Marketing Indie Games as a Developer vs. Publisher

I used to believe that my marketing abilities were very important to the success of our games, like especially for the first two games. And the longer I'm doing it, the more I'm feeling like actually it's just a game. We launched with like 900,000 plus wish lists. And I was just thinking the people on this wish list are waiting for 1.0. Turns out I was mega wrong.
This is a conversation with Filomina Schwab, co-founder of Stray Studio. They have an incredible track record with four fantastic releases so far. You might know them from The Wandering Village, Dungeon Clawer, but their previous games, Nimbato, and Nish, were equally as successful. The bank was empty on the day the game came out. It felt like we had one giant dinosaur egg in a basket and everything was depending on this. Currently, Dungeon Crawler Mobile is financing our 15 people in the studio. Our studio has been around now for 10 years and we're like working on game number five.
Filomina also leads Rayon's new

publishing branch and she also co-founded the Swiss Game Hub, a co-working space for game developers. She gathered a lot of experience about game development from a lot of different sources and I think it shows massively. That's why I'm excited to have her on the show today for all of us to learn from. I hope you enjoy. Maybe a bit of a cold open question like what's your theory for how to make successful video games? Do you have a theory or
going right in? I used to believe that my marketing abilities were very important to the success of our games like especially for the first two games and the longer I'm doing it the more I'm feeling like actually it's just a game. So, I do think like if you have a really good game, like let's imagine the game is like a little fire, like some some wood, it's enough if I just have a tiny bit of a lighter and I put it on and it will go up in flames. You still need that tiny little spark, you know.

On the other hand, if your game is like one uh tiny little branch, you can come with the marketing flamethrower and throw and throw and throw and nothing's going to really happen because it's going to and burn out right away. So yeah, I just feel like it's the game. It's you need to have a game idea that is appealing in some way. There is multiple approaches I think to this. And yeah, then a little bit of marketing to or ideally a little bit of marketing to increase the chances to make it go out there. Yeah, that's where I'm currently at. I don't know, maybe next year uh it changes again, but this has been a gradual thing like ah it's just a game.
All right. So, you came in as a marketing person and uh have slowly transformed to to the just make a good game side of things pretty much. I guess unfortunately yes. I kind of wish it would have stayed that way and I would

have just felt that yeah, you know, you can give me almost any game and I can make it work kind of. So yeah,
I mean what's what's very impresses impressive about your studio history is that so far it seems like you only landed hits like your very first game. What was that again?
Yeah, our very first game was niche. Yeah,
niche. Yes.
So maybe a tiny bit of how that came to be. So me and my business partner, we met each other at like a local game event where everybody could show off their game and he showed off his hobby project which is called an imbatos the space drone constructor that he had been working on for multiple years like on the evenings and weekends and me uh I had niche which was my bachelor thesis that I made back when I studied game design and had continued to work on since and then we really liked each other's games and we saw that we have a very complimentary skill set and then it kind of felt like we were doing like a marriage compatibility test. So like we

sat down and like each had some like questions for each other and then we each wrote down what kind of genres of games and like what kind of themes are we interested in and that kind of stuff and then we saw that oh actually I think there is a ton of games we would both be interested in making each other and that's why we ended up starting a studio together. Then we made Nish, which was originally my thing, and then we made Nimbatus, which is Mika's game.
Awesome. And they they both did really well from from what I can see.
They both did really well. Um I think Nish made lifetime about 400kish copies and is like I think at 200 250
and with Nimbatus, we unfortunately could not port it to console. Also, Nimbatus is steam only because it has such a weird control scheme where you need a thousand buttons to control each part of your drone separately. And it's also weird that this has kind of become

a theme for our studio. So, whenever I have to lead on a game, it's a biology game. Nich is a game about population genetics. And whenever Mika has the lead, it's a physics game. And so, that has been going on up until now.
I see. And uh those first two games, was it just the two of you or how has the studio growth progressed over time? Because I know you're around like 10 people right now, right?
Mhm. Right now 15, but also we have two interns.
Um yeah. No, already with niche when Mika came in, there was already a small team with me and I think two and a half other people that kind of came on board because they thought the concept is cool. And then we essentially just everybody wrote down their hours and then we agreed that we would then split. If there ever was anything to split, we would then split it. And Mika, he was like working alone on Inato. So he basically came into the the niche team. And then we first made niche as team

niche and then only once the game was released, we actually founded the studio out of it because we needed to pay tax
and that kind of stuff. But before it was like a group of hobbyists just tracking time, splitting revenue based on that and having like a little contract. And then Nimbatus was the first game that was fully made inside of the studio. And it's funny because we often get asked that, yeah, after Niche did so well, like it's a a surprise success for your first game, right? Why didn't you just make two Niche 2 or like something similar? It's like, yeah, because we had the agreement from the get-go that this would be our second game. So, there is a lot of like talks. How do you choose your second game? Like, we didn't really. We just made the two games that we set out and then Wandering Village was really the first time where we could apply some of the knowledge because on both games we were already like in the middle of production, right? Um, with Niche, we

were I think lucky and it made it a bit easier for the marketing. there was that there was really nothing that is like such a big genetics focus and even like
so the very first thing we did when we started working on the project together is running a crowdfunding campaign that was actually part of my master thesis I wrote my master thesis about community building for indie game developers and spent a year like trying to build up communities around the two games and then my teachers were like that's nice but is that actually going to help with making the game successful. And then like the agreement between me and the my teachers was that a crowdfunding campaign would prove whether or not this could actually be put into value for for making the game. And it uh ended up raising like 75k and we were all like, okay, we we were not uh expecting that, which was then the first time we could pay ourselves like 10 bucks an hour. So

that was like the the starting point.
Um
nice. Yeah. So you managed to run a successful Kickstarter game before there was anything playable before you had a demo just from pure community building or how did you do that exactly?
No, there already was a demo. So like as part of the bachelor where I made the game,
you had like three months time to to make a demo for that's your bachelor fees and then I worked a little bit more on it and a few months later then put it out on Kickstarter. So there was something playable. There even was back in the day there even was a web build that you could just you know one click you're in the web build kind of trying to remove every barrier there was between between people and the game and also like traveling around to all kinds of game conferences thanks to the provitia which is like a Swiss thing that helps you go to different places. Good chances there is one something like that in your region too. Check it out. and then just going there collecting

everybody's email addresses, writing them by hand into some forms and then spending hours and hours trying to figure out this Hans Müller@gmail is it correct by and then you know putting them all in the newsletter and that's how like the first 500 people came into the newsletter. Yeah.
Oh my god, you added 500 people manually to your
It was like 3,000 people across all of the uh time. Yeah.
Jesus. Okay. So,
but like let me stick with the niche community for one sec because they are the best. When the game launched into early access, just a few couple thousand wish lists were like really nothing big. And the launch was also like not huge. It was like this is the launch. And then over the next year, we continued to make the game. And before it came out, we told everybody like, "Okay, the game needs to sell at least 50,000 copies for 1.0 or we have to stop because then we

actually have to do something else and get a job.
And people were like, "Oh my god, it will stop and it actually cost something, you know, make a game and like yes." So we gave them like a list of things that they should do for the launch like write a review, give the game to a friend, let your favorite YouTuber and streamer know. And so like like a big ass list. Share this, share that, share. and they really did. And so this game had like an early access launch that was this and a 1.0 release that was this, which is very like not common for for a game to do, right?
And yeah, it's it was all thanks to their pushing because a lot of big YouTubers then ended up picking it up because everybody was telling them like, "There's this game, you should really play it." And like I guess that convinced them to actually take a look.
I guess the lesson here is also a bit that I or I feel like often times the community is is what's really doing the marketing anyway, right? Like for all of

my games, uh I feel like the community also really helped spread the word. And for example, if you look at games like Silkong, which they didn't do a ton of marketing, the community basically did all of that. Right.
Right. But I think it's very also very interesting what you say about community building because a lot of people when they make their first game, it's it's kind of developing into the void a bit, right? It's like where is everybody? Where are the people interested in my game? What would you recommend? Like what can you do to get like your first 100 people interested? Like
so I think for me I draw a lot of my motivation from like when I'm sitting there and I have to fix bugs I'm like and if I know that there is some people waiting for me to do that and give them a new build so they can continue to enjoy the game that like increases my motivation tfold. So for me naturally making a game I start to bring them in

like super early. Uh, one cute story that I have for Niche. The game Niche is actually inspired by a children's book series. It's called Warrior Cats. And I originally was planning to offer them like a collab. So, I would like make a game about their book series as my bachelor. And they said no, they are not really doing collabs. And then I was like, okay, I guess I'm going to make completely different game and just take some inspiration from from the books. And then I reached out to the author again once I had actually made the prototype and said, "Look, it's not Warrior Cats, but like it's you can probably feel the vibe of it still in there and she really liked it." And then she like posted it on her Warrior Cats forum newsletter and then I had like,500 teenage girls in my back then Facebook group that came over, you know, from from her giving me a shout out. So I think it's just really good if you tell people about your game. Find the people

that are actually interested in your game. So like I spend a lot of time with niche for example in genetics Facebook groups and subreddits or as I said like warrior cats communities. So I think it's much easier if your game has some kind of adjacency with existing communities. If I was making an abstract puzzle puzzle game that has no relation to anything, that would make it harder for me. Now, here I could just piggy back off the topic of uh genetics.
We like in terms of press for this game,
we had more um coverage from science news sites than for from games news sites. And like this is something that never happened again. Each game is so unique in where the people are that are actually interested. For Nimbatus, for the second game, for example, we quickly found out that Imature and uh Nak were

like that's where the people are. And like for Nish that didn't work at all. And there we could like um really use like the game's visuals, make some cool gifts. But here also like we went into some robotics and programming groups to talk about the game. So yeah, makes it much easier. Or for wandering village like Chibli is probably one of the most adjacent ones. So we always post stuff there. Yes.
So hearing all of this very much sounds like your early marketing efforts did did make a big difference. So I can kind of understand.
Don't tell me that now. Don't confuse me.
Yeah. Honestly, I'm just a little confused myself sometimes about about this entire topic because I also talked to Hugh Milward, the guy who made Warsome. I'm not sure if you know Warsum is like an entirely textbased
game.
And he also told a similar story that he just put a ton a ton of effort into

community building and all of these little marketing opportunities and constantly sort of fishing for attention. sort of similar to what you're uh explaining here. And somehow that turned a failed release into a quite a successful game over time.
Maybe if the game is super niche, you know.
Uhhuh.
Like such as a fully text based adventure or a population genetic simulation, probably that is where you need to dig for the people. But if you can make a game that just has mass appeal, I guess then you don't have these problems as much. Right.
Right. So basically this maybe your strategy has shifted more towards let's just make something that has more mass appeal so we have to do less of this manual digging for attention. Maybe that's a way to describe it. I'm not sure. We're figuring this out together.
Yes. It's like a therapy session. It's good.
On your next game was already wandering village, right?
Yes. So that is really for the first time where we could take all our

learnings from the two previous games and apply it from the start and I think it showed. Uh it was a funny story how we got the idea because it was just me and my business partner like taking a walk through an exhibition and then there was a concept art of a turtle with a city on its back as you often see it in mythology and in some pop culture and we both stopped looked at each other and said I've been thinking about a game like that at the same time and then we went back through the studio and told everybody and usually when we pitch game ideas you know like half of the people are like that sounds that sounds cool and the other half is like h and that was like the first time where we came and everybody was like yes and the artists like instantly started making scribbles and then I just took the scribbles that they made and I made some scribbles and put them on Facebook and said we have this idea how should we name the game and then we had like hundreds of comments or how we should name the game without even like having a

screenshot and then we were like okay I guess this really is such an appealing fantasy in itself that hopefully this would do well. Actually making the game was like because there we really came from the idea and from the fantasy and we had to make like six prototypes until we felt like we could capture it in some way and we were like, "Oh god, can we even make a game that manages to capture this or not?" So
So it was very much a fantasy first approach, not not gameplay first.
Okay. Yes, we rarely have gameplay first games that we made. Niche was super came from the topic, right? From the genetics topic. Um, so the challenge there was like how can you take the five pillars of population genetics and turn them into a fun game. So came from the topic. Nimbatus I feel also the second game came from yeah how can you make a fun

game where you put together the drones like came from the building fantasy wandering village came from that one and the dungeon crawler our newest game that we launched a few months back also there was the idea first and the game second so I think this is a pattern that goes through the all of our games
well there there are of course different ways to make games and there's not one correct way that you always have to give that as a disclaimer before giving an opinion on on this. But for what it's worth, I really think um fantasy first is a really great way to go about it because players care about fantasy a lot is something I have noticed. And also getting the fantasy and the feeling of a game right is much more difficult than getting the gameplay right. like it's it's relatively easyish to make a fun game, but to make one that's appealing and that serves a fantasy and that serves that fantasy well, that's kind of

the
the tricky part. So, find it interesting to hear that sort of the everybody was instantly on board with the idea of a wandering village and then it took you six prototypes to figure out how to surf that fantasy correctly. Yeah, it was kind of a weird one. Also because we wanted to do a a Kickstarter quite soon for the game.
Also kind of because we wanted to, you know, we're a selfunded no publisher studio. So we felt like would be good um to get the ball rolling and get some money in for the next game, not wait too long uh to see if this works or not because if it doesn't then we still have to shift. So we have kind of like for bigger projects we have always used the like for the first three for niche for nimbatas and for wondering mil they basically had the same approach of like validating it on socials and with the community kickstarter early access with a tiny minimal like tiny version and

then game can stay in early access as long as it finances itself and as long as it's fun to work on. and then while it's in early access, you probably start thinking about the next thing. So that has been the process. So we wanted to do a Kickstarter fairly soon, but we were really far away from feeling confident that we had a really good prototype. So we kind of split the teams. So there was the art prototype team that was in Unity just like putting together all the stuff like a camera and also maybe a little side story that the game was originally planned to be fully 3D but our animator Marcus he has been like oh please let me do 2D animation for uh for a while for the past projects too and then um he's also a tech artist and he made this two and a halfD thing where like when you do the zoom out, you have the buildings that like move a bit. And we thought like, well, it would be pretty cool. So,

I guess you get to animate your 100 million images of little 2D people. if that's really what your heart desires um so much. And I'm really wondering still if it would have if this was a good decision because it set us apart from others or if it would have been better to just keep it 3D because then you know you can rotate the the camera and stuff. But anyway, so we had the art team starting out on the art prototype and at the same time the gameplay team was doing a gameplay prototype um because we wanted to make sure that everything that we show in the art prototype which then like turned into a Kickstarter trailer would actually be doable in the game. So we had a really ugly game prototype which kind of tried to validate all the things showing in the trailer. So, we didn't promise anything that we actually would not end up doing. And yeah, after a few attempts, we even had one prototype that was just completely UI

where it's like little things going up and down. You have to press buttons, but like not a city builder view or anything. Uh, which was also helpful to find out stuff about pacing.
And yeah, then at some points we were like, okay, we're fairly confident this one works. And then um the art trail, the art prototype was far enough to make like a nice trailer and that's what we used in the Kickstarter. But that was the first time we had a Kickstarter without a demo. The two previous uh games always had a demo. Then we had to patch it all back together like the art prototype and the game prototype which was a whole different level of complicated. But
do you think it's worth it to prototype things separately or what's your reason for doing those prototypes separately? I do think in this case it saved us time when we needed to save the time later we had to pay the time back you know because we had to actually fuse them together but if we wanted to validate the idea quick to be able to move

forward I think it was a good idea probably doesn't work for every game but um in this case I'm not regretting just a little bit but
I see
I would do it again
it it sounds like you had some very big prototype there. If you even managed to use like the art prototype for for the trailer and so on. That sounds like a very big big prototype.
Yeah. I mean, we used that one then essentially to become the game itself. So, we had to put the gameplay stuff in there, but it would have been easier to do it together.
I see. And what did you land on for for the game play? Were there any interesting revelations from the gameplay prototyping about the the pacing or how the game has to play to serve the fantasy correctly? Yeah, we made some really weird prototypes also like going into all kinds of directions. I made one that was more of a clicker.
Mhm.
More of a clicker game. We made stuff that was more of a base builder. Like it wasn't even clear it was a city builder

at the very beginning. Right. So we kind of and we we quickly learned that even though everybody had been very much on board with the initial fantasy, everybody had a completely different idea on what that actually means. So we had to like bring everybody um into one boat and for that we used like a technique where
we basically asked questions. So, is it more a base builder or a city builder? And then there was a line, you know, city builder here, base builder here, and then everybody had to put like a line on on the line. And then you could see that, okay, for some questions, it's pretty clear, okay, it's more of a city builder. Everybody is around here. But then there were questions like, how many people are you controlling? Five or a thousand? And then we quickly saw that it was all over the place. So then it came to discussions like oh but do the characters you know actually like Rim World have a character and skills or if you have a a lot of them then they

probably don't because it gets too micromanagy and then we're there were all kinds of these discussions before we kind of set on something. We also played like 20 different citybuilders and like our game designers and like analyzed firstly like genre conventions.
So um I think it was in a book from uh Ty and Sylvester from about the rim world design which is one of my favorite books where he says that you should only burden your players with the kind of mental load that is actually interesting for for them and is different in your game. So save all the same stuff. Uh just use what the others have done and use their brain capacity for the interesting parts of your games. So we kind of try to just you know what works across the board. Let's just take it take it take it take it and what where are we actually wanting to differentiate
on that?
That's really good advice. Yeah. Like uh the the typical example for that that I

could come up with is inventory management. I hate inventory management in survival games. Like you have thousand boxes and you need to move items around constantly. I'm just like, can we can we get rid of this already? Can we focus on the interesting part so I don't have to spend my time moving objects around?
Yeah, I feel.
Yeah. Yeah, I see. And for the for the case of um wandering village, what were the interesting parts that you want the players to focus on? So we noticed very early that people were like skeptical about the game in a sense that oh you know but it's just decoration. So you're just building your city but it's on a dinosaur whatever and you're not going to have any interaction with the dinosaur or no meaningful interaction. So it was important for us to very quickly have that in the prototype that you were actually codependent on each other. Actually, since it's my game as a lead, it's of course a biology game. So,

it's actually a game about uh symbiosis. So, that was kind of like the design start. So, the idea of you having to balance the needs of your people against the needs of the creature and sometimes they are not always aligning with each other and you kind of need to prioritize. But also the option of you acting in an evil way, being a parasite essentially.
Yeah.
And like constantly having that, you know, I could also just exploited option, but then kind of forming a relationship with it and like trying to give the player the feeling that they don't want to exploit it. It was also very fast uh apparent in the community that they hated all the parasite stuff. So whenever we added like here is this new building and you can now take a stick and put it into the creature and force it to obey the command, you know, and then they were all like, "Oh my god,

no, remove this. I don't want to play this update." And it was really adorable because that's exactly the reaction I wanted to have from them, you know. Uh, and there are some people sometimes that are just like super casually like, "Yeah, and then I poked my creature and blah blah blah." And then the whole community comes in like, "You are not belonging here." And it even like all of these things adding them sparked interesting conversations in the in the community like is it okay to vaccinate your dog,
you know, because he cannot consent and blah blah blah. And then like they started talking about so this game inspired this kind of conversation which I uh which I really like. I in general when I have a game design lead I often try to design from the angle of what are people saying about the game and then I essentially write like some texts where oh this person would be posting or telling their friend this about the

game. And this is another thing that I think I picked up from Rim World a lot because I noticed that sometimes I just told like one of my co-workers an interesting story that's happened in Rim World and that the system was able to generate and then I'm really impressed by it's really a storytelling machine this game and then I'm trying to like see what that would be in my game that people would be talking about and how can I make them talk about it with the design that we do. Right. So you're even though the community was like remove this, you sort of left it in because you saw that oh this sparked some interesting discussions. Maybe let's maybe lean into that maybe even a little bit.
Yes. Um even like I think it's much more interesting in games to be to be good if you have the option to be evil. Otherwise you it's not really a choice to be good. And I really like having like games where the the good way is slightly harder than the evil way. So

you're always a bit tempted to go to the other side, but you're kind of having this internal moral fight when you
But I see. So you also noticed very early on that people have this very that like the creature is just as just a skin basically and it's just a normalish
city builder.
Yes,
I I understand that. But it's cool that you figured that out so early that that is something you need to address. Is that something you figured out in the team or did you get some feedback from the community? How did you learn about this so early?
So I think when we started posting like first mockup screenshots, that's already when this started popping up and it like so we were aware of it very early and it kept coming. the same thing, the same worry kept coming up until like really for
okay
for all the years of development we we saw this was the primary problem and this and as for every game but it doesn't have any combat

we were like nah
but that's sort of the advantage of more public development cycles that you get feedback and warning signs about this sort of stuff very very early on right because you could also develop these games
in in a vacuum behind closed doors and then uh release it and be surprised that people feel like oh there's not enough interaction with the creature then
do you always I guess due to the Kickstarter nature you always have a very open development cycle right
yeah it's also just more fun
for me or also for the team like sometimes I see my deaf friends and they are like working on something for three years and they're not allowed to show any of it and they're like I really want to show And in our team usually it's like yeah just post it. Sometimes there is like one thing like don't say this because this is going to be an announcement but other than that everybody is essentially open to post all of the things that they're doing uh

also on their personal um social media and so on. And I personally draw a lot of energy and motivation from people reacting. And also it makes me uh sleep better at night because I know I'm not developing into the void.
Yeah. Do you run kickstarters for all of your games like part of your ritual or how do you go about that?
Did not do it for Dungeon Crawler because the game was so small um compared to the previous games. I think that's also something that
we have been a bit uh worrying about. So like essentially with the first game that we made, we paid the second game that we made and then with the money that came in from both, we paid the third game that we made and we had a real make or break moment when it actually came out. It had a lot of signs that it was going to go well. It had like over 500,000 wish lists, which back in the day was more than now. I would say it's maybe the equivalent of eight

or 900 now because of wish list inflation
stuff and so yeah originally we had planned to release the game a full year earlier
like minimal viable product was essentially ready a yearish earlier but then because it had so much attention we felt that and usually we also had only done uh English for early access and like really just focusing on updating quickly but here we had so any Chinese and and Asian wish lists that we felt like no, we actually have to localize it and if we would release it in the state that it is now, people would probably be a bit disappointed. And so we basically took all the money out of the bank, which was another our year reserve money
and put it all into the game
and uh yeah, the bank was empty on the day that the game came out. I mean, we had also done beta testing with like 8,000 people.
Uh, and the feedback was super good. So,

we kind of moved through, I think, like eight months of beta testing or something. And it went from like a seven out of 10 average to a 9 out of 10 average uh rating. And that's funny uh because it reflected exactly the Steam reviews in the end. So, that I don't know if it was just a coincidence. Um, but they also heard from some fellow deaf friends that um they had done that and they had gotten really good feedback aside from a few that were like not happy with the game. And then the game had like mixed reviews and they realized that the few that had given them negative feedback were actually exactly mirroring all the negative feedback that they then got on uh on Steam. So that's why I was like super focused on the negative stuff. So like, okay, you like the game, it's good. Like, I browse through it. Okay, that's what you like. So, let's keep that. And then just hyperfocused on the fuse that gave it

like a four out of 10 or below and see if we could fix any of these things. And that then gradually led to less people giving it very low scores in the beta testing. And that ended up being the Steam review score. So maybe it was a coincidence. It was the first time we did it to such a big extent, but we thought we have a game with a lot of wish lists and people seem to like it. So hopefully it will do well, but you never know, right?
Sony could shadow drop their whole catalog on top of you and you will never know before.
Um, but luckily it then went well, but it felt like we had one giant dinosaur egg in a basket and everything was depending on this. That's why we like um moved with dungeon crawler to just make just make a tiny game. It's not killing us if it's not doing well and see how it goes. And in terms of copy sold, it will overtake the wandering village this year. Not in terms of revenue because it's more expensive uh wandering

village,
but in terms of copy sold. And we're just like I guess this works too. So I guess we're now making some smaller games for a change. the the amount of effort you put in does not always reflect in the results. Yeah.
Yes, absolutely.
Do you think the scale of a project sort of also influences your workflow a bit cuz you you like okay we have all of like we have the giant egg in the basket essentially.
That mean that means we do have to do a lot of uh careful beta testing make sure that players are happy with it. I'm wondering do you do you do the same thing with the dungeon clawer? No, not at all. Because there the risk was so much lower. We just basically made a prototype in like three months, put it out, um, let people play it, gather some wish lists. I think it got up to almost I think it got up to like about 200,000 and then just launched it like half a year later. So, the whole development

was like a year and it was only my co-founder. So, that's why it's a physics game. and one of our artists part-time and then our sound designer uh coming in at the end doing some music and stuff and that was it. And it was like for us compared to our previous projects a tiny investment, right? And yes, so it was allowed to skip all of the steps aside from the demo step and we were much more willing to experiment also with the marketing. So, we did a maybe interesting a mobile sim shship. That was a cute story because our neighbors from the co-working space came over and uh lately there was not a lot of like they are mostly an agency doing like VR, AR um apps, websites and lately I don't know how it is in other countries but here there's been a bit of a a slump in um agency work. So, they came over like do you have something we could maybe do? And we were like, let's

try Dcl mobile port. And then they they did it. And they also have like a ref share in it. They did a really good port. It's like 4.9 stars um on iOS and Android. And then we sim shipped it with the PC version and like a third of the copies that we sold is mobile and it's premium mobile.
And then it also got into Google Play Pass and it's been doing really well on Google Play in the past three months. So, currently Dungeon Crawler Mobile is financing our 15 people in this studio.
Wow.
Very nice. Nothing I would have ever expected to happen. Now, we're trying it again. The mobile premium seamship thing with another game that we're publishing to see if we can reproduce this. And then this is this is an experiment we would have never done like with a bigger project. Then the focus would have been,
you know, get the stuff that actually needs to be done. And here it was like sure why not um let's do it. Also like

Google Play Pass we you know we would have carefully considered how will this impact our long tail if it's in a subscription and and here it was just like whatever let's do it and it was like the best decision that we did in the past two years and it was just a random thing.
So funny because everybody says like premium doesn't work on mobile anymore right?
Yes. I mean, I was a believer in this as well. So, um, it was really just a low invest thing. Uh, I think what really helped in my opinion here was the Simship because the game ended up having quite a bit of coverage. So I guess then people who saw it with streamers and YouTubers and so just checked if it was also on mobile and I feel like if we had split the push then it would have done much less because that initial push helped it to like surface on the charts and to be picked up by the Google Playhouse uh team I guess.

Mhm.
So that's why I want to try it one more time and see if I can
if it's reproducible. Why does everything you try seem to work out? And the question I'm wondering about is which things have not worked out? Are there any? So, we actually made another mobile game um back like five years ago, which was like a little tiny spin-off project for niche, like a mobile, not niche ported, but like niche in a more casual style, which was a side project of me while doing the wandering village with two interns essentially. And it really didn't work well. Nobody knows it exists. Uh and that was basically the end of our story with mobile. Well, that's why we were not super interested in doing any ports anymore and now we were proven wrong. This has kind of shown me a little bit that I guess it is like if something fails once, you so quickly make the conclusion

it's just always going to fail or it's always going to work if it works once. I think that's also why we have so many different studios, right? because one thing worked for them and then they ran with it and something that worked for somebody else just didn't work in this specific instant then they never did it again. So I'm like second chances are maybe not the the worst idea. And other than that, so we have started a publishing branch two years ago. Here again the main motivation being having multiple eggs in the baskets instead of one giant one. And because we felt that with the knowledge we have, we can really help other deafs. And because we felt that having more releases, not just like one every three years or something would help us in like improve our relationship with platforms like maybe we can find a bulk deal where we do put multiple games into game pass when the separate games would have not gotten in. Um Steam is taking us more seriously. We

can make a publisher sale. you collect publisher like or um studio followers from all the game releases that you do. So, we just thought that for the studio it would be a benefit and if we can get it to run break even um then it's a net positive for us. So, now I'm in the process of of trying that and it's really hard. Um been doing it for two years. I'm a publisher on probation I call myself. So, essentially I got money from the studio, right? So we we said like, "Okay, let's uh see." And I'm trying to like get clo get it back close to break even to decide whether or not we should continue to do this. I think I'm going to make it. But I've seen that this is actually what taught me that even if I have these six games that I signed and I'm doing marketing for each of them with, you know, thinking what to do, where to do it, and so I'm seeing the results are wildly, wildly different. And so like for one of the

games I have to do nothing and everything just goes and for the other one I'm busting my ass off and it's just not happening.
And yeah, that is where the realization of I guess it's really just mostly the game came from. So
yeah, I love that you're confirming that. I love that you're confirming that because I I had the same realization with my own games and some people don't believe me like I did the exact same marketing for William Snell that I that we did for Thronefalls. like not that different. Actually, we did very similar things, but one just worked out way better. So, it's like Yeah, it's like if you have a if you have the correct game, it's almost like marketing on easy mode, right?
I forgot one. So, actually, I made another mobile game very very like when I was still in school. What was that? 15 15 12 years ago. And um for that game I actually had a publisher like and with the publisher he essentially told me what kind of game it should be like a point andclick adventure and the setting and then I recruited all of my

classmates and we split my measly intern u payment amongst us all
and spent our whole summer vacation and some more time than uh working on the game and it absolutely horribly flopped in the end. We each got like 200 bucks out of it for like working multiple months on it.
I felt that next time when I do something because I blamed it a little bit like, oh, the game was good. Why did the publisher not do such a good job? Now I'm in the reverse role, you know, and I'm like, oo, was it really like that? I don't know. But back then I was like convinced if the marketing would have been better, the game would have done good. And so I said that no, for the next game, I'm not taking any publisher. I want to be responsible for if it I want to be I want to be able to feel responsible that it failed, you know, so I have to do it all and make all of my decisions and nobody else can get in there and tell me what I should be doing.
So, it's a bit of a paradox on right that

as a publisher you basically want to pick the games that would already succeed without you. It's kind of a
Yeah, of course. I mean, you still need to help elevate them, right? So, I do think you can make a difference with that spark or with the flamethrower that you're putting. I mean, if you have a really good game, you know, this is the fire analogy. All the sticks are aligned nicely and you come with the flamethrower, there's a chance it will really just completely light up, right? Um, so I do think publishers can provide value, especially if the game can't be made in the first place because they don't have the funding. That's where you'd make the biggest difference probably.
Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Have you funded any games or which kind of arrangements do you have with the developers so far?
Difference. Um so for some we only funded for others we only did marketing and for most we funded and uh helped

with marketing not like huge sums I would say maybe like max is like two 300kish so like more on the smaller side or it's partial funding um yeah that was about the range
actually also very interesting question how do you pick which games to work with do do you find them or do they find you and how do to choose the best ones.
I think I've never signed something that pitched to me.
Oh.
So far, um I don't know. So, we like we get pitches. I also am very overwhelmed. Uh feeling a bit guilty about it that I want to play them all. I want to give them all feedback, but it's just impossible. So as a publisher, you're essentially sitting there and if the game cannot draw my attention just with the gift and like one sentence or two sentences, it's like it it goes away. So the first game that's maybe a cute one that we signed

is um I was currently fighting new publisher imposter syndrome. Could I really help another death make their game a success or or not? And then um there was this game currently on Kickstarter and it had a good start with the campaign, but then it kind of dwindled a bit. And then I wanted to see like I want this game to have a successful Kickstarter and I'm taking this as a challenge to myself to see if I can help that that works. So I reached out to the deaf and um offered him that we would just borrow him 5K. No strings attached. Here's 5K. We help uh get you an ad an ad agency because the game didn't have a demo. We help get you an ad agency. If the campaign fails, you don't have to give it back. If it's successful, you give it back. And then um he said like, "Yeah, let's do that." And also organized like some shout outs from other Kickstarters. And then you can

clearly see like in the backer history like what day it started. And then it ended up over financing by exactly the amount that the ads cost. Pretty much exactly which and I was like cool apparently it makes a difference and that gave me then the confidence to like talk to him um whether or not we should start working together. The other ones some of them were people that I knew previously like from a deaf background. I think that makes it easier for us uh compared to other new publishers that we have been through the process and we know how it feels and we're not going to um make you you know crunch crunch crunch and we can also help with gameplay feedback. So, I think one of the games uh that I'm very proud we ended up signing was I think a project that quite a few publishers pitched for because it had like a viral trailer on YouTube and so everybody was on to it, you know, and I feel that with us playing the game and giving really deep

insightful feedback the that was um impressive to the deaf and he thought that oh not only are these people going to make marketing but they can also help me improve the game and that is something we really like like playing the new builds uh of that people are making and giving our input on what we could. Well, yeah, it was um bit all over the place, but mostly it was either people that I knew from before. Now, some of the games were also already in early access that we signed because there we felt like, okay, we already kind of see the baseline and we also as quickly as possible want to like build up a publisher portfolio so then we can show like these are the kinds of games you want to do and then if they're already out, nice, right? And then you can work with them. Yeah. So, it's a bit all over the place. uh still figuring out what works the best. I have not yet found any specific approach, but please continue to send me your pictures. I'm looking at them. I hope I hope at some point I'm like, "Yes, this um but yeah,

I think it's just like all the team and everybody is constantly like looking around, right?" And then if you have games that have can already bring in some kind of validation like oh the demo has a lot of players or the YouTube trailer went viral that just makes you react because you have to react right now. When I like we have uh our little co-working space and we have like projects that we mentor and I usually try to give them advice on how I would handle publishers if you want to make them react quickly. So, what would you have to do with me if you want a reply right away? Because, you know, people are slow and then it drags on forever. I've just seen so many developers stuck in this publisher pitch limbo forever. They're like, it's a year later now and they're still pitching and they're getting feedback um of what they should improve for the game that from the publishers and then they improve that

and they resend the pitch and still nothing happens. And I think if your game doesn't make a dramatic change or suddenly has some kind of new validation like now it has suddenly 20,000 wish lists then it becomes interesting again. But if it's just fix small things I don't think it's going to change. I mean I'm sure there are cases but from what I've witnessed it's not changing publishers opinions. So I always tell my people that you pitch and then you say and we're announcing the game in a month or in two months or something. You know, you put a deadline to the publisher thing. So they are like okay either I sign it now or the announcement is going to move without me. So that makes me react like okay I need to choose now. It's not like they're coming back um with an improved version in half a year or something.
Sure. Yeah. So that's like like basic negotiation tactics basically that that I guess you have to you have to uh grab

into that toolbox a little bit if you want to get a replay.
Yeah. But just like I would just in general not recommend staying in publisher limbo forever. So
if you have an unannounced game I recommend reach out to the publishers that and to the platforms where you think oh this would be really good. And if it's after three or four months not looking like something is going to happen, then maybe send them a reminder. Hey, we're about to announce it. By the way, if you wanted to do that with us, now is the time. And then move forward, announce it, and hope it's doing something like put your demo out there, get your trailer out there,
give them some kind of validation, and maybe you don't even need them anymore. And maybe they're going to come to you after it's actually going good. And I think that puts you in a much better position anyway. A bit of a It sucks if you then do the announcement and it absolutely flops and then you have
an announced game and then you try to pitch it again. That makes it harder.

But yes, I think it's better than being stuck in publisher pitch limbo.
I I like if I was a publisher, right, I think I would be very much looking at what public validation is already out there. Has this game Kickstarter has it already announced? has how has this announcement gone and so on.
Yes.
So this can I can imagine that this drastically either improves or worsens your odds depending on how
very much like if you ran a play test be sure I looked if the game looks interesting be sure I looked at how many people played it or are still playing it. I'm looking at all your socials. Um, is there anything I can do to because like you know when we before we sign a game we have like this deal sheet where we put like okay this is the worst case scenario we expect realistic and optimistic and it kind of needs to be above certain thresholds um for at least the realistic and the optimistic one to say like okay let's go with this game instead of all the other games because

there is a lot of pitches going around and anything you can do to increase my confidence for the realistic outcome, the higher the chance uh it would actually make sense. Yeah. I mean, it's funny to see both of these sides because
from a deaf perspective and from a publisher perspective, um I understand them more now.
Yeah, I see. And you also review uh game pitches for the Wing Game Fund if I'm correct, right? So, you're also in the committee there. What like as someone who has just seen a lot of pictures, what would you say? What differentiates a good pitch from a bad one?
Yeah, I I think so much is just about can you just get me right away? Like is it like the trailer and the demo? I mean, if you have if the demo is not good, the trailer I don't care that much about the trailer, but if the demo is not good, I don't even care what's in the pitch deck, right? only if like okay

the demo is really cool then I'm like how much would it actually cost to get this game made what other validation can they give me here again like the de is the demo good and is there any external validation for me are the two biggest
points maybe don't have a super ugly pitch that gives me no infos but I think that's very secondary and yeah if it's not the fanciest trailer I don't care either because that can be great, but if the game itself is not hitting it in, so I usually think there's two ways to be really successful. Either you do it better or you do it different. If I'm just feeling like I've seen your game before and the other version of it is probably more fun. If I really feel like, oh, this game, this is palatro, but it's better, then I'm like, okay, you know, then I'm I'm there. um or if it's just something that

is unique enough to be its own thing while still not being so alien that nobody really understands what it is. So for me, Dungeon Crawler is an example of this, right? Because it's like, okay, everybody knows what a rogike deck builder is at this point and uses another kind of mechanic that nobody used in order to interact with the game. But like the whole how you pick items for your deck and how to upgrade stuff is very similar to others. So here again the mental energy of the player is focused on the important part of of the game. And if I basically need to learn I mean it can be really cool if you make a whole new genre. I think you will weirdly have a hard time selling it because nobody has any reference points on how it could do or who it will appeal to. How am I marketing? How am I going to market this game? U even though it might be, you know, the next Undertale

and just nobody believed it would be. And that's that's kind of cruel, I think. And then but maybe then sometimes you have people that are visionary enough to understand where you're going with it. Um but I feel a lot of times a lot of cool mega innovative games are just fall between the publisher cracks because it's too risky and too weird and also between the player cracks because they are also like what is this? I don't know. I don't know what this is. And then they c it can be that they don't look at it.
And even worse is also the algorithms because for example Steam has a predefined set of texts and if your game doesn't fit any of these texts then also the Steam algorithm is going to have a bit of a harder
uh time with your game. Of course.
Yeah.
I've also thought a lot about this um thing that you said with either you have to do it better or you have to do it different. I wonder if like a good summary of this would be that you just have to be the best or one of the best

in your category, right? Either you go into an existing category and you make one of the best entries there or you create a new category that you get to be one of the best of,
but the second one comes with a with a caveat that you
it needs to be it can't just be any category, right? M. So, we just ran a boot camp here in the game hub, me and the developer of Rotato, where essentially we tried to help people come up with concepts that um that they want to make that they can make and that they should make in terms of what would currently work on the market and that can be finished in a year. So basically like potato was made and how dunge crawler was made and um one thing that I found is they basically had to look at tags and what tags are popular and what do they like to play and if they brought me and I learned a lot myself too because I never there are like 15

projects and essentially the deal was that both me and the rotator developer needed to give our stamp of approval that they should move forward and spend a month making a prototype which is a lot of pressure because like if I say the game idea and the genre and everything is the most important step and the marketing is not even that important. It's like can I give my stamp on approval and I thought I I found that if it's a game in like a genre that is rather new but is starting to establish itself that's nice especially if there are like entries in the genre. Let's say it's a potato like or like a vampire survivors like where there are a lot of entries in the genre that have not very good reviews. So like mostly positive or mixed but have a lot of reviews
because then you are like okay so people actually want this and even though this is apparently not that good they still got it because there is no other offer out there that they could play instead

if they wanted this. And then if somebody comes to me with a genre such as a platformer where all of the recent successful examples are overwhelmingly positive, then I'm like, is it going to be mega hard to get in there because there's no guarantee you're going to make that good of a game. Uh or especially if they're overwhelmingly positive and they only have like a 100 reviews. I'm like, even though you made a really really good game, you didn't really get the exposure. So, I would much rather make a game that is mixed with 5,000 reviews than in the genre of overwhelmingly with 100 reviews.
Interesting. So, that's a that sounds like a super useful metric for which genres to get into to have a look at how many reviews do they have and like how are the reviews are they mostly positive or negative?
That's super interesting strategy. I haven't thought about that. Yeah, I that only came up in the boot camp when they showed me their reference games and I

was like, would I make it based on this? And now I think the boot camp is uh by the way pretty interesting because I think you just talked to Renee too, right? Uh in another episode and he has this whole itch validation step that we are stealing now.
Uh and essentially all the 15 games that were made now in the boot camp within these two months. So they had to make the concept and the prototype in two months and then um they're all put on an each page together and then the money that so like people could either pay us in ref share for the co-working space. It's like a um it's a nonprofit so it just goes to organizing events and stuff or just paying us. And then the ones that just paid us, we used the money to hire YouTubers and streamers which are now going to play through all of the boot camp games. it's happening uh now
and um then everybody who participated gets the metrics of all the games and

they can see how well theirs performed against the other
that were in there and then hopefully that gives just one potential uh data point on whether or not to continue this idea or start something new. I'm so curious. I'm really hoping one of them will uh will go will go big.
That's super interesting. I think this is the correct time to to explain uh to the viewers maybe where you're at right now and what you're what you're doing here with the co-working space.
All right. Yes. Um so yeah, I'm sitting in our co-working space in in Zurich. We started it together with uh two other studios with who did our port for Duncloer and with David Stark who is a solo dev. And uh yeah, we essentially just moved into an office together and had like one extra room where we that we wanted to fill with other devs and that was 3 months before co so that was the perfect time to start a co-working space which was then closed down for two years and after that was finally over. Uh we

like filled the building up with more deaths and now um in January we moved into this hall which is like 2,500 square meters and 140 deaths. So it's really like every day you have lunch and you have all these interesting discussions and like new teams are forming and new collaborations are happening and it's just really fun to sit in it and how it transforms our very small local uh dev scene
and this co-working uh space was co-founded by you and it's called a Swiss game hub or
Yeah, exactly. and developers can just rent in essentially and get a get a space to work with. Cool.
Yeah, exactly. Or if any of you that are watching this video are coming on a vacation to Switzerland and just want to work here uh for a week, you can just drop by and hang out.
So, you still have space,
move a couple of tables. So like the fixed spaces are like rented

but there is like flex desk where people come every day and then they take their stuff and there's usually only always a bit of space there.
So you're welcome to visit.
Do you have any interesting deafs in in the house already or is it mostly newcomers or are there some games that people might know know about?
So the potato deaf is uh here with us which is really really cool also like for the boot camp. So it was like his uh initiative. Okay.
Then we have the guys from Unrailed
which you maybe know it's one of the more they're actually both of them are sitting like right uh behind there. Other than that yeah we have a few maybe you know airships that's David Stark's game. It's also
maybe you know the farmer was replaced. I think it's uh about to launch it. There was a was like a weekl long addiction.
The farmer was repl
I'm surprised. I I I have no idea who is here. Like every week I'm like, "Oh, that's you again. You made that?" And

like, "Yeah, they're they're like crawling out of all their holes and I'm realizing there is more successful Swiss games that I knew that I didn't know were Swiss."
Wild. So, you meet people and you get to talk and collaborate and obviously learn a lot from each other hopefully.
Yes, it's cool. I like it.
All right. So, your last game, Dungeon Crawler, let's go back to that. There was actually one more thing I wanted to ask about that which was um did this also start from a fantasy perspective? Was like the fantasy the starting point or was it more of a gameplay kind of thing for this one?
So I can recite the exact conversation of how this game actually happened. So me, my co-founder Mika, and our tech artist Marcus, who was responsible for the two and a halfD style of wandering village, just like grabbing something to eat after work. And as it happens, you continue to talk about work things. And at the time, like Peglin was really going through the roof. And we were like, "Yeah, rogike deck builders are

cool. We like playing them. We would like to make one but we feel that even back then uh card based is kind of already there's a lot of them already but Peglin is the first one that is like doing it on a physical like a physics-based rogike deck builder and we started brainstorming what other physics-based rogike deck builders you could do and somebody of us said claw machine and somebody said and then we called it dungeon clawer and then everybody went Yeah.
Okay.
That's how it started. And then in the studio we have Monday and Friday afternoon is do what you want afternoon. So uh many of us are spending it prototyping. I'm writing weird fantasy novels but most of my co-workers are using it to to a useful extent for the company. and Mika just started making a super quick build for like idea on how it could work with the claw machine deck

builder and it was fun. We liked it but also we had a million other prototypes that we wanted to make. So we put it in the fridge. So it was in the fridge for I think 8 months or so and then we took a team vacation with everybody to Japan. It was like this was our celebration trip for Wandering Village launching into early access and us not dying as a studio. So, we were like, "Cool." And it did good. So, let's all go to Japan together. And then we got hopelessly addicted to the claw machines in the arcades. Like, spend so much time and money. And we I'm still in there mentally. We never would have believed this was so big in Japan. Like, multiple floors of just claw machines. And we were like, and we have a prototype of this back home in the fridge. What the It should never have gone in the fridge. It will do great in Japan. There is nothing like this out there. So, we went home, took it out of the fridge. Mika got an artist, um, Larissa, who was

also very addicted to the claw machines. We got a Japanese PR agency and Neon Roshi. They're really good. I highly recommend working with them. And then we kind of made a demo and prepared like a press outreach with this story. You know, western people are coming to Japan, getting addicted to claw machine, going home, making claw machine game. Good story. Quite a lot of like Japanese outlets fixed it up.
Okay.
And um then we released the demo for the game after like three more months of work. So I think in total in total it was maybe at this point like four months of work with the previous version that Mika had made and um yeah we dropped it into the Steam Deck Builder Fest the demo and it just went from there like from there it just did its thing. I mean, we continued to to push it and made sure that it's in all kinds of

Steamfests and we made some social stuff and we did for that one we did like a very small influencer outreach um of just people that previously played our games which was like 700ish or so YouTubers and streamers. But we didn't want it to like funnally we didn't want it to go too big because it was like shortly before NextFest. So, we were kind of trying to save the main push for NextFest. And so, we did another influencer outreach with I think like 15,000 males or something to for the NextFest demo. And then it was the 11th most played game in NextFest. Um, we also had a challenge. Yeah. For such a tiny game with four months in development. So, that was
really We were like, "Okay, cool." So, like we even had a bet going that if the game makes over 10,000 wish lists, we're getting a claw machine for the office. And it ended up because that was my goal for such a tiny game and it ended up

200,000. Yeah, we now have a claw machine in the office. It's very like in the co-working space and everybody can put in their merch. That's like a dungeon crawler themed uh claw machine. Uh we Yeah, that was
that's how it went. Yeah. And then I feel like I also could have from that point on done nothing and the game would have still gone well. Um, but it probably went better because we put more effort into it and then it had a bigger launch push. But
Got it. So you had a bunch of prototypes in the oven from like these do what you want Fridays, I think. Right. And then
Monday and Friday afternoon. Yeah.
You realized the the power of that fantasy you've been sitting on. And obviously the the the final reveal to the story would be did the game actually do well in Japan?
Yes, it actually did well in Japan. I think mobile it's our biggest country and on Steam it's also in the actually

second. I think it was like 15% Japan or something. Yeah,
that's also something Gavin, the
Chuch Charles developer, talked about a lot is like
um combining things that are already proven, but they don't have to be proven in games particularly, right? They can be proven things from other media. They can be proven in the real world to some capacity. So, I feel like using claw machines is is kind of that route. You're you're taking something that has been proven to work well in the real world and you
part port part it to a game.
And then you combine it with a genre that's already working well.
Yes. The only problem that we or when we had the next fest demo after that we already had like people ripping the codes from the next fest demo and we had like 10 mobile clones before the game was even out and all of them were free to play. Yeah. Some of them we managed to get removed because they downright stole all of our stuff. Others are like they stole all of our itemization like

one to one but they put different graphics and then like Apple was like you know give them a few months to diversify the game more and now they like to change some of their items and that was okay. Yeah, it's not fun. and mobile is they are such like hyenas just waiting for you to put something up that kind of works. Yeah, it's crazy. And we never had this problem because all our previous games are so complex. So, um,
that was a bit of I mean, for Wandering Village, we had our assets stolen and our screenshots stolen by some really big mobile publishers that are like making,
I don't know, billions with their free-to-play games, and they're using our indie game screenshots for their ads. I'm just I don't know. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah, we have some of the same stuff for Thronefall where some people like real thronefall footage to to run ads and so on. Like
very weird. There must be like almost an

entire industry of like
there is
and you know they they're quite sophisticated about it as well. Some of some of them like they almost feels like they take a screenshot and they rebuild it one to one or they absolutely analyze the music and they rebuild the music and change like two notes or something. It's like
holy hell you put so much work into this line. It's like why don't you just
fortunately I guess it works then if they're putting in all this
what are you working on uh now like what are there any were there any other games after Dungeon Crawler that I missed not not the case right
no so Dungeon Crawler is still early accessing village only just came out of early access
and right now we're mostly like jamming making new prototypes also like relaxing a bit after the launch launch. Considering if we should do Wandering Village DLC, having discussions about that. Also still doing some updates for

Wandering Village. Yeah. And now we like kind of have five or six games floating around. I was also running around at Gamescom like putting everybody my tablet in the face like these are the six games that we made. These are all check out all the videos. Which one do you think we should make? And there was no clear verdict which is like ah I was really hoping like one was just standing out. We have one game that is uh something that our gameplay programmer who has been complaining that we don't do enough story in our games. He has been complaining about this for the past five years. He also designed that story mode for Bandinger Village, but it was still not enough story. So he's currently making a story game which is something for me that will be a big marketing challenge. But it's kind of a a mix between a visual novel, a life sim, and a turn-based strategy game and a dating sim. That is it's a very wild with permadev. You have a dating sim

with permadev. Have you ever seen this? So, um yeah, we we just took it to Gamescom and see how people are liking it. So, that is one small project that we're doing. And then yeah, right now we have like five or six things that are flying around. Um, and we will see what of it actually gets finished. Also still pretty busy publishing some of the games, but no big new game in the pipeline as of now. Um, which I'm actually not too sad about. We have this um company voting thing. So every end of the year, the whole studio votes what we should be focusing on in the next two years and what they want to do. And uh in the past 3 years it has always been top of the list has been can we please make some smaller games not more five years wandering village
because I also felt that
I would say we're not the strongest at project management.
We also have no producers uh in a 15 people team. Maybe it would be time to get one. Um, so we've been standing

around on each other's toes a bit on one and also like everybody usually is pretty opinionated about a lot of things. So it was feeling like it was bit hard with all the people on one project. So now everybody is just like ah it's just three or four people teams and everybody gets to be heard and it's much easier to manage. Um, so that's why we thought that would probably suit us more to to try out. But yeah, I'm we'll see. I'm also a little bit torn. So this is my internal conflict you're listening to now
between like as you said from the outside it looks like cool they are actually like the things that they're doing seem to work and if I now put out a bunch of small games where I have no idea if they will do well like how will that reflect on us as like as a studio that suddenly oh their first five games did amazing and now they did five games

me you know um if you're not looking at it differenti appreciate it enough and especially as a publisher, right? Because you kind of want to be the example to show, hey, we actually are able to to make it so you will believe us that we can make it for you as well. And now we're a bit in the how are we going to present this? Is it like a tiny tiny font subl are we just ignoring it and putting it out there? Should we even think about these things so much? That's kind of what's happening. Your opinion? I wonder if you can just add uh enough verification to the process to ensure that the small games have a very high success rate and I think that would also look good, right? You can kind of do like what Renee preaches and be like, "Yes, we'll we'll validate often and early and we'll figure out what works and what doesn't and maybe we'll even kill a couple of projects that we realize don't work and uh make adjustments to make make the other ones

fair. So, I need to produce successful games always. Yeah, just put them out and see how they do.
I mean, that's also I guess that's also fair for small projects, right? That's
kind of the appeal of small projects is that you don't have to worry so much.
Yes.
You know, the people that that made them,
if they're so easy and quick to make, if you're like done in three or four months, it's kind of a shame if you're not putting them out there. But I guess yeah, you could still like sock Pop. Sock Pop is also not afraid to just put it all out there and see if something takes off, right? And we're and in that or just itch. We'll see.
Yeah, we'll see. I I think I think it'll be fine. I think people will understand that you're you're trying something out.
Maybe it's it's understandable. Like for for what it's worth, I'm going through a similar thing with my YouTube channel at the moment actually where I used to make uh very high quality videos but very

rarely and now I'm kind of um switch from more quantity over quality approach again.
Are you saying this is not a quality video sir?
This is this is very high quality but it's not it's not very in for No, I'm not I'm not kidding either. This is this has been fantastic so far,
but um obviously it's a it's a very hard ask for for people to sit through a 2-hour conversation to to get this value. So, most people would rather have me make like a 10-minute video summarizing the main points and presenting it like with juicy animations and so on.
I don't have time for that anymore is what I decided. So, that's why I'm doing this now. Um,
do you feel that if I can ask one question like
how much of the success of your projects do you attribute to your YouTube?
Yeah, that's a common question and it used to be more like for Will you snail for example, I'm not sure will you snail would have done so well without my YouTube channel.

Mhm.
Like but once you get to a certain scale to a certain level of success with your game then it becomes very negligible. I feel like for for Grownfall, I feel like
my YouTube channel didn't really move the needle at all.
Like
may maybe a little bit to get that initial spark or something. You can certainly argue that, but
it's like I think I feel like Thronefall would have done almost the same without the YouTube channel. And there will be people who don't believe this, but this is my my estimate.
Maybe we're back at if the game is more niche, then you need to dig more, you know.
Sure. Yeah, that's certainly the case for release. So, can you not make niche games? you can make niche games, so it's more work. Yes, I I actually think it's great you have like your competition is usually not that big if you're and you so I do think especially if it's
your own niche for me still I call it niche uh niche for me was the most fun game that I made because it's just so

much in my interest focus that I had a much easier time talk to people about this game and like they had suggestions about epigenetics in the game and I'm nerding out about it with them. And when I had to do the marketing for Mika's game
for I felt that was way less effective because
I have no idea how the space stuff you do your space stuff. I
it's interesting but it's nowhere as interesting to me as the biology genetics stuff. So there I opted more for like visual marketing. It looks cool. Let's make a cool gift because I'm not able to explain you how black holes work if you ask me.
It then would have had to be Mika who was more the guy who went into all the groups and he's less the guy that wants to do that. So that's why the marketing for this game.
Got it. So, but that means or maybe that

explains why the specialized publishers are often a better fit because they share that excitement and they can spread that excitement more more effectively than like maybe a a generalized publisher or a generalized marketing agency that cannot do ads for everything. They like they can't go in in groups and and nerd about biology with people, right? can only really do that yourself or you have or you find a partner who like shares that passion.
Yeah. And I think it's the coolest if it's just the deaf because
sure
being the the publisher now of some other people who wants to talk to me. They want to talk to the deaf. They want to talk to the person that is shaping the game, not me trying to sell them stuff.
So that's Yeah.
Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. I'm not sure like I'm not sure if you have time to talk to everybody as as a developer. So I'm wondering if maybe there there's some healthy middle grounds like having a community manager that relays some of the points to the developer and so on.

Yes. As long as it feels to people like this person is part of making the game, I think then it's fine.
Is there anything you've anything else you've learned about community management over the years? So how do you how do you approach community management for for your games nowadays? I used to be very patient. I used to be so patient there. Like back in the niche days, there were people like there were a few people that was like just constantly making trouble. And I took the time to basically do one on-one talks with them via DM on why they are handling and why they are behaving in this way. And uh nowadays it's just like you call somebody uh X, you know, you're out of here. I don't care what's going on in your life. I don't I can't deal with 30,000 people. I can't go on each individual's person's level of problems.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think I just gotten a lot more impatient and I think it's not a

bad thing
because if you can't behave in a group setting, then just don't be in a group.
Okay. And obviously this uh like um community management nowadays mostly means probably Discord, right?
Yes. Um, yeah, I have a big So, we actually used to run a forum for quite a long time when forums were already super out of date and it was kind of hard to get it to come alive at the beginning, but now I'm not even doing anything anymore. It's still kind of alive. So, I'm wondering if we should have stuck with it. Um, but yeah, I mean, Discord is so convenient. I'm always a bit scared that you know something can happen this court changes their policy or I don't know it's not allowed anymore now in Turkey and suddenly a whole
country is gone. Um so that is for me only one step into the community. The deeper step into the community is the newsletter which we are doing which we also so at some at some point it was at

about 100k people but uh we have started to really viciously remove people that are not opening mails like if you're not opening a mail like five times you're out of there because then you probably are not interested and since then it's gone to like 30k people and then I tried to like recruit people into the discord but then from the discord into the newsletter so that we have access to them even if Discord decides to I don't know what and we mostly you do do this by like giveaway stuff. Um we're giving away games and newsletter or when we are running like an alpha or a beta access thing where you need to sign up for the newsletter in order to get the access key. Um,
yes, for I have to do it more again, letting it drop because Discord is so comfortable, but I shouldn't get too comfortable. So, I really have to get back on putting more call to actions to our newsletter because I still think newsletters are amazing marketing tool.

I love it. you really see the people that are on it, they open it, they read what you're doing. And on Discord, it's amazing. But I feel like
you can also just be muted and you do not know how many people actually read this specific announcement. And so I mean, you see it a bit with the reactions, but yeah, definitely step one, Discord. Step two, newsletter. I'm even thinking about if we should offer people one of our older games as a gift when they join a new setter or something to make like the ultimate draw. We'll see. But like a lot of giveaways for like plushies and stuff that we're making or for games that we publish.
And do you see results from that? Like do you see that makes an impact for for marketing? I mean it's really hard to clearly differentiate then
in the end what made what impact. But yeah, I do feel that also for stuff like

merch campaigns where you have like a smaller audience to target to that is more targeted that you are hardcore fans, it usually we also for example had a plushy Kickstarter or like we just did an ombu plushy campaign and I feel like quite a few of the people that are coming are actually from the newsletter.
I see. Yeah, because a lot of people who have newsletters swear by them and we're like, "Jonas, you need to do newsletter." And I've always like, "Uh, later. Maybe later."
Yeah, YouTube. That's already a lot of work.
Yeah, I guess so.
And just don't do the manual list where you have to write, you know, what I did in the very beginning.
Oh god. Like going to events and typing everybody. Hey,
I still recommend I mean, yes, I still recommend like newbie devs to do this, but you don't have to anymore.
If you enjoy networking, then this is something you can try. Give me your email or or just collect business cards and put them all on the newsletter.
Yes. So, actually for like events like

GDC, uh we always, at least back in the day, had like a big glass ball and it just said business cards, join newsletter, win a Steam key, and then we came home with like 200, 300 business cards. And the good thing is there there's actually like some fancy people in there. You're like, oh, accidentally there's somebody from Netflix that and then you know this person is interested in this game and you can reach out to them. So, Yes. Been there, done that.
Oh, big big brain strategies. We're tapping into your awesome.
Thanks.
What What is this Swiss Game Developer Association that you've also been part of? What was that?
Yeah. Um that is like the association of Swiss game developers that are like fighting for for example funding um for games like political support um grants and it's happening actually thank you for asking uh 10 years later after a lot

of work Zurich is finally getting its own game fund tomorrow the informations are coming out about it so okay
yes um that has been a lot of work but also like organizing ing things such as the Swiss Game Award or the Junior Swiss Game Award or like the Swiss booth at a lot of local events. Basically, that kind of stuff. Yeah. And then I kind of switched that out with uh the work for the co-working space because doing both things and the studio and the publisher was
kind of eating at me.
It sounds a bit much like I'm also sure like even viewers listening will be like, "Oh my god, I'm It sounds like you're you're all over the place." or is that the case or what do you spend the majority of your time on? Is is do you feel torn between all of these projects or do you have
So the studio and the the publisher definitely take up the most time.
Got it. mostly marketing and management things

though I kind of miss going jumping back into like I'm really like at during the game jams I'm like give me something give me because the creative energy is is building up and probably sooner or later it will uh emerge again into another biology game I assume but right now yeah it's fun I I like in general starting ideally if I could pick I would always start new things then leave.
Okay. Yeah, that was that's what we would all do honestly.
And um yeah, with the with the hub, a lot of the work has also been taken over by AO and some of the other people that are running it. So at this point, we are in the lucky position that it's uh being profitable with rent. So we can actually
pay people to do work um for the first time that started this year. Yeah. stuff like the Wings Council or the Kickstarter Committee, they usually are very just every like every month a few hours or so. But yeah, like I would say

what is the biggest mental load is I'm used to being with my brain in one project like Wandering Village was the game design lead for uh most of the time and then like switching focusing on the marketing and now with the published games there's like six games in my mind and like three or four games from the studio and still dungeon cra and wandering village and now we have the boot camp games that I kind of also try to think about what they could do. So, it gets a bit scattered up there and it's time to go on vacation.
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Yeah, focusing on too many things at once is like very exhausting. I've I've been there many times and then every once in a while I realize, okay, I need to cut some of them out and then I figure something out. But, as long as it works, it works, right?
If you're a publisher and you're responsible for these projects now, you kind of can't cut them out until they are finished.
That's right. You have to find the

correct time for it. Of course, if you want,
the problem is always wanting to start means I really like the part of scouting and signing new games, you know.
So, that's in my opinion the most fun part of work as a publisher because you get to play a lot of prototypes and then you end up signing another one which you're then responsible for. So, you
have to put it in there as well. But I found that even though it can get overwhelming, especially if things are happening at the same time, because you plan it out carefully, there is supposed to be one release per quarter, but then they all end up moving and they're they're all in the same quarter and me just constantly suddenly have three launches within four months or something, which is much. But like having multiple projects, you come up sometimes with an idea for a project and then you're like, it actually would also work for the other project. It makes this network of ideas in your brain that probably would not

have come out if you were focused on on one thing. I don't know how to
feel like a mushroom network between the games working out there.
The projects can sometimes benefit from each other. When you find something that works for one game, then often times it works for other games as well, right?
Yes. So, for example, just one example, uh for the Wandering Village 1.0, we were quite surprised at so we launched with like 900,000 plus wish lists and we had a day one wish list conversion of only like 0.3% and I was like, and it had a 35% launch discount, which was our highest historical discount. And I was just thinking the people on this wish list are waiting for 1.0. Turns out I was mega wrong. They are all just waiting for a higher discount.
So if I could travel back in time now, I would make this a 50% launch discount even if it's like
oh
like I talked to a lot of people about

it and everybody told me no, keep it more like keep it lower. You're wasting too much money. You have that many wish lists. Um, but yeah, I think that would have been the better idea. And now I have some other games that are waiting for their 1.0. So maybe now I can apply this learning directly because they are so similar.
I mean there a lot of marketing people say that you only get one launch for your game, right? Your early access launch is essentially your your launch and then when you go out of early access it's if you're lucky a little a little blip. But some developers also tell a different story. Some also say the the second launch was almost as big as the first. For example, I think the Tucana defs like the do romantic defs.
Yeah,
I think for them the the second launch was also still quite good.
So for us it was niche was early access full launch, right?
Then for Nimbatus it was early access full launch was same.
Okay.
And this was now the first time where one village I would say this was early

access and this was full launch. Um so this is a new experience to me. I'm used to uh 1.0 going the same or bigger. I'm curious how it will be with Dungeon Crawler, but yes, I've also heard that normally 1.0 is smaller than your early access release. I just hadn't lived through the experience.
What you what you just showed there with your hand like you you got three entirely different results for your games, right?
Exactly. Tiny early access, huge 1.0, same, and then really big early access and okay 1.0. Yeah.
Can go anyway. Interesting.
Can go anyway, I guess. Yes.
And have you identified um some deciding factors like maybe besides the launch discount where you I assume your feeling is to maybe make it a bit higher next time?
Yes. Um I've talked to a lot of people like trying to help me figure out how like why it went. I was also not pos, let's say, not positively surprised by

the console numbers,
but I guess I just have to live with the fact that the strategy game is on consoles. At least that's what I'm being told. So, just saying I'm complaining on a very high level. It still ended up selling like 55,000 copies on um in the first month of 1.0, but early access
was a 100,000 in the first week. So that's why we thought maybe we could get to 100 in the first month again with over 900,000 wish lists. One other potential factor I've identified but I'm not sure about it is just in general there have been more citybuer releases and I felt like we were at the time where there were not that many. And I've just recently not really seen a launch that is not a medieval themed realistic city builder because they tend to always do like they tend to go pretty well. Um that did so good. So I'm thinking maybe we're at a a bit of a point of a shorest slump, but I'm not sure. I think that's

already the two points. I guess maybe the updates. So we did like a big uh story mode update for 1.0 note that we released shortly after it was also which I'm not sure this was enough to draw people in again
and um even though we did a really big influencer campaign we reached out to like 18,000 people and everybody who previously played the game and very few people ended up covering it again
I feel like maybe the early access period was also just a bit long so it was 2 and a half years and a lot of people actually um when I talk to them like, "Oh, it's coming to 1.0." A lot of people told me, "Oh, I thought it was already 1.0."
I guess we were the only one still aware that this is an early access game.
Um,
yeah.
So, I'm not really sure what happened there. It was our longest early access. Also, like Niche had only one year.

Nimbatus was, I think, one and a half, almost two, and now Wandering Village was 2 and a half. So next time I would maybe keep it shorter again to not lose too much of the momentum.
Yeah.
But I mean there are examples where the game was in early access forever and then 1.0.
Yeah. I wonder if you maybe need some bigger news for 1.0. If you maybe need to pack it with a big update or something, but I can only theorize. Well, there was the story mode update, the Switch released, the PlayStation released, the announcement of a physical edition, a new fancy hand animated studio from uh Japanese animation studio. I feel like it was a bit of a there was things
it was short shortly after the 1.0 or was it for 1.0?
For 1.0. So, the story mode update dropped a bit before um to make sure it just works. Uh but like the whole communication for it was then for the

one.
Got it.
So it was like a silent story mode drop.
Yeah. Maybe I don't know is this is it's very curious sometimes which updates excite players and which don't. For example, for William Snail,
uh we spend a whole lot of time making a level editor and it
didn't really draw in new people. I I thought like, oh, let's make a level editor. This is going to be awesome. This is going to bring so many new people. And it was like the people who were already there find it awesome but didn't really didn't really help.
Yeah.
I agree. I find it very hard to find out what to do with the game after it came out. Like
for niche, we had a system that people could actually vote on their favorite features what that they wanted us to to make. And then for every update, we looked at the top 10 and tried to pick one and combine it with something that we wanted to do. And I felt that was very good for keeping everybody engaged and they really felt like part of the

development process. I would maybe try to do something like that again. But it's quite a lot of work. Also, one thing we do and we should really stop is we overpromise things uh as stretch goals during the Kickstarter.
Oh yes.
I And then we're kind of locked in to what we should be making even though we realize midway in that this is probably going to be a waste of time. we should put it into something else. And then maybe you can get away with not doing some of the stuff, you know, but you kind of still feel obligated to deliver on what you promised. And I think that's uh not not good for the project.
That's one thing I'm really happy we we did not do for Thronfall is like a an early access development timeline cuz some some games do that where they are very public about like their development plans and you make a bunch of promises up front, right? Like if you don't have to, then don't do it. like if if you have to do it for a kickstart or something, sure. But
yeah, going with the flow is nicer. I agree.
Yeah, it certainly is. There's one thing

that I I wonder I can if I can ask you about if if not, we'll just edit this out if this like gets like too spicy. It's like um I'm I'm wondering a bit why is my YouTube audience like 95% men? What's your theory?
95%.
It's it's crazy numbers. I have to double check. something wild like that.
Probably don't have enough uh female guests to interest the the female developers. So, you should maybe improve that ratio.
Maybe start.
Looking around in my hub. I think it's also still 70 maybe 65% guys. So, I just think there's still more men. I mean, of course, we know it's it's
Yeah, we we know that
data point. there's more guys in the games industry, but yeah, 95 is a lot. So, what I've been thinking is maybe the

games that you made have a bit more of a male target audience. Would you say so? Yeah.
And also some of the guests you're inviting or maybe also making games that are having a bit of a more male target audience.
Could be. Could be. Could be. It could very much be that I'm just basically a bit stuck in my bubble, right? Could certainly be the case. Yeah. So maybe invite a super successful wholesome game, Woman Deaf, and see what it does to your viewer numbers. Um because then
I'd be curious. Yeah. No, I'm I'm just like basically wondering uh about about the reasons cuz also I feel like if I would pick a random game, like a random indie game on Steam and would reach out to the creators, I would have a pretty high chance for it to be men probably, right?
Yes.
And that's the question is why?
Yeah. And the question, I'm not sure if the question is why. I'm just curious how how you think about it in general. I guess
I think if your role models are men, then you attract more boys to a career

path, it doesn't even matter what career. So, and since up until now most of the successful deaths that are being presented are guys, the the girls cannot see themselves in them is what I feel is often the problem of why are there not more and then you need to kind of actively educate like you can be this too. You know, if all the doctors are guys, you need to as a kid really think hard that
I can be this even though
apparently none of other women are there, you know.
Mhm.
And then you really need your parents and your teachers and society to help you show this. And if you just go to the hospital and a lot of the doctors are women, I think for you it just instantly becomes clear that um so yeah, it's a role for me. It's a role model thing. Um
yeah, that makes that your makes sense.

I I think um
but I'm honestly not so sure. I would like there to be more women in the games industry. So if I can I'm like when we are hiring we just really try to hire
super neutrally uh like not looking at all that stuff and currently we are 45% women
in the studio so it works. I think you just yeah they're they're out there and they're good so just get them and let them
Got it. Yeah is such a hot iron to talk about the is always like you have to think about your words so carefully but I guess it makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's also a bit like I don't know if I'm the prime example for uh if I can speak for women, you know, just because I am one.
Sure. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Sure. You you're not like the speaker for all women. I get that. But I think for for what it's worth, I think you are at least a very good uh role model that like for example other women could look up to if they like they want to get into the space and

they want to start their own game studios.
Yeah, they can. Let me talk to them real quick. Let me talk to them real quick.
You can. It's totally cool. You can be a game dev. Do it. It's fun. You can do art. You can do programming. You can do it all. Thank you. Now, get to work. Thanks. And bye.
Yeah. Good work.
Yeah. Um, if you have any tips obviously for other interesting female guests, then I' I'd very be very much be curious.
I'll make a list and send it to you.
Do that. That's all I can come up with. Do you have any more uh questions or stuff that you would be interested in?
Is it is it the goal to get to two hours?
Nope. We can just hit stop here.
Sounds good to me. I think that covered a lot of ground.
Awesome. Then uh thank you very much for your time.