Masters of Publishing 1: Secrets to Getting Signed by a Publisher

Eager Broski, GM of Supersonic. Thank you for having me at your studio.
Thank you for coming.
So the topic that we're going to discuss today is how to get published by Supersonic. And basically I will be extracting all the information so that I can get my hypothetical studio uh signed by Supersonic. Um but let's start off with the with the most important part. What does a GM do at Supersonic? So supersonic is the publishing solution of by unity. We started back then in 2020 as a hyper casual publisher by iron source. Then we merged with Unity and in the past two years we're actually focusing on more as most of the industry on hybrid casual games and the shift to hybrid casual games as a GM. So I'm announcing all the activity from uh game development, growth, user

acquisition and our R&D side which uh is one of our I think unique uh h strength.
Nice. And tell me about so at one point I know Supersonic was soaring kind of almost like the second I think at in hyper casual publishing
first even first you got to number one and then
there was no more hyper casual and now it's the hybrid casual. So
can you just align everybody on what is a hybrid casual game?
Yeah. So h I think that the definition of a hybrid casual game is a a combination of mass appeal hyper casual core gameplay together with death and death and more engaged mechanics of a casual games. So this is very simple high level

definition. Uh in supersonic we look on hybrid casual games not just as dual monetization where there are several other things that we are looking to. So the first one is we're looking for immarketability simple core gameplay that comes from hyper casual games that can be very attractive for the the user acquisition activity. The second one is uh the dual monetization, the IP and the ads based monetization. We less strict with the percentage. So we don't look like okay if the game is 7030 into IP or 50/50 on into like between ads and IP. We more look on uh the ability to create a more engaged game uh that allow us uh to retain the users uh to build more live ops

activity and that the user will keep h involved in the in the in the game and coming and and will come back to the in the game for longer longer time. So, so just to summarize it, basically you take the design of a hyper casual game,
you make it deeper by adding elements like progression vectors so that you're able to run live ops through. So through through that you can
keep the users for a longer time. Yeah.
And implement especially in dual monetization model. But what you keep from hyper casual is all your learnings in terms of marketability.
Yeah.
Uh and then on the production side, the same thing, making games much faster than a typical casual game.
Yeah. or typical midcore game or other type of game. So you can push them quicker in the market and see if they have if they have what it takes to be scaled eventually.
Yeah. So I think this is we understand like the gaming industry in general we understand that the development time of a game takes much more time that in the

past and obviously all the the user acquisition cost are rising year from year and uh when you invest one two three years in a game you take a huge risk in terms of development time and cost and everything and then you don't know actually what to expect from uh the user acquisition. And this is why I think the hybrid casual genre raised in the few in the last few years because actually you from the beginning you feel the marketability side of the game. This is what happened was with the hyper. So it's exactly this point why why hybrid casual games are are rising now.
Yeah. The importance of monetization. Um
I want to talk about like from your side because you're running this publishing organization you run it through the transition. Um, can you talk a little bit about like what different skill set had to be different when you moved from hyper casual where there's hundreds of studios, you're pushing game games out at a massive scale and pace the lifetime

of the game is relatively short. So, it's all about volume and now you've moved essentially from a volume business to quality business. So, how does the organization like what how did the organization change of from a publisher perspective? So we we we definitely had a two years of of shift and from a hyper casual to hybrid casual. I think that most of the talent that we have and people that was here for hyper casual focused on on very like growth. It means like pure red monetization and and user acquisition together with very advanced data tools and platform. So we create supersonic platform and we create a new metrics that the developer we were very transparent. This is with the developers to to show them all their gaming metrics

but we succeed probably because of the heavy lift on the user acquisition capability of supersonic. Then in the past two years we started to work on the hybrid and we understood that we need more function that of of of build of creation of of game. It means that is is more people that actually work on the product side. This is the big difference. So on between hybrid and hyper you need actually people of pro product who lead the product of the game. We work more on economic metrics and we creating a live ops operation a hu whole new live ops operation that didn't exist during the hyper casual. H it took it took us time to to adjust and to bring and to bring more gaming DNA into into supersonic in this uh in this transition. And today I think that we're most more

close to to to gaming side than to like just data growth side. Uh and this is what we did in the past like let's say two years.
So if I understand correctly like before when you were a hyper casual publisher essentially what happened was a studio uh a small team would put out their game for a test you test it it's scalable you scale next one. Uh but now how has the role changed when when you consider the role of a developer which is the one who makes the game and then the role of a publisher because before it was game is here scale it and then it's a clear-cut division between the two. You have the capital you have the tech
um you have the knowhow you know how to scale we have the creativity we know how to build but now what's the what's the divide of the work? Yeah. So I don't have I don't think that at supersonic we have a strict like definition of of what is like the publisher

responsibilities and what is the developer on very very high level. So the the the developer is basically the creating engine of of the game. the developer in in charge of creating fun simple core loop that can attract the users the publisher side supersonic. So we in charge of the all the the powerful growth mechanics. So it starts with adding economy to the game and using live ops tools to the in the game. We are adding we're working on AB test progression and and in user acquisition creative h production. So this is very on very like high level but we work with sometimes with we have some studios that are just two or three people and they really

really good in creating the core loop of of the game and that's it and here we bring all the value of supersonic in terms of like all the package we are guiding them in terms of marketing analysis what works what doesn't work we work them we help them to build the the economy of the team. Then we are adding the layers of the monetization, the dual monetization. Then we are working with them on the live ops system, creating the the creatives, the growth and then we're growing the game. This is all the the scaling basically of Supersonic. On the other hand, we do have more sevy big studios that brings more capabilities to the table, not just creating a simple core loop. For example, we published recently Screw Master H with EO games from China, which is solid big team and they they build a great game for the local Chinese

market and came to us to help him to publish worldwide. So we adjusted we were like in the beginning we were just in consultant and as a partner just to take a game for local market and to explain how they can mass distribute it in in worldwide. So we did the adjustment that needed to in terms of the game in terms of the design of the game that can be for more mess appeal in the worldwide. we help them with the monetization strategy and the growth and the UA. So here we there's two examples like one is just focusing on pure on the core uh creating the core gameplay and one that comes with much more capability but still need supersonic as as your partner to to publish the game.
How do how does the decision- making work? Because there's always two parties when when you're at a publisher. There's the always the developer and the always the publisher. And I understand that in

the beginning of course decision- making is all on the developer side because they are making the decisions to make the game creative and then it goes into testing and so forth. But when it goes past those phases when a publisher really starts putting their weight in
how does it work? So it's it's again it's it really depends on on the relationship between us and the and the developer and the understanding what is the capabilities of the developer. So sometimes as if we understand that developer can bring really as I said like very good core gameplay but he doesn't understanding how how to build the retention and retain the users how you build the economy in the in the game. So we are taking in charge of that part. So basically we becoming the the operator of the game. Yeah. So uh this is uh what we like operator in uh with everything not just the UA growth and the developer sticks

to to what he's doing really good which is the core game play and he's the developer of the game. So and but if we understand that the developer on the other side have more capabilities and he have like design design people or or product people. So we're working together we find exactly the spots where they need like even if they have a product so we guide them and we work together and we create kind of a one team. So it's a one team that works on a game that uh includes the part of the developer and Supersonic. So here in Supersonic we actually create a whole squad of professionals that in charge of of of creating the game itself. So with all the functions of economy and monetization and and the QA and everything like like a studio. So it's a studio that we build

from uh from both sides. Interesting. How we see how we look on it. So basically look at it what does it take to succeed then you look at what does the developer have and then start basically filling out those holes.
Yes.
As um as the game moves forward.
Well well talking about different type of developers like
how how do you find a developer and how does a de like how does a developer find you and how do you find the developer? Where is that match made and and what are you looking for when when trying to make these matches?
Yeah. Erh so first uh I think a lot of developers find find us uh uh today like because Supersonic already existed several years with several good successes in terms of games. So we we are we are getting traction for for many developers and then we we actually need to decide like because we're looking compared to what we looked on hyper casual we look much

more in the quantity and the quality of the game uh compared to to quantity because uh for hybrid casual games you need more quality in terms of the uh the creation. Erh so if we used to work with uh hundreds of studios uh three years ago today we work with dozens of uh studios sometimes we approach to a studio if we see a you know a good a good background from the studio and we want to tackle specific studios that we think that in terms of fit they can work with Supersonic not only in terms of the professional side because there are a lot of studios that work doing great games and great developers but as I mentioned we work eventually we create one team
so it's it's it's a cultural fit it's

understand like the fit it's it's not only professional fit we need someone that can understand that he's now starting to work in a collaboration with another partner for creating the this game so This is this is where we try to to approach to a studio because we understand we do it with we talk to the people we understand their tech level we understand how fast they're going in terms of production because it's super super crucial for supersonic and general I think for a publisher these days the the time to market because uh you can create a great game but you can create it in two years.
Yeah.
Yeah. H it's not it's not good for it's it's not good enough these days. We look for a shorter time. So we need high quality in terms of production a fast
developer.
So if I'm a developer like how do I stand out from because I bet you're getting hundreds of Yeah.

if not thousand of different applicants every year. How do I stand out as a developer? I know you you want to date. You want to see how fast I am, how creative I am, how how willing I am to take feedback from from the publisher and able to course correct based on that feedback. But how do I get through the door?
So, uh,
how do I get spotted?
Yeah, it's a it's actually a good question. So I think that uh first everyone welcome to to to to to talk to us and to approach to supersonic and then if you approach to supersonic so I think that you need to bring some already some like core game play that you want with with an idea with a vision uh that you actually want to build a big hit.
Okay. Erh this is need your turn to be your understanding for it

and uh you need to be very on the tech side you need to be on the edge. So we are we look for it. So you need to present you need to pitch basically the idea in terms of ideation what is the idea why you choose it. We need to to see that you have, you know, some understanding of the market because you eventually choose some sub some a game based on something and not just because you played with your friends in the in the basement and you decide that it's fun and you want to create a community of 100 people that playing the game. Erh you need the to show us and we we're looking into the tech how uh deep understanding how you fast in your time to to marketing the production time
and uh we need to understand that the cultural fit and cultural fit I mean like for example accept failures because it's very important during a production

of a game sometimes
you fails and you need to understand that you can get a feedback and We need to understand that you are getting the feedback and you actually implementing these feedbacks uh in your production.
So often times you fail especially in this most of the time most of the time you need to understand it you will fail
sometimes you succeed.
Exactly.
So um okay but what is the stage? So you you explained that there you're doing these evaluations. So am I approaching supersonic where like let's say I slide into your DMs. I'm like eager
got this game. Yeah. looking real slick. I want to make hund00 million dollars a year. Um, we made me, my buddy, and our our dog made this game. It's a it's a really good core. We want to publish this with Supersonic. Is that the the the earliest phase or it's the earliest phase, but let's say that you need to send We'll check like you need to show
your again like it's it's nice, but you

need to pitch the idea. You need to send the
This is like the Steam game and it's doing really well. We made a mobile version of it.
I think this is it. I think we're going to the moon.
Yeah. So, so I'm not sure like again like in most of the cases in hybrid casual world compared to hyper
usually like two three people to build a heat it's it's it's you need to be very very very good in it. Yeah. H as like I mentioned it we work with several studios like that but it's it's not a lot yeah
usually you need a bigger team okay you need to few developers you need the function that we need to
do AI bots count
AI bots count for sure so actually
if you are really good with that it's actually an advantage these days
okay interesting
but but you need solid studio we prefer
with some background of of it with failure which is great but if you are

just this is your first idea you never build a game just as you said have some probably will be difficult to publish a hybrid casual game. Yeah. So you you need a background of of some background in the industry. You need a solid team and you need the the market fit and the cultural fit for supersonic.
Interesting. Okay. So now I understand a little bit better. So you have to be somewhat established before you start working with with Supersonic. You don't have to be, you know, world topping charts, but you have to have some reps in you so that you know how these things work. So you've been in the industry, so that gives you the um
the experience to work with a larger publisher like Supersonic effectively.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It an advantage is if you have some background working with a publisher because we see different from
different like we see public like developer that comes with for example experience that they worked with even

different public like not just different publishers
on a game they understand much better the flow they understand what much better the needs of a publisher how you work together compared to even studios that build nice games. Yeah, but never worked under publisher. So suddenly, okay, they need to adjust and it takes time and sometimes this is the reason why the game actually fails.
Oh wow. So the the communication between the
communication. Yeah. So that's basically when we're talking about culture, we're talking about are you able to have the workflow that makes you able to work with somebody who gives you verbal feedback that you might even disagree with but you still follow it because you trust that the publisher have seen enough of that and they might be right more than you because they see hundreds of games every year.
Exactly. And to accept someone from outside let's say that will be involved in the production of the game.
Got it. Okay. Interesting. And uh when

thinking about the the hybrid casual market in terms of developers, are there certain areas that are hot or coming up like geographically
or is it just worldwide anywhere?
It's it's it's worldwide. Yeah. I I think uh it's if it's it's pretty similar to to the hyper casual market but just went we shifted to hybrid. So some of the location got stronger
over others that had more like indie like pure indie developers. H. So we for example look on the Chinese market these days which is very very strong for us
and we are working with several studios something that we like we had games from China during the hyper casual period but these days like we we have much more

attraction for for the hybrid
we still see like from Walt like you know Europe Europe which for the hubs for uh for hyper casual, they're still there for hybrid as well, but the the the balance between them changed. So places with more mature studios rised. Places with more like
indie developers, one one developer went a bit down in terms of obviously in terms of the possibilities.
Interesting. Okay. And how about this the the point of like there's so many games that are very very similar than each other
whether it's the sword games which I really like or or the the different puzzle games or the different iterations of RPG games that have come out. Um how do you look at trends and how do you expect the developers also look to a trend because they are the one who pitch

you with something. You don't come to them and say, "Hey, here's a cool little game. I think you need to copy this. Make me 15 different iterations." They have to come with you with an idea. So the question is like how how are you and how are how should developers be looking at the market to find segments of growth.
Yeah. So I think that in the past few years we have like several new subg genres that was created during the hybrid casual hype,
right? Which is mix of of few genres, right? Like we have puzzle but we have like the classic puzzle match 3D casual, right? games and we have a more like hybrid casual games. So I think the developer need to understand there is two options or you want to be in innovative and you were taking two genres and you want to create

something new because you find that this sub new sub segment sub genre that you want to create this game
is have a good good attraction. So it means that you test it a bit and you see that people interesting in this nice simple core game play and innovative core gameplay and then actually in this case you need you actually expanding a new sub genre like we we saw several examples of it in the in the past year and then you bring basically players from different sub genres and you're creating and growing a new subject. I think in the past year we saw like match 3D, right? It's a good example of it that actually they took new match three, right? Creating creating new sub genre and then in this sub genre we saw more and more players

coming in. But so this is the one option. The second option is if you're choosing to extend this in specific sub genres. For example, you want now to do a sword game. Yeah, which is a very big market with many players and and if you want to stand out in this market, you need to understand that you need to do a strong h market research to understand exactly what are the strength in your game that you want to point out compared to others because it will be very very difficult to bring new users to this h sub genre already. It's it's full like it's mature sub genre. So you want to extend your you you want to extend some users. So here you need to be
more advanced in in the game and you need to create more mechanics and you need to understand that you you retain

more users and you can actually build the like better game that exist in this sub genre. Erh and here actually it's a good example for for the help that you need from supersonic or from publisher because usually in this case you need much more capital because you need to invest a lot of user acquisition at the beginning a lot of creatives and a lot in new users because to enter a new to enter as a new player into a very mature sub genre it's much more difficult I think than creating something new innovative that no one saw So, let me dumb it down to myself.
If you're first in the market with something really cool, it's fine to have a quite simplified version of the game. Maybe not the all the bells and whistles of the progression systems and everything, but you can be a pretty simplistic title and find a lot of success because you're the first and you're finding that new audience that is grabbing into and and

then basically when you work with a publisher now, you have to move really fast because everybody's coming behind you. They saw that you created a subg genre. Now they're expanding it and they're coming in with much more robust products, which is what happens if you're second, third, fourth. You're you're looking at what somebody ahead of you did,
learning from what their successes, learning from what they did maybe wrong, coming up with a little bit of a different value offering, whether that is a setting, a theme, an art, or a little bit of a variation to a gameplay, much more content, and so forth. So whether you're first or you're coming second, you still need to eventually push on the same thing which is more quality, more more content, better marketing and so forth.
For sure.
Okay. But there's but if you're coming in second, third, fourth, there is not not that first stage where you can come in with like a rudimentary product on an existing market because you're just not competitive.
But you're competitive if you're the first.
If you're first, you can. Yeah, you can be very competitive.
All right, I can get that. Uh let's talk about the uh the most difficult part of working with a publisher which is the

contract because when money comes to play then then that's in my own experience working with uh with third party studios of course not hybrid casual but with casual ones that's the the most challenging one is like when the game becomes successful is like how does how does the uh the revenue that you're seeing on sensor tower and your dashboards how does that get distributed so I just want to understand like how do you think about the contracts so that the relationship states because if I understand correctly, you worked with the same developers throughout many games. So clearly there's something done right with the contracts.
Yeah, I think let's start like first uh one of our most important values in Supersonic from day one
was transparent. I think this is something that we don't know if it's innovative or but but this is something that we brought to the table when we started our publishing business. So we're very transparent with all the developers that work with us. They can see everything in terms of financial

metrics. They never just got you know a check in the end of this is you know this is your this is a this is what you earn and see you next month. Yeah. This is never was the supersonic approach. So h and this is maybe the reason why publisher keep working with us because they feel that they more partners than just you know developer. So this is the the main thing but as a contract as a publisher so eventually you have obviously the developer work on the again on the simple like work on the game plan and uh build it. Then usually we take the rest and uh the growth activity and the live ops activity etc. And uh when it comes to the revenue so we have the revenue then we have the user usually have the user acquisition the creative

costs etc. And then uh eventually you have some split usually on the profit uh between the publisher and the developer uh that you get.
And so to understand it more so this is the profit sharing part. Yeah.
Uh and there's transparency. So what do you spend your money on? What does a publisher spend their money on and like how much will come out of it? And there's of course the growth phase where more money is being spent the money comes in. And then there's the uh the the revenue phase or profitability phase where the marketing starts tapering off
and you're basically running live ops to your existing audience and marketing is much smaller. But before like during that phase, during that process, is there a like if I sign let's say me, my friend, our bots and few others, we're we've been working before and we sign with Supersonic because you believe in our vision. You believe in our market research of thousands of hours of Steam gameplay
and our ability to execute. And now we start building it, but we're pre-revenue

and we get signed by Supersonic. Is there revenue coming in from Supersonic? or we still bootstrapping by that phase.
So there there is a the studio that we chose to work with we we support in terms of developing period. It's
it's actually good point because sometimes the development we're still looking for as I mentioned like very fast time to market but it's not fast as it was in hyper casual. So yes definitely studios it's again it's
if it's a bootstrap like small so usually
eat before we support the studio with a with a revenue during the development time and then uh we build we we we build all the contract that both sides will be very happy with it during the development period and then later on and we adjust our contracts they are different from how they looked four years ago because this the revenue and the the profit comes much later.

Yeah.
As as as you mentioned.
Yeah. Of course. And
regarding how many developers you have and how many get rejected like what's the or pro like not even developers let's say prototypes how many prototypes
a year do you run through?
Uh thousands.
Thousands.
Yeah.
Damn.
Yeah. like it first prototype iteration. We still run a lot of prototypes iteration. Yeah.
How does that work on your side? Like who who plays them and and how do you how can I stand out if you run through so many prototypes? How can my prototype stand out?
So we still so we still look on on the marketability side at the beginning
and we look on on specific genres that we we feel that we are good with. they are like we are looking for but with on on puzzle or for example idol

genre so where we already had some successes so we understand a bit more
uh what we we need to to do to succeed with the game
so we have flow we have a a test that you can upload to supersonic steel to supersonic platform
and then just it goes through through a flow most of uh like we test a lot
like let's say
80% of them will will fail at the first uh at the first iterations test of marketability.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it's eventually the the ones who who keep working with us it's not like a lot.
Yeah. And then once you fail it's better to just pivot to something else than try to fix it. Right. Just like in hyper.
Yeah. So again eventually it's we of like on hybrid we we don't look only on day one retention and and CPI. Yeah.

We look on other metrics but the attraction of a simple core game play should be at the beginning.
Got it. Well, to to cap it off like what are the most typical misconceptions then when it comes to hybrid casual publishing like what do people get wrong? Erh so first one is as I mentioned like not only day one uh retention then the ro day one is is matter
you need to to look into more deeper metrics today I think the second one is a is is definition of of of hybrid as just I IPA combination monetization mechanic that's it okay it's much more it's more about the engaged of the user

uh you can be 95% ad based but it's still if your games are engaged and you you can retain the user and bring again the user through uh events and live ops so it's still good.
Mhm.
And I think that the third misconception is is about the market. So we we talked about a bit but if like there are a lot of sort games so I will create an out game that will do a a great game. It's sometimes it's it's not exactly you need you need to understand and to define what is your sword game be what will define your sword game from other sword games at the beginning. Yeah.

And uh don't count just on light. This is something that very important. If your basics mechanics of a core loop doesn't work in terms of together with monetization, don't think that the live ops that will come a bit later will save you in terms of scaling and revenue. Don't count on it because usually when you fail on the core, you will never usually not going to succeed or to cover it with with just live ops.
Perfect. Uh so clearly the market is moving more towards casual games, live ops. Marketability is still there and and lesser but higher quality games coming out from from Supersonic.
Yeah.
Thank you Igor for for sharing how how the uh how the publisher works. This is fascinating.