough job for anybody so it's hmm it's very understandable that they're getting a lot of criticism as well as praise same

time with that being said I know you guys are steam focused but yeah I would love to kind of hear your thoughts more I don't know if your you're connected with with people who have published games on the PlayStation from the Xbox friends the switch front did you guys yourself look at this as alternatives I think the last time those consoles made a splash with any development was the originator which is Xbox game or what was it called Xbox Xbox Live Arcade kid live our kid yeah yeah they started they just let it die and I haven't heard too much of a splash from those guys I mean switch was the closest where I feel like there was a resurgence of indie games going over there but what's your general feeling about that space is that viable it's I

mean it's a like the short answer is it's not really viable for us simply because like they refuse to like they refuse to sell us dead kits like I've actually asked like like reps from from Microsoft and you know think behind their answer is yeah we don't we don't sell that gets there but you know if you if you know a guy there's like gray areas where you can figure out a devkit yeah so it's like really you know it's a little like disheartening like you know like if you're not then I don't know like why why would we bother and them you know console is a little bit more I I don't actually have enough knowledge of the console space but like what I understand it's like you know like there's there's a lot more like certification processes

like before they even let you put the game on like on the store whereas like you know like on VC it's it's more like kind of Wild West like we know we're in early access so like we're putting out stuff and like within within minutes we get like bug reports or like the game not loading so you know we have to scramble the pull up put up a hotfix that's kinda that's the kind of stuff that this really happened in terms of console yes I think the short answer is it's not really viable for us at least as a gateway to game development but we are next up for exact idea right now we're actually looking for like 4 console publishers that would be interested in taking academia and then like you know like figuring out the porting process like how you you know how do you map the controls to a controller versus a mouse and keyboard

and then yeah like release it worldwide on all three of the consoles so we I had I don't have a Navi direct experience with it yet so I can't really do any comparisons but yeah like I'm definitely interested to see how it goes and last question I promise so the publishing side of things right so indie developers have are faced with choices where they the the gun hope that by themselves the whole way or the tag team a friend or partner that has done this this many times and just take that off your plate so you can focus on the game you guys try all routes before going with the publisher you just looked out you found a great publisher obviously and decided that way um well for me like

like I said earlier like the the biggest problem was really funding all right I'm so for our first game I definitely didn't want to look mortgage like like our apartment I didn't want to like put my savings on my like meager savings on the line at that time so like basically my I mean effort for our first game for political animals we there's just no way I was gonna do it like with my own money I'm not I mean like you you'd think I'd be more of a risk taker because like I'm a quote-unquote entrepreneur but like I'm very I'm actually very risk-averse like it's you kind of tweak it as you go obviously you can't like me in any kind of business if you're not willing to take any risks but like on the scale of of entrepreneurs I'm very I'm pretty risk-averse and so for our first game we definitely it was like publisher or

nothing at all luckily we found a publisher and really lucky for us because like again it didn't do well so we didn't lose any money and I feel bad for our publisher but you know like they they knew that risk going in and they did their due diligence and it just doesn't pan out sometimes so for a second game we you know we have we had a better idea I think of what we wanted to do and we wanted to just kind of you know do it on our own but also like you know like it was just like things were just moving too fast for us to like really stop and and and pitch it to a publisher and also like we you know by by releasing early like by releasing our progress early and and seeing that there was interest we some inkling that the game might do well

well I think honestly like we we were sort of at the point where it's like yeah you know what this this as well then and then great we keep going if it doesn't you know maybe it's time to pack it up and start looking for for jobs again just turned out that we you know we got lucky to second time around and yeah so it's we've we've done pretty well we did we did take a little bit of investment money just for the game and so like kind of just to help us get get to the finish line in terms of when we release for early access but otherwise yeah we were self-published and III feel like again like there's nothing would boo themed like we have to be thankful like they've just made really easy for for for almost anyone to self-publish their their own game and like kind of make a living off of it and yeah and now

so we we did well enough actually that we had a little bit of money like put aside and I found another local studio that was working on a really cool game and like I started chatting with them it's okay like you know I think your games really cool and like at the start I was more like if you guys would want a publisher like I'll hook you up with like some people I know because like I really really just want like I was just very excited to see another studio locally working on a game that I thought was cool and so like I was just like yeah yeah I want it I want to help you guys succeed like regardless but yeah like we we kind of got to talking and I said like you know we could help you out with the funding if you're interested and we just you know we kept up that communication and so now we're both the developer and sort of like quasi

publisher like we yeah like I mentioned earlier where we're publishing a game right now that's called ruin our it's like an evil overlord simulator you're you're basically a demon and you're you're you're wreaking havoc on a village of people like throwing down meteors and then poison and all sorts of stuff I don't know the steam festival is still ongoing right now but like there's a demo out on Steam if anyone wants to go and try it out sweet I will definitely link that for sure and and I and I thank you man for paying it forward I think that's one of the biggest coolest things about Game Developers were always very wanting to help and pass on the knowledge and I always feel like the people who give more actually receive more in the end it's just you know a community of trust and you actually build this huge network and and I always say to the indie developers it's always like if you make

it to the third game that's when it really goes crazy it seems like the average is like you get to the third game you go through all those trials and errors and you hit your rhythm finally know what you're doing and you're like understanding this lansky yeah I'm very thankful and looking forward to the game that you guys are publishing any games that you guys are working man because that that's a huge deal that's a huge accomplishment you're in the 1% time for most indeed a yeah I wonder actually if we should have we should have just kept the money but yeah we already struck the deal so anyway and if you I hope I made the right decision we'll definitely link it if it's in the steam festival that's a huge one I only selected like a few good ones to showcase there so as it's already on the right track so I think we're at the hour and and again thank you for for sticking with us for the I know we were trying to cut

short but you know it was just so interesting blast yeah yeah that's good this is my time to actually throw the mic over to you to give a shout out attention to or talk about any issues that you want to talk about to our listeners and viewers out there yeah so like definitely please do check out ruin Ark on on on steam we have a demo out right now and like developers would really like to know what what you think and yeah and like please do check out like try to check out games from like the Southeast Asian region and the Philippines I I'm not very good at this I'm not good they're like like marketing like other stuff but um check out like on Google like on rising rising sea I forget I'm super not prepared but like so there was like a game jam recently

where it's like a bunch of Southeast Asian game developers got together and they they just released their games recently and bunch of them are pretty cool so if you check out risings if you like search for rising sea games a game rising sea game jam on Google pretty sure you'll you'll be able to find that and yeah check out academia school simulator if you're into like chill builder like tycoon games we we just released an update recently and you know we're we're just turning out those updates like every like month and a half yeah I mean that's that's just a top of mind right now and yeah I'm sorry I'm kind of like I'm off right so I understood what you're saying one last

thing before we go though can you know the name of that game Reuben Reuben are how do you start ruin arm so it's like ruin like you're ruining so long and monarch so like ruin Ark I see I see alright well we'll definitely link in in this video I'll spice all the video footage so that people out there don't have to click around but I want to thank you Ryan for coming on in man let's stay in touch dude I definitely want to make sure that you know you represent over there Philippines I think it's thank you thank you Asia we do yeah I don't miss studios for sure yeah yeah yeah for sure sure all right man thank you man have a good one thank you very much for having me all right but [Music] you [Music]