Marcin Świerkot - How to iterate and use crowdfunding / Early Access

foreign [Music] and today I wanted to kind of share with you our journey on whatever we learned from The crowdfunding Early Access and we are a company that was uh what I call a true startup meaning that we started up in the basement with five thousand policies Lotus and throughout 10 years grew to almost 200 people and we are only able to grow like that because of crowdfunding and because of uh and and we did all of that with only our kind of internal Capital so no investors right only right now we accept a few of them

but you know for nine years we did all organic growth only our own capital from you know zero people to to 200 and good healthy business and I think that crowdfunding is an amazing tool especially for games especially for video games board games because we also started as a boarding company kind of want to share with you all my lessons from that period so I'm the CEO of the company but I'm also a founder and I'm also doing a lot of kind of like marketing design so I'm kind of all around the place so with this presentation will be a little bit all around the place from kind of business to design and all the benefits and cons because there are obviously cons as well we'll start with uh just quick audience track I always like to see you know whatever who am I talking to in terms of you know what things I will focus on second question how many of you are making like totally indie games and are thinking about using Early Access or crowdfunding just raise your hand

all right how many of you are you know working for a middle-sized Publishers that are just thinking about using marketing uh car funding in marketing or whatnot nice none okay and how many of you are thinking about making like other products like board game or some physical stuff all right we've got a few items okay awesome thank you all right so just quickly uh I wanted to kind of showcase few numbers because uh you know one one of those whenever I go to a presentation my first question is like why should I even listen to you so here are a few numbers just to kind of note to both but to kind of showcase the type more or less know what I'm talking about so in general we did uh throughout the years on crowdfunding and this includes Kickstarter and our own platform uh game pound so in board games we did over 70 million dollars of uh funding and we had tainted Grail which was one of the biggest Kickstarter of 2018 uh then we had them as this lockdown interface Isis Vanguard we basically had like I think

by now we have like 16 projects that are funded delivered and and and a lot of like basically like over half a million backers uh across all the projects uh we also created a game a dedicated platform for tabletop games so this is game found right now we have almost a million users uh this is the fastest growing platform it's the fastest growing because it's still small so it's easy to grow fast if you're small but uh but you know right now we're growing for every year right now over a thousand projects so this is a kind of like a platform for everything table top so RPGs games board games things like that um and we also right now are aggressively going into an early access uh on Steam which is sort of crowdfunding to some extent right um and with the tension clay Conquest which right now is fully released game

with almost 300 000 copies sold and you can see all the all the numbers in here one thing that I would recommend looking is thank you very full of Avalon because right now the game is in Early Access and you will hear about it next year when it will come out it can still be one of the best RPGs of next year but we also had our first year of failures uh you know the message distance didn't really go well uh business-wise number is this lockdown as well so kind of you know had some success had some failures learned a lot it was a fun you know both of them were very fun and my biggest achievement you know our board game was on South Park Nemesis and you know one day I woke up on my Facebook there was all around Cartman hold the game and talk about Nemesis it was Best Day Ever uh Forbes cover doesn't uh doesn't matter for me anymore because you know I can die happy now um so okay so let's start it a little bit reversed uh so okay why shouldn't

you go early access because just a week ago we had our uh our first not Early Access Premiere so all our previous digital games were in Early Access but this time we decided okay let's try something new we'll just go go ahead and do a full publish and you know I have a fresh fresh kind of knowledge of like what is cool about going straight to Premiere instead of Early Access process so very quickly go over that and then we'll go to the focus on the on the Early Access so okay so uh one super important thing if you're an indie developer obviously you don't have a lot of marketing money blah blah you need to rely on organic traffic and that's why steam is such a great platform because steam will promote your game for free if uh certain certain criterias are met and those criterias ask you need to have at least 5 000 wish lists quality wish list right if it is like if you will buy wishlist from India it does it will not really count so you

don't need to be quite quality wish lists and if you do usually you will end up here meaning popular upcoming games and what is important in here is that you will be in popular upcoming only once this is this is main main page of steam so a lot of traffic uh more or less if you're here it's around from a thousand to three thousand wishlists per day being in here uh for free so no marketing spending you get thousand two to three thousand wishes and um but but you will be here only once so if you decide to do Early Access you will be here but then if you release for the full Premiere you will no longer be in the popular upcoming right on the other hand if uh your game will sell very well in Early Access you will not be in new and trending because new and trending there are no Early Access games only fully release games so if you'll be in the best sellers yes Early Access

normally will be in the best sellers but you will not be in the slot new and trending and this is what was our main focus on the decision to make Early Access because with this game it was a pretty much ready game uh so we decided okay let's not divide the sales into kind of two periods so Early Access and then full release let's make it all together because we hoped that the sales will be enough to get us to new and trending and this is again top page of steam a lot of organic promotion for free right and it it it's happened thankfully right so with this game with panoramas it's actually happened it helped us to push us over to the front page of steam the game did well you know reviews are possible uh positive so so great story so um so so that's what one of the kind of thing is that just to kind of show you how the how the wish list uh shows and and what are you playing for this is the

graph of the wish list and as you can see if you compare it so you know here before the the popular upcoming and new and trending with its um internal marketing but you know it's very expensive especially for an indie Studio to get wishlist with like page traffic like either on Facebook or whatever so you can see how big those graph spikes are with whenever you are promoted on those special places on Steam it's a popular upcoming uh you know you get a you know two thousand uh 1.5 000 wishes and then if you get to New and friendly you suddenly have a huge Spike popularity people see the game obviously they also buy the game then right but it is like a huge visibility Spike for your game um so I I would I would if so basically for me it comes about the product uh so if your game is ready if you if you think your game is not free skimming not trying anything crazy but it's like in setup genre or you know you have like a

follow-up game or whatever uh you have hype you're recognizable okay you don't need Early Access probably you can just go ahead create one huge event get the sales being a wish in the in the kind of top spot uh of the wish list right uh and best sellers and then news and trending and all of that will kind of accumulate into uh into hopefully a successful uh say story but obviously you know very often uh we're not sure about games and you know I wanted to kind of come in here because I'm a huge believing in crowdfunding and especially crowdfunding for games and it worked wonders for us and I think that for everyone who's really willing to commit to the process it will not only help help you be more successful successful on the business terms and marketing pairs but also just create a much much better game and you know and and engage community and all of that will come together into hopefully a great success so like the first question is like okay

like why would I need Early Access and the the answer is because we as game developers have no idea what does it mean to what good game does mean right we have some hunches but at the end of the day we don't know it and we need to face it straight up we might have some idea that maybe the game that we're working on is fun but at the end of the game there is no some magical you know quantifiable formula of a good game where the game is when the game is fun when it is fun and people decided you will not decide it right and you know my favorite story about it is small board game uh that was developed in uh in in the first half of the century uh of the 20th century which which there was like a doctor's thesis that she really hated the capital market for um uh for for for property because she knew that the if you if you apply a capitalism to the uh property Market

buildings buying buildings it will end up uh in strategy basically whoever will start buying sooner will win the game basically right because the properties are there and so far so she created a board game to illustrate how sick this system is right and the game is called Monopoly and this is the best seller game ever she wanted to illustrate a point that the system is not working and what Humanity did it like best game ever right and Monopoly is extremely bad design extremely bad it is unbalanced there is multiplying lack factors and there's like no engine building no great like if you show it to any proper game designer who will just you know go crazy if if seeing this game right but it is the best seller and people love it and if people love it then it means it's a good game that's this is this is how the world works right so you know we don't know it you

know like Disney doesn't know how to make a Next Star Wars movie with all the money in the world and most talented stuff in the world right they don't know how to do it and how many stories are there of Games game designers who are putting in games out there without any testing or whatever and surprise surprise oh the game is not fun Community is actually not finding the games fun right so you know at the end of the day we don't know and we need to accept it and the sooner we will push our games against people who will play it and test the fun Factor the better for the product for us and for us understanding the potential of it right and the thing is that obviously we can do testing with you know focus groups and whatever if you have the money for art most of us here probably doesn't have the money for that right but one thing that I kind of learned throughout the years is uh you know the best vote is whenever when when people are voting with money

very easy it's to kind of post a com posting a comment is free right and very often you will go into the Trap of like a vocal small minority who will force up changes but they are actually not really invested in it uh voting with money is very something very important so that's why uh that's why it's really kind of uh interesting and you know this is something that I always say to Almighty to all our teams both board games and and computer games making games is iterative process you make something and you bounce it off of the people then you you know you need to correct it and go back maybe some mechanics doesn't work you need to throw throw it out you need to maybe add something new and you basically go back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth and at some point you need to decide this is the finished product and and ship it right and this is maybe it's just me but this is the only way and I talked with a lot of people this is the only way to make quality games it's go back and

forth with people make iterations of the games see what makes sense what doesn't make sense look at analytics look how people interact with the game and then decide what state what goes and you know trying to you know create a waterfall you know planning the game and then executing it and then shipping it it's asking yourself for a tragedy because you have no idea how people will interact with with the game and all you know like multiple example of those uh games that were huge success or no one see seen it you know mobile games no one see mobile games coming it was a mod to uh to Warcraft free and just people went crazy about it with daughter League of Legends and things like that right so no one's in the comic no one's incoming pubg those were all games that were mods developed with the community going back and forth back and forth until they reached out this kind of you know perfected mode of play that was

something extremely new extremely fresh you know this is what if you're an indie indie game designer this is what you're aiming you cannot make a copy of an you know old game because like why would someone buy it you know a copy of like worst copy of something you need to find something new right this is your target so if you're making something new there are a lot of creative risks there are a lot of creative questions that you need to ask yourself and a lot of this process of going back and forth in those situations are necessary like you cannot make this game otherwise because again there's no magical formula of a good game you need to see what makes people uh Happy um okay so so why just not ask right and we're as a game designers we're we have one huge Advantage right and as you know from the business point and from the design point and from the artist form and this is why you know uh so many people love to be a game designer is because uh people actually want to find a great

game and you know for us it is pretty much natural right because you're looking for a great entertainment right but any other industry doesn't have this luxury because no one is you know no one is want to find next great toothbrush right it's like you don't care about it that much right but people are invested in games they want to be a part of you know of the process they want there there will be you know there are a lot of people in the world and there will be people that dreamed about the game that you're making and they want to make it a reality they want to be a part of the journey they want to help you they will get involved and they will you know they will suffer through your shitty builds with 10 000 bucks and no of the optimization because they want to help you get there they want to enjoy it right uh and enjoy the journey and uh you know and it is rare and we should use it if people want to be you know

part of the community if they want to help you we should use it because we need all the help we need because creating games is not an easy task so you know we can gather feedback and test potential at the same time meaning not only we are you know we have some kind of playable build that we are showing to people uh but also we have the possibility to you know very realistically see whether someone want to buy our game and this is super important because if no one is willing to buy our game even if the reviews are good then we have a problem maybe we need to Pivot maybe we want to change assumption or maybe we need to kill the project and move to something else because you know you can trust me on that because I had one example of that it's better to you know kill a project before you spend a million dollar on it and you know without making any money it's much

better to know sooner right and just to move to something next because not only you will potentially lose a lot of money and making games can be making games can get really expensive really fast if you have a team you know a monthly burn rate um but also it's not even about the money it's also about your time and potential and burnout you know no one want to make a product that no one is little we're in here because we want for people to play our games right so if there are no interest for our games well maybe we need to change something drastically or or move the goal post um so this only works if so one thing that I show that I've seen is that you know companies going to An Early Access as a you know not really a or of like a business decision and creative decision and I never seen it worked um well so it only works if you are really actually committed to listening to community to be prepared to change

Assumption of your games to you know do changes that Community will ask you to change and to basically change your game into the better iteration it is hard very often right uh because sometimes you know those will be hard changes or you know the feedback will be negative or whatnot uh but you know if from our experience always people will really appreciate a developer willing to listen and willing to put in the work and then they are feeding us a part of the team so they are actually feeling us you know they are helping to actually make the game better uh and it's very satisfying for them as well um so as I said it helps you cut your losses much earlier or invest more if you see the potential or even you know this is a great example then to Showcase you know you want to find a publisher you know if you have a business business use case it's so much easier if you already sold copies like it's drastic

difference showcasing that you already sold copies that people are playing your games that reviews are possible are positive uh all of that so much easier to talk to anyone and also as I said before people voting with money is super important because uh you know as I said and you know many many times uh listening to feedback is cool uh you know all good but for example from the board game test one example that I can give you is you know very often we would have like first of all there's cultural difference we would go to SN first biggest first in in the board gaming space in Germany and for example you know there will be Americans playing our games and they'll be like oh man this game is the best game ever and in their mind it's like 7 out of ten and then there will be Germans coming in and they'll be like yeah that's okay and they're thinking like nine out of ten so and and you know there are those cultural difference that you know you

subconsciously don't think about it but they're very very real that's the one thing but the second thing is like for example when we design board games and we test the games on like five space we're not actually listening what people are saying but for example we are looking for a moment where the player will take out their phone and check their messages right dismissed oh okay so in that moment he was not engaged there's some down time there he's not really enjoying the game because he thought about you know checking his phone or whatever so very often like having an analytics in-game or kind of being able to see people interact with the game and and you know for people to pay their money and then play the game it's also very different because they will have a more realistic expectation because they paid money so they have some expectation of you and this is what you will face off when you kind of Premiere uh Premiere the game uh one cool example that we had with dental degree Conquest is uh for example just to give you example how you can use Early Access practically it's like uh so technically like gray Conquest was uh

uh it was uh uh roguelike deck builder with RPG elements so there was story you know there were 3D models 3D combat but it was card based so basically roguelikes you had enemies and basically you know we published the game and it was like not not great not terrible you know this is this is this is a feeling that you need to get used to early in early accesses because it will not answer your it will not be overnight success it's a it's not a Sprint it's a marathon so usually for a half a year you'll not really know because the sales are eh they are there but they're not crazy you know so we need to kind of keep on working and you kind of go back and forth with Community to see what exactly people people people value so you know we made the game it had several instances it had cards it had enemies it had story it has so first we tested okay like people were asking for events so it created an event line of the uh Rhino of

the Rat because rat was one of the most annoying enemies and we kind of created especially even around that and you know like okay some people liked it but you know we didn't see a huge player Spike or whatever so then we had like oh maybe we'll add a story right maybe the story is the element that people want from the game and we know we we added a story element it was like fine some people came in or whatever and then okay so not sorry not this so okay how about a new class that you could play so different play style and people suddenly you know went mad uh twice the engagement even more much more people came in played the game tested the game and it was like okay so this is it people want more classes right so then we added in total nine different playable classes and you know people were super happy with it because they had like a different play style and this gave them a lot of value so as you see you know like we had a game which had like five different elements but we didn't knew exactly what element is most important to the players

whether it's the story or combat or whatnot right and thanks to that we were able to in the development you know selling the game were able to actually decide with the people what is the most important aspect of it um sorry so how to start and and I would say like uh you know if you're looking to do an early access just a quick uh quick an idea of like um how to chronologically do stuff uh so first you know uh one thing that I always say is start as soon as realistically possible the first crowdfunding thing that we ever did is like we had like it was called The Edge so we we fought off of a game The Edge it was supposed to be a war game it was nine years ago and literally we had one concept art one concept of nothing else one concept art and the name of the game and I went through on Facebook groups like Warhammer 40 000 whatever and I just shared the concept everywhere I said

like oh guys we're making this game this is our fun page you know Gorilla Marketing no money for for marketing so just like organically and like oh what do you guys think about the concept do you like it or not or whatever right it was a cool concept some people made interest in it or not but we never wait and we still don't wait because there's pointless like we as a customers are used to you know Grand reveals you know like oh Diablo 4 trailer teaser trailer before a trailer you know everyone is excited everyone is hyped but one thing that you kind of need to understand is none of a series blizzard right no one cares really no one cares about whatever we're making uh so there's no really point in hiding in making great you know huge releases surprise releases trailers you know obviously weaker right we're excited about this to us it's the most important game ever and so forth I know we need to be realistic about that

um and you know the sooner we can start the better we can just start with the team because sometimes what will kill the game is a team you can have a good gameplay but you can have just a wrong team you'll just steampunk but you know fantasy is more important and fantasy is more popular at this moment or cyberpunk or whatever and I've seen it in the board game industry a lot of time meaning a bay a game that went out in sci-fi team was like eh success then rest rescued itself to Fantasy and suddenly this was like five times more successful because it was just a better fit it happens all the time so why not test it earlier you know we should test it as soon as possible and this is you know constant battle with with perfectionism um because uh we have like most of the people who I work with in gamedev has this like oh it needs to be perfect before I show it especially artists they never want to give you assets that are half ready or

whatever super hard super hard to get people to actually showcase the work that is not finished uh but an interesting thing about perfection is that not everyone knows and I'm interested if you guys know about it you know that perfectionism is actually a psychological condition uh so yeah if you Google on Wikipedia it's actually very uh yeah it's it's not good so it's good to it's good to combat it in yourself um because uh again like we like obviously it's good to do things on High level for sure right but it's really bad to spend a lot of like to sink a lot of time into something that doesn't matter that's one of the you know the games are super multi-layer complex things right you have art you know 3D 2D ux there's like so many things so many things to do and you always have a limited budget and you always have a limited time and you know and you need to pick things you need to

pick what you will follow what you will focus on and what you just do how fast right you need to do those things you need to make those decisions uh and the only way I know to decide it kind of realistically that will make sense is to show it to the people and see what do they care about and what do they not care about we are not making games for ourselves we're making games for other people so whatever they think is most important you should focus as the most important thing right so we need to pass it off them all the time and then you know all the bad things uh all the non-important thing just do them whatever and focus on the most important thing and a great example of that is a board game called terraforming Mars I don't know if you know it you guys know it all right okay so what do you think about the graphic art of the cards and the production value right super shitty you know like all components and everything right but it's a great game

who cares if you know you have pictures of cows it's a great game it's a good game it's fun and the game place is more important right so it was super successful super successful because they did what was the most important thing they did really well and all the things that you know kind of mattered but really didn't matter you know they didn't care about it um and you know and I've seen it multiple multiple multiple times so if you will do the most important if you'll do one thing really well that is really important then your game will be super successful I remember I was early early days uh DOTA player uh so once it was like the mode to Warcraft free and to play DotA it was like hell basically there was all Brazilian people playing and it was like disconnecting all the time it was super unbalanced but it was so fun that you couldn't stop so it was all that it had so many negative stuff

but people kept on playing because he did one thing really good and it was like something new and any other game couldn't offer it if you get this one thing and you focus on it and you say that it clicks with people this is where like extreme success is um anyway and if you have already you know if you have oh that's not what so if you have like already built Community for example like us uh we usually do on our board games we do polls uh basically for example you know we need to create a new miniature to our board game or create a new class for our game we'll just do a poll we'll just do four cool designs that we are fully comfortable with and then run it for the people and whatever they will choose this is what we will do it's not a risk for us creative risk because all of those designs are fine with us um you know sometimes we'll kind of uh sometimes we'll decide differently but very often people will have like a really you know one thing that I found about working with communities like

people have really good decisions there's like you know like this kind of community it really works it really kind of has a good taste in things they are choosing good good Solutions it's really awesome um so you know one of the most important thing is gathering early adopters so meaning the base people excited about your idea and they will be your kind of um you know your most engaged uh group and you can do it on Facebook you can do it on on Discord whatever is your thing just trying to to gather them uh is you know usually for organic means either use Twitter or or Tick Tock or whatever it is then you think uh but super important to communicate with them and that means not only to you know GitHub days but also to react to whatever they are saying to talk with these people to kind of create this community and one really cool thing is that um if done correctly they will feel like a

part of your team we for example for attention gray will have people that created absolutely for free uh Wikipedia fund on Wikipedia page with all the cards and everything tutorials on YouTube spread the word again the game because you know they were the part of the journey it is not only that they didn't only purchase the game they helped created it they are part this is partly their game they're so much more involved and that's the beauty of crowdfunding Early Access because normally is like just a transaction you buy a game you play it that's it right but if you do a correct you know good Early Access good crowdfunding campaign you're actually making people much more involved it is not simple e-commerce not simple sale but it is okay but it is you know but this is an actual you know a more emotional uh you know involvement and people actually feel proud because

of their games because they were from the beginning they remember all the stories of unbalanced items and everything and it's really cool to to have and you know the last one is also don't is better that's bad than perfect it's really quite important okay I'll quickly skip up through the last slide so that you will still have some times for the questions uh I'll just so so from my experience what is needed for an early access you need to have a key gameplay Loop or gameplay idea and one thing super important just keep it as you know no the scope is everything just think of one mechanics one is in one is big enough I think of one thing and and make one thing good and that's good uh you know so one thing that is uh you know early access there are a lot of Early Access games coming out so the quality bar is kind of high right now so it's good not to have game breaking box though we launched uh entered grade full of Avalon like what months ago and there

was a bug that basically if you jumped in the wrong place it deleted all your saves and people lived through that right so yeah I mean you know if if you get it right then I guess uh I guess it's it's like 80 positive reviews still so you know surprising um you know you need to have obviously some basic audio and visuals but super important I would say like least important Point having a great gameplay look much more important than visuals it is called a game for a reason because it's a gameplay right it's a game right uh some form of balance again this is again very not uh not important communication is super important so that you show the game you need to show people that you're in here because there are a lot of Early Access graveyards out there with like games that just went out never communicated nothing it is good to show people that uh that you understand it and the Why by now is also very very very important basically you know you

need to give those people a deal right meaning that okay now you're here with this shitty build with full of bags or whatever but you'll get half a nice so you know once the game will come out you'll get something extra in value right or you'll be a part of the process so you'll get like special art book digital art book whatever it is you need a reason for people so that they will have something for joining in early and yeah example of audience buildings for technical so this is you know throughout the Early Access you are continuing to not only sell the games but also build your wish list and to kind of you know then hopefully at the release you have a much much better game and it takes off and so forth and so forth and very quickly yeah positives or one thing okay I talked more or less about everything bigly motivation this is super important because um usually you know if you work for a game for a super long time it's super demotivating because you know you're

working on something you don't see your result of but if you open an early access you actually see people playing the game and this is super fulfilling one of the best feeling in the world you created awesome game people enjoy it super additional motivation you know you bounce it off people it just feels good because you see the results of your work uh negatives Community can be toxic you know we are in the internet so you kind of need to deal with it unfortunately uh and feedback is often hard to imply interpret again uh so that's something that you know you need to not only read but also look at analytics and everything and risk of negative reviews uh that's probably from the business sense the most important ones if you start early access it is undercooked or whatever sometimes you'll get you know below 50 reviews for example and it might just kill your game right on the other hand the other hand I've seen stories of coming back from it right for example what um

there was this space game I forget the name oh yes no Mexican yes so you can come back from it after three years or four years I guess but well it takes a lot um and you know and another thing is that one thing that is very very good and this is the lesson that we were that we learned be upfront on your early access page that you can save wipe and basically you know whenever you make a huge because if you will not then people might feel betrayed or angry with you that you are deleting the sales and if you will not be willing to delay the save sometimes you would want to do some bigger change in the gameplay or mechanics or the engine and it will actually be impossible with like it will cost you like four times the work so it's just much much easier like you shouldn't you shouldn't structure your Early Access in a way that early access will hinder your development of the

product the the game game development is the most important Early Access comes kind of secondary at the end of the day the game is more most important uh so it's good to just basically let people know like listen you know your saves might be wiped your progress may be wiped so be prepared for that and then usually they will like usually people are cool with that they understand that but it's good to kind of like let them know uh failures and lessons uh you know don't spend big budgetes before before Early Access uh so if you're going for Early Access just go for the access and try to live in the scope and the scope is everything really like we by now we've done like eight digital games and 15 board games and I can tell with confidence that the biggest decision is the deciding on scope what to put in what to cut out the the most important decision and it's a secret and don't go to two big projects uh make some something extremely new meaning like a new mode of play is super risky each must and very risky uh so

which mark it is much easier to go with like uh uh for example uh tender Grail Conquest was laid aspired with a Twist basically right so this is the Inspire about with RPG elements so very often it's much easier to do like an established genre and then kind of make like a Twist of it right then just trying to go with uh something extremely risky but on the other hand where there is an extreme risk there's extreme potential rewards right but if this is your first game maybe consider doing something that people have like some similarities right so they can say and understand when to quit is also very important just to respect your time your team's time your budgets just understand when to click if to is also a hard decision to make but sometimes you just need to Pivot you just need to drastically change the design process or you know try to find something else and that's it and I have a time for questions we have five minutes even even seven

nice uh okay we have seven minutes per questions uh hello thank you for for a talk and uh I want to ask to question first is uh What uh kanal you used to communicate with your audience in reaccess and second question is um and do you differentiate or try it not really accessed by a hidden like a better branch of steam which and the difference between those sure um so okay so the first question is like we usually communicate through Steam it's most important one just to be active on the Forum do updates like establish like I know like monthly update and then just stick to it so every month you show progress it doesn't

have to be every month if you you push a new build because it can kill your team but it should be like every month you show a sign of life so people know that you're working on stuff so just showing work in process and people actually from my end on marketing because I also see marketing very often work in progress things are more interesting for people than Finnish things so that's that's interesting uh and and so this but we also do Discord for ourselves but to be honest it's like it depends on the genre and type of audience you have we have more kind of core audience so Gamers game and Discord is very you know works works well with them um ask for the second question whether you know we do better branches or just push the build for the Early Access we do both basically so we have like so we have layers of Early Access so we have the Early Access is kind of like most common thing but then we have like a uh you know like for the Discord server sometimes we'll push out like before Early Access push update I will push to

them for like back finishing or whatever and I we have like a secret bunker which is like you know 20 most trusted people and then we'll push like even crazier things and craziest changes there uh so there's like those kind of levels uh but uh the question whether you know uh not to go with the beta instead of Early Access I wouldn't go there because uh you need to see how many people are willing to pay for your idea and you will not you will not see the potential in the game until you have this verification because people might be interested but it might they might not be willing to pay for it and then it it means it's a bad idea basically so you need this kind of like business verification to understand whether the game has actually a marriage or not right right okay thank you cool I want to ask you about um about wishlist because at the beginning

you make it use it as the proof for the why we don't why we shouldn't publish in Early Access but then you use other light Motif the voting by wallet because as you said clicking is not not really worthy so how do you think is it wish list really important indicator to to measure the potential of the game because because we know we can no problem with both something some kind of you know sure understand uh which is the second most important factor I would say uh and there's wishlist as follows right those two different so the photos are kind of more more engaged wishes and I would say that they are the after after purchasing consumers are most important but also you know if you want to have like a great day one on Steam super important to have those wishlist build up you are right we which this will not always convert if you don't have a great game right so that's why when they're on

the decision whether you want to go straight to to lunch or you could go early access my answer would be how certain are you that the game is completed and good because if the game is completed good you know you tested it multiple times everyone loves it it's engaging you can go straight to the release but very often you don't very often it's like kinda ready you don't know right and then it's much better to go early access because you will not burn your potential you still have like a second slot where you can actually make it right make it out and uh you know which is just like a part of it it's just like it's a general interest but then you need to convert okay I just actually changed my question right now okay I will be clear uh I will give my personal example I am actually a lead game programmer in a

company I'm planning to quit my my company in the next month I have a okay yeah yeah yeah no I will do I already talked with them okay I I have what I believe to be a very good idea of a game I am willing to I I actually I will be committed to this game I am for now alone what should I do should I because you said involve the community from the beginning in Accra funding if if I really think I if I really believe in this idea uh but you know I don't have any base of followers anything like that so I am completely alone right now sure okay so this is a good example and one thing that I will tell you and this is super important and mark my words because it's important uh and don't take it the wrong way but don't think your idea is worth anything right now because as I say ideas are like everyone got one right but

your idea can be really good right but why I'm saying that is well maybe some virtualization is not just ID I have already I understand okay it's a design so it kind of I am at this point that I'm ready sure but why am I saying that because I think that there's a great Wharf in um passing amounts the idea with people right and this there's a great because generally in like Facebook groups on Reddit forums people hate whenever you try to do self-promotion like oh guys check out my games they hate it right but it changed drastically if you do like hey guys and you're like you're really honest about it and you're like hey guys you know I have this idea this is my story you know and you know I'm I'm thinking about making these games like what do you guys think right this is something that you would play or how would you change it and then it actually changes because people want to help you they will be actually telling you uh so I would if I were you I would just go about it like don't be secret about your

idea just go out it just you know ask people what do they think and see what you know whether there's a conversion and and whether people is interested in one um because you know like I'm saying you know I I had like so many people that coming in and coming like you know I have this idea but I need to sign you NDA first and whatever like I've seen so many areas and it's like ideas without execution are nothing right you need to like the devil is in the details and especially in games like I have 10 000 ideas for games right but making them a good game is like two years of you know super hard work and all of us knows that who've actually done the done the journey right so don't be shy about sharing the idea just you know work with the people talk with the people just go onto the Reddit forums go to the Facebook groups just talk with people you don't even you know just see and the worst thing that can happen because people think that the worst thing that can happen is that if people

will be negative again about it but that's not the worst thing the worst thing is if no one will even respond that's the worst thing you know you put our your work and there's like your mama is clicking the like button that's it that's that's the you know if if it will be a extremely negative response that means like okay so I tackled something but I tackled it in the wrong way so it's very good to have that feeling that oh actually people are interested you know maybe they are angry because I did something wrong but you know I'm in a general good direction of something right so just go out in there share your idea ask for people if you have like some materials if you like have something drafted on paper just add it just graphic example like something graphical as it or even you know like pay a concept of you know me journey to make like a graphic cards to just kind of illustrate the team or the idea or whatever right you can like there's a lot of possibilities right now to have anything to share and ask for like what

do you guys think yeah is this interesting or is it just me right it's very good to have this because you know I have you know very often will have an idea and we think that is an awesome idea but you know unfortunately for example it's not it's much better to learn now than after you will spend your your life savings and a year of life right so yeah okay thanks so unfortunately we're out of times thank you very much actually I think this is one of the most uh valuable presentation today thank you um I have one question uh on the first slides we saw popular upcoming on Steam uh do everyone get there or there is something you need to have at least 5 000 wish lists five times more or less three thousand five thousand depending on time but is like

uh I need to achieve five thousand uh wish list in certain times or I can achieve it in long before you will be there you need to have five thousand so the way it looks like you you schedule at uh launch day of your Early Access on Steam right and you have an exit date and you need to lock it down two weeks before the actual date right and based on that this is the crazy thing on Steam and it's just mind-blowing but it is why one of the reasons why steam is amazing platform is like if you have 5 000 wishlists and you are your launch date is chronolog chronologically before Witcher 4 coming out with 10 million wishes your game will be showing about them because yeah exactly like once you get over 5000 wishlists for the popular upcoming this one place it doesn't matter how many wishes you have it's just like you are through the threshold meaning that you are not some random animal hentai game but you're

like an actual game that people want right and then steam will do that and that's why steam is such a great platform for indie games because it will help you like if you have something that will actually help to promote it and to get to three to five thousand wish list if you will do a lot of organic work you know Twitter Tick Tock kind of showcase your work it is doable even without paid marketing so okay thank you very much cool no worries thank you very much for all the questions and presentations [Applause]