The Vampire Survivors developer is opening studios and making over 15 projects

So we started really to work from different places and then we start to find people in other countries. For example, in Italy and in Japan where we are in the process to opening a studio. How many projects are you working on? In actual development if we include even Crawlers that is coming out the next week 15 project. 15 projects?
Yes. And but like starting from like sketch on papers and various threads of talk I think more than 20 at the moment. Yeah.
[music]
Hello and welcome to the Game Business Show with me, Christopher Dring. I am here at the Games Finance Market in London to interview Matteo Sciutteri, the Chief Strategy Officer at Poncle, the developer behind Vampire Survivors. They've had a huge amount of success and they've been reinvesting that success into the video game industry, into new projects and studios. And I'm here to find out all about him. Check this out.
[applause]
Hello. Hello.
Morning. Thank you for having me today. Welcome to London. You've You're living in Japan, is that right?

Oh yes, yes, I live in Japan. I came on my way from Japan. Very long flight. Ah. And when did you get in? Uh last Saturday. I had the time to recover a little bit. Well, let's go back to the start. Vampire Survivors has Oh, I know it's been a huge hit. But I looked it up. I don't know how how big a hit it has been. So just how big has it been? So if you talk about numbers that we didn't share too much. If we think at players and we sum all the platforms and mobile we are actually over 27 million players over the globe. But besides numbers, there are big concurrent players, a lot of people playing Vampire Survivors. What amazed us is the love that we receive everywhere. I was in Taipei a few months ago. And there was a lady that came there doing like a Vampire Survivor live event in Taichung, very joyful city in the south of Taiwan with 5,000 people playing live Vampire Survivor. And this too

I mean we released one game three years ago, but still we receive love all the time. 27 million players, I'm going to assume it's a lot of money. But some developers choose to keep that money. They maybe stay small, don't expand, maybe buy a few fancy yachts. Poncle has decided to reinvest that success back into the industry. So talk us through that. Why Why have you done that? So the thing is that first of all, Vampire Survivors as maybe some of you knows, came from a solo developer. It was Luca Galante that he wasn't in the industry that made a game for him for his friends. So the thing is that Luca and Vampire Survivors exploded in two, three months. They sold more than 1 million copy. His yacht are games. Mhm. So for example, instead of buying a yacht, watch, he made Emerald Beyond DLC with Square Enix that we released for free for example. So it came quite organically, let's say. You did try some

third-party publishing. Oh yes. How's that been? How's that experience? It was It was It was a very learning experience because I want to say that we wanted first of all we did publishing because we wanted to give back to the community somehow. We wanted to help our solo developers being able as we own everything to make investment and to help the community and try to release game that maybe no one else was able to release. For example, one of our first title was called Berserker Die. And is a game that you play with a keyboard. So and it was very strange. And but what happened is that um we wanted to give these people help. We did publish a stuff, we did money, QA. But at the end we found that we weren't able to give the right support to these games. So we think that we didn't did the best for these games. So we paused a little bit. But we want we want

absolutely to continue. Want to add that at the moment it's not profit first company. We feel like trying to build It can be a community, it can be pushing the games. So that's why we are kind of free and we will continue to do publishing in the future. Oh, I see. How are you doing it differently as you How are you going to approach it differently from what you've done? So we tried not to care about the money. And first of all, what we need is a structure because publishing is a serious thing. And we thought a little bit naively that with love and money we were able to support a project as the project is worth. And maybe we need more a little bit more structure. And this is exactly what we're trying to do in the in the last years. You've now moved into opening development offices in other countries.
But tell us about that. What are you doing? So what happened is that obviously even if Vampire Survivors is out whatever, we had a lot of possibilities

to work with people. As you can imagine, Vampire Survivors was released during COVID. So what happened is first of all, we are a full remote company. So we started really to work from different places. And then we start to find people in other countries, too. So [snorts] for example, in Italy and in Japan where we are like the process to opening a studio. And so why why Why? Yeah, why? So um uh for example, let's say let's talk about Japan. Mhm. We had interested from Japanese companies that wanted to work with us. And you know, Japanese are quite like they're deep in their world and they like to deal with Japanese company. For example, in Japanese with Japanese contract, that's one thing. The second thing is also talents. And we found obviously that for example, in Japan there's some unique views and unique creativity. So we find a nice talent to work there,

maybe working with some Japanese idea or IPs. And then we thought that it was like efficient to have a base there. And that's that's why we are expanding. Now we will have obviously a base in UK, will be Italy and will be Japan. And then we'll see. That's interesting. You've done some stuff with Japanese IPs already, haven't you? In Vampire Survivors and Konami games.
Yes, yes, yes. We We did uh There was two big collaboration. The one obviously was Emerald Beyond. And it happens by chance because when I was talking about the love, so Saga team as maybe I don't know if you're familiar with, but Saga is a big series from Square Enix made by uh Kou Ado Sensei. There is a nice artist. And and they made a GIF with Saga characters from Emerald Beyond. Inspired by Vampire Survivors.

We noticed that. So we reached out. We said, "Oh, we saw your like GIF that you make a joke. Let's do a DLC." And that's how we started with for example, Square Enix. Konami, it was obviously finalizing this relationship because obviously Vampire Survivors was was made by Castlevania inspired asset pack. So obviously there was this convergence between Konami people and especially Luca. So we started with Contra and we did Auto Castlevania that at the moment is the biggest DLC we ever made. We'll come back to talk about this. So you're opening these different offices. How are you going to look to maintain that sort of indie solo dev spirit when you've got multiple different offices? So the thing is that we will not thinking at gigantic studio remotely, but we were thinking when we talk about Poncle like a federation of studios. So our idea is to have little teams of people five, 10, 15 working on different projects. So the thing is that the structure would be We

will have like game designer Luca, different Lucas, bunch of pair of producers. And this little team a giant but flexible, work with the responsibility. And that's how we think that we will be able to maintain the space because what's the space? The space indie space is like uh I guess some really freedom. Mhm. And taking risk with ideas. And this is something that I think it's the It's why we are here working all together. And this is what we consider the mission of Poncle. Yeah. So you're talking about a federation rather than one big super remote studio with people around the world. Interesting stuff. Well, let's let's talk about one of the your your next projects, Vampire Crawlers, which is your Vampire Survivors spin-off. Yes. How did that How did that come about? First of all, we tried to analyze what make Vampire Survivors loved and everyone in the world. And we

found that uh
[snorts]
accessibility and fun is kind of the core essence of the game. So what happened is that we started from that. And then there's another thing. Obviously Vampire Survivors is a game, but it's not like the game that Luca wanted to do in his life. It's something that you wanted to play because he loved skill up characters and this type of things. And he made this black box. But we also like other genres. And card games obviously it was one of the genre. So when we wanted to to make a new game, obviously we are little with not so much people. So what happened is that uh using a very famous IP or like allow us to be more present because we don't have the the power to launch a new IP, a new game. So we use obviously the Vampire Survivors IP very famous to experiment in new genre. And card game We love card game, but we're not too much good at card games, because they're complicated. So, we made the game that we wanted to

play with them. And you you partnered with another studio to help you on that project.
Yes, exactly. So, what happened is that obviously Poncle grew grew organically in a way that we were trying to catch up the success of Vampire Survivors. So, what happened is that obviously while developing Vampire Survivors that in these 3 years changed a lot. A lot of contents, whatever. That's why we don't have a sequel, because we put all these ideas in the game. So, what happened is that we had this prototype for a card game and but we didn't have the resources to develop by ourselves. So, we have a core team and we like team up with our friend is Norse Blade. And we're releasing the game next week. Hopefully, everyone will like it. Yeah, wow. And Luca mentioned I think in an interview that he he he hopes Crawlers will be the first in a series of spin-offs. Are you looking to create these yourselves or partner with people like Norse Blade like you've done Crawlers?
spin-off is interesting, because I mean we try a lot of prototype

and again to try a new genre obviously we could try and off like capitalize of Vampire Survivors success. But also we also have like friends that came from other series, other games that would like to work with us, because they like the Vampire Survivors. They would like to add Vampire Survivors element in their games. And also practically on a business standing point obviously they would like to access our the community, because at the end Vampire Survivor is a really community driven business. Truly. So, is people coming to you like you're getting people pitching to you like ideas? [clears throat] So, let's do a this Vampire Survivor for example.
[laughter]
So, the thing is that I mean the quality of the personality we need to be a little bit like uh uh careful.
Okay. But yeah, this is exactly what happening and this is what like actually make us having this enthusiasm and the will to continue and to grow, because we will have like a very nice collaboration coming in the near future.

Exciting. We've also we talked about it a moment ago, you've been doing these IP collaborations. You've got you've got some involvement in Warhammer Survivors, is that right?
Yes. So, what happened with the IP collaboration? So, the thing is that a lot of people came to us and they say, "Oh, let's do a collaboration. Let's do a Survivors, because Survivors seems really simple and a simple graphics, but it's actually quite complicated in the in the machine." So, people [snorts] came to us and instead of copying it as a lot of people did actually, they say, "Oh, let's do a Vampire Survivors." So, what happened? If we have the knowledge of the IP we do ourselves, but a lot of times we don't know. If you have like an IP for example Warhammer 40K in this case that has this like decades of story and the big lore, we don't want to risk to to disappoint the audience and the fan. So, what we did we made an engine called Vampire Survivor engine that is kind of

template with all the Vampire Survivor juice inside. Wow. That we give to people that we consider the IP guardians, so they can do their best and we are fan of Survivors game. Luca has 3,800 hours on Steam on Vampire Survivors. So, we want to play the game. So, for example with the Warhammer 40K with our look their best, their guardian of the peace, we give them when we look forward to play. Obviously, we are collaborating with them giving them obviously all the help they can. Wow. How significant are these IP collaborations to what to what Poncle's doing? So, I live with myself. So, first of all is the knowledge of the IP in a way you really need to understand passion.
[snorts]
So, what happens is that you start from that you decide that you we can do ourselves or we can give to someone else. And then the IP stakeholder that the IP that we've been talking to, they're very big. So, the next thing is stakeholder needs to trust you. Yeah. In

a way that okay, this is my IP, you understand it. And then you can have obviously they need to trust you and respect the gameplay. So, it's a mutual respect and mainly listening. I want to make an example with Konami. So, we did this hot Castlevania DLC very big. Very nice. And they allow us to do everything and to use everything and at the end we were able to do a DLC that actually I want to say made people cry, because you put Easter eggs and stuff. And but if you don't have the knowledge obviously we we pass it on or we give it to the VS engine to develop it. So, it's not like a a license business or business model in general. It's just to allow people to do the best Survivors they can. We should expect then an array of different Survivors games set in all different universes. Yeah.
[laughter]
The more Survivors, but I I want to say as you probably know, I mean we have so many people that love the game so much.

They they can't We tried to close Survivors so many times, but actually people continue to play constantly. They always want a lot of contents and sales are still very on. I've spoken with a few big brands recently actually, specifically you know, thinking like likes of Disney and stuff and they seem they seem to really interested in independent developers, independent teams, because you know, they they can take more risk. They can do innovative ideas, potentially drawing new audiences to their IP, you know, some of them not necessarily need it. Is that your experience you've got? You've had loads of sort of bigger brands or suddenly seem interested?
Yes, the thing that we found obviously is that um when you have big IPs, there's a lot of responsibility, because player expectation look at incredible. So, for example, when they do if they do a One Piece game, player expect to be Luffy Grand Theft Auto. I mean so, there's so much money and so much expectation that

create tension and we know I mean we do video games. I mean anything can happen at any moment. It seems that now within this there's the possibility to steam off a little bit this kind of tension. So, they spend less money, they manage the risk better and they can even can like risk a little bit more. And when you have like a little reality that is like empowered with a big and important IP in this people really give their life to do their best. And at the end even the game doesn't work, you will still have ideas and passion and this is something that big IP stakeholders are like finally I don't want to say finally, but like they they take advantage of it. So, I think there will be more and more. And we have a nice conversation with Warhammer as a one example for. Is this is part of the reason why you're having these offices in different locations? It's not just a cultural thing. Like if you want to work with an IP in Japan, it's makes sense to have uh people in Japan that live the culture and understand that world. Exactly, yes.

It's in the specific example of Japan is exactly right. So, we would like to be near uh the people that know the brand. We would like to be because obviously there's the need to listen. I would like to tell you there's especially we work with Japan. There is this authority versus consensus. So, I mean in Japan I mean do you you sit at the table you can decide. In Japan you have layer, you have process. You need to be a little bit slow. And when I was at university the first classes Japanese classes, my teacher said, "Democracy in the late '90s, democracy is a relative concept." I was like, "What?" So, if you have 10 people voting six say yes, four say no, you can't ignore that minority. So, when you're at a table talking with a big stakeholder, you would like to decide, you would like to proceed, you need time. And this is something obviously that a western culture doesn't accept too much. So, when you have like a Japanese

company, you have Japanese people, you speak Japanese, you have people that understand, in the middle of time it will be easier. And then easier I mean more freedom to do what you want to do. Yeah, that's why you need the local office. I mean I know it's still early days with your IP partnerships. You've done a few, but what do you think's the secret to getting the collaborations working and getting them right? Again, it's a like um the secret is is our knowledge of the IP passion. And actually it's like you start finding and that's the luck that we have with Vampire Survivor. You start with love and passion and a common shared vision. And this is like it seems silly in this industry and world that is driven by money, but it's exactly that. When you have like knowledge of the IP, a shared vision, you have passion and like let me say I don't want to sound banal, but you find the right people. I mean you catch up and you see that you can talk and then you start to plan, because we don't know it's not an easy feature, whatever game it is. You need

to stick with these people 2 years. And there's pressure everywhere. So, I think patience and intellectual honesty is the key to nice IP collaborations. Yeah, cool. So, you've got Vampire Survivors spin-offs. We've got one spin-off, but possibly more. You've got IP collaborations going on. What about what else? What about original games? Original games? Yeah. So, let's say that we try in every genre, because basically what we're doing with Poncle, we want to make games and that's starting with Luca and we also the people that come we want to make games. So, we're trying almost every genre, let's say, but dating game. But if I can say in actual phase of development, we have two original IP that we're working at the moment, yeah. How many projects are you working on? Like in actual development, if we include even Crawlers that is coming out the next week 15 project. 15 project?
Yes. And but like starting from like sketch on a papers and various ways of

talk, I think more than 20 at the moment, yeah. Right. Okay, we manage.
[laughter]
I mean managing the cost of all those projects. Are you able to keep all things under control? Oh, yeah. I mean I mean we we said some numbers before. We like we we quite comfortable at the moment. But the thing is that we manage it because first of all little project We don't want to do like triple A double A. We want to have like a efficient cost machine. And we're quite efficient with costs. So we don't take useless risk. We invest in people. And so when I was saying you like 15 projects is when you have many many projects one can fail, one can go good and you balance with that.
[snorts]
I would take it you work with loads of partners, then you're partnering with loads of different studios and teams and are these people that you already know or you meeting people at events like this?
Yes, we meet people as we meet people here and we there's people that we met

the friends that we start to work with. And it's quite organic process at the moment. I mean we are extremely lucky and privileged because we are like a bunch of very nice people, the best that we know and we share the same vision. So we bring people from outside the industry. This is very important because I think that finally we bring industry after 40 years are able to open up a little bit. So you can go to pick it up from like Apple, you can go to pick it up from every industry. So it's it's fun. As far as you find a nice people that share a vision and luckily again Ponko working on a lot of project and we can like commit on fun. Who come with us, he will have fun. I mean I'm I'm really quite pleased cuz I love seeing when you have an independent developer that's had a lot of success reinvest that into the business, reinvest that into new studios, new partnerships, new games. I think that's what the industry needs a lot of. It's very easy. It's great this rise of independent studios who can self-publish and have a lot of success.

But if the money doesn't come back into the industry then it sort of it goes out of it. So I I I think it's it's all wonderful. I don't really have a question there. I just feel it's
Yes, I mean I mean it's it's um There's a way because obviously if you say oh, but if you're like honest on the expectation and you're like strict on numbers, I mean you can do a game that will sell 50,000 copy and make a studio alive. I mean there's Like in cinema, I mean you can look Ant-Man and you also can't see Avengers. In games you can like lean forward, you don't have to play marathon. So there's a market for that. There's not anymore 1 billion people market, there's 1 billion 50,000 people market. Obviously there's a risk all the time. It's a lot, but you can be considered and I'm sure that in this there's a lot of publishers friends here. I mean there's no project now that will cost more than 1 million. If you see recent

pitches, people are pitching projects for 200,000, 300,000. So if you make like a the calculation, I mean it's absolutely sustainable and that's why India are thriving, I guess. This is all going back to something you were saying earlier about the all these survivor games that you're making. Are you not worried you might end up having a saturation that you're all just competing with each other and and No, because so the thing is that with survivors, right? Why we doing collaboration? Because okay, Vampire Survivors three games. I mean we want to close the game. We tried to reboot adventures. We reboot like time limit, but anyway people wants more. So what [clears throat] happened is that with survivors we will continue to invest in the genre with evolution of the genre. So with through collaboration we will have the genre survive with our ideas, with local ideas. So it will be something new. If few people get like bored to it, it's totally fine. But when you work with IP people, for example, let's see Warhammer. There's a lot of Warhammer

people that never played Warhammer Survivors because yes, Warhammer Survivors is big, but it's still a niche, it's still indie. So and when you have like Warhammer Survivors and you see we released the trailer like the other day, make like 300,000 views in two days. There's a lot of people that doesn't know survivors. And it's actually a good game. So there's a Warhammer fun and that's how I think that there's an angle and that's why they want to work with us. But I mean if it will not work anymore, it's okay. I mean we had a lot of fun, we made a lot of money. You're right. Yeah, I guess 27 million is a lot, but there's a lot more people in the world. Um and I you know I'm going to ask the question that every games journalist is obligated to ask anybody these days is are you investing in AI as part of all these So not at the moment because I mean Vampire Survivors for example started to with an asset pack people and the human expertise. So even if at the moment we can use surely generative AI to do some of our asset, we at the moment we prefer to

work with people. And I would like to add on it that it's if there's something that AI made obvious it's if there's a little bit more on an image when you look at it because when you look at an image and you know that it's AI, you feel kind of deceived. There's kind of an uncanny valley. And our thought my thought is that because when you see an image, work of art let's say, even if it's a silly meme, there's a person behind it. There's a feeling, there's a compelling need to do that. So what happened with the with the especially generative AI, there you feel that there's a there's not the creativity soul behind it. It's kind of soulless. But I mean there's no stigma if we will have like useful tool in the future. I don't want to sound hypocritical ethical. I mean I'm surely considered, but at the moment we have a no need of it. It seems to match a lot of people. I'm I'm conscious of the time, but where I ask this question is a normal question ask at the end of

my interviews is where would you like to see Ponko? Sometimes I say 10 years, but that's that's lifetime in the video games industry. Where would you like to see Ponko in five years time? Yeah, 40 project and probably delivering in time everywhere in the world. But that's I think that it will be a nice balance because I mentioned before the federation of studios. If we will be able to have this beautiful machine that are able to have a so many project that can go good, can fail, some [snorts] as collaboration, some as for money, maybe some moonshot. That's where I want to see. We don't want to do like a gigantic studio working of gigantic game. We would like to want it small, but if you have a lot, you can do more. That's what purpose. And that's what we're trying to do for real. Actually I'll probably ask a follow up to that last question. What are you looking for then? When you're looking for people to work with, you're looking for partners. What is it What Who is a Ponko developer? Well, first first of all like passionate people, nice people, people that we can talk with. And when we talk about shared

vision, there's one thing about game that I mentioned at the beginning and talking about spin-off accessibility and fun. It sounds simple, it sounds maybe naive, but that's exactly what I want to do. We would like to do fun game that everyone can play. So the thing is that okay, we want to do games profit
It's more with at the moment, not a priority. So when we find people that like are like committed to this, obviously we work and I want to say we are a little bit picky. We we try to to find special because there's a lot of special people in the industry. If we have that, I mean we will be happy to it can be That's why I was telling you before we have a lot of project going on because we try to find first of all the the right people and then we will make a project together because our age if you don't you don't share a project with your friend, you will never meet. So it's an excuse to work together, you know. Yeah. Matteo, we're short of time, but it's it's wonderful. I say it's really exciting to see what

you're doing. It's really fascinating to see the things you're trying to do with the survivors brands, with your spin-offs and with new games and and all sorts of things and licensed IP. Good luck with it all. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you very much for coming and for your time and we will see. We're doing our best. But hopefully we will be able to pull off some nice game again. Brilliant. Thank you again for Matteo and thank you all for listening.
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That's it for the day's episode of the Game Business Show. We'll be back with more news, analysis, insight and interviews in the days and weeks to come. To make sure you don't miss a thing, head to the gamebusiness.com, stick in your email address and you'll get a newsletter every time we have a new episode out. But until next time, thank you for tuning in.