You Don't Need a F-ing Publisher

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okay I mean that's not at all what it's about by the way Oh Jiro another round of applause for zero the reason I have them up here is so he I'm not gonna look at him you can secretly get up you guys a thumbs-up and thumbs-down if I'm talking bullshit and making lies up here okay because that's the whole point so I'm gonna try and make this quick I'm not that great of a public speaker but if you hopefully we get to the questions quick and start thinking of them now so it's called you don't owe apartment I should introduce myself again Nigel Lowry I work at devolver digital so you don't need a fucking publisher but if you do ask questions and that's what this really is about it was a little misleading of a title I think that one of the biggest things that people need to know is that you don't need a publisher I think everyone knows that by now and this is what this discussion is about that if you do start asking questions mostly like I said it's going to be about asking questions not right now no one go to the mic but the fundamental part of getting any sort of business deal at all including getting a publisher is to kind of ask questions know everything you can possibly know people are still coming in welcome I'll wait I'm just kidding this might be a short presentation actually lent it being long because I am humble a lot but I invite you to start thinking these questions down because I think I'm here I want to answer them this is a forum which I can kind of give you some information but I do want you guys to think of questions because I'm happy to answer as many as I can and I'll stay late I don't have nothing else to do I'm a really sad person so a few disclosures the first thing I also we all work at an indie publisher like I mentioned before and the reason I want to do this talk is we get a lot of pictures literally dozens and dozens of bitches that pitches please do not tell my wife I said that and it's become very clear that a lot of developers don't really know either to even ask questions or the right questions to ask and who to ask them to like any industry gaming is fantastic but there's good guys there's bad guys and there's good guys that don't want to fuck they're doing and maybe you know aren't providing all the information that they should so maybe I can make some decent points today talk about what we're what we look for what to look for excuse me and what to ask about before signing an agreement so this is the agenda aka last chance leave before it's rude with that said you know this is not gonna have a lot of cool charts and data this is almost all entirely anecdotal stuff my intention here is to pass on information to everybody here from my side of the fence from the evil publisher I to publish your side of the fence and bring to light some of the issues and challenges that crop up even in our business and things I hear from developers I talked to so any publishers one board every minute right oh I'm gonna back up the things I'm going to talk about actually our indie publishers what is that what the fuck does that even mean publisher partner are those things you know the same thing are they different I think that's kind of the crux to this conversation and then common issues common issues we just kind of see so any publishers ak1 born one born every minute when I was thinking about what I was going to say here I kept coming back to this inherent struggle that small developers have on why they might even look for a publisher the game market is wonderful amazing but you know you're all pouring your heart and soul into these in these games and it can become pretty terrifying when it's time to either really work on or it's getting close and you want to launch right so oftentimes developers don't want to go it alone and this kind of made me think of this famous scene from the opening moments Legend of Zelda where link is about to embark on this grand adventure right and he walks into this room and some old dude tosses him a sword and gives him a warning right link takes it and doesn't ask a single question just rolls out assumes because this guy knows he's done had been there knows what he's doing is going to give him all the information he needs what do we find out yes the sword was helpful but it was not the only tool that he actually needed he needed quite a few things to finish it his adventure and there's more things necessary to complete this task than just the sword so he didn't ask questions he doesn't know who this guy is or what he did and he doesn't know what kind of cut this guy is taking off the back end of this adventure right maybe maybe this guy's getting seventy five percent of all the rupees that he collects we don't even know and what happened to link he didn't ask questions any end up and his shitty sequel I'm saying it sell the two sides so publishers have been around for nearly as long as game developers but I did zero research on the subject so that might not be true but what I'm certain is there's always been this animosity between developers and publishers and you know rightfully so the latest I think most obvious thing is the end of every Kickstarter people mention you know why are they doing this Kickstarter well because you know they want to avoid publishers because they're bad they ruin creativity they'll take a hold of the game they're gonna cheat them out of money and honestly you know publishers have behaved badly for years and this is absolutely perfect like rational thing to say but this happens all the time and it's unfortunate and there's some good people out there there's bad people like I said before but this happens all the time but I do think the game has changed I think everyone in this room this is not news the game has changed digital distribution I put the little exclamation marks I'm not as good as a Giro at graphics but I put these sweet exclamation park.the marks up there because digital distribution is a point that really changed a lot of things it bestowed an unbelievable amount of leverage with the developer that changed everything because you can get directly to your consumers this is an important moment and for now like I said it shifted this kind of perceived power so we've seen those bar graphs those charts where there's huge acceleration the number of games being released on Steam the App Store everything like that and you can argue a lot of different reasons digital distribution is one accessible tools less stringent curation on these storefronts but that's not the news everyone knows there's a lot of games out here I especially think this audience knows with shitload of games out there right now what's interesting to us is hey Evan I just saw you sorry what's news to us is that our not what's interesting to us there's a lot of service providers people whether there's a publisher or localization company there's a lot of things being built up around any games and any game developers a service provider like I said can be anyone from a localization company to his testing studio but there's more and more of these write and game publishers are no exception the indie publisher market has lots of options now ok devolver being one and in the middle but as you can see this is a small example of the different publishers you can go with what's important is to understand each one's Direction their strategy their capabilities and know what's right for your game the names up on this screen these two screens I didn't know there's going to be two screens the names upon these two screens are just a handful of companies to consider their publishers their game labels or whatever but they're all have their own kind of thing of taking your game working with your game and getting it to a larger audience Sony Computer Entertainment obviously has their kind of angle to do it any fund specialized them obviously funding Indies and having really really friendly developer agreements and folks like team 17 Adult Swim and Double Fine our fantastic groups you can release your game with their developers themselves and they can offer a lot of insight and the game development my point here is the publisher can mean a lot of different things so I'm going to lump them all together but they all have the you know they're on my new show and details of what they might specialize in water sorry ok so I want to get to the meat of this we know that there's a shitload of option I've cussing a lot of apologize there's a ton of options out there when a developer wants to find a publisher work with and now you need to get to this vetting process right what's going to work for you what's going to work for your team and what's going to work for the game itself so most of the developers that we talked to the discussion starts around what is what is the publisher going to do for me and then it kind of works its way towards what can you do for my game that's kind of an important kind of evolution to that discussion so the best way I thought when I was thinking about what to say here is to frame this by categories and categorizing this into what are things that a publisher should do for you and what are things that a partner should do for you now these things aren't necessarily at odds with each other but they don't also necessarily always come hand-in-hand so this is what I want people to be careful to when they're talking to publishers partners game labels whatever it's being called these days you need to find out the potential publisher you're working for and find out what they're going to do for you and what they're you are looking for in a partner and reconcile those two things okay because that's what's really really important you don't want to pay for things basically that you're not going to use and you want to find a publisher can do all the things you needed to do okay so what kind of publisher provide these are the basic things that people think about when they're talking about a publisher a developer can hypothetically do all of these things themselves actually not hypothetically they can do all these things themselves that's what it's called self publishing a lot of people do it the reason people like oh Jiro work with us is because they don't want to do them and they think that a publisher can do them better and more efficiently right so they can focus on making the game give the thumbs up right now okay your royalty check is it's due so these are the base level things though okay these are these aren't things that should excite you these are what you should be expecting from a publisher I don't really want to dwell on all of them and I'm not going to go in too much detail but I do want to talk about marketing distribution is I think these are the areas that are maybe most foreign to developers and maybe distinguishing characteristics I guess between different publishers you can talk to so marketing marketing is like saying I'm a game developer it's game development like what does that mean there's a lot of things in marketing there's a lot of different disciplines that's PR that's advertising the defense it's everything that's going to position and communicate your game out to the world and this is where you need to start asking questions you're going to see this theme throughout my discussion you need to start asking questions about everything that that's publishers you're talking to you might do so the PR the PR teams for example understand is it them doing the PR is it a team of people doing the party are they contracting this out all of these things are valid that finding out where are their P to PR teams when they say they're going to do PR so just North America that's that's not good there's a lot of people outside of North America that buy video games and they want to be talked to in their own kind of with their own cultural nuances and localized you know the information you're giving them into their language do they include streamers and youtubers when they talking about PR if they don't include youtubers and streamers walk out of the door lock that door and set the building on fire because they don't know what they're doing advertising how are they going to spend this money like I think a lot of times we talk to folks and we'll mention advertising they don't even ask what that means right I think that's and we then give the information or at least someone should give the information to them but you need it ask how this money will be spent okay they don't look at the line-item go great we got a great advertising budget you need to find out what that means and how they're going to spend it and then what events do they go to do they go to events do they have people to go to events outside of North America I think that's important too there's a lot of amazing things like bit summit in Japan o Giro want to and there's a lot of amazing events to go to that are going to spread your game outward so just be mindful of where they're PR activities are really happening and then of course a cohesive campaign right you need to look at what they've done what is their strategy what have they done in the past how they customized that for different games there's not a template to marketing there's not a contemplatively clones you know clone mobile games or something like that I didn't look at you for a reason not you not you but you need to find out what their strategy is find out what their beliefs are in marketing the other part is distribution you know let's I'm gonna be honest like five years ago publishers that we know or people I know or any publisher could tell you well I can get your game on Steam and that was a lot of times enough for people to get excited and sign up with them and I don't think that's right and that's definitely not right anymore I mean anyone can get your game on Steam or you can bypass Steam or or you know you can go on PlayStation there's itch there's all sorts of amazing places to get your game directly to consumers but I will note when I was thinking about this it's fit you know fair unfair publishers do have their advantage so you should ask them about what these advantages might be because one of the things I talk about is publishers get direct lines sometimes a lot of people at them because they have a lot of content then people that you know steam or valve or Playstation or Xbox or whoever you have a direct contact there and there's advantages of having that for placement store placement things like that there's things like publisher sales like again right or wrong there's publisher sale the devolver digital get and it will increase revenue for these games so you need to ask your publisher what they do and how they're going to make more money than you would make on yours alone when it comes to sales and distribution and the last thing I'd say on this distribution is look what else you're going to be amongst when you know with the game with the the catalog of games that publisher has to see where you sit there's some games there's some publishers out there or you know partners or whatever you want to call them at this point in the discussion that specialize in things there's point click adventure folks that do really really good have a lot of pointing click adventures and you would sit amongst them and there's some synergy there so these are what a publisher like I said should provide and I liken this this is the basics when you're buying a car and the car salesman says well it's got four wheels it's got windshield wipers and he'll take you from point A to point B like yeah I know that like sell me on what's next I think this is the crucial moment for a lot of developers that don't keep asking questions or the publisher doesn't provide more more answers of what they're going to do beyond those things I don't know how to emphasize this enough but these things that you see up here that's the base level thing you should be except expecting so what do I mean so what's next what's after that right and this is where I got it got in my head this discussion was going on discussion with developers we work with and discussion with the folks that I work with it and my company you know what's next step and then we think it we think it's a being a true partner and what I would what do I mean like that well I mean actually let me back up those are all questions you're going to ask that publisher asking about funding asking about things but these when you're finding a partner you're going to ask them you know some questions I'm gonna get into but you also needs very important to start asking questions to do the developers they worked with previously right that's we're going to find a new angle a new a new way of maybe assessing this publisher because they're going to tell you what happened whether it was good or bad find of and here's another thing when you're talking to developers from this publisher that you're speaking with fine don't just talk to the people that sold a lot of copies because they're probably going to be pretty happy right and they're probably going to be pretty pleased with it go find the developer that maybe you know game was fine but didn't sell a ton of copies because you maybe can find a new dimension to that discussion and you know find more about how that develops Cuse me how that publisher carries themselves when maybe things aren't as stellar as you know you had hoped so what kind of a partner provide a true partner and again this is where I think a developer needs to start looking and start assessing more and not stop it what does a publisher provide these things like I said aren't easy to ascertain and the publisher is gonna you know there's a Salesman here basically talking to they want to sell you on them as a company and I'm going to speak to created creativity enthusiasm okay giving a fuck about your game and that's I mean it's I know it's you know language but like that's important part because you don't want to sign up for somebody that really doesn't care about your game once it's signed on the stage and a spotlight a personal relationship and brutal honesty so when I say create creativity I don't just mean good ideas for launch trailers I don't just mean like hey what about some slo-mo action on some slow-mo music it's going to be beautiful like I'm not talking about those kind of things I'm talking about their creative enthusiastic about every element of your game that's just marketing that's distribution that's production that's funding working with you in the way you may have money already and doing things smart and different to make sure that you're happy that you're comfortable so don't just check stuff off a list these are people that are thinking and being creative about every part of your game again look at the publishers body of work that's the easiest thing to do you can scroll through the YouTube channel you can scroll through their website you can scroll through Metacritic you can see what they've worked on you can see where they've been successful and where they may be applied creativity to everything they do you need to find out if they've done what you've you know done things that are successful before and how that might apply to your game I mean frankly they're going to show you all the best things they've ever done and the big fancy launch trailers or they could I'm just saying a good ones going to show you some smart thinking and I'm not going to try and pimp us out as a publisher that's the whole point I just want to talk about in general but one thing I would do want to reference because I use this in my discussion with developers as a point of when you're thinking about every aspect of it this is a game called hotline Miami that we worked on in 2011-2012 and this is the point I want to make is this ridiculous phone number we set up for hotline Miami it was just late one night we're thinking of fun things to do and if you played the game part of the game is you get these crazy calls from a telephone he gives these crazy messages so we thought it would be fun too we found a Google Voice number in hotline markscopy in Miami Florida and we grabbed it and we left a weird message and we start leaving this phone number in you know press releases website social media so we just we sent that out for a week never checked it that'd be funny what people start calling it what they leave messages to open it up it's got 4,000 voicemails and like 600 text messages which I didn't know you could do on Google Voice and was very concerning what people were writing but the cool thing that my point what this is is it's not don't just look at the high level fancy things that's going to you think I mean those are very important trailers important booths are important but look for where people are thinking of things like this that costs nothing and really like this engage the community and get them excited and talking about it because that's where I think you're going to find that difference in creativity the next thing is stage and spotlight a good publisher should put this developer first right this is important for your personal fulfillment as a developer but it's also very important for you as a studio and you as it may be a lone developer that when you're done with this game people know about your work and that you did it you're the one that made this and that when you're ready to do your next thing that they know who you are it's it's not about necessarily whose logo is bigger but just make sure like that you are always center stage whenever your gaming is being presented and not the develop excuse me not the publisher putting their name out there first and a good partner will will do this and I will be you know frank with you like we fight for this I have to fight you know platforms and first party people to say I know what your rules are but you've got to take devolver digital off this you need to put the developer on there because I think it's very important that people understand that they made it I can't make games I can barely put together a PowerPoint I promise you that and and I think it's important for you and your studio to have that kind of spotlight put on you the one thing I will note and I think you know oh gee Row is up here it's a really good example not all developers necessarily want that spotlight we were first working together we were had to go to a twitch stage was a PAX East wasn't which thing and you know he came to me he was like you know I'm not necessarily excited about being in the spotlight on this one and so your publisher your partner needs to understand that neither stand what your little idiosyncrasies might be what you are comfortable doing and maybe you the publisher the excuse me not use developer you the publisher might need to speak for your game okay and not talk about Mark getting bullet points from a factsheet I'm talking about knowing your game inside and out being able to demo the hell out of that game in front of somebody speak for you and represent you and your studio well I think this is a pretty crucial crucial part because the whole idea is you guys can focus on your game you're not going to be able to go to every show you're not gonna be able to go to every event and you need to make sure your partner's out there that you trust will represent your game well and speak kind of in the tone that you want it to be presented okay this one is me almost tearing are tearing up over there when og ro is up here because it's a personal relationship like you need to make sure it's this is a very aspirational thing but you're looking for a personal relationship with this folks and this this person this partner you're going to work with they're going to be a part of your lives for 18 months two years five years whatever it is and you need to make sure that you can develop some you don't have to necessarily like them but you have some sort of personal working good relationship with them you know might I'm sorry you may not want to have a beer with them and spend the night at their house and staying up all night playing NBA GM but you do have to have to have some sort of personal relationship with them and you need to understand the organization of the company itself right the guy that me let's say me that is signing your game or let's not say me I'm not supposed to use examples of me the person that's signing your game you need to make sure if that's not the person you're dealing with on a day-to-day basis who is that understand how that company works how that publisher works and who are the people you can go to and speak with when things need to get done and you're not talking you know to the the persons just your handler the person that can actually execute make things happen for you the other part I think I've have it up here yeah can they work can they contact them at night weekends or mid-coitus I know it's kind of a joke but like you need to understand that we you know you guys don't work 9:00 to 5:00 in fact I'm pretty sure it's more like 5:00 to 9:00 basically the people I work with like it's you guys have insane hours right so you're going to need someone there something you've been able to talk to and contact at any point and I think you need to talk to the other developers they work with to see how that goes because if it says 9:00 to 5:00 company and you know you're going to get an answering machine or you're going to get you're not going to believe them that's something important you're going to need to know because things go wrong constantly as you know and then what are the lengths that people are you know this this this publisher this potential partner is willing to go for you you a lot of the people I know I'm talking to and a lot of people who work with they're very small companies and they're the same people that are making the game of the same people plugging in the computers to the events and so you need to understand how far this partner this publisher will go and they're not they're not too fancy to you know go get your breakfast tacos when you need them when you're setting up you're setting up your demo kiosk and then the last thing is brutal honesty if you have those other things a personal relationship for example the brutal brutal honesty won't be a problem and I mean this this is going to be a two-way street when I talk about brutal honesty there's there's a lot of uncomfortable talks that might happen when you're working with you know a business like a publisher right money is an uncomfortable subject not just the initial talks about money but ongoing talks about needing more money and then when money starts rolling in from the game being sold you know understanding being very clear how that money is coming in and where it's going being able to talk about these things there's it plainly and openly is very important and then talking about I put on here tell each other that you suck you need to be able to the publisher the partner that you're talking to needs to be able to tell you what they think honestly about the game and you need be able to accept that criticism and either take it or dismiss it I know we talked about quite a bit it's a little I was watching your your hear your talk and there's a lot of elements that were like yeah I personally didn't like that no juror is like cool fuck you I'm keeping it in there and it's great and that's the kind of things you need to be able to save to a real partner right at the same time he needs to be able to tell me I'm sorry I'm picking on you we're supposed to be other developers up here so that are now sitting the back I see the the other thing that I would say here is that you need to be able to tell that partner that publisher that you don't like what they're doing you need to speak up if you don't like how the games being presented you don't like the trailer you don't like whatever it is the steam page whatever it is speak up it's your game hold of it and tell them that they're doing a bad job on something and the last thing I want to say on this this brutal honesty thing is this comes up in a lot of discussions when I'm talking with developers and they told me they're talking another publisher the publisher guarantees success they're fucking lying to you okay there's no guarantee of success i tawt got the clearance to talk about this but this guy Paul Hart who made the game called Fistful of gun it was a great game it didn't sell really well and we talked about it we were honest with you sure the whole time of what these what these projections are looking like and then once the game wasn't doing well what could we do to hopefully you know if the game recouped made money but how we can maximize it because he spent a lot of time in this game and we maybe didn't do a good job and he maybe didn't make the best game you possibly could no one needs to point fingers here you need to be brutally honest like how do we fucking make this work now that the game isn't going you know as well as we'd hoped so I think that you need to talk like I said to other developers and see how they handle not only success but not success I'm not gonna say failures but not success there are a lot more things than this there really I just have some things that I thought were important to bring up but this extends like this you need to find this deeper level of commitment that extends past this kind of publisher developer relationship it's this is not an all-encompassing list but my point is I think you just need to look past the basics and what the publisher should give you and look beyond like what you really need is a person because you all have different situations you'll have different circumstances which run or operating so you need to look past that and ask as many questions as possible so this leads to this last little piece about some common issues that crop up right this is all again anecdotal but I thought they were worthy of these amazing slides that I put together clearly some of these are related to the publisher partner kind of elements that I just talked about so I'll make it kind of quick I'll own it intellectual property IP if their game is your baby the IP is it soul okay so you need to take care of both and hold on to both do not sell your IP do not make it part of the agreement there's a lot of reasons why obviously you know sequels and things like that but just that's ends up being one of the most important parts of this and it strangely still comes up in conversations we have like do you guys want I pee and if they want I pee that's that's a whole nother level you should absolutely hold on to it but owning it is just kind of a part of it I need to be mindful how your IP is being presented right and how it's being positioned overall if there's damage done to it while you are promoting the game marketing game it doesn't just affect that game it affects your studio and it affects any future games in that series and the last part is from the best movie all-time movie of all time space balls and the idea is your IP is not just your game remember that it is about any sort of opportunities that exist within it so whether it's t-shirts comic books that are made movies feature-length film download the movie which is coming to theaters next year is it apparently okay good I got the IP so but it's something important to keep in mind that it's not just the game itself and that you know these things do not let a partner whoever it is mess with how your games present it and how your IP is presented do not this is like I want to have a whole mother quiet talk in a room with each and every one of you about agreements do not settle do not assume anything in agreement okay ask the questions it's your right to do it one example that please please please be very clear on how the money flows into the game and back out of the project when it's done there's there's a whole other talk that would be way more boring than this one but it's really important of understanding how your game is going to be recouped how the cost the publisher might put out there might recoup them how they're going to read the group when they're going to be recoup because it could be the difference between how much money you're making like not only short term but long term as well can be very tricky so ask for examples one thing that we do is we provide a spreadsheet where you can literally see like where the money is going in and then you type in the unit sold and the average unit price and it tells you it shows you exactly how it comes back out I think this is so important because you do not want to be wrong something like that especially after the fact and then I put lock your shit up to developers like make sure you have clear agreements amongst yourselves and the freelancers you work with we can't help you if you had an agreement a handshake we chest bump or whatever it is that about the music about some freelance work you know that if you don't have an agreement there's nothing we can do about it as publisher like that's agreement you made and oftentimes people start asking you know well what do I do I need it can you guys pay them this money and that's not in our agreement it becomes a really tough conversation to have so make sure that you understand you know I'm very clear understanding ideally an agreement with other people you work with the last piece is poor communication do not save changes to the very end when you're working with a partner like our publisher or a partner you need to if the game is going to be late bringing it up as soon as you think it's going to be late because that helps everyone including yourself involved having you know making knowing who the decision-makers are talking them and being very informed back and forth of what's going on is super important I know it's pretty generic to say like have good communication but it can't emphasize it enough you are in charge of your game make sure you're in charge your game stay in charge of your game and the last part is related to what we talked about before sustainability I think that's a huge thing that people don't think about at least weak you know we see it with developers we work with and developers we don't is understanding sustainability for publisher as your sustainability if you sign on with somebody like I said there's lots of them out there that call themself publishers you need to do your research so we're talking about that they're gonna be around when your game launches because if you signed a deal and they go away that's really really going to hurt you in your situation so kind of know who funds them right who's funding that develop excuse me who's funding that publisher how do they have money and what are they going to do are they going to be around right but also don't plan for yourself plan on your funding when you're pitching do not lowball a publisher that helps nobody you need to understand what's going to take to launch your game and then what's going to take for those two or three months after your game is launched when people start when the money starts coming in you know Steam PlayStation they all pay not it's not like someone buys the game they hand you your money right it takes months sometimes six weeks to two months for your money to come through so if you've only funded your game up to release you might have to you know two months that you don't have any money coming in and we see this time and time again and you know it's fun we can keep advancing people but I think it's good because if you're in an agreement and the money runs out and you really need money you ask them for more they could ask for you know royalty change and things like that things you don't want to get into and then also have an idea what your next project is if possible it's always good like if something doesn't go well you're not spinning your wheels for a few months wondering what am I going to do next I know that's easier said than done from the publisher up here what do I have up here Oh provocative recap so there's lots of publishing options that a lot of people to do a lot of things very important understand what that publisher working with what they do what their angle is you know what they do well what they might not do as well understand your partner completing you know everything you can about that partner and the last part our second last part is you're in charge so stay in charge never forget that never forget you're the one that made this game ultimately they need you more than you need them you could self publish if you want to and that's my last point self-published I mean everybody would do it very successfully and it's much better than getting into a bad deal I know there might be tough situations you might be in but you know you don't you don't need a fucking publisher so you can self publish if you need to it's better than being in a bad agreement and now if you have any questions I'm happy to answer no question apparently no questions but thank you very much for coming out

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Channel: GDC

Views: 152,204

Rating: 4.9307928 out of 5

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design

Id: mAI5W7Y5H28

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Length: 33min 32sec (2012 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016

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