What's next in line for PC games?

[Music] so hi everyone well the panel is about what the main topic is what's next in line for PC games and unfortunately I haven't been introduced face to face with the panelists but hopefully after this kind of Lou I will have a chance to learn more about them we would like to cover today a couple of subtopics so called the first one would be how do we see actually the future of the cross-platform how do we create the awareness for the developers and generate more quality games and as well what can we all do to give bigger better support for the developers so I would

like to now ask the panelists to introduce themselves to the audience intelligence briefly what you guys are working on what are for example the high like the biggest experiences you've had so far what would you like to highlight in a way so please start from here hi everyone my name's Tracy I'm the CEO of ansible communications which is a marketing agency and I work at the moment predominantly in PC helped him bring games to market and I'm working on with some really cool people doing some VR multiplayer at the moment I'm I don't think VR is quite had its hit but I think 2020 we're getting there and so yeah that's why that's why my brain is at the moment ok hi my name is Kim Akari

and you'll probably most of you saw what time what I what I'm doing right now with with fake fish so so briefly it was a PC survival games is the main focus right now I have been in the industry for for a while roughly for the games has been produced and launched but probably the biggest highlight for me the biggest production so far is is rich tracer unbounded title from to Namco Bandai with blackberry entertainment and that was actually cross-platform to all consoles and PC yeah hello my name is Naimah kratsov I work for Ubisoft redlynx as a lead gameplay programmer on an unannounced PC and console title I can't really say much about that but

anyway I bring hopefully some more the programmer this more I'm mostly focused on like actual just game development so don't have much experience on the marketing side and like the all the business decisions behind but yeah more the lower level game development stuff thank you hi my name is David I'm the co-founder of a Switzerland based indie game studio called pinata punch and we were developing currently a game called colorful darkness it's a hacking simulation wrapped inside a cinematic adventure and highlights I'm a software developer gone game developer I make game since childhood but never considered it as a as a career until a few years ago and that would be my highlight actually deciding to make it my career yeah thank you and my name is

sebastian banal I do video games I'm a developer on the game designer at motion tween in France and actually the second french guy on the scene and we actually released recently dead cells which is a korean kind of hog Ivania kind of game and we've been making games from 17 years now we are quite an old company even if that surge is our very first PC and console titles but we do have quite a long experience on making web and a few mobile games so it's interesting to talk about cross platforming and how it evolved since the early days of flash and so yeah thank you very much so if we're actually it looks like the main interesting sub topic should be cross-platform in a way which is also very important to ethic because I'm representing epic what are your opinions on future of cross-platform and what

kind of great impact it's having could have on the on the game industry echo system now so what do you think guys I based talk to you we did have as I said quite a long experience at making cross-platform each kind of game because we started 15 years ago 17 years ago on PC making web games on flash and we did like any flash developer did have to survive the flash collapsing for good and bad reasons because flash used to be nice it used to be nice and so with the rise of mobile development we did see new challenges on how to make games especially because mobile by this time you did have already a very low CPU you did have very specific issues and touch things and touch controls you don't have any high clicks or anything like this so yes we did approach the cross-platform

thing but for me we did part away from the cross platform actually today because we were making cross-platform at PC and console on that PC and mobile anymore because these are very different markets and it's today it's really not about tools anymore because we did we do have lots of useful as a from epic on unity unity you do have lots of tools to actually make mobile and cross-platform games but the real challenge for us today is really to make a platform that fits this new markets and they are very different so making a PC game and steam and console on even between switch on ps4 and mobile it's such a different thing so it's really not about the engine anymore today I think it's really about making again that fits this new market yeah I would also argue that it would make a lot of sense to make more supply collaboration with with developers because if we define cross-platform

in such a way that is not aborting the same way do another platform so I mean that you can port pretty easily a PC game to console platforms and have a pretty simple same experience but but then if you if you think about mobile mobile platforms you could you could also you could also make a sort of like cross-platform game that similar launch with the PC and console data but then of course the game usually needs to be quite different on that platform and usually usually these companies who are good in making PC mobile games are not so good at making making making mobile games so so I would I would I would think that more collaboration would would be would be needed in that part I can tell a short Express when a previously I worked no of course she kind of liked being relaxed and just talking about experiences so all the audience hears about it previously

before a fake fish I work with rival games and and and and and we had a nice IP from a Robert Kirkman demon thieves anyway enemy developed a PC game and also console version and and we also also also where with really limited resources also trying to develop a mobile game that would be really different actually only sort of like a text-based game but what we really didn't have enough resources and perhaps expertise to really deliver in the in the in the level we would hope for but I think it the idea was good I just hope to take executional resolution would have been a better truly delivered the mobile game the mobile game because the game is broing narrative game we have we had to scriptwriters there and sort of like five thousand eight hundred lines of text at that and and and so that so

it would and it's based sort of like a comic old comic series that you have this rich universe where you can stuff like pretty creative and find a lot of different and almost the same happenings and stories so the idea was was was that the mobile game is totally different will highlight the main characters in a sort of like different angle have stuff like different background information and also if you do something right in that game it would also communicate that to the backend to the pc game and give you some help on the pc game even though they are both sort of like standalone products but but there's some sort of like little little little sort of like cooperation happening in the in the backend side so i think this type of things are too rare nowadays that could be could be more

okay for us cross-platform now I'm looking at you because I thought of what you said that it doesn't it's not the tools now that limit you etcetera this is very true we're gonna use we're using unity and this is gonna help us but we're making a PC first game and for us cross-platform we try to turn this into an opportunity to turn one of our weakness weaknesses actually into a strength and I think you I loved your talk by the way about the long tail and yeah we're all already thinking about that let me explain so two words actually a symmetrical multiplayer so in our game in the context of our game what players do the core loop right would be you talk to people you get information you

for the world so when you talk to people you do social engineering and you actually then hack systems that are all interconnected and in the game world through terminals typing line looks like commands etc and it's very realistic so publishers when they look at our game dates and they say yeah that's that's hardcore a niche market is great but could you go on consoles and we're like people need a keyboard you know I mean it's it's it's an essential part of our game place in the DNA of the game to type commands like like a nerd with a hoodie you know so we we thought about this and we're like what we're gonna we're gonna stay we want to be faithful to our core concept because people really like it like players are eager to see our game you know out and they want us to keep it difficult and this realistic Ness is part of the of the

game's difficulty so when we think of a cross platform when thinking okay why not have people team team up as a band of hackers and some of them would carry guns or try to infiltrate you know a place and others would be so those could be on play on console and on PC we could have players typing commands in terminals to open doors a disabled cameras hack robots etc etc did I mention it was a cyberpunk again it's set in a cyberpunk universe so you have a lot of stuff to hack yeah so that's as the answer on our side it's a very designer answer but yeah it doesn't matter it's a great answer anyway so I work for a big company so obviously we want to release games on all the platforms that make sense so especially traditionally these obviously means that we try to release a game on all the consoles and all than

the PC and then also on mobile side have hurried all the major mobile platforms but I guess at the moment one thing that is maybe changing this a little bit is maybe Nintendo switch because it's very much kind of in the middle it's technically very close to mobile platforms but then the controls and the experience is closer to traditional console platforms and in the future there will be a lot more projects that have to go have to make some kind of decisions of like how how do they approach that because it seems like it's a big emerging platform and that puts a lot of pressure on the other tools and the engines and all that to make it possible to actually have a game running on like like top-of-the-line PC as well as the incentive switch with a 300 megahertz GPU so yeah that's that's I

think very interesting but obviously yeah we will definitely want to have more shared experiences with the with all the different platforms I think you guys have a really huge challenge because I'm from a consumer it's kind of magic and it's really complicated you're tall your tools and more engines you're using but honestly I don't actually care about that part of it as a consumer I'm platform agnostic I want what I've got in my living room or in my pocket to play the game that I want at that moment and I think cross-platform if we can begin to work more and more with getting things talking to each other the person that wins is the consumer and that really really excites me I think it's going to be a massive challenge marketing wise because to be suddenly your audiences on every platform perhaps at launch how do you how do you deal with that how do you scale with that um

but from it from a pure gaming point of view to be able to just have that instant access and I think that's much more what we're seeing on consumers want and so I think cross-platform is going to be inevitable and I want it yesterday I think it's a brilliant a brilliant thing because I don't understand how complicated it is yeah you're right it's a for example talking about the switch recently they did port doom on the switch and some kind of change use some kind of shift when you can actually play so again such as doom on portable device which is like radio amazing and you're right it's not it's different from what to player one because they do want some kind of course platform thing even if they don't call it this way I just want all their favorite games with them together at any given time and the thing is for example we are marching we are trying at least to pop that cells on mobile which is

like something we didn't announce officially so please don't talk about it but yes we are experimenting with that and you right because as a gamer it feels really right to actually be able to play the game on mobile but it makes the difficult parts not really know that it's not about technical things we do about making sure there is an actual market for this kind of game on this device which is becoming different today because especially with faultline coming to mobile for example what will you be G coming also to mobile which is like something which is crazy play and few years ago it wouldn't have been something and it's really about making sure the game actually plays right and making sure there is an actual market from this and but you you're right because it's it's something that we can check our ends and say no I don't want to go there but it will happen eventually so yeah we just have to go well and today we have the technique all the technical tools to do that just making sure that we actually think our game at the beginning with a few

things like ok it might be a touch control so I won't have a right click so it might be on a very small screen so I can't afford to have small text on the screen shot not too much text on my screen so you have to think about this a little bit earlier and in the King's again and as you can see I think it's a good thing because it allows you to make a good UI in good UX most of the time but it's also quite a challenge because some game can be really challenging to a report on mobile and on the screen but as I said I was talking about for tonight and Pew DG that's something that wouldn't have been possible few years ago and now it's happening and they actually do have a huge player base so even doom likes on this kind of game actually to happen on mobile so what should be there and could be by the way it is the short thing so the two of you mentioned and talked about the controls and I guess that's pretty much the most limiting aspect of a game how do we

control the game and then the consumers would expect a game to be out on every platform that has those controls available so Oh overall it looks like you guys all believe that there is a there is a market there so are you right now for example developing games as I said we are you are but are you others like looking into as well we are prototyping that I believe it counts as developing yeah yeah you know where our our timeline is to release the first player experience at first but we're already prototyping the multiplayer area just by the way the trials rising which is the next game coming from redlynx early next year is gonna be the first trials games I'm coming on Nintendo's switch and because that just platforms

just sound felt like a really good place for that game yeah we have going to plans to launch games on all platforms from mobile to Nintendo to PC and and any and consoles I've been now while away from the console multiplayer you know development scene but back in the days when I was there there was some technical limitations that I hope will would go away someday that that you couldn't do what really cross-platform multiplayer game between the consoles technically there is no reason why not but but I think the platform owners want to own the users and and you have these golden passports and whatever so so I feel that that's a bit stupid limitation but but let's see what happens in future you mean that the one platform owner wants to keep their players to them in their own example that is Sony and also PPS it says are

you actually porting yourself I'm gonna I mean you said it's not official but are you thinking of going standalone and cetera cuz I'm aware of companies such as hatch here they have a booth here who horn it's not just about porting to so from PC to mobile but it's also about curating so they this company for instance wants to see themselves as the HBO you know of those games and what's interesting here is that it's you would get to discover the games that made the effort to go there so we're talking of an emerging market it's really when you make a game in my opinion you you can think about cross platform between PC and console which is pretty much the same because not only technically

speaking but it's a pretty kind of same player that you have differences of course nothing everything is the same but when you're talking about cross-platform the real challenge for me is between mobile on whatever and because it's really not about technical things I study about the challenge of reaching your community and it's also about this yes stupid thing of having a closed app store and this kind of things that would probably explode in a few years hopefully but it's really about addressing a market that works really in such a different way from PC we as I said we did started on mobile on web and we switch it to PC it was like really great relief force but this is very different you you you don't address the store in the same way because a game can be really very successful on mobile and not at all on PC on also but it's also true so zero difference at such different markets that it's just not about partings again

it's really about adapting again and making sure that this experience is actually something that fits and talking will quickly about the switch the switch is a very interesting platforms Babel platform because it's the same console as a portable on a on screen version so when you make a game on switch actually I have to think this cross-platform things and you have to think making sure that your game works on small devices and I've restored controls if you want to take advantage of that and if you supply or just duck so again you have to switch instantly into a traditional kind of gaming which is design also very interesting but that's also quite a challenge but that's okay same kind of challenge that you have to do if you go to mobile and PC at the same time in my opinion and so a couple of points from me really is but the first thing I work with a range of clients and I would always say to them yes starting where your strongest market is at the moment

because cross players and you know cross platform and cross play isn't a huge thing but and start there and then try and go to every platform that you can because there's a huge audience opportunity out there to discover stuff and and I know I was wondering how long it was going to take us to talk about sort of HBO models and and Netflix for games because I know we've talked a little bit already about cross platform from the game point of view and and from a consumer point of view but I think you know everybody is wanting to be Netflix for games I think there's only Netflix that can be Netflix for games and I don't they're only just dipping their toes into it I think it's very interesting conversation and I think to go back to the consumer point of view and say you play fifa you're really only going to play fifa you might play a couple of other titles and I want to play FIFA on whatever device but if I'm the platform holder and you can only get FIFA from me that's the probably the the

darker part of the future of cross-platform that we'd go into because then you're going well if you want this you can only purchase it from this particular place so it's not necessarily about access on the platform itself it's that where do you purchase these titles from and if I'm the owner of the third yes I want you to buy it just for me I don't want anybody else having my 30% and then we're getting into you know very different complex retail market structure markets ecommerce debates and name and yeah again how you begin to unpick all that from a marketing point of view I think is going to be a huge challenge as well so it's it's interesting how these conversations start from a technical point of view and actually looking at where the customer is in their journey not just how you play but where you purchase from I think is something else to look out for in the

future because I'm I'm I'm not sure I know I don't feel that steam is the one point of contact for everybody anymore and I think it's super interesting that really big developers are going I'm not gonna be on Google I'm gonna be on Steam I'm gonna do things my own way and you're like wow that's amazing and it's crazy and you know not everybody's gonna have that opportunity how we come to market I think is gonna be just as important as what we're making and I would like to maybe come to the second topic here which is about actually creating awareness how do you guys ensure to create awareness of your games is actually steam nowadays like a good channel for you or you know should you use your some own channels maybe I don't know some own platform some pre-orders how or how to use them effectively like what what are what are the tools that can help you gain awareness what are you

right now believing and using we started with a with a bad idea actually I mean it was a good idea but it's it yeah so let me explain we thought initially that our game would do great if it was visible in the real life hackers community you know if it was if real hackers would say oh that game is pretty realistic and and and yeah this is this is what we do actually yeah the problem with that approach is that I think I still think it's a good idea if marketing wise but for a specific purpose which would be credibility but I don't expect this anymore to bring us sales because yeah those are very different communities so it's interesting how ideas that are you mentioned like press reviews versus user

reviews and it's interesting how good IDs sometimes can give you good visibility but what actually convert into into you have success so so we are maybe I will let you give your answer but we're still figuring out but we're going very organic and we're trying to build basically build a community of fans and we believe hugely on word-of-mouth in our case yeah so I mean your your topic was very young where we're going actually yeah I could say something yeah we basically came to the conclusion that know most games are not really on just one platform for example just PC only basically the old release and only reason you're on one platform is maybe that you're just really tight on like resources but otherwise you will be on as many platform like platforms as you

possibly can so you're not if you're making a PC game you will try to releases on the consoles and every single platform also like well Ubisoft we have our own you play as a storefront as well as like they're all the games also on Steam and obviously then on ps4 and Xbox one and all that and so basically what like you wouldn't really focus any kind of marketing in like one platform either so you you will definitely be on on Twitch you too although all the different channels that they are you will have to be on all of them it's only if you're limited on resources that you might have to limit them having experimented the different things I would I'm a quite traumatized by mobile so sorry about that guys but for mobile marketing is quite difficult you know I approach you you show that

you know what I'm talking about because because of this 2025 top thing you have to be here featured on that feature and it's very difficult to exist without that but it's very different from PC and Mac and console markets because in this market it's all about making yourself visible and you have tons of ways to do that today's we for example in that search we did some very basic thing actually we did send huge amount of keys to very small streamers on Twitch at the very beginning of the right before maybe two weeks before the or the access it is because the other access is almost always so it's very important to know that so yes we sent a tons of keys to very small streamers I'd be right before the accessories and because all these small trimmer streamers were actually playing the game so it shone on twitch we had a few people from the medium to reach us with larger ones we who as good

as can we have a key and because these large of streamers actually shot again we had a big ones already big ones so it's ready was this is not some kind of strategy magic strategies do you work all the time but really to take care of the small ones because they are not that used to receive a free key for a game most of the times they just don't they are not on the list so this they don't get anything from the professionals or whatever and if you just sound sometime in case sometimes it can turn into some kind of a nice long-term effect and just a small thing about what you said about console this is very power dr. today because when you're making a console game the first thing they ask you is is it possible to have exclusivity because even if you cause platform if it even if it's the same game on all platforms they don't care about the PC market but making console game is the first thing they would ask is can we make this game exclusive on ps4 switch off Xbox so that

might be a good strategy if you already need money but as you said which is a radio right you shouldn't limit your markets you should even if they bring lots of money for getting you on ps4 on only on switch only or Xbox on D most of the things better idea to just make sure make sure that your game is on as many markets as possible because you especially if you are small Tim you should not a fault you couldn't afford to actually limit yourself I think you're I'm so pleased to hear that story about influencers because I'm a real believer in in the power of influences not by just going to the person who has the most viewers and you know will will give you a big shout out but finding the right influencer for your game and then who influences the influences that sort of ripple effect and the word-of-mouth effect is massively powerful and I think a we're

going to get to a stage where as as you said you were you know you have a game in your and you're on most platforms and from a marketing point of view yeah you need a big you either need a really big think of resources to be able to support all of that and but another way is to build a community around a product and have a space where they all meet together regardless of platform that they're on maybe it's discord maybe it's you have a regular AMA on Twitch maybe you have a Reddit channel or whatever it is wherever your commute the most members of your community live their lives online build it around them build it where they are and I think that then helps you manage a little bit more of your marketing can help with discoverability people come in and see that hopefully you have a very healthy community everybody's really excited whichever platform they're on they're talking about the game and they're talking about you and your studio and your brand and and why that's all really cool and actually

that can be much more effective than paying on every platform and paying for that feasibility and totally agree and and and like in my previous talk I I explained that that that we are not developing or altai that was as open-source projects but what I talked about the tool to to to and one we are currently developing so so it when you are develop in the game with the community and and and and and the end up fans of that gender I can contribute to that game of course of course they are super happy and they they tell their friends and then they find us some influencers who still start start posting posting videos and stuff so that has happened to us like twice already so it's seems to be really really really working concept that really start to develop and develop in the game with with the community that you have so it

looks like we all believe that the influencers community everything is very important for the game to be successful but I think the question like for me would be so how do we actually measure the KPIs you know what is the indicators I've sometimes heard like there is no way to make it does it keep he rightly because it's very individual so what are your thoughts and that that's something that is really hard to measure because especially on mobile also again but because it's really close on all the information usually what you present from the store on how it turns into the sales it's really difficult to actually have a real number real figures on that on PC I just suggest to go on Steam spy which is because even I hope it survives but it should because it's really a very important tool for most game developer

today's but you have a ways to actually track your visible visibility on twitch on YouTube on how much streaming time did you have and if you compare that to your own data you can actually see if it transformed into something if it's related to some kind of news in your game or whatever some change you probably made or something so yes it says something which is very organic so very by definition very hard to actually analyze sometime you have no reason for something to happen just some big stream others shows your game and so the knee it explodes and says you cannot get good lessons from that except that I was lucky so that's something which is really difficult but the thing is it's not because you cannot analyze it that you shouldn't try to propagate to create this effect and the ripple effect that you were talking about searching for this is the world making sure that you actually address even very small people and were not important in some way

people on your community like soccer community on not exactly the core game else but as a target of this game it's I think it's a key and it's it's not something that you can measure on say okay this operation this marketing thing was a success or wasn't except if the girl is again totally fails of course but it's difficult to measure but most of the time I can guarantee if you don't do that it's difficult to have any kind of visibility except if you have a strong marketing power like you did so for example in such a case you have a reputation so when you release again everybody will be just looking at it because it's Ubisoft game but no and you're a smaller team you have to rely on different tactics and you should do pretty much everything you can do including talking to streamers on addressing your community I have to say that I don't perhaps believe that KPIs

are really useful capias are meant to be the key metrics they tell have bit like self-evident stuff that you can see already that ok is you can see it like without even the KPI that is your game successful or not but if you want to have if you want to really want to learn something from the matrix I think one should go pretty deep most likely even develop their own matrix tools which we once once did back in the pack back in the days when I was in a company in in France and and and and and then then we had this metaphor of like if you are like a hotel manager and then you have like a really big hotel and and and then you want to see that how your customers are like doing in the hotel where do it they like to be at the restaurant or in the cafeteria or what such thing you cannot you know go

go with the camera in their room so you you have some the matrix are like the tools to you to see what the players are doing in your game where they like to be where they don't like to be what is program what is not broken and that's how you can make your game game better I think the KPIs good rotational stuff it depends of the gender what is what is good and bad and and it's like pretty like self-evident information in such a way but you really want to have beneficial metrics you should call really deep and and try try to visualize what what the players are doing I want to say just a couple words obviously I don't know personally about much about the metric stuff except that obviously we're in a good situation that we get the basic visibility quite easily so what we measure and what we're really like interested in is just how much players play the game how they

experience it and we're just mostly just using as much or gathering data to figure out how to make better and more fun games and that's what we focus a lot on at least as a programmer and developer I'd like to think that [Laughter] yeah I think kpi's can be when you start going deep it can it can be the Alice in Wonderland hole that you'll never ever come out of because you begin to just track everything and so I think it depends on what kpi's you've set yourself what's important it might be play attention oh it might be play reviews actually you might say we just care about X Y Z and I think kpi's are all only useful if you are prepared to change course when you actually learn from them and it's great tracking everything and going KPIs and dashboards and things going up and things going down if you don't change course and it doesn't inform what you're doing then

you know they then become a little bit redundant so I would say you wouldn't have to track everything track what is going to be most important to you pre-launch launch your first six months and then whatever your development plan is change course or go make something better if you've not done it the first time around just a quick thing on that thing is for us it's really ask question first anzen gazelle data because if you just gather as much data as you think and you try to analysis it's just leads to madness so don't do that just first ask question what you want what you want to see and to track in your game and then gather data about that and get get on shows but if you just gather that randomly and just get some kind of fun down here or whatever you will just you won't you will be able to tell pretty much anything out of this gathering so it's not useful as an indie game

developer I was going to say keep you what but no actually we mean we're using steam spy we've done our research we know our competition or as I prefer to call them similar games we've done all of that but our bet is to just have a very strong game that talks to you know the that that challenges the players intelligence we believe people still care they want games that challenges them and yeah I I was I agree with what you've said actually it's where I was going it's you need you said the same you need to be ready to adapt for us even before having any data we we still don't have data yet but before before having any data it has been a journey of discovering what worked for people and what didn't work and even in this prototyping phase we we had to you know

realize some things that some design ideas were good some design ideas were bad so I can only imagine what will happen in the long tail when we we have a product and now we have to find new ways you know to to touch other people [Music] actually I just wanted to mention one quick thing that surprising thing that even though even if you're making a game that is where the monetization is not tied to how long the players play the game like on mobile platforms often is what is really actually quite important is to still measure the retention and all that because it's it's still a good way to figure out how much the players actually love your game we unfortunately we have I think time for a couple of questions which I'm sure are gonna be

interesting because it's more about support for developers so right now at epic we are having a lot of initiatives with funds with investors publishers etc trying to help developers get the right connections I know that some of you are looking for publishers tell me if I'm wrong or have already been they're looking for funding etc so the question is how do you see the future but like the with all this such such variation with the market did you have some did you ever apply to some do you think there is a future can that help developers like some advices maybe there is a good tour from devolver it's called sorry for what it's do you need F F world the publisher which is it's actually very interesting it's not something which is bad to be honest here

but it's actually explain when you're talking about publishing and marketing and making your game visible it's pretty important to actually ask questions like what do I need do I need some kind of marketing do we I need some kind of trader or something do I contact the press and this kind of thing so this this is a good to see on YouTube it's video I think it was do I need a publish or something like this but is very interesting and for us we did go for example on audio access and that was also a good problem to get from subnautica they did a huge successful re-access and it's something which is very important if you decide to go live like making a kickstarter on all the access or it used to be green light of beta on mobile on this kind of thing it's really like like making a show if you're doing that you're actually making a show of your game so you have to be ready to actually have some people full-time

working on that and making sure that if you go or the access if you go live in some way even if the game is not finished you will have to talk a lot to your community you would have to have a very frequent updates and lots of extra content because it's it's a show is they don't just want to see a boring game development which is it econ takes time it can be very boring at some point so they don't want to see that they just want to see a game that moves and in some way you have to create this effect by yourself so if you plan to address and to market your game by yourself you should be aware that it really takes lots of time if you don't do that publishers are useful because it's not something that we we cannot afford today to reduce the game without any kind of marketing Airport any kind of publisher app it's really very very risky situation you cannot afford to have two years of development and just say I will see what happens you will have to if you do don't do that alone you should yes definitely ask for help I think someone

before say is the same thing on an atoll it's really making sure that you you get the app for this kind of difficult things you can only agree with that we by the way we're still looking for a publisher and we the way we we've seen a publisher so far was we need we need someone crazy enough to publish a game that that's hard to sell so yeah actually the Volvo it would be a good good one for us but maybe something more useful to you guys it's it's funny how in the indie development scene how many among you are indie developers or consider themselves indie developers yeah oh don't be shy okay cool it's it's funny how often we think you know funding wise of how much money I need to survive for the next month's and and we don't do often often enough two

things which is first I think you said that in your talk think about what happens after you finish the game because you still need to pay your rent after the game is on Steam you know it probably won't be a big big hit in the first week so you need to prepare for that but also when you talk to a publisher put put put yourself in their shoes you know they want they want you to have a plan and especially they want to fund something that they can sell you know they usually don't want to to fund you to survive for your next internal milestone that's not a product you know so it I'm always surprised how rarely we do that as Indies so yeah you you you need to start having a plan being very realistic and retro planning it's over

unfortunately we're a little bit over I mean so many interesting topics and I mean you guys have so much to share so we must be cutting now completely yeah okay so so overall you believe that the Indies should try applying for funds like for looking for publishers everything but did you for example have some negative experience something that you could just shortly share you know or just any advice to give here the audience just like for last thought my final advice is please think big numbers just because you're an indie studio doesn't mean that you shouldn't be asking for a million pounds to make your game it will help you with the long tail it will help you feed your team it will help you do crazy great things to continue keeping your product alive to get it to market and beyond so yeah to

your point David think big numbers don't be afraid to ask for those big numbers because you have to survive and make your game and market it and do everything and yes then if you just you get to that moment where you decide am I going to go this alone do it in-house am I going to a publisher having those funds helps that decision making sure that you don't think about the release date is not the end of your game so when you it is again you have to actually market it and it can last for few months after that is dead so it's not about making surviving until its release date its surviving so you can make a second game it's very different so make sure that if you get fundings and which is a good thing we did have fundings also in France of a special kind of fundings for all games and this is very useful because it gives you a little bit more space to make sure that you polish you

you push your game on on the market but you can actually support it for some time and making sure that the long tail actually happens because you're not dead in between so making sure that yes think about making your second game I'm not finishing this one and funding should be fought in this way so don't hesitate to ask a little bit more that's no shame for that and yes we about that experience I don't want to name anyone here but yes when you're beginning in this market on mobile on PC on console they will probably take a huge cut on your revenues especially on mobile so don't hesitate to negotiate event if it's your first game we are not not sure maybe it will be it we don't know so make sure that you'll always negotiate even if you're a new commander in the market they will probably ask you for 60 or 70% of your view which is not a good idea don't do that you as I said you have to survive for your second game you just it's not about releasing one just survive and make more talking with quite

a few publishers and investors and and in general I would hope that the discussion would go a bit away from a kpi's because because for me I do understand that for an investor who is not properly game developer by himself yeah he is used to still excellent numbers and KPS he can understand and stuff but if you have good K peers it's like sort of like self-evident decision to bet on that so I think it's a it's a it's a bit unfair to ask could KP us before someone invests or someone trusts you to sign a publishing deal I would like to see more more investors and publisher who believe in something they have vision that I would I believe at this January of a game sortie this type of game place would work in the future III bet on that I don't care about the

KP as we will fix fixed a capias later okay well I'm sorry that we run like took all your time I mean there's so many topics and these guys had so much to share so I made him I maybe made a lot of questions so I hope you guys enjoyed enjoyed the panel and maybe you guys are gonna be free to us answer some questions later here from the audience so I'm they're gonna find you somewhere so thank you very much thank you very much [Music]