Finding Success with a Sex-Positive Game Hook Up

what's up everyone it's uh me your uh host here ethan levy i am currently a gamer in residence with connect ventures and i'm here with a very very exciting interview today someone who had the bravery and courage to release a premium mobile game in 2022 and has found success with it something that most members of the deconstructor a fun audience i don't think would ever even consider a premium mobile game with no in-app purchases uh but i'm very excited to have uh up and coming game designer game creator sophie artemigi here hello sophie hi thank you for having me it's lovely to be here um so why don't we start uh can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into game development um yeah um a few years ago i was actually training to be a translator from french into english um i was doing that but um during my studies i

took a very short course in game narrative design and i was like oh i could do this for the rest of my life and so now i'm here you're like translation is horrible this is great well yeah i mean you know it's it's fun i felt like it was the only thing i was good at at the time and it was nice kind of to have that validation of finding something that i was both interested in and i got you know positive feedback for um yeah so then i applied for a master's course at the national film and television school um in england uh also known as the nfts which is quite funny because people get it mixed up with nfts um yeah you studied at nft so you're a scam artist like yeah yeah i studied scams for so long my game is a scam and yeah that's that's what i'm here to tell you today uh no um yeah i i got a scholarship with bafta while i was there and that kind of

helped me a lot business-wise and um in my final year i started development on hookup which is then sort of what launched me into this whole like business side of things straight out of it and so it's been really fun yeah so that's your game that you just launched a couple weeks ago right uh yeah i launched it uh june 7th i think so it's been a bit over a month a bit over a month um before we get to hookup what what were your motivations for uh becoming a game developer uh what what did you find in yourself when you took that game narrative class that that convinced you like this is what i have to do um i felt really embarrassed about making creative things beforehand in the uk you're not really encouraged to do that the same way but um it seems that people are in the u.s and so finally kind of oh don't worry my parents discouraged me as well

they still send me the odd law school catalog every now and then and i'm like i'm a 40 year old man with a mortgage i don't need to go to law school and they're like well just in case you know as a backup yeah um yeah my my family has very like you know prestigious job backgrounds so like you know accountants and lawyers and stuff like that and so it was a bit of a shock for them but right um for me it was kind of radical like giving myself permission to do something creative and then i kind of went a bit insane with it i was like i want to create games about nymphomaniacs on dating apps and no one stopped me so that's why i'm here right no one was like no you can't do that because you can't you know i i mean i'm gonna i'll i'll get back to this but um when i was younger when i was roughly your age i think was when i had the first idea like i was

thinking about movies that were art versus movies that were entertainment and why video games weren't considered art and and the ideas that i had were not original at all but i thought to myself like oh um if i think about some of my favorite movies it's because the create that are that are art and not pure popcorn it's because the creators put themselves or part of themselves into the story and that's what we're connecting with in the audience and so uh i've never been a disaster bisexual on a dating app or any tar sort of bisexual or on any sort of dating app and i like your game let me experience some of those things um in a really uh first person way and i was like she did it she did the thing and i i mean i don't know you that well i don't know how much of you is in that story or not but i

loved that um you know when i the the courses i took in school for game development um a lot of my fellow students were probably there like i want to make grand theft auto i want to make call of duty for me it was i want to make rash and clank and to hear for you you're like i want to tell stories and express myself through this medium and that's such a different um i think it's amazing that you had that insight about yourself and that you decide to follow through in it and make this product now yeah well it because um the school i went to is primarily a film school it just has a game design school yeah that was actually quite helpful because a lot of my friends are like screenwriters and we used people who were like film trained sound designers and composers it gave us a bit of an inferiority complex because nobody really considered us proper like screen artists but it did

kind of push me to prove myself in that space and that sort of helped me grow um in my own way as a game developer so yeah that's that's why it's very um it's a very high concept game but i i don't think that's a bad thing and i enjoyed making it and some people enjoyed playing it so yeah yeah um describe for us hook up the game um so hook up is about a woman who matches with her high school bully on a dating app you play as alex who's this 20-something who's going a bit crazy um mostly in a fun way sometimes not in a fun way and you play by snooping through her dating apps swiping on potential matches talking to people including her former bully and by having these conversations you kind of figure out what's going on with her and what went down in the past between her and her bully at school and um yeah it's out now on google play and

the app store yeah i liked um part of what was such a uh a great design choice i thought was part of it is typing out messages to the different matches and it's not just the bully you there are how many different people are there that you can have conversations with there are 30 different people um we're going to do a pc release and add like a few more profiles and so that should be fun but yeah overall there are 30. got it and and one of my favorite parts is when you're tapping the inputs and it starts typing out a message and then it starts deleting a message and uh it'll be like i can't remember exactly so i'm going to get it wrong but as a good example as a as an example it might be your yours you've got someone you're like you were so selfish i never want to see you again you bastard and then you tap some more and then they delete it and then the character writes a new message and then deletes it and it made me it was very immersive like it felt

very uh i thought you did a really good job of matching the medium to the experience thank you yeah i i really like that mechanic as a storytelling thing because you know that whatever they write they think is the truth um whereas anything that you send to someone is kind of filtered by how you think they'll react to it and so if you don't send it then you realize that that filter is just not there um and i i found that really fun to play around with and i use it on a few characters yeah um what i i'm not very big into the world of visual novels but uh what visual novels inspired you to make hookup um one that i did do know of and know you know it seemed like there's some kinship or inspiration with uh nikki case's coming out simulator which was an igf winner a long time ago that again is a game that helped me understand someone's experience that wasn't my own uh so i'm curious what what did you look

to for inspiration for uh hookup it's really interesting you mentioned that because i remember when it first came out i played it because my friendship group found it on tumblr and i remember really liking it but not relating to it that much because i've never not been out but my boyfriend at the time who was in the closet was like really struggling and i remember that game really resonated with him and so even though i didn't use it as like some of the original source texts that like helped inspire hook up i like that game definitely had an impact on me and it's definitely part of the journey that led me here um i also am a huge fan of um tender creature comforts which is a very similar game except you're not necessarily playing as one person you can say many different things not just necessarily the thing a disaster bisexual would say and you go on dates with you that's such a great phrase by the way it's just

comedic when it comes out of your mouth like the rhythm of it is funny on its own i all die all disaster bisexuals are funny and so you know it's a very appropriate title sorry um uh so i i've uh i i'm an old uh i've never done the tinders uh or other similar dating apps uh my only my online dating life i was ahead of my time it was pre-app and it was uh very disastrous i had uh three or four horrible jay dates and that was it that was all i could stomach um can you tell me about some of the experience you've had that have inspired hookup because i think what's just for the audience who hasn't played what's again a really great design choice is that you're playing the game on the phone and your pl your method is to

interact with with dating apps is how the story gets told and so it's like a perfect uh match it wouldn't feel quite the same uh on pc or on uh with the controller i mean it'll still be good but is as a first uh approximation or a first interaction it just feels really natural um to be playing a dating app inspired game it made me think like what other apps could be storytelling mediums but anyways um so describe some of the experience that inspired this game um i well and i don't it doesn't have to be specific like i went out with ben and he was a jerk and now i put him in my game so i can shame him don't even get me started um um well that's the thing like i've you meet people on dating apps that you'd never meet just naturally and so i've met like a physicist and a clinical psychologist and like a bunch of

photographers and other stuff and um i i don't know if this is strange but i actually developed quite good friendships with the people i've um ended up with on dating apps and so a lot of them have played the game and have messaged me being like is this me and ninety percent of them are wrong they're just trying to flatter themselves right you're like sorry it's an amalgamation it's not yeah totally creative license and all that you know um so there i don't know it's it's just a lot the the thing about the thing about online dating is that it's so inorganic and you have the potential for this like very unique closeness which is just like you know meeting somebody and becoming very like close and vulnerable with them very quickly but there's also this like possibility for this intense loneliness which is you know you're doing something that's ostensibly like very passionate and very vulnerable but it can feel so

isolating at the same time and so a lot of the stories are kind of just things that made me think of that dichotomy like things that let me play with that idea and it's also annoying because um you know the google play and app store rules didn't let me talk about specific examples that would have been as shocking and funny as i would like to but i think pcc release maybe if you put in the konami code the real i think i think you should do a hookup x-rated edition no joke i think that's that's a really good marketing and then you can just instead of putting like graphic sex stuff you can just put horribly uh true things and that's what's x-rated about it what are some of the things you had to take out yeah oh oh like very specific kinks there's like there are i think there are two kinks that i kept in um but the thing is they they weren't that

weird there's there are a lot of you're like they're on the king scale they're like four out of ten but google no way honestly like people the great thing about dating apps is you can kind of just list things that you write and people will be like i can do that and vice versa like shopping for sexual partners yeah it's great um i'm gonna come off so badly on this but um nonetheless i'm sticking to my gun um they so you do end up experiencing a lot of very weird things or like by weird i mean outside the norm and i just know in my heart of hearts that some regulatory body would have stopped me if i started talking about europhilia or like cnc or i'll have to look those up in a private browser uh after this is over am i allowed to look those up

no it's okay i mean this is like as i said i think what's uh i mean this is really what i was thinking when i was a little gamer dork the closest to this that even existed is leisure suit larry and like what a horrible embarrassment the idea of leisure suit larry is which was like this horrible text adventure point-and-click adventure where you're a loser trying to get laid and it's like the most juvenile 12 year old like fans but there's like 19 of them i don't know they're they're just they're not they're they're garbage games sorry to whoever suit larry but like to be tackling uh interpersonal relationships kinks dating sex in a real adult way with a game like it is art it's uh i i think it's really cool i'm like

so glad that the medium has progressed this much that you could not only make this piece of art you know wit with some restrictions from the app stores but get it out to people and let it respond you know resonates with them yeah although like that said it from a business point of view is incredibly risky like right you know the restrictions that came along with it the fact that i released it as a premium game which i don't regret because 90 of the comments of people saying please make it free are like 13 year olds and i'm like please do not play this game it's a filter if you don't have a credit card you should not experience these uh yeah but like it's yeah um but part of the reason it could get made is that most of it was done off of student labor and as a result of that i have a hundred percent profit margin and you know some great data going forwards but uh

nonetheless it's it's it was a huge gamble and you know my my next game i think i think i would make games like this in the future because i do have an audience and i do understand how and what i can do like in in terms of what is feasible but it i i i was very naive going into this and it was like a huge learning curve as like a biz dev right yeah well as i said uh hook hook up triple x version on it that's where it's that's i'd make so much money if i just started out the the temptation is real just to make x-rated games um this game strikes me as very personal um how much of it do you feel like the character is you versus inspired by you versus an

amalgamation of you and your like how um is it is it a heightened version of yourself is it you and a lot of your peers experience or did you really like put yourself in the app um i don't know because like alex and i have very similar opinions on things alex is the main character um but i'm not sure i could have written a convincing dating sim with somebody who had like a completely different world view than me um and so you know i i had issues with being bullied when i was a kid and i have had weird experiences on dating apps but it's also like not just you know a self-insert there there's there's a lot of sort of patchworking of different personalities of different stories i've heard there's a few stories

that are somewhat stolen from my friends like uh the the story of alex was more in service of like a larger um not to sound like you know pretentious but of a larger like philosophical um point i wanted to make and that is where you can kind of find me like that's you know completely who i am and what i believe but the characters themselves i like i you know there are a few times in the game where alex is an awful person and i'd hate people to think that those were things that i would do or say but you know they're real i mean i think that's where a lot of uh i'm really into comedy and i think that's where a lot of comedy comes from is writers thinking well what if i took myself and took all the filters out and put myself in a heightened version of this scenario like that would be that would be funny and it sounds kind of similar like you took um

you took parts of yourself from the character but it being the character gives you the license for the character to act in ways you never would right yeah i yeah i i think that's a fair statement i mean also like the original premise i just thought was very funny and so yeah there were a few things that were just in service of like a gag and you know yeah fair enough if that's how you get that yeah no i think it's a i think being matched with your childhood bully is a good hook it's like instantly understandable absolutely a few people have dm'd me being like this is relatable i matched with my childhood bully and i've never experienced that that was wild for me that it could happen in real life um and so yeah that's uh i'm glad i managed to do it justice to people who've actually been through the situation because had i known that like people who had done that would play the game i would have felt like a total fraud making it

yeah um you know i've never uh none of the game well there's only one game i've worked on i did like one narrative game as an indie many maybe 10 years ago that's personal or you know there's parts of me in the game uh but you know when i'm working on something like legendary game of heroes or tetris or the mystery of shark island or poly pride pet detective there's not a lot of room in those games for that type of uh storytelling uh i'm curious was it was it scary to put so much of yourself or so much kind of real life into a game uh it strikes me as being very opening yourself up a lot being very vulnerable to make a game like this um i practice this thing called like radical vulnerability in my like day-to-day life and it's the idea that if you give people complete like context of what's going on in your life even if

it's like a bit embarrassing or you have to get a bit vulnerable for it nine out of 10 times people will try and help you and so it's a good practice to have and so i've had a lot of practice just being like you know over sharing too much with everyone all the time and so as like an art piece it was more of the same but as a product like i didn't realize how much the mental of a mental shift was there because if someone's like this game is cringe i'm like oh well you know like other people like it but if a bunch of people like this game wasn't worth the 185 to that you know it took to buy it i that's different because it's like actually assigning a proper price to it and actually like assigning metrics and that had a very different like psychological impact on me um i would rather have someone like play it as like an a piece of art and say they hated it and thought that everyone was disgusting in it then have somebody be like i think it was 50 pence too

expensive yeah that's funny that's like i'd rather you understood what i was trying to do and decide that you hate it and hate everyone in it and you only want to play nice things uh instead of saying this wasn't worth it well i think it was worth it and i encourage everyone in the audience to uh skip a candy bar or one quarter of one beer and buy yourself hook up the game and expand your mind a little bit thank you so much i appreciate the plug yeah what was what was the development process like i know it was a student game or it started as a student game like how long did you work on it were you working with other people did you have any services you paid for was it all solo development um yeah the apart from like actual labor the only cost was

uh eight pounds to buy the um font making software um oh you made your own font yeah we we we did it because um we wanted to be able to match it properly to the hand drawn aesthetic of everything um we yeah uh it was very very ugly when we originally made it but we we put a lot of effort into it and i like to think it paid off um yeah so uh the masters project started officially in february of 2021 we made it uh i had a sound designer a composer an animator and a marketing person so the sound designer did all of the like pops and things you can hear and the dialogue editing and um all everything that went in with the cinematics uh the composer did the music that you

can hear for the game and the uh we we showcased it at a few conventions like egx and we had um a mini scene that we made for the game and the marketing person dealt with that um because it was part of their course and then i did everything else oh and the animator did the cutscenes um yeah and then um but during the development period like a lot went wrong like i was um hospitalized five times i had chemotherapy oh my goodness we had to isolate for five months and then two weeks before the release i had two internal organs removed um and so i i like telling people that because i think that if all of this is because i have this disability and i like to brag that it makes me a better game developer than the average person because no one else can go through that amount of catastrophe and make a sellable product in a year yeah seriously that's uh i'm i'm sorry

all that happened to you and that's kind of amazing that through all that you have a completed product well yeah like because it's because i'm disabled anyone who's listening hire disabled people because like they know what's up like the pandemic it's nothing to us just just another uh quarantine and yeah it's um well that's the thing like you know i had to go through it but you know there wasn't really much of another option and so i did go through it and i think a lot of people can like experience can like feel that with um covid because we all had to kind of just really adapt to a new situation and we all managed to make some good games despite it and so you know you just you just keep on going on yeah um how are you doing now um good i've got some gnarly scars from from the surgery uh and you know i'm on a handful of meds

every day but you know i'm i'm alive i'm breathing i'm working on various games and so that's fun yeah that's a good good attitude to have um so it was largely yourself on and off uh for a year uh working with a couple other specialists sewer students uh beset by uh personal health issues and setbacks along the way that caused work stoppages i'm sure um along uh the way did you look for publishing support for the game i mean i know we met because i was a judge for the big indie pitch from pocketgamer which hookup won i was very happy to be uh voting on that but what was what was your experience like on the business side of things taking this uh uh a mature content visual novel premium

mobile game to different publishers or investors or business people asking for funding or support um yeah well we we got a lot of no's because it's a premium mobile game and it's 2022. um but that didn't really put me off and we we also got a few no's because you know of the other things to do with it like um the mature audience sort of risky nature of it and the fact that it can't be sold in certain countries with more like conservative uh rules around that stuff um but we we did almost get published but it didn't end up working out in the end because uh going with them would mean we'd have to miss a key window uh in the app store um because we got um on the editor's list uh because we released in pride month and the game is very uh unapologetically

bisexual yeah and yeah so that that was good and i'm it would have been a good learning experience to work with the publisher but ultimately i don't regret not working with one yeah that's awesome that you got that um that pride month placement um that's probably as valuable as any publishing you could get i mean i don't know um what in in going through that process and getting a lot of rejections as a developer like what uh feedback would you have for publishers at large like what were interactions you had um that felt positive that left you feeling like oh i want to email that person again for the next game versus ones where you like and and i'm not talking you know don't nothing nothing specific nothing like well ethan publishing code was horrible and those guys but just like what are the things that on the developer and you know facing all

these rejections we were like oh this was you know i had a positive experience i want to work with these people again or reach out to them again versus like i'm taking them off my email list they're they're a waste of my time well yeah uh to be honest just receiving a rejection email that kind of specifically acknowledged you it's very helpful um right i actually became really good friends with the ceo of a publishing company because they rejected me so nicely that i then emailed them a thank you for their rejection and then we became friends after that which was you know a very cute origin story so you make you you make friendships on dating apps you make friendships when you get rejected by publishers i think you're just a very uh friendly person good with the the electronic communication i just you know why why wouldn't you want friends yeah friends are just lovely lovely things to have friends are just obligations if uh

mishka kakov would stop dming me on slack i'd get a lot more done no wow um yeah i mean yeah uh i don't know like the if if publishers if all of the publishers were um in front of me with the pens and notepads like trying to take notes i just think it's like showing that you're specifically acknowledging the people it's not just a blanket letter and yeah um a lot of them were like i'm sorry we can't give feedback because of the amount of um pictures we get and that's absolutely fine just as long as it doesn't seem very like cold and robotic that said um one publisher i talked to actually likened publishing to a dating app because if you're a guy on a dating app you like have to message all of these women and you'll rarely get a reply or a match and it's just like soul destroying

whereas if you're a woman you have like your choice and you can just sit back and let the best options come to you and so being a developer and pitching to publishers is like being a guy on a dating app and you just have to be as charming and as like you know straightforward as possible in in hopes of starting a good relationship and so maybe that's why i made so many friends with publishers because of that mindset yeah um ultimately the game was self-published it sounds kind of it was halfway between uh um a choice and a necessity it looks like it sounds like you had that placement um that pride month promotion and so you kind of were at a choice point do i want to go with the publishing or do i want to publish now and hit this promotion um and i would expect that that pride month promotion was part of the uh success story of uh hookup

yeah um being number one in the app store like even though it was for a few hours it was insane and that was definitely because of the you know promotion from apple as well as like a bit from um tick tock uh that i was able to bring in um yeah well i that's an amazing accomplishment so but you are number one on the paid charts yeah number one on the pay charts um it's that's great yeah take that papa's pizzeria to go yeah screw papa's pizzeria people don't want pizza they want horny bisexuals um i i actually uh based on some some preliminary searching i've i've done people want horny bisexuals followed by pizza damn it that's it that's an idea right there

there's um there's a dating sim called only cans where it's like horny soda cans maybe maybe you could do like you know horny pizzas and uh that could be an idea yeah yeah anyone who feels free to collab on that idea dm me um but yeah find your perfect slice customized to your liking who likes oh my god i uh i have a joke that i would get canceled for i'll tell you after this recording that's a that was a sign of emotional maturity that i did not say this horrible joke on on air it's terrible i would get canceled i can't wait for this joke i'm i'm just going to be refreshing on dms after this yeah

where were we um horny bisexuals on the outside right yes you were number one you were does that make you the number one bisexual or just the number one game developer um i'm going to change my linkedin bio to both um can't wait for that it's an honor well let me tell you is a 40 year old cis white guy see getting a message from somebody on linkedin that said world's number one bisexual game developer i would be like i have to block this now because i'm clearly about to get scammed this is clearly a phishing scam well yeah but that's the thing there there are so many uh bisexual game developers i think i'd uh instantly get nerfed by one of them yeah yeah i know maybe that's actually something i've always liked about um game development as opposed to like making accounting

software or you know something more corporate or boring is i feel like i mean i'm i am a 40 year old white guy father middle american so i'm like there's a lot of me that's normal but i'm also a freak like i've always been a freak and a nerd and like i feel like uh in game development i've found my people and i've always been around people of all types as a result you know i think it's a very or it get parts of it parts of it are famously unwelcoming to anybody who's not and i uh i'm sorry to everybody who's gone through those types of experiences but i think as an industry it's very welcoming to uh very different type of people yeah i would hope so i don't know well it's weird because i like i've experienced some like horrible sexism and like behavior i wouldn't wish on anyone else but you're right like some of the best people i've ever met are in this industry

and i you know i think we're currently experiencing growing pains where we know what we want to be we know we want to be this inclusive like open thing where you know people can express themselves and people can feel all of this empathy because of this great medium we work with but yeah there is still this kind of 13 year old boy yes type there's yeah when you grew up with leisure suit larry you know i think you might be entitled to financial compensation from the dead larry i'm sure someone's going to demand compensation from me at some point so you know might as well start ahead of the curve um for all right so there was the pride month promotion um what what have been there were some conference uh conventions you did what would have been your other marketing efforts as essentially a student project solo indie dev with uh not all you know not a giant

bankroll behind you how did you get the word out about a hookup he um used tik-tok a lot um we had like an official account at the beginning but then i decided just to use my personal tick tock to promote it and that went down really well um one of our videos has 1.7 million views um yeah it was 1.8 when i checked it really yeah it's um yeah and it's really funny people really responded well to this series i did called cool features in my game and uh every single time it was just like an intro saying cool features in my game part one two three or whatever and then the feature would be like being a disaster bisexual getting blocked um you know being yeah you know sending sex or something like that and it was always just like oh this is really depraved and people really responded well to that which you know is

uh nice um yeah i tic talk is just absolutely insane the way its algorithm works it's so powerful and compared to other social media like it really does convert into sales um you know which is really cool but also very overwhelming if you just join us to make a slotty game and now you have thirsty i think i think thirsty thirsty's the word okay thirsty sorry i'm gonna get i'm gonna get your band off whatever platform you have sorry well so do you come on uh yeah we'll we'll all get well i think thirsty i don't know you you're the young person you can tell me if i'm wrong thirsty feels positive feels like it has a lot of um shame associated with it yeah yeah there's there's an argument for reclamation but you're right there's that sort of shame uh associated with sluttiness but i think hookup's also a very shameful

game i think it encourages you to sit with a lot of shame and i think that's a good thing you know yeah no absolutely sitting sitting with your painful feelings and learning to experience them instead of drinking or taking drugs or extreme sports or buying things or whatever i i hear that it's very healthy and healing i've never tried this myself but i've been encouraged and told that feeling your feelings um can be a positive experience i of course have no feelings so i don't know what people are talking about oh so you're true dave that's one nice right right i practiced that laugh uh for hours um what's funny what's funny about this is that the thing that got you um that caused rejections from publishers the thing that caused you to have to censor and edit your product to get onto the app stores to confirm with your

guidelines which is like um talking openly about sexual experiences this is part of what went viral on tick tock like it's content people want and have clearly responded to by the 1.8 million uh views so it's like being there on the edge uh even though it was part of what caused rejections also caused success and acceptance yeah but like that's the thing it's not even that edgy like it's about a conventionally attractive white woman who's just makes poor life choices like that that could describe so many games film tv like that's the premise of all of amy schumer's sketch comedy basically god um and yeah like that's it's it's not that revolutionary and there were definitely still things we had to censor but yeah like people can very much tell when something's being sanitized for the sake of like that common denominator

and i think that people could tell with hookup that we were like you know screw that with we're just going to try and make this we don't have anything to lose really and i'm really glad it resonated with people because it would have been quite embarrassing if i was like look at my edgy game and no one wanted to write it you know i think putting putting art out into the world uh that is is its own you know there's nothing to be embarrassed about with taking uh taking a risk and uh trying something even if people don't find it well yeah i mean embarrassment's good you know right you know like shame it's good to feel it every once in a while all right um so it's it's launched a month ago uh we we've covered that that it topped the charts on the uh uh ios store number one paid for a couple hours which again is an amazing achievement uh i've worked on plenty of mobile apps none have been number one on

top paid none of when number one on top downloaded tetris might have made it into the top our tetris definitely made it into the top 50 um but never that much um for downloads um what how did the launch go um for you oh my god i know i know from the tick tocks that the app that the app store launch went well and it looked like the uh android has been the disaster platform yeah yeah so there was an issue where the game wouldn't download onto every android user's phone and that stayed up for a week that entire week i thought i was having a heart attack like we've bounced back since then you know it's not doing as well as apple but i never expected it to do as well as after yeah um the game wouldn't download or it wouldn't open up it would it was it was weird it basically the

it downloaded like an empty file for some reason and got it so it's like one of those problems that you can't solve without someone's help at google and you're probably like using the portal and messaging and you're just like wait it and you're just one of one bazillion apps waiting for customer service that you're never gonna get yeah well we ended up getting um we ended up just using a completely different build and like changing the keys and everything like that but oh my god it was yeah um yeah everyone says their launch is going to be a disaster and i was like that won't happen to me and then it did and luckily like i know better now i know what to look out for going forward i would like i allocated one month to um storefront and marketing uh in my schedule i would have allocated i'm gonna allocate minimum three next time like it is there is so much that can go

wrong that you wouldn't think of as a developer um yeah so it was a disaster but we you know we survived it somehow yeah and um how what's the reaction been from the people who've discovered it on tick tock who've bought it you know what's what's the uh audience response been like um yes it's very mixed because tick tock its main audience are like younger children and so you get all of these people who shouldn't be playing the game uh who have different expectations than older um people like people who are 17 plus and that's very frustrating because i i i am very big on taking criticism and it frustrates me when i'm like well you're 12 your opinion's not valid but it's true in this one your brain hasn't formed yet i know it's like what are you

12 oh yeah they are 12. um and so that was frustrating because every every video i get they're like you know a bunch of comments like 20 comments being like make it free you know at least yeah and i'm just like i you are 12. if i may put it on yeah putting on roblox they can they can do they can match with one and then they have to spend v bucks to unlock the rest this is look this is why you go to me i the brilliant prisoners mine that said put the dating game on you know they'll discover it they'll spend their read oh yes well uh yeah i i think the market of selling semi pornographic material to 12 year olds has really been unexplored and so i i i think it's been thoroughly explored and found illegal let's let's talk about that pizza dating game offline okay

pizza slice dating on roblox with a lot of innuendo we've got a hit love it fantastic out 2023. let's do it um yeah um but it also the thing about tiktok is that the algorithm no one understands it and for good reason because if we did like people would take advantage of it um but it has also found like a lot of people who are really passionate about game that's been very like heartening to see people being like oh i'm non-monogamous and i really like this game um it was also really interesting to see people's um uh presumptions about it too because i would get all of these messages being like she better not fall in love with her bully and i'm like who said anything about love right that's cute yeah um love that's for olds

for the olds uh yeah they they put that in when they extract your wisdom teeth right yeah um yeah mine hasn't really come through and saying um how so let me let me ask you about this are you knowing that the game's promotion was like a pride month promotion uh and that probably like the most likely time you're gonna get promoted next would be part of another pride promotion for this game is my guess um as a developer are you glad that that sort of promotional spot and promotional content exists or does it feel marginalized like why can't this game be promoted through other venues why is it only

under i i could see it both ways right like you know we don't we don't have white male game developer promotion month because i think all 11 11 or 12 months are are for promoting white straight male developers right but in it i think do you get my question right like does it feel uh are you is it positive tokenizing mix of both you know what's your reaction when you think about that i mean i think the i think it goes like a level up from that because even though games are something anyone can make and anyone can slap on whichever store as long as they you know pay the developer fee um if you want to get featured you have to appeal to like a group of five people from each store and they have their own like personal agenda as to what's good what they're going to feature and you know it to to some degree you

it has to be that way because otherwise people wouldn't get recommended games that they would like and there would be a lot of like spam or dodgy games if there weren't some sort of vetting process but it is kind of just playing into this larger game of how can i get this group of five or six people to notice me and want to talk about my game and for this game it had to be like within the context of pride um yeah so that that that's kind of just how any storefront works i assume i don't know what it's like in the sort of you know crypto what well there aren't that there yeah i don't know yet either but um i mean i think uh you and i talked about marketing a couple weeks or months ago and i mean part of me does think like the game i'm starting on now um because i'm you know starting in a brand

new game company from the ground up day one i'm thinking about marketability right like my having got having had the experiences i've had over the past 20 years uh i'm i'm now coming at it where 10 years ago i probably didn't think this way actually i know that when i when you know when i struck out on my own 10 years ago i didn't think about it this way and now uh here i am and i'm like okay it's day one what is my marketing hook like how can i prove that this hook does appeal to people who am i trying to appeal to and i am going marketing first in a way and that's partially because i have um some confidence in my ability to make a fun game so you know on your end i wouldn't be i think it would be a totally valid uh you know coming off this experience say like okay well what's the game i can get ready and in front of people in time for pride 2023 like how can i

how can i dig into that uh marketing advantage that i have that other people don't you know that's that's uh as a business person i think that's a valid way to think about it yeah well um i'm a queer disabled neurodivergent woman in games so i've got like five minutes i can fall back um you can be tokenized a lot yes like i you know not to brag or anything but i'm like pretty oppressed um sorry but yeah i i agree with you i do like to sorry yeah um it is important to make sure that your game can sell units because you know at the end of the day you need to you need to be able to support yourself and it needs to be a job rather than a hobby um yeah but yeah i'm i'm very confident in my

ability to hold people's attention i mean you mentioned we met at the big indie pitch which i wasn't around of because i'm so confident that i can like charm people and persuade people and dazzle people and you know my next game i don't think is going to be the same as hookup but i think there are similar strategies i can take to marketing yeah and don't don't uh it wasn't all personality i mean i think the judges were reacting primarily to the game and the state of it and the uniqueness of it um and so speaking of this game for you it's been a hit right how has it performed business-wise you know pretty good i spoke to a lot of premium game developers beforehand so i could get a realistic idea of how it worked i wrote up a proper business plan with you

know an upper bound you know a goal and a lower bound and because of the android uh disaster it's going to be like slightly less than um the middle bounds that we made for ourselves but it's enough to like if i if i just wanted for uh the rest of my life to publish a visual novel every year i i could do that and live comfortably and i'm happy with that yeah that's great i mean most people most premium games or most games uh with iap or ad driven or anyway don't even reach that success level of being able to support a developer and i mean on deconstructive fun we obviously talk about the top grossing games and a lot of people who are on have worked or aspire to make games that are you know making tens if not hundreds of millions a year uh because they're big mass market games made by a lot of people with giant marketing budgets but

um success is you know success is a bar you set for yourself and it sounds like um you have a game that that you've made mostly by yourself with low costs you're young although it does sound like the the help well you're not in the u.s so maybe healthcare if you were here you would definitely be financially destitute well i i am american and the the reason i lived in you know my father's homeland is because of my disability but as you said like success is sort of something you decide for yourself and i would be very unsuccessful working at a bigger company because you know if if you employed someone like me who then had to take off like random times for hospitalization and chemotherapy that might be very frustrating to you and that might not be a situation that you could work through it might but it would be very hard because it was very hard for me and i was the one in charge um and

there there have been a lot of jobs not in the games industry that i've worked that have been quite hostile towards that whereas being able to do it on my own and to accommodate for myself and to work around my own disability it's kind of created this virtuous cycle where i'm able to work to the my fullest extent and i'm able to create a good game and therefore i'm able to you know make a proper living from it which is nice i'm um i we're i don't want to be too greedy with your time but that does strike me as a really good point to dig in on um what do you think have been some of the keys to keeping a positive mental out mindset and keeping i mean momentum uh keeping momentum in a project is something that every uh create every game developer struggles with i don't i don't know a single game that's been like well we started it and then we just worked

eight hours a day every day for four weeks and everybody felt great the whole time and it was shipped you know like every everybody is struggling with that problem of momentum and progress and setbacks and i think your um story is more heightened um because like my setbacks might be like uh my bills were high and i felt bad for a week and years like well i had chemotherapy and i was out for i was in quarantine for a month and i'm like i need to turn my attitude around because i'm a whiny white guy i'm sorry so what have been what have been some of the keys sorry to staying positive and keeping the momentum up uh among uh these types of medical setbacks um well um it's sorry i'm going to i'm going to restart what i was going to say yeah basically

when you're ill you have to let yourself experience the entire spectrum of human emotion and that's the only way that you can be positive because i was so grumpy and like angry and sad and tearful um you know during the weeks that i was having chemotherapy because it is not nice and it doesn't feel nice but if you let yourself feel that if you let yourself take the time off and then you project manage appropriately you can kind of get through it like everything's achievable and you come out feeling quite good about yourself because you've done this great thing so it's not about having this kind of toxic positivity it's about being kind to yourself letting yourself do what you need to do and then just kind of getting up and going forward no gain is more important than anyone's physical or mental health and so if if you need to work you know eight hours

a day while you're feeling depressed or while all this shit's happening just just cut features like screw the game it's not that important look after yourself that's that's my philosophy at least i understand that if i were making like a third person shooter fighter game there it would be more obvious if i had left certain things out but the player doesn't know what the completed game looks like in your head so they don't need to know what you you didn't do because you weren't feeling well or you just wanted to play super mario sunshine for two days straight you had to scope the ambitions of the game to your capabilities your energy level and your personal needs is what it sounds like yeah the game is completely ui based i didn't have to do like any character animations any anything all it was was a story that got delivered to you in a slightly clever way and that was very achievable by one

person and you know it's a proper game people accept it as yeah a legitimate game even though it took a lot less work than a lot of my peers games because they didn't have this constant fear of you know just falling ill every other week and and now you've you've had enough success with the game that you can support yourself while you make uh game number two so with this game because i did it with student labor i'm going to divide the profits from them like properly because they invested their time into it but um game number two i'll now have funds going forward that i can just pay people up front and it can just be the supporting cycle um but you know if anyone wants to throw some money my way i'm always listening absolutely i mean i think uh there's there are some there's someone i want to uh introduce you to after this

i'm actually not sure if i might have already um but uh what what i'll i'll get to the wrap up um so that uh uh so that you can hear me about the joke that you made earlier i'm not writing that down that's how bad it is there will be no dance it maybe yeah i'll tell it to you but uh no written record okay what uh what lessons did you learn from the launch of uh hookup that you're applying to game number two um already covered to spend a lot book a lot more time forget storefront yep and getting it live book a lot more time for storefront understand that like the community um management aspect of it is a lot more taxing and time con consuming than you give credit for shout out to all community managers um yeah they are

amazing people and uh they have a very challenging job yeah and um yeah i don't know i just i frankly i think the biggest takeaway are my new expectations and it's very unhelpful because everyone will tell you going into it being like it's way harder and way more complicated than you imagine and you think to yourself that's not true and then it happens to you and you're like oh that is true and then you get better for the next game right and so it's not very helpful for me to say but it's true and that's what i'm taking forward yeah like oh that thing everybody warned me about they were warning me for a reason yeah yeah um do you have any other creators uh uh who you'd like to highlight um any other visual novel creators or indie game creators that i should uh look into instead of playing uh metal gear survivor and what am i playing now

i'm playing metal gear five and i'm playing vampire survivors on the steamback oh yeah but uh any anything more on and i'm playing hookup i'm about halfway through uh uh other other games or creators you'd like to uh recommend um there's another game that i worked on that the demo is out for that is being released later this year called zelege it's by uh louis torres and it's this awesome uh game where you play as a medieval islamic mosaic maker and i'd highly recommend it it's not as as hookup i'm sorry to say it's not as thirsty as hookup i mean christine i wish it were but you know that was his design choice um yeah and also in terms of this carpet is amazing it's the liege two carpets do match the drapes um [Laughter] i'll pitch that tim the second it's cool

then um yes and also play tender creature comforts i've mentioned it before and i will mention it until my dying breath it's a great game um yes play it and uh where are you it sounds like you've already started development on the next game yes where are you unannounced game um we've got the game design document done the story element of it mostly done and we're waiting for one or two things to fall in place before i can properly uh announce it and i really wish i could it's another sort of visual novel thing and i really think people will like it so that's all i can tell you for now great and so if people are intrigued they've obviously already gone to the app store or the play store and bought hook up the game easily worth the two dollars um where can they follow you where can they

uh follow along to to hear when this next game is announced um they can follow me at sophie artemigi my last name is one of those difficult italian american names um a-r-t-e-m-i-g-i um on pretty much all social media um and yes that that's it i'm not very creative with my usernames it's just my name with an at at the beginning of it all right well sophie thank you so much for coming on the podcast and for sharing uh with us uh congratulations on all the success you've had with hookup and i look forward to uh what comes next thank you i've really enjoyed this conversation thank you for having me