Playstack’s Harriet Hughes On Finding The Right Publisher For Your Game

[Music] thank you Biz podcast we have Harriet Hughes CMO of playstec and we're going to be talking about something you wouldn't really expect here which is not about how to publish your game how to win your users your players how to keep them coming to back this is about relationships because it all starts there now you work with at Publishers games Publishers tell me first of all a little bit about playstock how I would work with you what you offer so so we're we're a games publisher we're coming into our seventh year now so um we've published over 30 titles on mobile on PC on console and um just to your point we really think that it really begins with a really solid good relationship between the developers that could be just a sole

developer or two developers or a whole studio developers between the developer and the publisher we think that if you are going to use a publisher you really do have to spend some time trying to find the right publisher for you and the right publisher for your game you have to think about what you're looking for in a publisher and what you want that publisher to bring to the developer publisher relationship and once you know exactly what you're looking for then you have to find the right publisher for you the one that really fits your game and your business and and indeed your personality so it's clear that you have to do your homework and you need to know what that fit will be you need to come into it with an idea but let's talk about that publisher police stack relationship because everything is Shifting Everything's changed what can I expect from you I don't come to you as a games company and a game Studio oh I just want the cash what kind of support can I expect what do you offer if I'm in

the market for it sure so I think what we bring is we bring a really dedicated team of experts to your game and what we look to do is we look to fill in the gaps in your studio um some of the the different disciplines and different functions that you don't have within your existing team we don't want to come in and take over we don't want to come in and tell you how to make your game or we don't want to come in and take the vision for your game and change it we want to come in and help you to get to the largest audience possible for your game and what we believe at Place stack is that it's very difficult to be the game creator the game Visionary be able to steer and and do everything that is required on the tech side and also then be a marketing expert be a PR expert be somebody that can acquire users or find players for your game and nurture that

community and make that Community as hyped and as excited as possible for your game release it's virtually impossible for one person or one Studio to manage all of those different functions and we believe that there comes a point within the game development cycle where you really have to hand that over to some experts who know what they're doing our role is to find the audience scale the audience and really nurture that audience to make sure that they are as excited for your game releases you are how are you delivering the Right audience for the right game sure so we we focus on Discord predominantly and we we make sure that we have dedicated Community Support on Discord and we are looking to really try and bring in as many different people to that Discord Community as possible prior to release and what we're looking to do is keep them excited keep them coming back so um for example mortal shell which we

brought out in 2020 we grew that audience to around 80 000 prior to release now that was done because of the excitement around the genre predominantly because obviously there was a lot of stuff that we couldn't disclose about the game prior to release we we got them to a point where we had people in that Discord community that had full arm tattoos of some of the characters in the game and the game hadn't even come out yet but that sort of demonstrates just how you can um get excitement people like to feel a part of something they want to feel that they're belonging to something and as long as you are doing that really tell good Community Management where you're allowing people to share their experiences share their own fan art for example and share videos of them playing the game once they are able to get their hands on it or do speed runs whatever it may be um it's just about making people feel like they have found um a common interest with others right I've got a term for you like I'm

thinking here I'm thinking Harriet you know what you do you do Community Driven marketing for games Publishers yes yes and uh and also we do obviously all the other bits of marketing we do fantastic really Innovative trailers that that really spark interest that again we can use across these Community channels but really the message that we want to say is you know we have complete and utter respect and admiration for games Developers for being able to come up with these Concepts and make these fantastic games and then what we want to bring to the party so to speak is just all the fun and the fun fair that exists around that so that the community are just really hyped and excited for when it comes out what's been going on recently we're finished standout success or even a surprise for yourself uh we had a couple of games that came out in October of last year that we're particularly proud of one of them is called The Case of the golden idol which is a murder mystery detective game and the other one is

called the entropy Center um and we're really proud of both of those and it and in particular I think one of the standouts of that process has been that the case of the golden idol was just made by um two brothers so just two guys they didn't have any help one of them had not even worked in the games industry before and the entropy Center which has been received with huge critical Acclaim as well that was just one developer sole developer he did every single aspect of the game he did all of the design and he it all the art he did all the programming and I just think that demonstrates just how incredibly creative and dedicated and determined you know people in the games industry can be that that those two games which have done so fantastically well for us and for the developers there's there's only in in one case two people in the other case one person behind the game give me an idea of how that progresses

over time I get a great game with you I've got a hit but I love my craft right I want to make another game I want to make a sequel I want to I want to keep players coming back how do you help me keep that memento yes so we we're obviously talking to both of those Studios albeit that they're just one-man studio in one case but we're already talking about you know what what they want to do next we don't want to as I said we don't want to direct that or take over too much because ultimately they are the creative one they are it's existing in their head right they're the Visionary they're the one that came to us with this fantastic runaway title so we want to just Empower them and give them whatever they need in order to be able to repeat that success and do it again um I think too often um we are a little bit too led by the data and by um you know all of the the the metrics and and what everything is telling us

that we perhaps lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day this is a creative genius and it kind of need to be left to their own devices we can't necessarily forecast what is going to be popular in a year's time or and a half's time sometimes that just comes from a very creative mind and they just managed to nail it speaking of nailing it Harry what I find interesting is you're also like a trend Watcher you're watching the market very closely what can you tell us about what's going to be hot and not in 2023 give me some idea maybe Inspire some of our closet garage creative people out here because they want help to nail it I do think there's something interesting coming out of um some of the big platforms like uh Netflix and so on and moving into subscriptions so I think that potentially we'll see a move away I would maybe predict to move away from sort of hyper casual gaming and move more into subscription-based services that allow people to engage with an IP

or or a product or a brand for example that they're already enjoying and to have that in an environment which is potentially ad-free and uh and and IAP free because they're subscribing to whether it's Netflix games or whatever it may be I agree on that one I called subscription apps I said this is the year for it subscription gaming has arrived Harriet great to speak with you thank you for sharing and above all it's really amazing to hear about how that relationship is created and cultivated you're the one to do it thanks so much thank you very much foreign