Marketing Jam Session

[Music] it's an exciting session for us as well because it's a peculiar and the world I would say because we are not entirely sure what the SP is going to be like um we wanted to meet up here to basically discuss a thing that's been running through my mind for some time which is how the world of game development and like work in the trenches that we actually do on like a daily basis overlaps with marketing and how can it overlap with marketing to One support the communication and the promotion of our products out there prior and post Rel is but also how can it influence how

we shape our games to be and how we work on certain aspects of the games so that they are not only easier to Market but also that they are better games as such and I know that like at least from my perspective there are some angles that we can take that can be uh of value for us this is why we are here representing like various perspective and various angles because some of us are from the like the game def side side of things while the others are from the agency side of things with varied experiences from across the markets basically so today I wanted to basically tackle very simple stuff because the simple stuff is the best stuff as I see it we can always Flex muscles and try to do um some complicated things but at the basis at the very bottom of it all it has to be built upon like a solid foundations and so we're going to start

with something that we usually start with when we think about our product so the essence of the product something that when I've been working on various projects of ours it's been a hell of a challenge because on one hand it seems very simple what our game is about but this is truly a difficult question to answer because again my personal experience is that whenever we talk about our games because games are complex multi-layered products we tend to give you like a robust descriptions trying to touch upon all the features and try to T touch upon all the knobs and whistles that are there while the simpler it is the easier it is to focus on what matters to prepare something that can actually exist on a competitive market so we used to say in our company which is 11bit that like every everything starts with a game meaning

development obviously but marketing as well business promotion you name it events like leaflets whatever that is you have to look at it from the lens of the game and so because we've got some experiences in terms of working on various titles from various shelves and various categories platforms I wanted to discuss that from the perspective of how we've been working on the essence of those games and how that Essence shaped up to be to act actually serve as a valid foundation for uh the following marketing activities so Alex the question for you because you have recently released home World fre congratulations man like the game looks absolutely amazing thank you and so I wanted to ask because for those of you who know home world as an IP you know that this is like a cult classic that's one of the best sci-fi Grand RTS strategy games so releasing something

that is a followup to at least three cult titles one of which was like coming from your studio as well right desert of karak yep um how was it for you and the question is like what did you do and what have you focused on to maintain the essence and maintain those values that your already established fund base was familiar with and was craving for right um so yeah home world it's you know long running series one of the pioneers of like 3D strategy games and to this day it's pretty unique in the sense that you use the the three axis of movement right XYZ and you can can position your ships above to surprise the enemy um and so that is a very important pillar of of the game and when the team set out to uh make a new installment the question was what what what can we do that's um new there um but also that's very much connected to um the the core um way of playing the

game um and so they actually went back to something they they couldn't realize 20 years ago when they were trying to make home World 2 um at the time home world one was played in a kind of vacuum like you have your ships uh space is a beautiful background but it's kind of like a fishbowl you know and and that said there's no I mean there were a few asteroids but really it was an empty space home World 2 initiative was meant to be very different but because of Technology at the time they they couldn't do it so they went back to that idea and what they did with home World 3 was that um to really make the most of the fact that you can really navigate the the 3D space and position your unit in all kinds of different positions now we have giant megalith we have giant asteroids and so you can you know navigate this space and surprise the enemy for instance uh there's an ice level you can go underneath the ice sheet and then the enemy you'll be invisible to their sensors so it's a it's a new way to play but that is very much connected to the core of Home World which is making the most of the three um access um so that's that's one example

sure thank you so much and like the previous games of yours was Game of yours was shipbreaker which even though it is not a shared Universe with homor as far as I remember it plays to some of the same themes and it tries to cater to a similar audience of sort right but at the same time when it comes to the genre when it comes to all the mechanics it's a very different kind of animal because it's like a firsters survival crafting game right so but at the same time I assume and correct me if I'm wrong that like trying to reach out with that game to uh to your players you were trying to also like pick that slice of a pie that actually was already invested in hom world like what were the areas that you were trying to explore in terms of the communication was it like the visual side of things or some us piece that you

were trying to sell to them right so the the the hardspace shipbreaker it's the first new original Ip from from Blackbird like home world was created decades ago when um the the creators of Blackbird were at Relic um then the IP was acquired um and then we worked on it again but we didn't own this but obviously the studio is very much identified with that so when when when shreer came up um it was a little bit unstructured at first it came out of a game Jam but very quickly um you know talking about this game and and um what kind of set the imagination of the team on fire there are a few things that became um a little bit more obvious in terms of connective tissue so yeah home world is a strategy game RTS shipbreaker is a first-person spaceship salvaging but they're both about uh spaceship and and vehicle fantasy like home world is all about super detailed spaceship if you play desert of kak well it's it's more groundbased but we have amazing mechanical animations for the buggy going over the sand dunes to this day we get people doing Twitter threads about you know how crazy this level of

Animation is for an RTS um and shipbreaker is the same thing it's like you you have amazing ships which have different system fuel lines reactor differently pressurized area but the way you interact with them is you go inside the guts of these ships and you recycle them um and so that's when you know we're like okay that that's pretty important and and that's an aspect that is um key and that we want to leverage the game didn't start there the the prototype for the game was more about um free floating in space and you know it was a bit more loose but then all of a sudden when they found that connective tissue of the spaceships and recycling they like oh okay there's something and then the other aspect is that this game is um the pacing of it is I would say fairly slow and the way you play it is you always have to kind of like think ahead um because the ships are intricate systems so if you want to pull out the nuclear reactor that's great but there's no room to pull it out so you're going to have to cut through the hle of the ship but then this room is pressurized and then maybe there's a fuel pipe that's running behind the well so you

have to all of a sudden you know think of like okay it's this seven step process to get to where you want to go to and a strategy game is the same you know in the end you want to beat your opponent but then you have to gather the resources you have to build the units you have to build the right unit composition so you're always thinking you know 5 10 minutes ahead and she break her very much as as that um and then there was a you know a little bit I guess of um of a funny a cheeky connection um with our history which is when when home World deserts of K came to be um at first Blackbird was working on a game called Hardware ship Breakers um and so the title was abandoned because we got the home World IP we got the license to actually make it a fully fledged home World game um but then when we came back to hardspace shreer you know at some point it became obvious that like well maybe we should reuse that that that term because there's a bit of a a history there and it's a way to tell people that yeah it's not a home World game it's a bit different you know know just like Hardware shipbreakers was

technically not a home World game and then became one but it lives in a similar kind of like um space so it was really something more for the um for the audience and the fans to pick up on gotcha that's like even more interesting to me because like funny thing from like behind the scenes in at 11bit when we were starting our work on the marketing campaign for frost Punk we were very much inspired with the early trailers for hardship uh ship Breakers because you've had this like semi2 the animated trailers and we were like drawing from that trying to establish something for frost Punk when working on like shipbreaker or like home world were you already when like the product was evolving and you were thinking about how to shape it up to be were you cooperating with any agencies with any external vendors in terms of the creative creative side of things so yeah there there's two um areas where like some external input I mean one is truly external like a agency or consultant and

one was um I'd say an external team within the studio because we have a cinematics team that operates across our project and they're fairly independent so the first uh input I I just alluded to it was the name um hardspace shipbreaker came from hardware shipbreakers and so the the idea of like reusing that that that that name but making it slightly different um came from a consultant that we work with um because he was like well yeah you know that was kind of like the um original um the Prototype that you had done for the home World deserts of kak that became something else and it was about recycling spaceship so you know people who know the history of this product will be like oh it's interesting that they call it the same way but at the same time it's still different so it's kind of a way for us to say okay it's not in the home World universe but thematically in terms of tones and all that you you're probably going to find some of the stuff you like with the cool spaceship design and then the other part that came from the cinematics team is um in shipbreaker if you play it there's a

Kind of a Funny totem of thing that comes back pretty often it's a it's a stuffed bunny it's a plushy um so that bunny initially was not meant to be that prominent in the game what happened is as the cinematics team was doing the the um opening cut scene for the game they were going through the concept art folder and they found an old concept art of a shipbreaker that had like a a bunny attached to to his suit like a bunch of you know personal items all this was was inspired by research that you know our team had done around actual shipbreakers in India and then the the equipment they had and they realized that they would customize this equipment and often have like Lucky Charms or things that reminded them of home and their family so that's how I guess the bunny happened and um so the cinematics team thought it was a cool detail and then they snuck it into the opening cut scene where one of the first shots you see a little girl that watches you know her dad um take up for space and to do a salvage work in orbit and she holds a bunny uh and you

know the the the the de team was a bit surprised by it but they're like oh that's cool and then the players started lashing onto it and then this became this whole thing where people when were in Early Access was were asking about the bunny the de team ended up putting the bunny in the game as an item you can retrieve and then the description has a thing I mean some crazy thing about how those products were designed the bunny was a physical object that we made for the team when they shipped the game everyone got one of those bunnies and and then it was also in the final um cut scene of the game so it was interesting because it was fairly external to the development team um you know it came from another team but then there was that creative conversation and then there was a conversation with the audience um also at some point so there is like a sort of a feedback loop we're working on some ideas that are focused on the promotion you can actually enrich the world or even some of the features of the game right exactly how was it for you rafo meaning like first working as a creative director for cyber Punk but right now you are kind of a fixer running Hungry Bit and working with

other Studios do you have any chances of actually like working on the product itself and co-shaping the product when working with certain uh clients hello um hi um I I think that's the most interesting part of our work that we are able to to to co cooperate with Dev team and and create something really interesting and cool um we try to be we try to start very early with the creative pipeline so we are able to to talk with L team understand it more try to find places and spaces that are interesting for us that we can create something additional for the game that is not going to ruin the development process and it's going to not change anything and and Destroy but it's going to add some additional flavor or some additional info about the game about the lore and and most of the game worlds are so

so huge so immensely fought through that that there are so many cool points to find um we have a lot of experience on this uh we we for I don't know for example we work on for a game called Paradise Lost and we we listened uh we talked with the law team and we found out that before I I'm I'm not going to say any spoilers uh but the the main thing is that the the whole uh team is locked in a bunker so there was no story be before uh the the bunkers lockdown so we found some sweet spots where we can try to establish a connection uh we thought that locking down of the bunkers was a very emotional and difficult moment and a very import a very important one for the whole stories and we created story around one of the bunkers that's that that that was being closed and and and it was quite impactful and it was fun

and it was something that was not meant to be and even mentioned in the game and it ended up as a important part of the lore there so actually I've got a follow-up question to that because uh to establish that kind of an let's call it an expanded universe for the game through marketing however you do that whether that is some sort of a trailer or some sort of an additional asset from the smallest bits to something that is a bigger P part of a campaign you have to have like a very good understanding of what the game is where you come early into the project and the project is like ever evolving because something's going to change something's going to be cut something's going to be whatever modified because of the budgeting reasons or because of the creative change that happens somewhere along the way you you need a certain again

understanding that comes from a set of information that you get from the client so what is like the pivotal thing what is like the backbone that you absolutely need to get from the developer to actually de deliver the best work possible I was afraid of the question I know well uh but to be fair the the the the answer is quite simple the game is always evolving like you you cannot foresee how it's going to change uh basing on your experience you could try to judge what are the elements that are you know the the most interesting for marketing and we you feel that are the strongest and you hope they're not going to change uh because hope is all we got in marketing to be fair um but but yeah you try to estab you know talking with the dev team and with the LW team is is extremely important for us uh understanding of the of the the the changes of of the world understanding the uh the gameplay Loop

how it supports it we we we need to know it we need to have all the data so we try to start the the process early of course it's sometimes it's it's not that easy but um but yeah the core information is we need to we need to get info on what is planned at this stage to be the the to be the USP to be the most important parts of the LW and we try you know we are like detecting we're trying to look for additional branches that are important enough but and have a potential of expansion and and this is something that gives us the most uh Freedom mostly because we do not complicate the process the de teams process but we can find like you know the small bunnies that are cute and interesting and can bring in more emotion to the whole process that can bring more story like it it automatic it automatically gives you um some uh some

cool things that you can catch and and bring additional um emotional backpack there thank you thank you um Anna tius thank you for being with us I am very curious about your point of view and your perspective because in comparison to what we do you've got like significantly more varied experiences because you work on like multiple categories multiple products and on a significantly shorter deadlines I would say but at the same time you are very much expected to know your product through and through right exactly yeah that's that's what I wanted to talk about if you don't mind that I go first that you you actually have to be able to familiarize yourself with the product that you're going to Market so and you're not with the dev Team all the time you basically get the information when the product is either already finished or at the finishing stages but

you can't always play the game because it hasn't been released yet so it's it it can be problematic but you still need to find ways to find these hidden gems because I really like what both of you were talking about because these are like most of the time these are actually the things that make or break the marketing campaign uh so it's very important to to find these glimmers how some people call them yeah and basically latge onto them and and base the communication on that but it's true that you know when you work in an agency you think what you need to Market but then where you're going to Market it you need to be very specific about the target group who you're going to talk to because you don't only talk to Gamers you only want you also want to talk to people who are interested who could be potential Gamers so what would make them choose this game even if they're not regular Gamers so is there something that would convince them and sometimes it's actually the agency that is able to to find this link because there are so

many different perspectives of people who are Gamers as myself for example I have to say home World 2 was the game that opened my eyes to space exploration when I was a kid like it changed my life just a you know tiny personal tidbit here but uh but it's you know you have to like gather all these people so that there are some who will give you the Insight this is important about this game this is the thing that we want to emphasize and then there's someone who will tell you okay so we need the strategy for that and we need to base it on this and that Target group we need to go through these touch points because this would be the best way to reach the group that we're trying to reach and who are we even going to talk to we can't talk to everyone because gamers are not a monolith even if you talk to Gamers you can't talk to all of them in the same way so it's always very important to make sure that you get this on point and make sure that you know what you're going to say to whom you're going to say it and what you're going to base it on uh I know it you know it it does sound like basic stuff but it really is important to establish this in as much

details as possible at least from my point of view gotcha coming from like advertising industry into gaming like one of my um surprises was that um we don't have a lot of like that has changed along the years to some degree but still I think that we could have potentially have more information about our audiences Target groups uh some like in-depth insights about about how they behave and how to cater to their needs so this is something if I understand you correctly that actually we can benefit from working with an agency from early on yes I think that you know of course it's it's one of the things but it's very important to establish who you're going to talk to mhm because like a general message can reach the general public but then you also want to reach some specific people so you need to know how to do that and I know that uh it depend depends of course on the data that you gather about your audience uh

and the data that the agencies have on different types of Target groups that could be beneficial but still you know at the very basis of communication is what you want to say and and this yeah this these magic tidbits that you get out of the game so like trying to shape our new products and trying to shape our new games we are doing our best to follow certain Trends to understand what sells right now what can be fun but but actually what also can be profitable so this is something that we can collaborate upon with an external external vendor whether that is like a media house or an agency or whatever so that even before we get to the marketing we can actually understand who's going to potentially reach towards us like and and grab our game from the shelf right yes yes EX exactly superb and the other

question and that's going to be a tricky one I think is that due to those deadlines and the fact that you've got significantly less time to get familiar with a product than we do like being internally and going over and over over certain features and whatnot we do have some time to uh work something out how does it work for you are there any advises are there any tools like mind tools but also tools tools technical tools that we can use to be more efficient in terms of defining the idea behind the game or behind how we want to communicate that is there anything that we can treat as a first step so to speak in the creative process you want to answer this one or sure why not I would try I would try to so I think that that the the the the main problem is that the games these

days are really complex they have like um many uh many levels many elements that you can uh be involved to or some some guys are just making uh develop their spaceships they love to create where there are some discoverers that want to you know always go uh far and farther away and there was even one example that for the one of the shooters that they couldn't um they couldn't find the one uh the one particular audience for the game so they defined the three different audience in uh uh in specifics of what the people are looking in that game so there were Adventures that they wanted to to um to see the story they're going through the story the story line there was so uh economic uh with guys who who collects the money and and upgrade the weapon and all this stuff there was like more more economic focus and there was a and

there was a Gamers who wanted to just kill crush and Destroy and and and be uh uh the best shooter so and all of those audiences uh they prepared three different trailers for them because it's like it's like a movie you don't even you never know what the people what scene going to be uh the cult scene in a movie and even at that bunny yeah uh you can build it but still it's always cool but the thing is it the thing is it's not it only it's a gimmick and it's not selling the idea for the game and and this is one of the ways because sometimes they are so complex so um so uh um there there's so many paths to to go through it that you cannot make one simple message it's it's it's it's impossible so so I think that you that that we uh if if you're talking to each other we need to find uh some um some elements and then uh uh some elements and then and then find uh different uh

uh different Target groups and try to focus on on on on the on the groups not the not with the one um communication we can do it with the trailers or painting the whole word yellow but still it's like more The Branding than storytelling about the game and and to answer the question about the timelines and all that stuff I I'm really even when I was uh preparing that presentation and trying to define those three paths like branded games this is the shortest the shortest path with the dead end in the end because it's like a idea of of making a campaigns in two months so you need to develop the game in two months so what you have you have like Pac-Man mechanics uh super PK and all that stuff from 80s uh that's the only way with that you can code in in two months and and branded it uh the third part is a big collaboration and this is what you talking about that that you that that the agency uh or the creators are

involved from the beginning and trying to to understand the game but I'm I really like that that middle um path the hacking but in a term of controlled hacking so using the and this is the fastest uh way the most creative way and the most open way because we only using the the word of the game and trying uh the whatever it is uh uh and try to make some uh and and and and use it as a medium and try to tell the story inside the game using the native elements of the game uh to tell the totally different stories like that this example for Red Dead Redemption 2 all you need to do is like um collect the the bread uh Tomatoes uh beef and cheese and if you if you make a snapshot you go you are going to the restaurant and buying a and so you can you can you can tell

every story in your own medium in the in the language in the visual in the in the in the game so I think that that's that's pretty interesting because uh you can always involve uh an agency the creatives okay this is the word this is the elements you have like a wood uh a coal and sulfur uh this is the guys that collecting it here you have sheeps and um and and what what's and then we trying to gets those elements and because this is what we doing uh you know we switching the the clients almost every day one day you making a Coca-Cola next day always and or OB B and then a toys and then uh Canal plus whatever so if you if I saw uh the tools the sandbox we will try to build something inside sometimes we it's I think that is most interesting and and not welldeveloped ways to to to that's that's fascinating to me as well because yeah you've got

this kind of a lateral approach I would say because of the fact that one day for you it's like Coca-Cola and another day it's Paul Pharma or whatever right so because we are constantly looking for some ways to support whatever we do because as you have rightfully said our products are complex and we have to tackle a lot at any given moment so if I was to be your client right and I came to you with my game for you to create that kind of a story that can support me along the way whether that is with understanding and like enhancing what I already have there or making it like lovable for people out there what is like the essential set of information that you would need from me what do I have to prepare so that I can expect you to do your best in terms of the creative support I think that are two two

elements one is like uh what I can do in the game what's my goals and what the uh what's the word looks like and what's the main goals so it's because this is the the the uh the closed word that I'm in is a me is like a medium if you if you are talking about this totally the same thing in a radio commercial so I know that I have only sound I have 30 seconds uh and that's all that's that's the whole world if I'm in television I have 30 seconds or 50 seconds I have a sound and vision so that there are four elements and now in the game there are 200 elements but um if you if you try to do something complex in it you will fail if you are not from the beginning but still if I uh look at it as a as a Sandbox just to build something and tell this make the commercial inside the game to tell some story that's that's the be this is the way and and I think that the best option

would be like to play it for 15 minutes maybe that's and then after all that's the answer uh when you can involve anyone on the on that creative path maybe sometimes uh there is there is not the the point that it's too late MH that's my Approach after all the parts about about playing the game is interesting because that's the conversation we had with Rafa yesterday in regards to like some projects that we've been tackling recently that we appreciate when people that work with us play our games beforehand because otherwise it's very difficult to understand whatever you read about the game however you look at the materials until you play it you won't know what's out there right I think just to to the end uh the the the thought uh I think that is really uh after all it's pretty easy and not a timec consuming uh uh process because I have all the

tools all the elements in the game so all I need is an idea because I won't do anything more than I have you know I have a a piece of paper and a two penes a red one and a green one and if I if I uh make a bear it's going to be a a bear but but still I can tell the story I can draw the comics uh the tools that you give me yeah so and it's not the time consuming to develop it because it's already developed you can all you need to do is uh is to tell that story Anna yeah I I just wanted to uh add on that because of course the perfect thing that you could give us if we were to work with your game is the game actually for us to play it to be able to have time to familiarize ourselves with it to find the details that tus was talking about to see the sandbox and see what we can use I know that it's not always the case it's not always possible to give the agency the full game because the game has Isn't

finished yet or it's impossible because of some legal reasons there have been stories that we've been hearing but ultimately this is the definitely the best way to go about it to just let people play this game but then again there are a few important things that need to be um established when when we talk about how and what we want to promote so I think that if it's impossible to play the game let's let's say that it is impossible uh we definitely need to know what for example what feeling you want the people to be left with when they play your game not only what the J is because this is one of the things but then what is unique about this game how is it different from other games from this genre what is this game for you so this is more like a I would even say philosophical discussion but then again when you craft creative communication for a game you want to know what kind of feeling you want the people to be left with when they interact with your materials not just with your game so there's a lot to be discussed but then again yeah the best

thing would be to just give us the game ahead of the lunch date so that we can enjoy it before others can but sure if possible yeah like I think that like in most cases especially when should we establish like a long long-term cooperation there is a way to play vertical slices to play some early builds right um uh Alex like those agencies that were or Cooperators of yours let's say the person or the group that came up with the ReUse of ship Breakers where were they invested in the development process from the early on were they familiar with like ins and outs of of the game that you were creating um yeah I mean they they they roughly knew where this was um going it was a bit more of a of a like time limited collaboration in this case but there's another example from a a previous um company I work for that I want to bring up because I think it's it's it's

pretty relevant so um a while ago I I worked for beses down there um on the marketing side when they open European offices and um the the BDA like um started working with with agencies for Branding and positioning and all that pretty pretty early on I mean at least at the time they used to it was you know almost a decade ago so maybe things have changed but um and so for Wolfenstein the New Order there was something U really cool that um um you know they came up with in their brainstorm the the EUR um US headquarters and the agency so Wolfenstein the New Order if you're not familiar with it takes place in an alternate timeline where Nazi Germany has won the war dominates the world but then you know there's a group of people trying to uh tople the regime U and so in the game you go in in a bunch of you know different countries and areas but obviously you can't go across the whole world um and so the the what they realized is that there was an opportunity to flesh out the world of Wolfenstein the things that you don't

see in the game you could flesh it out in the marketing campaign and so for us in France that meant that we collaborated with an agency and we did a fake uh TV newscast of you know what it would like if you had the can film festival except yeah it's under Nazi Germany um so what are the kind of you know pop culture that that regime would generate and that became some marketing assets and this was you know not I'm not going to put that just to the credit of the French team cuz the the where it came from originally is as they were having all this creative discussions with agency and the US headquarters um they were thinking about like okay what what what kind of Pop Culture artifact would exist and then maybe we can you know leverage that in our in our campaign they came up with this amazing idea of creating uh bands uh alternate like 67s pop and rock bands uh except yeah they all sing in German so imagine the Beach Boys that sing in German uh and it's all about not being a rebel or

something you know you to the line you so it's it's pretty ironic it's pretty funny so they created these bands like they they recorded the whole songs they created the visual identity of the bands and then it was so good that they were like why not use it in the game you know so they ended up as like uh collectible items if you play Wolfenstein in your order you will in the levels you will sometimes hear radio or you know an old vinyl record playing that music and then you can collect it but initially it was actually kind of born from like a sort of marketing idea of like you have this amazing world in the game but you're only going to show a sliver of it and then you're going to have to Market this game to different markets right and so France might be more receptive to the idea of that game if you can of kind of like project them in like what would it be like if you lived in France and it was you know under a Nazi domination eh so yeah that was a really interesting back and forth yeah but that's only possible when you think about the marketing side of things pretty early into the process right because the game is still shaping up to be and then you

can grab those valuable ideas and incorporate them so they can support the pillars of of your game I do remember that in our case in with frostpunk we were working on the first or the second trailer I think it was the second one with people climbing like the icy wall and like trying not to fall so basically that was the trailer that was about to establish the premise of the survival game about the community and the group not necessarily a one entity and I do remember that like the biggest challenge like the production challenge actually that we had was to make those people climbing visible because of the like snowstorm effects and we came up with this okay let's give them lamps because we need to have some lights that are visible on the wall and those lamps like became a part of the world that actually got incorporated into into the game itself and finally ultimately became one

of the pivotal like visual elements along with the huge generator in the middle of the city that Define the world of frostbank but they initially came like became an idea that we came up with for the sake of the trailer solely right so those things this is why the value is probably um in cooperating closely whether that is like the internal marketing team or the external one because the external one gives you an additional value of a broader perspective and those like talking earlier over the coffee you said like the very interesting thing that you need to have like a perspective of someone who doesn't have the tunnel vision right someone who comes from the outside and can give you a fresh look at what you are doing and I've got that very much right now that working on one project like for the last few years I don't know

what's good and what's not I need someone to actually evaluate and re-evaluate that from time to time but like Titus mentioned like painting the word yellow and I do remember that you have painted the world in few um colors um and I wanted to ask actually not about the yellow color of cyber Punk but the color of ghost Runner because I liked this way the marketing side of things actually established the theme and the tone of the world for me as a player way before I have actually played the game itself and I wanted to ask like how much of that happened on the def side and how much of that happened during the cooperation of your creative team with the development team and maybe some of those things ended up in the game itself okay that's a humble thing would be to say no

we didn't do anything but uh Frankly Speaking it it was mostly about the cooperation the we we love the cooperation around ghost Runner it was a very open um brainstorming sessions and and talking about the world understanding it more and uh and there were a lot of really creative ideas and and and what was cool is that that we were giving a lot of freedom we um and for example what was interesting for us is that we at the beginning we established that that we wanted to the main hero to be a bit more human that's why we added the jacket uh at the first keyart like if you play the game there is no jacket inside of the game uh but we we F well but you know the the hero is is is an outlaw he's he's he's looking for his identity he has to have his Gadget he has to have something that makes him more like uh relatable

something that makes him feel and makes us feel because of it so um the dev team you know instantly loved the Lov the idea we we we we created it we made him we made the poses more human we made the uh the attitude more uh human and and instantly it became very interesting and it and it had an impact on on on the on the whole game and as you know in the second installment uh ghost Runner has a cape and has an has has a suit because because it worked guys we need to wrap it up even though I've got a bunch of question to ask you but uh if there are any any questions from the audience we are happy to Pro possibly happy to answer them uh in the meantime I'm going to ask you one quick thing thing because um I am very curious if you've got any

recommendations because like as we know uh good artists copy and great artist still so is there anything to steal out there right now do you have any immediate thoughts on resources things to follow things to observe to get inspired to be on top of what is happening right now especially outside of the gaming like environment something that we can be aware of to draw from to support our marketing campaigns and marketing Endeavors Anna anything that comes into your mind I will actually be talking about this during my presentation so I can give you a short summary but basically and you don't even have to look too far because uh you can say many things about Ubisoft you can love them you can hate them but the way they do their marketing with agencies is incredible and you can also look at local insights because quite a lot of things that happen on local markets are quite incredible I would especially look at the Romanian market and how they

promote the big titles on uh using very very local insights it's actually something that uh that is uh I think important to follow but I think that in general just looking at not just the trailers not just the assets that are being put out but basically everything creative that's happening around the game and with the community because this is also an important thing just keep tabs on the community this will give you an idea of where everything is going and what people actually notice and what they partake in because this is also important cool I'm happy to hear the whole talk hopefully yeah absolutely tus anything who add yeah I I I totally agree with Danel there was a um if you if if you remember the the movie bowling Colombia about the massacre in in high school in uh us there was a man in Manson in that movie and they asked him what would he uh say to these young people not to do that again and he was like to say to them just listen I would

listen to them so I think that the community is uh is a is is the place that you can find the insights give listen to them give what they want they are more in the game than you after all I think uh and have and have this um um o uh Overlook the helicopter view on uh and they knew what they they they are the heavy users so they they knew what they what what they miss in the in the game and you can build the whole St there was a nice example in the city pro project presentation about the uh walking button there was another another another patch and there was no the walking button and then suddenly there was a big patch with almost changing the whole game putting it on the other level and the walking button and the whole um uh the whole news the whole PR was around that that that so I think that we need to uh this is a like nice quote for

nice sentence for the end of the and that we all need to uh listen to to each other and and I think that there's a lots lots of really cool things to to invent together gotcha thank you so much guys thank you for spending this hour with us thank you to all of you for being with us should you want to talk to us we're going to be outside thank you so much guys have thanks everyone great day