Panel: Getting a Publisher vs. Self-publishing

uh now it's time for me to introduce the panel and in a slight change to the plans it seems like our moderator caglar is um well i'm not here so uh i will be taking responsibility for now for moderating this panel luckily it's a topic that i'm quite closely uh related to thanks to the big indie pitch and some of my other endeavors in the industry so um yeah quite nice for me to uh jump on but hi hi yummy i hope i'm pronouncing that right am i pronouncing that right if not please tell me it's jamie like the last one but my mother's decided to be trust me i love like traditional names that have different spellings i think it's super cool uh so i'm all over that i like your mum's decision so hi jamie uh hi michelle um i'm just gonna change my view to gallery

so that i can see you all um so we've got bertrand coming momentarily uh but hi alex welcome hello i know all of you don't know me you might have had some conversation with calcula uh kagler isn't here so i'm gonna be taking over um but i imagine we'll be hitting much of the same um topics and everything you know it's a i think it's a very clear panel topic you know versus basically self-publishing versus getting a publisher the pros the cons what people should think of and so i think there is definitely um you know a clear identity to this panel which makes it i suppose really easy for all of us um we'll wait for bertrand to join uh but in the meantime um why don't we just do some introductions so i'm gonna go in the order that i've got you here which is zoom's weird order um but oh actually just before i allow you to introduce yourselves i think i just want to once more remind our audience that obviously we have closed caption

subtitling for those who are hard of hearing or maybe in a busy space and want to utilize that but one really cool thing that we that can be used for panels specifically is we've got live transcript mode so if you turn on the live transcript on your right hand bar you'll be able to see who's saying what and when so um you'll even be able to discern you know where what person is uh speaking at any given time and go back through the panel and conversation so definitely make use of that if it's if it's useful to you um so yeah jamie let's start with you um tell us a bit about yourself i'm jamie wardman i've been in the game industry for nine years now um i'm an avid gamer on my own time so it's kind of fun for me to work in a space where i also have down time and want to continue in the space and i'm currently at lab cave i'm the head of business there and lab cave is a mobile uh on google play and ios publisher as well as developer and we are also a service provider specializing in app store optimization

really fun company and all based in madrid and spain so yeah fantastic and uh michelle do you want to introduce yourself next hi michelle branstad i've been in games probably since i was about 16 as a tester long long ago and now i'm at freedom games director of business and we're looking at publishing games all over the board we have about 15 games that are signed and just excited to bring them out i'm based out of san francisco so yeah fantastic well again it must be uh must be very early for you so um it's coffee time over here yeah i just realized that thank you for being here at such an early time where where are you based jamie i'm in madrid you're in madrid i'm only an hour forward uh she has a much much uh more aggressive yes i love this event so bad yeah i love this man i don't i don't mind well thank you so much and um alex tell us a bit about yourself and i suppose where you're based as well we might as well get everyone's time zones down yeah i'm uh with graffiti games we're an

indie publisher i've been around for a few years uh i focus on the marketing and business development for the studio and we focus on the pc console market and i'm based on the west coast as well so it's fine i have a baby so i'm used to being up at this hour well uh you know i i am so grateful to everyone who joins there early so thank you so much anna bertrand you've joined uh just to give you a quick update i know you were probably expecting cochlear to be the uh the mod but um uh we we don't know where cagler is so i will be taking he's in the green room he's in the green room he he'll be popping in any second oh well i'll let kagler take over when when he joins but for now um why don't you introduce yourself to everyone me yeah sure oh yeah sorry i don't have a fancy background because pc my pc hates zoom so i'm a teams guy um so basically i'm become one of the two partners at gamescom venture partners it's a boutique investment fund

and we invest in pc console games we didn't raise funds um we simply reinvest proceeds from or 2015 306 million euro exit in the industry or in digital distribution um and virtual currencies you know before cryptos and all that uh we decided to uh do something else with our lives and uh finance via project financing pc and console games that we like uh so that's us so very happy to be here today fantastic and where are you coming uh from where are you i'm in geneva switzerland so not so bad on the time zone no no she's there well fantastic thank you all for being here and when kagler uh i think from what i'm being told has a few technical issues so they will join as soon as possible but for now um as long as you don't mind um i'll keep the conversation flowing so for those in the audience who maybe don't know me my name is sophia aubry drake and um i obviously work for steel media i've also i've worked with independent

developers for for a decade now obviously i run the big indie pitch and i've been part of many publishing houses and self-publishing programs so obviously i've worked on on both sides of that helping in independent developers around the world and through the pitch helping them showcase their games so hopefully uh that gives me some sort of knowledge to help step in and help this panel flow while we uh work out where kagler is and how they're doing um but for now i think i'd like to start most panels with a fairly uh broad question and then we can start to get into the nitty-gritties of it all um and i suppose the simple question would be uh from my side um you know what do you think really are the key differences or key issues that developers should consider when looking at whether to self-publish their game versus publish their game obviously that's a massive question but if there were some key points that instantly jumped to your mind uh if a developer asked you that question at a show what advice would you

give to them and i'm gonna pick michelle at random here just to open with um yeah michelle if someone asked you that question you know basically what should i be considering when looking at self-publishing versus going with a publisher you know what what comes to your mind to sort of say to them what would you what would your advice be i would say a lot of it that uh we provide really is support because it's kind of scary to release your own game and send it out into the world after you've worked on it for so long so we provide support marketing and then just kind of a best practices and know-how to help get them through the whole process of actually bringing the game out and making it successful so hopefully they can make that second version yeah exactly i think that is a really really key point is that it's not just scary but you know from my experience as well a lot of developers are absolutely amazing at making the games and but it's all the rest of the stuff that they might need the assistance with and not just that it might not be even be assistance from a knowledge point of view it might be assistance from a from a staffing point

of view if i just go in a sort of x cross on my uh thing um alex um do you have anything that you would add to that from from your side you know like um in terms of you know what developers can really gain from a from a publisher versus self-publishing yeah what michelle was saying in terms of marketing i think that's a big issue um for me it comes down to time and money so if you have the time to invest into uh contacting media influencers if you have time for qa time for uh porting localization and the money for those services so if you don't if you can't afford to localize localize into multiple languages if you can't afford marketing you can't afford reporting if you're trying to do it unless you're doing it yourself i think those are the big issues and what you need to decide what you can and cannot do because when you try to do everything you're not going to get you're going to do a little bit here a little bit there and you're not going to have as much success i think you're right i think it's just about being honest with your time i mean

i think everyone wants to do as much as they possibly can it's their baby but you you have to sometimes ask for ask for help um but as we can see we've got kagler here so uh hi caglar how are you thank you finally uh somehow i made it not a problem at all uh just to give you an update i'm i i we've just done some introductions i helped keep things flowing in your absence we've just done some introductions we were just talking about the basics of if a developer um asked you know should i self-publish or should i go with a publisher what quick advice would you give them i suppose maybe what's best is we'll i'll let bertrand and jamie answer the question uh let you catch your breath kagler get into the flow of the conversation gather your notes and then i'll let you take over after they've finished um asking if that sounds good sounds good thank you thank you very much fantastic so in my weird order that i had in my head i suppose we'll uh

come to bertrand next is there anything you'd like to add to what alex and michelle have said sure i mean it's we send a little bit in the middle um since we we actually have uh companies in our portfolio which are publishing a game with a publisher and we have other titles which are self-published um it really goes down to the team when we see a project um for instance you know with the case of lin's works in barcelona they had come out of uh making aragami which at the time of signature had already sold half a million copies on steam and they were really hungry and they said you know we're gonna do origami too we want to bring meaningful online co-op mechanics and we're gonna gear up for that so we're gonna look for multiplayer specialists and it was obviously those challenges with a production which which got us thinking well you know you guys you're gonna grow from 11 to 18. you're going to be eyes in because this is quite challenging how are you going to cope with qa porting localization and all of that

marketing distribution and you know this was going to be this is going to be a lot of weight on your shoulders but they were very hungry and convincing so we decided okay you're going to get your millions um because you seem to be geared up for fight in some other cases we just signed with all in all in games and another indie which just rebranded into neon doctrine in those two cases production seemed to have a certain setup of skill sets which made us think they're going to be really eyes in and they're not going to be eyes out you know and they're not geared up for publishing so all in and the induction were perfect match for us so it in one word you know in one sentence it's just about personalities skill set in the team and you just get that feeling you know yeah definitely definitely and uh and before i leave you all in kagler's uh reliable hands uh jamie anything that you would like to to add to this sort of opening question for me when i when we talk about this with with developers we talk about what

is your goal for the game and what are you what are you looking for for your team because when you work with a publisher you're on their schedule and so if you have a particular culture or typical hours you want your team to work or you have a roadmap in which you want to work on your game and that's very important to you when you work with a publisher they also have an opinion and they have a way that you know they're focused on different monetization aspects and maybe that's not where you want to focus um and so it's also looking at the talent of your team and then where do you want to go what are your goals for the game is this a game that you're putting out to test the market is this a game that's going to be your it's your baby and you have a really solid team around you and somebody who knows a little bit about user acquisition again i'm coming from the mobile space so i feel like the the barrier to entry is lower for for companies coming in there and who want to self-publish that there's a lot of tools available and you know things like what you have to do either way right if they're going to go with a publisher you're going to figure out if it's going to work on your own you need to do some some testing of the game and there are some great tools out

there um to to get users into your game i mean even just putting on social media if you want to do a small beta test to make sure that your you know people are interested i mean there's there's definitely a lot to consider in the space but on the other side a publisher is going to bring you a little bit more stability they're going to have funding they're going to have marketing support already in place and they're going to have these pieces um a process in place to get these forward instead of taking the time to figure out what is the best process for my team but it's a little less individualized yeah definitely i think that's that's this really great advice and sums things up quite nicely um but at this point from me i would like to say just thank you for having me as a part of this panel albeit very briefly um i would like to remind everyone before i drift into the background please throw your questions into the q a for cagler and for alex and jamie and bertrand and alex and i'm sure kagler either you or myself can help go through those questions at the end but for now i'm going to leave you in the capable hands of cagler i'll let you introduce yourself and then i'll let you take over the panel and do what you do

best so thank you everyone and i will see you all shortly but i will be uh very happily watching in the background thank you thank you very much and sophia so guys uh sorry for for uh yeah it took a while until i set it up and the computer etc so to myself i'm charlotte with goodgame studios and some of you know me jamie we met already in the past a few times and i was i'm leading bd department and since um almost a year i'm with goodgame almost nine years and since a year we are not only looking into publishing our own titles we also look into publishing external titles and i think this is very exciting times for us because we never did that in the past and we we see for instance that the landscape of publishing is also changing especially in the mobile space because you know in the past it was the publisher took care of everything nowadays it's splitting like

like very very granular like there are companies helping you only with ua there are companies helping you spend your own budget so it's also kind of publishing without them spending any any any dollars on your own scaling your games and and nowadays we also see that in the publishing space also that of course you also need to be profitable especially when you have like heavily edge driven or marketing driven games so the the the the cpi's are going higher and you still have the 30 what you need to give away and to apple and google and all these guys so i would like to um i mean especially the ones from of you who are in the mobile space did you see any changes also within your business model like um yeah that would be um very interesting to see if something

changed there jamie if you like to yeah in terms of our business model it hasn't really changed that much it depends on obviously what the the developer needs and what they what they want from a publisher um something that has changed for us in the last i would say a year year and a half is before we take a game in we now do a small ua test on our own so it's not just you know we we play through the game we make sure that it's right for our audience you know my i have a testing team behind me who um who helps me as well we kind of have a whole process we go through in order to assess the game and then we look at metrics but then if we all decide this is a game that we want to get behind that the new thing for us is that we're going to run a small campaign and and if it ends up being that that game isn't going to give us the numbers and the retention that we want then we say you know thank you for your time and and that's something that's on us that we spend um and what we have found is that small spend ahead of time has saved us in in the in the future for games that potentially weren't going to be a right fit for us but hit all those pieces where we're like oh this is going to be great but then the

numbers weren't quite there um but on the on the on on the other side it also tells us okay this is very close and we have a really solid monetization team that can make just a few tweaks and this game is going to be fantastic so it's fresh data for us that helps us with um being able to look at the market right now and say okay this is where we're at and this is where we want to be is this a project we want to put our whole team behind and being again that we're we're small we're only about 29 people and so it's you know has to be that we all want to get behind the game and move it forward [Music] any anything for you guys um um in you are not in the mobile space bedroom um did something changed for you in the last 12 18 months or is everything like it was in the past um i think a lot of change since in the last 12 months to be honest um so we've we've witnessed um the evolution of game distribution since since 2005 but we've

been financing games since 2019 only so we signed one game in 2019 and then it just everything closed down and it went through a pandemic one one of the things that changed the most for us or that we're most worried about is probably the quality production um of indie productions due to the pandemic especially you know how it influences q a in play tests because frankly speaking when you're at an at the end of a production it's quite nerve-wracking to have you know hundreds of people play your game and say well i don't like this or i don't like that or you know physics are still not working properly and whatnot so we can't see your teams i can't go to montreal i can't go to barcelona as much as i would like to i haven't gone at all um so some of our productions are are you know nearing the silver master you know not the gold yet but the silver so there's a lot of qa going on a lot of play tests um and definitely i miss the fact that i can't i can't meet with my team and say you know how you

guys feel about this um there we have also pretty deep problematics um of some games citing game passes microsoft having extremely high requirements as far as you know cross-platform this is quite it's quite hard to get it working just even just between pc and xbox so then again you know you throw a ps in it you throw switch in it uh it becomes like a maze um and i cannot have this this this babysitter approach with my teams where i'm like uh you know how you guys feel about this do you guys feel you guys feel crap just you guys are stressed out talk to me we go have a beer uh you can you can insult you know whoever you like in industry if you're not happy but i miss that um because you know this those are projects that cost millions um and those are young teams and i kind of have the feeling that i need to you know as investor um as a boutique fund i can like try to protect them i went through you know driving a scalable business listing this business on the stock exchange i know things can be stressful so definitely everything changed because

i can be close to my teams and i am afraid this will affect the quality of productions and does this lead to the fact that you sign less and more cautious about the teams so you do a deeper due diligence on the teams now because you can't be so close to them and you sign less deals because more professional teams because due to this fact yeah i don't know it's um it's a very good question but i'm not sure about that that due diligence are deeper now i would say that i'm definitely having a deeper meditation about the usp of a title when before signing i had the chance to sign a game with um neon doctrine last month where i was absolutely mind blown by the prototype so even though i could not meet with the team the quality of production of what was provided at this stage was so mind-blowing that i signed my eyes closed but i'm definitely having other titles

right now you know especially games with lower production quality on the prototype aiming with you know co-op or whatnot they also aim at multi-platform and you're like uh you know you don't have a you don't have any leads for your team uh you want to do this it's challenging it's going to be a full covet production i'm like i'm more scared than before because again i can't have a beer with someone it sounds stupid but you know you don't take a decision for production of three million euro over a contract you take that decision meeting with the guys meeting with the girls making the game you know saying how you guys feel about this you know and and it goes down with with human contact uh because there's so much happening you know publishers of for support you know on so many um segments of a production um and those are complicated things you know to get a game online um in in the world today have attention in in in the end it's the people who make the successful game so as an investor i assess people i assess a project but that's like 20 30

the 70 is the people who make it so it's harder and i'm more cautious for sure okay michelle how do you think about that i mean do you did you see any differences in the way you are executing publishing deals um i'd say a concern with us too or something that we're aware of is definitely team fatigue everybody's at home by themselves a lot working in the front of the computer more more times in the day than they maybe should um in terms of in terms of signing less games we're kind of a newer publisher so we're kind of signing a lot of games but moving forward we are using a lot of performance marketing to test and see what we think would be viable in the market granted there's more downloads and more players playing games than ever but yeah we're doing some other testing now to to see going forward what other games we might sign because we have we have a quite a robust calendar going forward and i'm really quite excited about it and yeah we are we're doing the multi-platform thing and it's it's hard when you can't meet them

in person i actually take great pride in meeting each one of our teams in person and getting to know them and letting them know you know what they're representing and and basically how we work and and basically putting their trust in us over the over the internet is kind of strange so it'd be great when we can actually see everybody in person and and i really miss that as well yeah true alex yeah i mean i've noticed for a couple years now that there's been an influx of people instead of self-publishing looking for a publisher just because of how many games are releasing every year and i can see that and then i'm also seeing more in the publishers coming around so you have twofold where um you have more competition as a publisher and so there but you're also getting a lot of games as bertrand said that the quality isn't there so we had to create a bigger evaluation team in order to actually go through all the games that are coming through to us and determine what's good and what's bad um as you know i did before yeah we are being a bit more choosy now

and um because we've kind of grown in a space where we can be a little bit more choosy and we just have to be careful because we want to invest in bigger projects instead of investing a bunch of politics and so that's a little bit tougher right now when there's so much competition on the publishing side for those bigger and better projects where it can take months just to land a deal okay um yeah we we here at goodgame when we do publishing so we we kind of call this whole a boutique approach so we we for instance jamie you just mentioned a new a test i think that's um something in the mobile space very common so to get some idea of the performance of the game we for instance we do a very hard due diligence before we go into the ua testing most of the games we do analyze are already out on the market and they are getting some traction

somehow they did some ua on themselves and they they saw okay we don't have enough budget but the game has potential and then they need a bigger publisher who can spend more we for instance spend around 100k in the trial period to understand the performance of the game especially when you go beyond normal testing because you want to test like stress test the game what are the cpi's things like that so how do you approach that jamie so when you do your ua test you said you look at retention and what else is important for for the developer to know like what are the publishers looking at especially on the on the mobile side uh yeah so i mean retention because if we're going to be making that ua span we want to know that we're going to be keep getting those users in and so depending on how we want to structure that that user acquisition very important also looking at um you know how are the users

interacting in the game and how long are their place sessions is very important because it tells us you know where it gives us a chance to go see okay most users are only playing for nine minutes and then go into the data and see at what point are they dropping off is there is there one point in which they're all dropping off in which we need to kind of focus um so it kind of gives us a little bit more context to the data as well because you know you can look at the data and see why am i you losing a bunch of users here but it also you know as you get a lot of new users in they're you know not used to the whole system um we also look at you know what are what are the spending habits so well if there are ads in the game how many ads are being viewed if it's a fully um iap based game you know how are how are users interacting when are they also you know just in terms of an analyzing not just the ua span but then what is the user behavior inside of the game is very important and a lot of that has to do with you know the knowledge from our testing team about that first progression making sure that first time user experience is very clear but then also when you see the data come through

because we have the knowledge of the game what does this overlap mean and then what are they experiencing in terms of you know ui ux at the same time okay jamie anything um jamie michelle anything you are you can add on on jamie jamie's ideas i can speak more while we what we look for on the pc console side and it's a lot of wish lists um marketing how their socials are looking uh how interactive their everybody online is and kind of what other reviews they've had and what other people have said about them really too is kind of we do a full sweep of the internet of every game we look at but wishlists are a huge thing for us okay i see yeah and um so um are you guys looking for full i mean ready to launch like global launch ready titles or can it be an mvp uh that's how you just said that you saw the mvp you said okay i

just signed my eyes closed so um or are you more looking for games what are really ready for global launch what is what what approach do you have at home so we're looking yeah go for it oh sorry oh sorry michelle no i was saying we're looking for things at all levels mine wasn't super long but yeah okay yeah um so it's it's actually not an mvp uh it it's a it was a prototype it was basically just really really just something early on but it had you know custom made um art very well animated it had um like motions in the in the game which was almost motion capture like um which was insane so when you see this when you see a team you know who went through by the way you know incredible hardships um and they had this grant you know it was a 17 000 uh a grant um from an engine and they they use this current over 24 months it's a crazy story and they came up with

something absolutely amazing you know and they were still on top of that extremely humble you know again going back to the team they were like they were super humble and said you know oh we we're inspired by studio ghibli and we like games like journey and sky and this is our approach to it and they're like oh and by the way this is the prototype we made to showcase it to you you're like you you find it it's basically finding a diamond on the ground and you you're very much aware of the quality that you have in front of you guys because you just discarded a thousand games in three months you know so that's that's what i meant by sending eyes closed but as far as you know the kps we look at and and how we assess whether a game is fit you know for publishing or self-publishing it has a lot of course to do um with the wish list it you know but when something pops up on our radar with the wish list you know and it has more than 5 000 wish lists on steam uh to pop up on the radar of everybody uh because most of us you know track via bots or crawlers and whatnot and we have a ranking um it can also be too late uh it was a case for instance before

um one lonely outpost we talked with uh not directly with michelle we talked with her colleague donovan we were like um okay what is this you know we didn't spot that project and it it skyrocketed uh you know under a you know you have more or less 800 you have 830 games on steam popular uh wish list um anything that has more than 5000 will pop on that list um and then all of us so you if you have 5 000 wishlist you would be ranked 830. um so that particular game from freedom games directly went to uh 100 um and it's sitting i just check it's sitting at rank 84 right now so it's probably sitting at around you know 100 000 something like that so it's too late we talked we tried to talk with freedom games they were like you know we're good um this this is booming so we we're gonna be doing this on our own uh so we're like well it's great so for us as investors it's basically talking with teams before that you know

before they boom um so we were in talks with you know a critevo or 505 or whoever you know and we're like we have something that doesn't even have a prototype yet so you have different you know kpi that you can gather you know crowdfunding is one you know which was the case for one lily outpost um and then also you cannot talk with inferences and gather views on youtube it can skyrocket we had a project that had uh in 30 days more than 10 million views on youtube um and we were like okay we're gonna give you a 100k for the prototype and then you might get the other millions you know for your game and somebody just came in right in and said are you kidding the full funding so it's like it's when you have extremely high quality content for if you're dev the more kpis you can gather for your project uh the higher your chances will be to um to get funding because you do not only convince us from a project perspective or team perspective you also do the last pillar to get

funding which is also you're gathering public gathering a public api which give credit to your project as far as okay the community the community might be interested in this how do you do that alex is there any difference the way you do it uh no not really i mean bertrand he nailed it about what how do we look for games and what we do i mean i guess to add to that we will also look at games that have already released on pc and then see if they uh can go onto console same thing with we'll look at potential mobile games that could then translate to pc or console as well and bring it to other systems but for that we have to see that it's already been successful uh the hardest part is um when bertrand brought up the kickstarter you know what at what point can you get someone before they get too big you know if they've gotten written up by press and then they've blown past their goal like there was a game we were looking we saw was going into kickstarter and i think within two days

they've raised 500k and so it's like that's a team that's probably then going to self-publish because they've already raised these funds um but that determine you know they have to determine then do they have the distribution do they have the other services that they can do this on their own and that's the tough thing for us we're looking for any types of games um any level and we've actually just offered to a game that um no vertical size no no demo or anything that we've tried just based off of quality art and they're some of the buzz that's already gone around the game okay um you just said mobile to pc um do you see there kind of like it is is this becoming more and more kind of a business model if you have like an amazing game on pc like a brand a lot of people played it and downloads and wishlists etc to talk to the developers say okay guys let's sit together and let's make a mobile version out of

it is this something what is becoming interesting for you guys or or not at all yeah definitely for us we're looking at some of our titles and we've already talked to um mobile publishers that we could potentially partner with to bring some of our games to the mobile sphere it has to make sense and work because not of all the titles in our portfolio could translate to mobile and the same thing when we look at a mobile game to maybe bring it to pc or console to switch specifically we look at that audience but then we also see would this translate into a good gaming experience on that system because a lot of the mobile games won't translate into a switch or a pc and so you have to be really careful and and make sure that first of all when you play it from mobile you're like i could see this on a switch and is free to play a big topic for for the pc games or do you focus

more on paid titles we focus on premium titles um yeah okay yeah premium yeah yeah premium so i think that that could be the biggest challenge right i mean to translate a pc a premium title to free to play or what this could be also a very interesting um part of scaling such a game to the next level so but this is not a not something what's on your plate at the moment no it's not is that something that you've done or have experienced no but we we talked to a few companies they had some interesting pc uh premium titles and with our knowledge in monetizing games we had some conversation but at the end of the day um we found it very complicated to turn especially to turn premium title players

having and playing a game what is free to play because most of these players they they they think that um this is like immediately a um pay to win title what's not the case because a premium free-to-play title is something what you develop ongoing so it's an and i mean for instance our most successful title empire for kingdoms which is very successful on mobile is a game we are developing um since i don't know nine years now so and we still adding content to the game and it's a free-to-play game so you can always extend um extend also the content so but i i think this this is this might be a challenge for uh for the players who know the brand i would i would think that the difference between the free to play on mobile and getting it on console is there's so many roadblocks you have to

get through to release something on console like lot check and all these other things and you have to do that every time whereas if you release on mobile it's just kind of almost instant and i think that might be a barrier in order to make that work better in the space jamie how was it for you so are you guys also looking for prototypes or does the game needs to be um in the mvp soft launch status full game what is your approach there on on the mobile space yeah the game needs to be for for lab cave um we we don't invest large amounts of money into a game we will invest our our time and and we have a lot of resources that we make available for any developer who works with us but we aren't you know we aren't being able to write those those hundred thousand euro um checks to people to continue development this is not the way that we're structured right now so um what we look for is a game that is um at least has done a little bit of testing so something in

in either their beta or their their soft launch with a solid playable um and the reason i say a solid playable is because at least for me when i'm playing a mobile game and this is very important is that the experience of how it feels um because if the buttons have a delay or the swipe mechanic isn't quite as clean um that is a huge impact on how long users will stay in the game and so without having the salt the game in a solid state where we know that we can play through it and see what would a user feel like as well as having the data to back up what we're our interface experience and it's difficult for us to move forward i will say back on the other topic we have been getting a lot more pitches that have mobile and either steam or switch so it's becoming a much more we're seeing it a lot more um you know where people come into us and say oh we have all these different platforms which ones do you want i'm like okay well hold on let's let's have a conversation about well where do you want to take your game and then we'll figure out from there where we would go okay i see and um so

how do you grow the how do you grow the titles um on the on the ua side is it focus on aso or organic growth or is it um more with marketing spans what is the approach approach there it's a combination so we specialize in app store optimization so we have conversion rate optimization teams an incredible team of artists and aso specialists who really focus in and we do all the testing on our games and then when any a client or uh um someone coming in to have us publish gets the knowledge that's already in place um because we have our own games that we develop so so we start there to get the organics really healthy and then when we have a good solid state of organics then we would yes go and spend in terms of user acquisition um and be very targeted with how we're spending so what do we see where are users coming from where do we want to push where's the game localized because that's clearly going to make a difference we will localize all the store pages that doesn't mean the game is necessarily localized um

for that area and so um we also you it's also a really great opportunity to see where do we want to localize the text of the game next uh because if we clearly seeing a large increase of users in in a in germany for example and the game hasn't been translated to german it might make sense to make that next investment so so for us it's starting with aso um well i guess starting with really dissecting the game and the gdd and making sure we're all solid there we have a monetization team that comes on to assist as well um and then before it goes live making sure that the uh store pages are set up and then when we go through actually our publishing of the game um then making those ua spends bringing in users and having that healthy cycle continue forward i mean that's worked well for us with our external partners but you know again as i said at the beginning it's really dependent upon the goal of both both sides right i mean we're having a conversation in the beginning and everyone here has touched on it's really difficult to have that relationship over the internet and about not being able to go and sit down with somebody my boss makes jokes about part of his job as having gin and tonics

because it is really important to get to know somebody um and you know a lot about the team and the interactions and i don't know about the rest of you but as a as a frontline person if i'm having an issue with a potential developer who's already having trouble giving me information i know that my production staff is going to have a hard time and like i don't want to sit on those meetings with my production staff so um it's really important also in engaging that relationship at the very beginning i think i went all over the place um i think we are unfortunate running out of time the next um five minutes are for q a but before we go to this q a are there any genres you guys don't want to uh publish uh games for me uh point-and-click adventure games they're just it's so hard to get those games anymore people like i love playing them and they're fun but trying to get streamers to play them trying to get uh media to play it the market it's just

it's just too hard it's too difficult you might have a hit here and there but they're pretty much dead on arrival i see michelle pretty much in alignment with every everybody else but we are we are looking at everything so please feel free to send it over and hopefully bertrand we could work with you eventually on some some points so yeah sure i'll add you on linkedin after this or discord um honestly i would say we look at everything and everyone but we have a hard time with mmos mobas and rts's because those segments are extremely cutthroat and you need you need a lot of you need a lot of money and you need a killer team and you know we considered people who were going out of blizzard you know and said oh we're gonna make an rts um people coming out of activision saying oh we're gonna you know uh or is people coming out of daver sorry and saying we're going to make an mmo it's so hard um amazon just announced they cancel

lord of the ring you know they had us they have millions and they had the strong ip they canceled it um they are making new worlds uh in a while extreme well well it's great and it you know they have john smedley and all those people from the mmo industry it's extremely challenging to come after you know this period of time where you had games like world of warcraft and ultima online in the arcade of camera and one it you know the industry today is simply not producing quality mmos or maybe new world will change that a couple of other titles ashes of creations why not could but we're humbly saying um those games cost millions and millions of dollars um there's yet to be another sixth sense since you know 2005 in in world of warcraft um or a massive hit so we'd stay out of this it's the same for mobas it's the same for rts's um so we hopefully say you know guys um we still look at it because we love those games but they're so dangerous that we we get you know chills just looking

at how much the ask is for those games you know it's 10 15 millions and we're like oh man you know it's too risky but all the rest yes welcome please pitch us okay cool jamie for you on the mobile side honestly for us um we have not been very interested in the hyper casual space because it's so different from the way that we function currently um it would require a lot more um a lot a lot more user acquisition um and it's such a quick cycle um we kind of want that relationship a little bit longer to get all the pieces of our team in um it's not that we're anti-hyper-casual games it's clearly a huge market right now but it's not um the life cycle of those games and how fast they get picked up and then put down um is not is not something that we're focusing on right now okay yeah same for us i mean the only thing we are not looking into is hyper casual and everything also strategy games and mmos are very interesting for us because we're coming from this space right

so yeah cool yeah thank you guys and um yeah we are now open for q a if anyone has questions feel free to uh to ask yeah and on that note i will say that we do have a quick five minutes so use that q a function to throw them in one thing though whilst we wait for other people to ask a question that came to my mind throughout the panel and i suppose is something i would touch upon is um obviously you talked about what games you want to look at and stuff like that but what we obviously know is that there's very very different markets around the world and are there any markets where you know and i'm sure there's some that come to mind uh but are there any markets where you would say that the advice over whether to self-publish or go with the publisher is completely turned on its head you know i'm thinking maybe somewhere like china or india you know is there anywhere that you think no do you know what like the rules are

completely different in that specific region and you either should not go with a publisher or you definitely need help um yeah i don't know if anyone has any thoughts on my my random thoughts well with asia for at least from pc console you have to have a publisher partner there whether you're a developer developer or a publisher yourself you can't go in and do it without especially china china because the government only allows so many games per year so you have to have a published partner so there's no options in those territories i'd say though too it's also easier to publish on switch with iarc in hong kong and korea and japan actually as of the last six months or so so it's easier to get in those markets with your publisher because you don't have to buy a separate rating certificate because they all take iarc now which is kind of cool yeah i think that's a good point i mean from the work that i do on the other side of stuff i know that one of the biggest stumbling blocks around the

world that actually is one of the big things where a lot of people don't realize but it's like okay i need a publisher now is the the board ratings in all the different countries you know like for example and they exist on different platforms like you just mentioned how switch has one rules but playstation has a different one steam you may be able to bypass some of them and obviously mobile has its own areas i mean we know for certain platforms that brazil's rating system is really quite quite strict um and it's something i mean this was a decade ago but when i was a part of 100 indie it's something we very much had to manage and help the developers with even as a self-publishing uh area and then uh you know obviously with china it's its own different area with its own rules and and regulations and restrictions um so yeah that was just something that came to my mind um but uh yeah and we do actually have a question that's uh come in i don't know um maybe shall i do you want me to ask it or if you you've got it down there yeah i just thought what i just will

read it yes please do you're the moderator i was just asking a question of my own let me hand back to you thanks what are the criteria good game is looking for when publishing a third party game how you want to grow this business the criterias are um of course the team so we want to have a good team um behind the game of course besides that um if the game is already launched and the game has kpis we would make our analysis we have a very good team here doing analysis and this is a process to understand because we do also have our own successful titles launched in the past we have a lot of benchmarks to to get idea and once once this all looks good then we usually sign the contract and go for for the marketing test what is

made set up by our marketing team and the games we are looking for is everything what is not hyper casual what cane what can actually make revenues on the long term like our titles this is what we are looking for then here's another question would you consider a submission with a very early playable version but without ua testing i don't know to who the question is but if if i can answer from my perspective uh no so we are looking for not for early playable version without your a testing so i don't know how you how is it for you guys we're not really it's too difficult at that point because you don't like i said earlier you don't get the feel for the game in the same way with an early playable it gives you a really good idea of where the game is going to go and that's very exciting and if you're looking for feedback i mean you know that's something that i have

provided before to teams of this is too early for us but here's my initial feedback for you so you take it for what it is but you know as a publisher this is why we wouldn't want to go forward here um but that's it's just it's for us right now i know it's unfair for for india's because you know you want to have that that um buy-in from your publisher but it's just not it's not something that we're set up for right now similar to uchella and um question what we already answered what genres are lab cave going for publishing jim you said everything except hyper casual right yeah and i would say you know games that require a large amount of community management are also difficult um for us with our small team um so i mean it's a game dependent clearly but if there's a huge component that will be constant events um we're just not really we're not structured for that yet we will be but we're still putting those pieces in place for now okay cool i think if there are no questions anymore

then we are sorry i realized i was on mute i know yeah thank you all so much no thank you and it's good timing as well so thank you so much thank you thank you guys thank you have a good day thank you yeah thank you everyone yeah thank you thank you have a good day as well and thank you so much