Forging Your Path - Standing out from the Crowd | PGC Digital #1

i'm going to talk today a little bit about forging your path um as a developer um i hope everyone is enjoying rpg connect so far especially in this virtual world and everyone's staying safe and healthy um as this talk is only 15 minutes i'm obviously not going to be able to go into a huge amount of detail um but i'm going to be concise as possible on some of the key takeaways for your journey as a developer so firstly just a little bit about me um just go through that quickly my name is leanne i'm the head of the riot porsche team at riot games uh heading up our third party publishing division um i have three clear passions in life uh one is games i have loved games ever since i was small and the second one is cats these are my two cats bailey and cleo and then everything to do with cars i love so i love formula one i have a pretty big obsession with plastic and the context of my talk today definitely comes from a variety of companies that i've worked from during my career so here's just a

quick overview of my background um firstly always loved games since i was very young um got an atari st and my first game that i remember playing was nebulous which is a platform game where you play this kind of like frog thing um definitely fell in love with that game played many hours of that game and then moved on to the sega mega drive where i fell in love with streets of rage and i knew at that point i really wanted to make games i wanted to create these things that created that same feeling for me and so i went to university and then after university i joined stainless games and worked on games such as scrabble risk magic the gathering and started as a qa tester and worked my way through qa management assistant producer producer and then i moved to japan for a couple of years where i worked on the publishing side for a company called satire who do a variety of different entertainment products within japan including video games and then when i returned back from japan i got

the awesome opportunity to move to electronic arts and work on need for speed which as i mentioned um you know was kind of a dream come true for me because i love games and i love cars and it was kind of the perfect combination um so i stayed there for many years and did lots of new speeds um and then got to a point where i did need you know a bit of a change so had the amazing opportunity to move to where i am now working on league of legends which you know still blows my mind that you know 70 million people play that every month and we bring a lot of joy to people's lives so that makes me happy so a little bit about um riot forge we are the third party publishing label within riot games um we recently announced so you may have heard back in november december time that we are working with a variety of external developers to make uh different types of league of legends games and really different types of games that are very different to

what you see coming out from riot games so us at riot we're very focused on competitive live service games we serve that audience extremely well we have league of legends the moba legends of roon terra wild rift and tft and their motivations are very focused on competitive mastery they're the reasons why our players play the games they want to keep getting better and better um whereas riot forge is on the other end of that scale we're very focused on single player narrative driven experiences and we want to provide a way for our players to be able to experience the league of legends characters and the stories and the relationships between those characters in a way that you can't necessarily do in a competitive game so that's what riot forge is focusing on um and every day you know i get to work with different developers and we're looking for new partners um all of the time during riot forge to see what other games we can bring to our players so i've taken you know some of those

experiences looking for developers and um the developers that we're currently working with and and those learnings i'm basically going to try and summarize those today of some of the key things that a publisher like riot forge is looking for and also will care about so really the goal of today's talk is to give you all um a way to think about how you can stand out when it comes to partnerships if you're looking for publisher or investor it's obviously not all one size fit fits all so you know i don't expect this to apply to all partnerships it just really summarizes some of the things that may help you as a developer to stand out and get attention from certain publishers but ultimately i just would love to leave you guys with some thoughts about how you can stand out for whatever collaboration opportunities that you're potentially looking for so there are many different types of collaborations uh whether that's you know a developer to developer

um relationship or developer to publisher investor you know there's many different ways that we can collaborate when we when we make games and collaborations could be an investment in the studio or licensing or vip you know traditional work for hire or like we're doing with riot forge where you know we're focused on the league of legends ip but really leveraging the experience of the developers that we work with and allowing them to fully own the the creative of the game to to reimagine league of legends into into a different way for our players and what we do on league of legends and riot forge is definitely a bit of a mixture it's not traditional work for hire because we're not asking developers to build a specific type of game or already have an idea in our mind but it's also not fully licensed because we still maintain the ownership of the ip and we also fund the full development process for our developers so there are many different types of partnerships that you know you could be looking for

and it really depends on you know where you want your studio to go and the overall vision that you have for your studio um and depending on that you know different types of of collaborations would make sense whether you you know working in your own ip and want a publisher to publish that or if you're looking to partner with a specific publisher that already has an ip so once you've figured out figured out what type of partnership you would like to go for that's when you can dig into okay how do i stand out from the crowd from other developers that are also looking for these type of collaborations so for me personally and for you know how we've been approaching things i believe there are three main areas to focus on that could help you um when you were looking for partnerships and help differentiate against others and set your studio up for success um this could also apply you know when you're pitching um your ideas or presenting your studio's vision or

games to to partners so the first one is really around studio identity um you know what is your studio what what do they stand for what are some of the key things that you do within your studio and the second one is game quality and the products that you've made before and how this represents uh your studio and then lastly uh your unique dna will stand you out from the rest and i'm going to dig into a little bit about why these are important and what they mean so firstly for studio identity so when a studio has a really clear identity with the way they approach development it creates a really strong vision um and in order to achieve this you really need to think about how you see yourself as a studio are you work for hire are you an outsource do you work on other people's ips or your own ips what is that thing that really stands you out as a studio and really lean into that you know um what is your speciality and and why should people work with you

um you have a clear set of experience and expertise um and think about that in the way that you know your studio has its identity and a good way to look um at this is through your strategy and what your long-term goals are where do you want to be as a studio what's your strategy to get there and then from that what's your clear identity and why do you really exist um along with judo identity when i think about this i always reflect on a book that i've read uh this book here called essentialism um by greg mcrowlin um it's a really interesting case study in here um that makes me think about studio identity essentially it was it's a marketing agency company um who were really struggling uh in their current times they did a bit of everything and they just weren't getting clients um but their ceo knew that one of the things they did really great and consistently was

creating presentations extremely high quality polish presentations for their clients um so they went on and off site they went through you know all of the successful clients and partnerships that they'd had in the past and what the reoccurring themes were um and why clients have decided to you know go continue to to come to them for this work and they analyzed everything and they looked and they realized that you know presentations was that the key reason why their clients kept coming back it was the thing that they did really really well so they decided to pivot their company to focus solely on offering you know really high quality presentations and as soon as they did that they created a really clear identity for their studio they leaned into that one thing that they did really well and the company went from struggling to thriving because clients knew exactly who they should go for for that one particular thing and i feel like this could apply for game studios as well obviously there's a balance um

and this is the extreme example of going in and focusing on you know one particular thing but you know game studios could do it with you know genre or the type of spirit experience you know you are best at building and it doesn't mean you have to make the same game every time you know as mentioned this is an extreme example maybe works better for like the marketing and agency industry so it doesn't mean you have to make the same game every time but you have to have that one identification one that one thing that appears in everything that you make that really solidifies your studio identity um and then obviously game quality is a huge thing that we look for um you know ensuring that the games that have come out of your studio are the highest possible quality within the constraints you have of course you know not everyone is going to be making you know million-dollar games it has to be the quality that you can achieve within the budget that you have within the time that you have within the people that you have in the studio

what's the absolute you know quality game that you can create with with the resources and the constraints that you have and it does not mean that every game you make has to be you know 95 metacritic or anything like that that's not realistic there are definitely different layers of quality what's important is that you're able to show that you can hit that quality bar that you can achieve as a studio it also doesn't mean that your games have to sell you know millions and millions of units um not everyone again has the resources to be able to achieve that but showing how you value quality and that you care about making great games and you've achieved that previously within you know where your studio sits that's the important part is really ensuring that quality comes first and that the experience you're creating for players comes first and showing you know that potential as well

and then this one i actually feel for me personally is as potentially the most important one um which is unique dna and when i um i like using the term dna because it kind of forms that creative triangle of design narrative and art and those three areas are where we can innovate quite a lot in video games and create a very clear identity and unique representation of the games that we're making design not narrative and art you know these are some of the core creative elements that make up a video game and as a studio it's really powerful to have something that is unique to you as a studio in your games and help drive again that identity that you're trying to create for your studio and so you know this is just kind of like a montage of some you know games that have done really great unique visual styles or narrative and as a studio you know this is this is

some of these examples are great there's other examples as well whether it's a unique art style that you have created you some of the best pixel art or you know you have a unique animation or your studios have a unique art style that really stands out like gris for example it could be with narrative um could be the way that you tell stories in a game um are you great with theo you really understand you know how to create that emotional resonance um and that emotional connection between players like in haven it can also come from design you know is there a certain mechanic that you've coined or a certain design system that you've created that you use within your games that you know really helps you stand out from other games in that genre space essentially having something within this dna or dna triangle just really helps you put a stamp on what you are as a studio and where you excel and if the publisher or you know an investor is looking uh for something like that then you can

fill that gap don't be afraid to lean into that thing that makes you different from other studios so to summarize um three key areas that i believe can help you stand out and and get attention from publishers and different types of collaborations depending on what you're looking for um spend some time thinking about your studio identity and what the focus is you know for you and what you and the whole team do really well and finding that path can really help amplify that identity that you have um game quality can come in many ways as i mentioned and even if you haven't made a game before you know the emphasis on quality can come through a prototype it can come through the way that you pitched your game um just ensuring that you show that you value quality i think is the important thing not everybody has to sell millions of units and hit you know

a 95 plus metacritic um it's all about within the resources that you have do you care about quality and most of us you know do care about making great games for our players um and then lastly your dna your design your narrative and your art um what is your differentiator in the game and how do you approach design and how do you stand out from other games and other studios so um once you've kind of thought about that then it's all about how do you find a partner to collaborate with and of course there's many ways to uh achieve this including events like this um and you know conferences and networking and linkedin um the one thing i would recommend on reaching out to publishers on linkedin is being really specific you know i do get a lot of people reach out to me and say oh i've got a game idea for league of legends you know

can we chat and and that's great you know i love people reaching out but i would say it's worth being very upfront about what you can provide um you know what what what's the benefit what's the value be very specific about your unique offering um because that's what's going to really get the attention you know so many people email with the same kind of set template or the same you know information um and you know that makes it very hard to to stand out and get someone's attention especially you know with uh publishers and investors that are getting a lot of that all of the time so you really need to stand out and lean into your unique identity and be really upfront about that if you are you know contacting publishers or investors or collaborators on platforms like linkedin and really think about how you can stand up and be you know specific in what you're offering and then once you've found a partner or publisher

you know you want to make the most out of that collaboration um and this doesn't apply to all partnerships again this isn't a one-size-fits-all it's just you know some information that may help because it really depends on on the level of support that you're getting from your publisher or formula partnership and the support can change based on of course business terms and the relationship you create so it's definitely not one size fits all but the key is that you do want a publisher that can take you know some of the pressure off so that you as a studio can focus on making the game the best possible game it can be and a great publisher will um focus on amplifying your game uh with bespoke marketing game trailers events etc and really understand how to gain that awareness and ultimately the acquisition from your players that should be you know the role that the publisher achieves for your studio and for your game so that you can focus on the development making it great and the publisher can focus on really getting that game into players

hands so um the developer publisher partnership should definitely be a two-way um and benefit both parties in a perfect world you know the publisher gets the developers unique experience an amazing talent and the developer gets the support required to to really get the game into place has in the best possible way and both together means you know you end up with an awesome game that players are aware of and they have been playing so that's just really a quick fire summary of some of the ways that that might help you stand out when it comes to finding a partnership or finding collaboration or finding a publisher and that is it so any questions thank you very much well thank you leanne i'm uh i'm back for a bit but uh yeah i just wanted to say a massive thank you for coming here and being part of this uh rather different digital conference uh i

will give you a clap and i'm sure everyone else is it's weird without that visual and audio feedback isn't it you know it's kind of strange yeah having the audience to uh to play off um i know we've got one uh one question not related to games but i think we'll ask anyway is it was that your mustang in the picture oh yes that is my mustang yes one of our anonymous attendees i'm sure is very impressed that that one yes yeah i mean oh i think we've got some uh oh the uh person has come back going wow with their exclamation marks thank you she is yes she's definitely my baby i do love cars so uh yeah i i just um obviously first of all i wanted to yeah like i said say thank you um it's a very very fascinating and interesting talk for me uh because obviously with me leading the big indie pitch you said a lot of the things that i spend half my life talking about to everyone

so it's very good to have those kind of things reiterated but also with some different takes different opinions you know um but largely the same kind of advice about being unique and having that that culture and identity one thing that i am interested in asking is uh that i think it'd be good to you know for you to share with the audience just like i i often do during the pictures is you know you obviously talked about all the things to do but when you get pictures like you you teased at the end about you know when people come to you saying they've got some great ideas or with what you've seen in other areas um what do you find that there's any common mistakes that people make in terms of pitching their idea or showcasing what they're about and you know just some things that maybe would be good for people to note that these are like common errors that i suppose people make yeah there's one that really stands out to me and it's a very easy one to address as well um but the amount of times that i have pictures where it's very clear that the person pitching has not done

any research and i feel like it is so important to you know a do research on who you're pitching to um do research on what they're looking for um and do research on you know maybe some of the games that they've already you know published themselves or they've invested in so that you're really understanding the audience because i've seen many times where you know developers are really invested in the the idea that they have and the pitch that they have which is awesome but that might not apply to every single type of audience and i think if you try and pitch something that just isn't applicable it's it's gonna fall down um so my number one advice would be research your audience research who you're pitching to really be sure that you know what they're looking for and if it's the right fit if it's not the right fit it's probably better not to pitch or to you know pitch if you want to you know switch up your idea or if there's something that might fit better but really think about how your pitch is going to fit with who you're pitching to

i think that's a really interesting point and we find that i suppose on the editorial side a lot and i know that you know one or two of our editors are i think are lurking in the attendees and i'm i'm sure at least i hope they would agree is that like it's best for you to not only you know work out the best channel we obviously have pc channels we have vr channels and obviously we're best known for mobile but not just that it's also good to find the right person you know don't be spamming the editor with absolutely everything that you've got if what you're actually looking for is the reviews editor or the person who does the news or or anything like that and you know and i think you gave some really great advice about you know focusing on the unique stuff and and what i would add to that is it's sometimes it's also less is more it's not best to overload people as well i find i don't know if you find that as well it's like stick to your you know your standout moments to an extent and then if you impress them then you'll have all the time in the world to go into all the extra stuff yeah i totally agree that is and it's a

really tough balance isn't it because when you get that meeting with someone you're like i want to just go through everything and i completely understand that but i do agree with you less is more and really tailoring your pitch to who you're presenting to and really understanding like what pieces of content that they really need to see and focusing on those pieces and again it is hard especially you know events like gdc and stuff where you're quick firing across you know different pitches really really quickly and you don't necessarily have time to tailor but sometimes it might actually be better to stop and take a breather rather than going into something that could have you know a detrimental effect for example yeah we have had a question come in uh which i'll quickly ask is uh is it uh it does it matter for you guys if the game idea comes from an indie studio uh as in a team or a solo developer on their own is that important to you um for riot ford specifically we are looking for development studios um specifically devs

that have experienced shipping games before at some point in the future i would love forge to you know branch out a little bit but for now we are very focused on experienced dev studios there are definitely other publishers and investors and collaborators out there that would be happy to to take on you know individual people um you just need to find that particular partner yeah i mean i must uh you know apologies for the shameless plug but i you know i can say like for example on my big indie pitch side of things we we definitely have publishers such as you know like our sponsors uh plug-in digital lion studios as your pocky and then quality they did they don't mind whether it's one individual or others so there's obviously various different avenues but i think it's a really great question for you guys specifically because like you say you know know your audience exactly yeah for right forge a lot of this applies we are looking for you know experienced developers that have shipped games before that have a unique identity that would be a great way to reimagine league of legends yeah

well that's uh fantastic and uh i think after hearing that talk i mean it's amazing we had so much share in common in the sense of i love streets related too i went and lived in japan i worked for ea after that well there you go then similar careers but yes we should talk you make a brilliant judge on our big indie pictures yes i would love to i will be in touch with you after but uh yeah in the meantime if there's no other questions i will let you get back into the web space whether you're going to be enjoying the rest of the talks or getting up to some meetings or anything else enjoy the rest of the day and yeah we can we can talk more about other stuff but thank you for such an amazing tour thank you so much thank you for having me