Launch Day: The Emotional Cost Of Releasing a Game

Hi GDC, and welcome to launch day, the emotional cost of releasing a game. I'm really honored to be here. Thank you so much for letting me come speak about this topic I feel really passionate about at the Indie Summit. I'm Lucy Morris. I'm the studio owner and creative director of Star Cult, which is a small indie studio based out of Wellington, New Zealand. And I'm really looking forward today to exploring some of these, you know, quite secret of topics around the launch of periods that we go through. Just to be clear, I'm not going to be talking to you about how to release your indie game. There's an almost infinite amount of resources out there and thing faces on the best ways to go about this,

and anything that I say at this point I feel is probably just replication of of those things. But what we don't see a lot of analysis of is the emotional and non-technical side of of things running up to release and the struggles that come directly after launch, especially for smaller teams. After my studio released our first title last year and the dust has settled a bit, I thought about this a lot and I wrote a Medium article as kind of a cathartic activity cuz I wanted to get these complex and difficult emotions about this period out and also to see if I was alone in these struggles as we navigate this honestly really difficult environment that we launch titles into at the moment. It turns out I wasn't alone, and the article seemed to resonate with quite a few people. So this is a talk on things that we went

through, experiences that we had, and how to prepare yourself and your team emotionally to release an indie game. What I strongly believe is that there's a gap in our knowledge that it strikes us how to navigate launches in a way that's sustainable to us and sustainable to our teams, and ways to protect ourselves from some of the more unforgiving parts of this gauntlet that all of us are running through. Therefore, this is a talk to prepare yourself for that time. Especially from the perspective of a team from a country that's often left off off of maps in popular media. And a talk to jump-start discussions on the sometimes unrealistic expectations that we set for ourselves, and as well as those that others set for us in our launch windows. So, in August 2020, we released our first title Best Friend Forever on PC and Nintendo Switch. I won't go too much into the game itself in this talk, but for brevity's sake,

it's a dating sim crossed with a dog care simulator. You pet the dogs and you pet the owners. Um to give some context for the tips on this talk and the findings that that we found, I'm going to tell you a little bit about our timeline and the challenges we encountered, and also the emotional reality of launching a game during COVID. Um I acknowledge full-heartedly that in New Zealand, we've been really lucky in terms of our government's response to the pandemic. Um but I think it would also be remiss not to talk about the emotional cost of launching a game in the current climate, and ignore the elephant in the room. Uh the pandemic is something that has affected and is affecting everybody everyone, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Um and this also has an impact on the the non-technical aspects of our release cycles. Um, it's affecting us emotionally and physically. And in addition, if anyone listening to

this has even worked on a game or released a game during the pandemic, I congratulations because it has not been easy and I am very proud of you. So, this was our planned timeline. Um, the studio started up in 2019 at the start of the year. Um, we spent a month setting up the studio and hiring, um, bouncing around ideas for what the project would be and on February, uh, 2019 we started full production. Uh, generally I was aiming for pretty tight production timelines of smaller projects in which we could spend about a year to a year and a half, uh, producing something that would then in turn give us more runway in terms of diversifying, uh, game portfolio and, you know, future-proofing the the future of the studio. So, we announced Plan for a Naults around August and, uh, we went into pre-production slightly after August with the intention to release in 2020 on

Valentine's Day, which would be very fitting for a dating sim. Unfortunately, um, our actual timeline ended up something like this and I feel like this timeline might be quite relatable to anyone that's been navigating release cycles recently. So, this is how we headed into 2020. We were bitter weary and we were utterly exhausted from all the storms that we weathered. Um, as you can see, you know, at the start it was pretty predictable and, um, it was coherent cohesive to our timeline. In August we announced the project via, uh, Nintendo Direct at Gamescom. And then in 2020, um, we encountered like a few normal roadblocks that a a first game studio would encounter and I think they pushed our first release date back a little bit. But at the start of 2020, also COVID started up. Um so we announced a delay in February that we wouldn't be able to release on Valentine's Day. We pushed it back to

May 14th. Um in April, New Zealand went into strict lockdown um for five or six weeks um where we weren't allowed to leave the house except for our state-mandated half an hour exercise or to go to the doctor or the supermarket. Um and this was 2 weeks after we received uh new programmer from Australia. Um we had to pack down our new office that we just moved into, move back home, and uh this was a really difficult period for for us as I'm sure lots of people listening to this can relate to. Um having to maintain the same sort of production output, but have your uh working life and personal life completely upended um while you've got these you know, international pressures going on. So May comes around and we have to delay again. Um things are getting blown out. Um the world is reeling from what's going on. Timelines are impossible to

predict. And the one good thing about this period was that our community was largely really supportive of these delays. Um at least consumers largely seem to understand the struggles that everybody is going through in terms of of COVID right now. But this was demoralizing. Um we managed to hit out of production around late May and headed into post-production. And then August in 2020, we managed to release. And I still can't quite believe this happened because I I just it's so hard to release a game during during this late in the middle of this climate. I am so proud of my team and like sometimes I still think about how amazing and impressive it was to be able to get this game out with all these challenges going on in the background. Um it shows immense mental and emotional fortitude um

to achieve something like this. Uh and then we moved into live ops afterwards um which was quite an intense period um the immediate post-launch maintenance uh period. And I feel like this is really when the emotional cost of development was at its highest. Um it was it was a really intense and difficult time. And around November the intense live ops kind of ended and then it just went onwards indefinitely uh in terms of supporting the game. Like technically the game is still not complete because we are always updating it. We're always adding patches. We're always adding extra content. So it's not really is it even really done? I guess that's the question. So hitting into release window in August, we were already tired. Um we were the usual end of project fatigue where the last 10% takes 90% of the work. And this was also our first title so we poured a lot in trying to make the game

uh make our mark as a lot of indies do do with their first title. Um we were demoralized from announcing delays and pushing back our release three times. It was you know an understandable disappointment from our community. Um it was a disappointment to us because we just really wanted to share what we had been working on. Um and else outwardly it seems like delays can mean a reprieve in terms of work but as developers you understand that a delay just means a longer time until the powerful release. Um it means a long time working on the same project and a longer time before you see the revenue generation from the game, which is, you know, a studio owner is an extra stressor. Uh we were already demoralized uh from these delays and uh we really wanted to share what we thought was like a utopian story that the world needed at that point. We were already

stressed. Um mostly cuz there was so many unknowns surrounding release, and this was true before COVID. Uh but especially during the pandemic, these these stressors were exacerbated in terms of, you know, what whether it'd be received well, what the reviews would say, what issues might be cropping up that need triaging and patching. But also because we had encountered so many roadblocks coming up to this point, it almost felt like, "When is the other shoe going to drop?" Not knowing how external partners were going to manage their own processes amidst their own COVID situations, which uh is super difficult to navigate. Not being able to estimate timelines um when when dates are like the holy grail in um the game's pre-cycle. Uh not being able to perform at the same level of quality and finesse as as releases pre-COVID. You're expected to still meet that bar despite

the fact that the world stage is completely different um right now. But we were excited because we'd been working on this for a year and a half. Um we were passionate about it. We loved the project. And we had seen people love playing it at shows. We had a community that had started to build around that that was very supportive and very kind. And we just wanted to contribute this positive story to a world that was currently turned upside down. And we were glad it was out, but it wasn't done. Um we pushed the button and released, but it's never done once you do that. Um, I'm definitely not saying anything in this talk, just to be clear that this is gospel or anything, but personally, my experience of this immediate post-launch time period was the most difficult part of the whole production cycle. Um, even even bug squashing and um, you know, like other roadblocks that we encountered wasn't as um,

draining as as this was. Launch is your one chance at the moment to legitimize the purpose of your entire production cycle, a year and a half of work, the investment of a significant period of time to create one thing, to prove your concept fully in terms of realization, um, and reception, and likely your biggest chance to make your mark with this artifact. And as in recent past, we can see the zeitgeist coming back around, and sometimes it does happen. Um, it's super rare, and the botched launch is something that never fails to make headlines in games. It's all in all at once, and launch has an immense amount of pressure tied to it because of this. So, pain point one, um, I feel the emotional cost of launching games encountered encompasses several pain points. The first of which being the end point of production is becoming extremely ephemeral.

Um, some of the emotional drain from these launch windows definitely seems to stem from the amount of unpredictability that comes with pressing the release button. Um, the immediate period after launch can be busy keeping up with press, communicating with the community. Um, these are all incredibly time-consuming and sometimes exhausting activities that come at the end of an already full development cycle. But, even aside from that, it seems like we're almost going towards games uh a continual service, not the sense that games are a service and and free-to-play, but the amount of work that is involved post-launch to stay competitive in this market um compared to even say 5 years ago is growing considerably. So, I did a very scientific survey on Twitter. Um I asked a few questions to developers who had released at one at least one commercial title. And these are some topics that I've been thinking about since release and even now, almost a year later, still releasing patches,

still releasing content, still releasing um seasonal content to to eke out some some exposure and sales. And although this isn't quite the traditional sense of games as a service, as I mentioned, the end point of games is moving further and further and further out. We are a continual service if we want a fighting chance these days. And we are providing continuous support and in a lot of cases updates and contents if we want content if we want to be seen. And this has a cost, like not in terms of this is more work that I have to do, but you never really get closure on things at the moment. If you want to buff your long tail or if you uh you know, super interested in in maximizing the the worth of your game over time. So, the first question, did you patch your title within 24 hours of releasing? This includes making a patch build, submitting it to a platform review

queue, or making a patch build and pushing it to users live. 75 people surveyed, 76% said yes. So, this already shows that there is a very like on-call nature in terms of games, that there is a very immediate expectation that issues are supposed to be fixed very quickly. And that, I feel, is another pressure that we have to acknowledge here. How many patches did you push within 7 days of release? Um 54 people responded and 85% said one to three. And I acknowledge this question is very broad because we don't know the length and breadth of those patches. We don't know how big they are or what amount of development time went into it, but I still think that this shows that there is a significant amount of work immediately post release that it comes from just a place of of almost unrealistic expectations of of uh time and um like uh

ability to respond to things quickly. Um if you want to be featured on a holiday sale, you need to update your game with holiday-themed content. If you want to capitalize on momentum after release, like here, you need to keep a watchful eye on issues that crop up, um issues on Steam reviews, and plan into production where feasible to mitigate this these sorts of things happening after release. Um you want to fix them. Um you want to add content. And if you want to keep your community happy, you need to be almost on call, um watching the social media channels, keeping an eye on emails, vetting content creators, doing interviews, responding to reviews that present issues down Steam. And so, production and launch are really only the tip of the iceberg in terms of of production cycles. And it plunges us straight into this games as a continual service cycle that feels like a a hangover after the already intense period of development.

Have you built or pushed a patch outside of your normal working hours for your title after hours or overtime? 57 respondents with 75% saying yes. I feel like this is also concerning because it is showing that we have that on-call nature after release. We are so worried about how um negative things like bugs or less than stellar experiences, which I'm sure no developer wants their consumers to have and is more than happy to fix. The pressure from having to fix these because of the the impact of things of like say negative Steam reviews is becoming more and more of a pressure um and we're having to respond to it quicker and quicker. Um we're expected to be continually responsive in launch windows. Um turn things around at an almost inhuman pace because that launch window is so critical.

And then to a lesser extent around the windows of visibility and that the events to follow, say like summer sales. Um it's now expected to launch patches immediately if not within, you know, a day of finding an issue. Um launch bugs, uh as we've all seen in the press, can make or break a title and losing that edge to negative reviews, no matter how quickly or easily the bug is fixed, can impact your title's entire lifespan. And that combined leads to this huge nebulous on call pressure that we have to respond immediately. We have to be constantly vigilant, that we have to be just hugely emotionally invested and I think this is definitely something that we should talk about a bit more. Pain point two, um post launch on top of pre-production is painful. Um it's not just about releasing a game. Um while you're knee deep in this um like pool of lava that is post launch, you also have to have the brain space to

be directing pre-production on the next thing. And this will depend on how you run your studio, but um as I mentioned at the start of the talk, I really wanted to have tight production cycles. I wanted to have um a good foundation to move forward into the next project as quickly as possible. So, I had to have the brain space to be creative and um look towards the next thing. Um the presence of mind to learn from my mistakes from from this launch um and be objective while also, you know, knee-deep in this lava. I have to be able to support and guide my team towards our next shot um to to sustain the studio while looking at, you know, this this miasma and wondering if if I caused them or if it was my fault or something I could have done better for my team, something I could have guided us to avoid. And that period post launch, especially for people directing,

um is incredibly confronting. Um as things go wrong, we we feel bad. Um we feel sometimes guilty or or ashamed or, you know, if only I'd worked harder I could have caught this. Um if only I had done XYZ, then, you know, this process might have been easier. And I definitely felt a lot of that after the game came out. Um but at the same time, I want this this difficult feedback. It's just on top of having to be intensely creative overlapping with pre-prod. That is an intensely difficult um That's the dichotomy that I experienced after launch. It's hard and exhausting and it's the most difficult thing I've had to do is to be objective um and be a buffer for the team um while also trying to tap into a very exhausted creative part of me to move forward into the next

project. And I think it can't be understated that often we're creating emotional work at a large emotional cost to ourselves, which may not be immediately apparent, but definitely has become more apparent to me going forward. Uh the release playing field is now less level than it ever was, and I feel like this is the biggest um hurt that I continue to feel in terms of release, but the one I feel is also most unlikely to change cuz this is mostly out of our reach. Um you are expected to perform at the same level of of finesse of quality as anyone did pre-COVID. Um you were judged on the the same playing field um as you ever were, and the reality is that that playing field is not level um in terms of team size. Um you were judged in the same way regardless of world stresses. Um it's been very very difficult to to reconcile that the fact that we're being judged the same having having struggled

through a release in a pandemic than before. Um regardless of team resources, regardless of where your staff is located and and what your time zone is. For instance, launch windows are very North American time zone-centric, and we often found ourselves being up at 4:00 in the morning to to action things, which is, you know, is exhausting, and it's another it's another physical and emotional commitment to make to to this process. Um regardless of connections, like who you know, um you know, what publisher you found. Um depending on where you're located in the world as well, like there could be very few or or quite a lot of options open to you. And regardless of experimentation um in terms of production, I've often noticed that experimentation and and sub- subverting of genre is very welcome when when you release, that is very much not the case, and when expection expectations are subverted and money is involved, the reception is

quite different. Um so, I just found the entire playing field quite uneven um in many ways. And it's very easy to sit here and say, "Hey, that's unfair." We're all in the same boat, and we should recognize that and know that we're all we we are all in that same boat. We are all working to sometime like the standard up here that we not might not all be able to reach because of anything on this list, and we will be judged the same. And I think this will tie into a point I'm going to make in a second, which is be kind to yourself and be realistic. Um pain point four, launch was about making wrongs right. Um and that is good, but it eclipsed enjoying what rights were right for us. Um if you're a community manager, or if you're like head of a studio or planning busy, you'll have to kind of just wade into everything negative about the game when it launches because you have to because you need to

react to it, and you need to action those things. Um when positive or negative reviews dictate so much of our worth and future viability on storefronts, you need to digest these narratives, and engage with them, and that is super important. But, I think it's also important to acknowledge this overwhelming and draining. This is something that you've worked on for a long time. It is natural to to feel like this process is difficult. And that's not to say don't fix bugs. Definitely do fix bugs, but do it sustainably. We wanted this feedback. We only wanted our consumers to have the best experience. And yeah, like anything touched with sweaty human hands that came out with flaws and imperfections, we released eight patches in 77 days with 40 to 50 fixes um as a team of just four. And we responded to bug reports via email, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Steam forums. Um we monitored email channels, and we itemized quality of life feedback so we could give our our consumers like a actionable plan going forward.

And we wanted to give them the best experience, the experience we wanted them to have. And at the end of this highly charged marathon, we were just like heaving for breath at this point. And it is it is hard. Like you want to enjoy this imperfect sweaty creation. But instead of like sitting there and just looking at it, you've immediately got to be going, "Right, what's wrong? Let's you know, let's fix this issue. Let's make everybody happy." Because you want to. Have you felt pressured to create a patch outside of normal working hours, after hours, or overtime because of negative reviews, complaints, or social media pressure? 50 respondents, 70% said yes. I feel like this is also something that we should be talking about. Um This is people saying that they feel the need to work on call because of the the negative impact that, you know, this these expectations are having on us and on our on our games. Um we obviously need to create a more

sustainable system where we can work on these things healthily and not create such um unrealistic expectations for ourselves. Uh do you currently have any negative reviews on your product on any platform for issues that have since been patched? Um 46 respondents, 76% said yes. This is also important. Um We have all of this pressure on us. And even despite our best efforts, it can still result in uh things that negatively affect our long tails that might not always be super accurate. Um and not often want to talk about Apple, but having reviews that are only reflected in terms of the latest patch or latest update might be a way to get around this. Um I don't know. I'm not here to like create new game platforms or anything, but there are definitely issues um in in this ecosystem that we should probably discuss. What would we change for round two that

we could have changed um A lot of this is kind of out of our hands, but change one, we would have sort of facilitated better peer feedback in pre-prod or early production, specifically peer feedback. We had tons of consumer feedback, but that imbalance really worked against us when we when we launched and we saw that there were some, you know, issues with design and systems that I feel like only um an experienced peer probably could have caught beforehand. So, I came up with this amazing Venn diagram, very artistic. Um this is what you need in in pre-prod or early prod, which is the holy grail of feedback. You want it to be feedback you can action, feedback that's realistic for your team's resources, your production timeline, and you know, if you're at a point in production, the things that might be suggested that are difficult to implement because that's simply the nature of of game development. You can't do everything. Feedback you can trust from peers that

have experience, that know what they're talking about, um that can save you from walking off any cliffs accidentally that that they might have done in the past and avoid you replicating like easily avoidable mistakes. Um and feedback that's constructive. Very important. We don't just want people to tell us, "Hey, your game sucks." Um the ultimate sweet spot is things that you can actually implement from uh sources that you can trust that you can rely on, and that are constructive in a way that actually allows you to take action and implement those things. But getting this good peer feedback is hindered by our weaknesses in not giving good feedback. It is not easy to give good feedback, and this is something we really need to work on. Not being able to receive feedback objectively, not wanting to hurt feelings, few established channels to get that real feedback, and the fact that good feedback takes time and effort, which a lot of us uh lacking.

Um and it was cathartic and relieving to hear compliments about our game, but we honestly needed more critical real feedback to save this pain down the line. Um added relief to help outside our time zone working hours and launch window. Again, we were at NZDT plus 12. Everything went out in PST time zones. We were working at 4:00 a.m. It was crappy. Um manage expectations and be kind to ourselves, realizing that the playing field isn't even. Um taking time to appreciate the successes that we've had and the things we managed to achieve is really important. Block out time for that in your team to to do this and be mindful of what you've accomplished. Have a better post-mortem plan for both mechanical and non-mechanical needs. Um this involved, you know, things like self-care, protecting the team, um hiring that that comms person to to be a buffer between the negative feedback and translating it um when the team might be

feeling raw, I think is really important. And keep talking about this and not forgetting the value you bring with the launch. Platforms are lucky to have you, and we should be talking about these things to hold them accountable. So, a summary, um seek support and counsel from others who have been through the process. Be kind, be realistic, um make sure that you realize where you stand in terms of trying to achieve these these very very high expectations. Um what kind of state the world is in at the moment. Um plan forward for extra support, blind spots, buffers, and time zone issues. We definitely would hire a community manager or a comms manager to to go through all of this feedback and all of these channels after launch, and really help us not just in terms of being awake when we're not, but also being able to be a little bit of a buffer when you're

in this launch period and feelings might be raw and and, you know, tensions might be high because it was definitely a difficult time for us. Um work constructive peer feedback into your production cycle from an early stage. So, accessing peer knowledge, um not being afraid to to expose designs, um and and receive critical feedback, even though you might be protective and and very loving of your systems, um this is definitely something we're actioning going forward into our next project, and we definitely I I specifically have to be less precious about um um receiving feedback because in the end I want feedback that I can trust that's actionable and that is going to give the game the best shot in this really difficult um environment we're launching into. That is super helpful, and peers don't want you to be replicating their mistakes. So, that was a lot. Um

thank you so much for listening. If you want to contact me, you can email me here, um and best of luck with your launches.