almost 19,000 games released on Steam last year you’re not only going up against 19,000 games released you’re

going up against all the games ever released on Steam 85% of play hours were on older games back catalog games today

I’m joined by a publishing expert with over a decade in the games industry he’s led publishing at Seager Curve Games

launched over a dozen titles personally and reviewed hundreds of pitches what does a developer need to know about how

a publisher works i don’t think it’s often talked about enough in terms of what’s at stake for the publisher a lot

of publishers are really trying to do good they want to be successful with you if they don’t find success with you then

what what’s left for them we’re going to talk about what makes your game investable from a publishers’s perspective the common pitfalls and why

publishing isn’t something you bolt on at the end and what to do about it you have up to three shots per publisher if

they say no the first time there’s a really good chance when you send it through again a few months later with

improvements they’ll look at it with some seriousness the second time beyond three times it’s like it’s probably

never going to happen unlike before you need to prove the product market fit if you’ve already got strong amount of wish

list I’m talking 50k wish list or above then people will absolutely take you very very seriously from someone who’s

helping studios actually get signed in 2025 this episode’s guest and founder of Kando Factory Bobby We’re a Time

today we’re going to get into 2025 guide to publishing maybe this publisher side of the story and with your experience as

a Game Scout i’m really excited to kind of dig in to kind of bust some myths and also just give people a practical guide

so a bit of background so Bobb’s been in the game for a very long time a decade

plus and recently I want to get straight into it you mentioned at a global top round event that the current market was

a cluster f-word so like a chaotic landscape right there’s a lot of post-pandemic boom happening and I

wanted to get into just straight into like a lay of the land of the environment of publishing and then the

publisher side of the story and just to remember as a developer the opportunity and what’s out there and then straight

into like biggest mistakes to avoid and then a practical step by step of things to get into so I would definitely stay

to the end of the episode to catch all of that so lovely Bobby I would love to just hear what is I guess happening

right now like you mentioned in that global top round i just wanted you to just kind of set us for this conversation today yeah so that that was

from an event back in like late 2023 I think it was um where I said that and um

yeah and you know what the environment hasn’t really improved since right it’s

I I think the outlook for 2025 a lot of people in 2024 were like survive 2024

right that was like the slogan within the games industry almost and then as we were nearing the end of the year

and even maybe in January this year 2025 people were like thrive in 2025 that

became like the new slogan for a short period and there was this optimism

from the industry which is really nice right and the industry is always changing it’s super dynamic it’s full of

creative talented people surely it’s going to be fine eventually I’m sure it will there’s like on on the top highest

level the industry is generating a huge amount of revenue right so there’s

It’s a really vibrant industry um and I don’t want to be a damp squid and be

negative Nelly or anything but it’s we’ve already seen quite a few headlines

of studio closures layoffs etc already this year quite significant ones um and

and a fair few of them as well and I don’t think that’s going to stop anytime soon and the reason why I think we’re in

the place that we are right now as an industry I don’t think it’s because of one single

cause but it’s multiple multiple things right and to understand why where we are

today i think you you do have to kind of look back and think about well what has

been what’s led us to this point and therefore you know what could happen in

the future right and um and I’m a historian at heart like an art historian

so I’ve always always been interested in history and you know I think it’d be good Bobby to hear you explain like what

is your perspective here for people who don’t know cuz I think people might have heard the word GameS Scout but it’d be good to understand like what is your

day-to-day like like what perspective do you have yeah so like um I started in industry in 2009

um and been at various big gaming companies like PlayStation Sega Curb

Games and now I’ve founded my own company Cando Factory and at Cando Factory it’s a small team of five people

um we do a fair bit of consulting work and um my perspective is really from

like the kind of commercial view right i’m not a game developer i’m the commercial guy i’m the guy that does

deals i do a lot of bisdev work i have a really good understanding of publishing

from the kind of very beginning to end of the value chain of publishing in general so I tend to look at things from

uh like you know really kind of big picture view and then drill down into

all right what is this game what makes it special does it have a place to exist in our in our in our industry does it

have a strong kind of calling for people would it be really attractive does it have a potential longtail blah blah blah

so I look at things from a really project level but I also tend to look at things on a macro really big picture

view level as well and and you know before the games industry I used to be an antiques dealer and so I’ve always

been into history and stuff right going back to what I was talking about earlier so when you think about the history of

games it’s like it started off massively in the arcade right coin op it was this

sort of like a you go to the arcades you put in a coin and you get your dopamine

hit and the game will be so enticing that you want to put in another coin right if it was a good game you’d keep

playing and you’ll have cues of people playing at a single machine right and

whenever there was a new game coming out it’ll be a new cabinet to be released it

will go into the arcade and then that arcade if it had the newest latest

machines would naturally attract a lot of people and if you had an arcade that wasn’t being updated and it was just

showing the same games on the show floor as it had done the previous 2 three years then naturally the number of

people attending that arcade would diminish right so there was this sort of like refresh happening constantly within

the arcades and then the games industry moved into console and with consoles you

had the refresh happening every time there was a new console release and you used to buy games in boxes and it’ll be

in shops and there’ll be this impulse purchase happening but also every time there’s a new console released the shops

will want to have the latest machines they’ll want to have the latest catalog of games and so all of the older games

will quite quickly phase out and move into the secondhand shops right so there was this total refresh happening every

time a new console was coming out a little bit like the arcades but a lot

more in stages at that point rather than like a consistent update happening and

then now we’re living in a world where mobile is half of the revenue in the

games industry and then PC console web HTML blah blah that adds up the other

half but most of the stores are now digital and most of the really really

popular stores are permanent stores you know they’re persistent so let’s say you

look at Steam or you look at Apple Arcade or you look at Google Play Store

doesn’t matter what platform you’re you’re playing on what device you’re playing on most of these digital stores

are now permanent right so that means you’re not only going up against games

of your current generation you’re going up against games that are as old as that storefront so say for example Steam

Valve they did like a a roundup of data of how their players performed like how

they behaved over the course of 2024 right at the end of 2024 they well

earlier this year they released this report this is a roundup of what what it looked like there was um 15% of play

hours of all of its players of Steam played games released in 2024

85% of people were spending their play hours playing games older than 2024

releases and there were like almost 19,000 games released on Steam last year so you’re

not only going up against 19,000 games released you’re going up against all the

games ever released on Steam and the most popular games the games that people are spending most of their time on 85%

of play hours were on older games right back catalog games and this isn’t just

happening on Steam this is happening on all of the storefronts right so back in

the day going back again console cycle it used to be the console refresh

they’re the new platform it’s a new store you have to buy the new games all

the other games were redundant now it’s like backwards compatibility there’s an

online store and you can buy all the older games so it’s like it’s a tough

market right that’s one that’s one reason why the market is where it is i

think a just to speak on that like this came up on a few podcasts as the old

game problem where it’s just you’re fighting against those old games they’re

not even some of them aren’t necessarily old as in they’re dead like some of them are like Fortnite where you’re competing

with new features or Lego Fortnite where it’s a game within a game is that’s what me and my brother did for example it’s

like I didn’t have to pay for anything or there’s a lot of games which are on game pass which maybe come back in so

they are paying in some way but it’s it’s interesting cuz

hearing you outlay the history like that I think is really important where it makes sense why that didn’t happen

before because it was just logistically not possible like you need a new machine you need a new front and the fact that

it is now and the 19,000 games um

it’s a lot and there was one question I wanted to ask like I asked this on a previous guest who did a lot of

publishing and I asked him like “Oh out of those 19,000 games how many of those

games do you think are like quote unquote good?” Cuz I feel like it’s so much easier to publish a game now on

Steam for example that I I wonder if that number is as big as it seems i was

wondering what your perspective on that was so I don’t have the data to back it up honestly um so it’ll just be my

opinion um but let’s say the top 1% of games throughout the

19,000 games maybe 2,000 games are stellar really really good games they’re

commercially performing well they’re well loved by its players they’re really

really good games top 5% of games I’d say are also really

really good they at least probably broke even um commercially and you know so a

lot of people played with it engaged with it and probably still play them today when you get into the top 20% I

think that’s when it’s like all right there’s some games there that maybe didn’t make its money back but actually

there’s some really really good games there um generally speaking they’re good games top 20% so if you take 20% of

19,000 let’s say it’s 20,000 right there’s like 4,000 good games released last year and just be really really

crude right but I would say actually the ratio is probably better there’s

probably a lot of good games that are received really well by the people

who’ve played it bought the game and played it it’s you know nearly overwhelmingly positive right but it’s

just not being played by enough people right there’s so many of these games so actually I’d say more than 4,000 games

easily are really really good games um I think there’s a lot of good games out

there that just haven’t been discovered um so yeah I don’t know i I don’t know

exactly what percentage I could say is the right amount

is half of them really good games i don’t know i don’t know it’s hard to define good as well but I think

objectively speaking good relative to like 10 years ago maybe but now it doesn’t matter because good is a

relative term so even if they were good a while ago now they’re not as good um

so is one problem the other problem is obviously the investment coming into the

industry has been reduced a fair bit compared to say 3 years ago um and that

is because of multiple reasons but you know interest rates going up is one reason you know it was almost 0%

interest rate around the world um so that made people want to invest in games and during COVID there was this huge

uplift in the games industries there was a lot of interest in the games industry so there was a lot of money coming in that’s now the taps are being turned off

um I think like you say publishing a game is now way easier than it used to

be so there’s just so many more games so there’s just the old game problem there’s the current currently so many

games being released today compared to before problem there’s the lack of investment problem there’s quite quite a

few I you know like I think there’s there’s a lot of headwind right that

we’re facing um and going almost going is almost similar point to what I was

pointing out before but the this kind of persistent store thing

right a lot of these stores are now persistent they’re ongoing they haven’t changed and there hasn’t been this

revolution in how games are being distributed right there isn’t there’s this stagnation in the distribution

channel and I think that that’s also another reason or it’s it’s it’s a

different way of saying the same problem or the old way old game problem in a way um and yeah there there used to be a lot

of free money in the industry as what people were referring as free money where you could do a deal with a

platform holder before your game released and already be in the black right like you’re already making money

before your games even come out we’re not in that situation anymore um that’s

basically gone um so there’s and there’s probably a whole load of

other reasons why we we’re in the situation where we’re in but yeah I I think it’s um ultimately

there’s a lot of people playing games there’s a lot of people spending money on games there’s some games that are

absolutely smashing it right like commercially doing really really well and loved by its players and engaged for

years and years um but then there’s just so many games coming out that haven’t haven’t

performed and I think that’s that’s why we’re we’re in the place that we are and

that’s what that’s led to is publishers like the dynamic of publishers and how

they operate how they how they have to you know because they they they need to continue to exist as a

business like how they operate has changed a bit right so that’s that’s another outcome of where we are where we

are so say previously when I was scouting games eight years ago um I

would find a game a pitch it’ll be a paper pitch no not a single line of code

but it’s a great vision by a team with pedigree asking for multiple millions

and I would sign it um and I did I signed those games and some of them became really really successful um today

that’s not really happening anymore right um today the onus is on the

developer to have a prototype maybe even a vertical slice maybe even they should

have wish lists and an a vibrant community before a publisher goes “All right I’ll put I’ll put money down.” So

like I call it the and I I see not just me but in the business world like people

call it you know proving the product market fit right before the onus of proving the product market fit was with

the publisher today it’s really up to the developer to prove that before they

can get the investment from a publisher i think it’s kind of emulating I guess

how you raise money in other industries right like usually you need to have some users back in the day if you had growing

users they could figure out revenue later but that’s changed as well like you need to have cash flow not just

growing users so I think it’s a bit of a correction right um so we just laid out

why we’re in this situation and I want to speak to the developer here listening he’s like “Okay

Bobby it sounds like it’s going to be very very tough why should I even bother?” Right um but from what you told

me before the show there are games being signed they are really games that you’re helping find publishers so activity is

still happening because like we said top line there’s revenue despite the kind of headwinds so if I’m a developer I’m

facing the headwinds i know they’re there but I’m still going to go through i would love if we could clarify for

that developer what the publisher is looking at like what’s their day-to-day because you

mentioned before the show that the publisher side isn’t really told in terms of like how their financials work

and I think it’d be very beneficial for a developer to come into a kind of conversation with a publisher knowing their side right you want to pitch to

them based on their kind of incentives not yours so yeah I’d love to you kind of lay out like what does a developer

need to know about how a publisher works Yeah okay so maybe first I’ll talk about

what a publisher is in the games industry in general from a an investor perspective like what I’ll talk about

that first and then I’ll talk about what you need to do to really kind of like

stand out and actually secure a really good publishing deal so first of all like there’s different types of funding

sources right is like uh maybe if you’re in a geographically great location

you’ve got a local government funding source that’s really really great maybe maybe you’re in a country where there’s

some banks that will take you really seriously and loan you the money right or maybe you can go to VCs or angels or

whatever and get investment that way and then you have publishers as well who can provide funding right as an investor but

they also provide publishing services when you look at those different types of funding sources publishers are the

ones who have the most at stake this is what people don’t really I think realize right like when you have an an angel or

you know some kind of VC who provides funding they’re doing that in exchange

for equity in your company right they’re taking a share of your company so they own something they own a part of your

company and it’s pretty permanent right until they exit and they sell their

shares they’re you know part owner of your company right so whether that

initial game that they provide funding to you with whether it’s successful or

not they still walk away owning a part of your company if it’s a bank they’re

only going to lend you money if there’s some kind of guarantee they’re never going to go into a situation loaning

money where they can’t get the money back right so they’re always going to

win in some way right you might lose your house or whatever right um if it’s

a government system some kind of government scheme um usually what

they’re looking to do is provide employment and therefore generate taxes off the back of it so no matter what

happens to the game obviously they want the game to be successful they want your company to be successful but really no

matter what happens they’ve got their budgets and they’re going to make sure it all ties up in the end in some way

right and some programs are going to be more successful than others but their objective of why they’re investing is is

very particular right publishers when they invest in a game typically they

don’t take equity they don’t take shares in the company right they’re funding the

project and if the project is a failure they lose everything like they lose

their investment completely unlike the other types of investors that I’ve just mentioned so there’s a lot at stake for

publishers when they invest in games in that the game really really needs to be

successful otherwise they can’t continue to exist unlike the other types of investors because they’re working on a

ref share model where they share revenue with the developer and you know it’s a

it’s a spectrum in terms of what does a ref share look like with a publisher right like there’s no standard

publishing deal really there’s some that have become public some that are very well known publishing deals by certain

publishers but every publisher has its own sort of refshare model and it’s very

very different and even within the same publisher they might have different they most likely usually have different

revshare models depending on the game right depending on how much they’re investing how much the developers

already invested what the commercials look like in terms of their projections so like there’s no standard publishing

deal and but what generally speaking you can say a standard is usually publishing

deals are revshare based and usually if the game fails they’re going to lose all their money so they’ve invested the

money to develop the game probably sometimes they fully fund sometimes they part fund there are publishers who are

um only funding the publishing effort and not the development effort but usually publishers are funding the

development effort so the developers being paid for their salaries to make

the game and then when you release the game the publishers spending more money on QA localization marketing and if the

game fails they’ve lost all that money like they’re not able to make that money back whereas if it understand Bobby is

that most cases cuz that for me seems a bit crazy as a business model so the

publisher invests money and then the only way they get paid back is revshare and if it doesn’t work out which we

established at the start of the call is most likely like 80% of games probably won’t be commercially viable and that’s

probably generous maybe it’s even 95% 99% for some industries and that’s the

current publishing deals being signed like I would imagine that 5 years ago but is that still the case now is that what developers are seeking yeah that’s

usually what’s happening that’s generally speaking what’s happening so publishers have a lot at stake right which is why some publishers are um

tightening up their belts and providing less funding into the actual development of the game and coming on later in the

development process or maybe there’s some publishers just overall just reducing their budgets in terms of their

spend per project maybe they’re trying to take a bigger rev share and recouping

fully before they go into rev share right that’s quite a typical model that’s always existed in the past but

that’s how they d-risk the project right that’s how they d-risk their investment but they’re not like looking to usually

publishers aren’t like hey we’re going to take equity as well you know cuz then you’re burning the candle on both ends

because you know you invest in a company for equity because you want that company value to grow but if you’re taking rev

share from them then their equity isn’t going to grow as well right so you it doesn’t really make sense to take both

anyway conceptually it doesn’t make sense so usually they’re taking revshare right and if the game doesn’t work out

it that It’s it’s a failure for the for the publisher so there’s a lot at stake for publishers compared to other

investor types is what I wanted to get across i don’t think it’s often talked about enough in terms of what’s at stake

for the publisher it’s often like talked about in the industry like oh publishers are evil and they’re doing all this

nasty stuff and it’s actually the predominantly a lot of publishers are really trying to do good they want to be

successful with you right cuz if they if if they don’t find success with you then then it’s that what what’s left for them

you know there’s there’s not much left usually like you can talk about what the long-term interest in the game is for a

publisher so let’s say a game they sign with a publisher sometimes they’ll say

um uh well we want uh first right of

refusal and last matching rights on the IP right so any prequel sequel spin-off

games of that IP that they invested in it must first go to that publisher for

them to have the opportunity to continue to work with you on the IP right that’s

the first right of refusal and if they say “No we don’t we don’t want to work on this anymore,” then you can go to

someone else to work with and get someone else to publish that sequel prequel spin-off game

um that’s how they kind of like take some kind of future option rights in in in the game so if it’s successful they

get to continue to work on it and then sometimes they’ll take last matching rights which is like a little bit more

ownorous where let’s say with the first right of refusal it’s as I explained you have to go back to that publisher to say

hey I’m going to work on I don’t know Harry’s supermarket simulator 2 game

right because it’s number two I’m going to come to you first and then they say no we don’t want to work on that one you

go to someone else they’re like oh actually yeah publisher Bobby is like ah I want to I want to work with you on

that if that initial publishing deal had last matching rights it means now you need to go back and go actually I I’ve

been offered this deal from Bobby Publishing can you match it and then they have the

right to match that deal or not right so that’s how they kind of usually retain

some kind of rights of the game in the future sometimes publishers very rarely

take co-ownership of the IP or even full ownership of the IP very very rare in

today’s market very very rare hardly ever happens to it but generally

speaking it’s it’s on the rev share of the game right it’s project financing that’s how they’re making money so

there’s a lot at stake on the publisher side is what I wanted to get across first and foremost now that we

understand what’s at stake for publishers and what and we’ve also talked about the market environment there’s like say 19 thou almost 19,000

games released on Steam alone last year not counting all the other platforms

like mobile it’s even bigger right in terms of the number of games released um considering that and considering the

number of games that go to the graveyard and doesn’t make it to market as well that do get pitched around there’s a lot

of games out there being pitched to publish publishers to say “Hey I’ve got a great game will you give us the

investment?” So publishers are like “Hey uh the success rate in the games industry isn’t

quite what it used to be to put it mildly um we’re we’re going to try and

reduce our risk.” So how do they reduce their risk right are they going to invest in a game that’s really really

early not a single line of code just a paper pitch are they going to invest in

a game that’s got an early playable looks really ropey doesn’t quite look like a finished product but it the fun

of the game might be proven are they going to invest in a vertical slice where actually looks like the final

product and you’ve got one section of the game that looks really good plays really well are they going to invest in

a game that’s already in an alpha state maybe it’s already got a community maybe it’s already got momentum wish list a

huge vibrant I don’t know social media presence it’s already gone viral i mean

obviously the later it is the further that risk is reduced right and so it

becomes a lot more of a okay this is a sure bet like we can fund this the

developers already done a lot of the work they’ve already proven the fun of the game it already looks like the final

product it already has a vibrant audience all we need to do now is bring

it to all the other platforms do the marketing work and support the game beyond the initial release right like

the later it is in the project obviously the the the even if say there’s the

project that’s right at the beginning of the game project they haven’t got a single line of code they’re asking for a

million dollars versus a different game towards the end of the kind of really

near release but they still need a million dollars which million dollar is going to be lower risk right obviously

competition thing yeah you obviously go for the better the better deal so I guess because there are better deals on

the table then it’s almost not worth pitching with paper pitches like all

that effort and energy like from what I’m hearing you need to be going after the Discord community and whatnot yeah

the time and energy it takes the cost that it takes to go out and go to the conventions network blah blah blah with

a paper pitch would it be better spend spending it on your own team on your own game getting it to a certain point and

then pitch you know it’s probably better to do the latter right so like now to

we’re in an environment where publishers have to pick and choose right well they always have done they’ve always picked

and cho chosen the the cream of the crop as they see it and they’ve picked the very best teams the very best games that

they can they can find and secure today it’s just that there’s so many

more games so many more teams going out pitching that the sort of like bar to

entry to to secure that investment is higher than it used to be right so

before it was like you’d pitch a game you’d maybe have a really early playable

um lots of gray box you know but maybe the core mechanic of the game is to improve it maybe it was even a paper

pitch and you could maybe secure an investment whereas today what numbers are we looking at Bobby i’m curious here

because you mentioned investment like what are people asking for now cuz I’m wondering if that’s something we can nip

in the bud for someone listening like what’s a realistic number to look for now versus you know precoid precoid

during co even I think you you could go out pitching for multiple million

dollars and if you had the right pitch the right team you know you you you’d

probably be able to land a deal today it’s much harder to land a deal where

you’re talking about multi-million dollar deals right like 5 million and above is really really hard to secure

today most of the deals you’re looking at now pardon the right what are most of the deals you’re looking at now yeah

yeah like the thing is like if you go 5 million and above there’s probably 10 or less publishers investing at that level

today whereas before there was many more today if you’re under a million dollars

you’re probably going to be able to find a deal like a lot of indie publishers are working at a million or below maybe

even quarter of a million right it’s their upper end for a lot of indie publishers so if you’re between say

quarter of a million to a million you you’ll probably be able to find a deal like you’ll be able to speak to lots of

people who can go to that kind of budget range if you go beyond a million you’re

getting to the point where you really need to have proven the product market fit before you can secure that

investment okay so I want to make this

practical now so from my understanding with all that context of the publisher

I’m a developer and I want to secure let’s say that 250K right how is that

actually possible am I supposed to be bootstrapping it is there another way to get funding before I do publishers is

there I’m just trying to think if you have an example where you’ve taken or seen a

game or like when you look at your consulting clients for example like what are people missing that they need to

check box first before they start you know going to the convention and invest in those resources yeah it’s a great

question Harry so like it people tend to do it in different ways but um either

they’re bootstrapping it they’re moonlighting it they’ve got a full-time job you know um like the other day I was

talking to a developer he’s from country A he currently lives in country B and he’s working in a pub right and he’s

already got two games in his back catalog quite successful games but his third game he’s having to bootstrap

again right um and it’s a team it’s a team but the one of the co-founders

that’s what he’s doing so you can either moonlight it bootstrap it right or maybe

there’s you know the the friends the families it’s the fools that will invest into your company early and that way you

can fund the time that it takes for you to get to a certain point to prove to a publisher look I’ve actually got a

really good game here there’s some playable code and it looks really good it plays really well blah blah blah or

maybe there’s a government scheme some kind of accelerator some kind of incubator that you can take part in and

you can do it that way um each country has not every country has but there’s

quite a few countries that have really good sort of ways of fostering and

growing the games industry at a grass grass level so like um in the UK uh

there’s Creative England um there’s there’s like a whole bunch right there’s like there’s so many of them like and in

Europe there’s like there’s a European fund as well and per country on a per country level there’s lots of different

government programs um there’s incubators like game BCN

uh recently I just went to Lithuania um where they’ve also got an accelerator there There’s like literally the list

goes on so look wherever you’re based have a look you know just Google it

you’ll be able to find it there’s just too many to mention really but like yeah fair is there anything people need to

know about that i’m just curious is that cuz I’m guessing they don’t take everyone in right they need to do something so is there something to help

them usually these government schemes are like based on jurisdiction right you need to be based in the right place to

be you know to be eligible to be part of it so me being based in the UK I can’t

just go to Belgium and and benefit from the scheme there well technically with

the Belgium one you kind of can but like it’s it’s it there’s countries that all run it and

generally speaking what is good about these government schemes is they’re usually the most friendliest like

developer friendliest type of program there is in terms of the funding that you receive like for every dollar that

you receive it’s going to cost you a lot less than any other funding source that we’ve talked about so far the only

problem with it is or the only negative with it is usually it doesn’t fully fund

your game usually it means you have to live in that right place or your team

needs to be based there or your company needs to be incorporated there or whatever and usually there’s like rounds

of these things happening throughout the year and maybe it’s only happening once a year so you need to apply by a certain

date and then you’ll get the money x many months later right so there’s a bit of a lag between when you can apply and

when you actually get the money even and it might not work for you in that in that sense so the timing thing could be

a problem the location thing could be a problem uh but generally speaking if you are successful with it they’re they’re

really really good programs to be a part of um so I’d Google stuff based on where

you are and see how you can kind of benefit from that stuff and that they treat you like a publisher Bobby just to

clarify so if they want to be successful in being selected because I’m guessing not all applications get selected in

your experience is it kind of what we discussed earlier like as promising of a game as possible or is it different

because it’s a government no you you it depends it does depend but usually

publishers don’t really do prototype funding anymore they they tend to come in a bit later now um whereas these

government stuff usually these incubators accelerators etc usually

they’re quite happy to take on stuff that are paper pitches um so but then

some of them they’re not really like for that kind of early part of game

development sometimes you get these schemes that are really for games that have already been in development for a

while and you benefit by tax credits right so there there’s these kind of tax credit based kind of government schemes

as well which is more for like later down the road in terms of how you benefit from it but generally speaking

um the hit rate should be quite good um and it should allow you to kind of get

started right and get a project off the ground is usually what they’re for so um

they’re quite good in that way in that respect all righty so let’s get straight into I guess just

getting that deal signed right so when it comes to the pitch when it comes to the publishing deal the number one thing

that a developer needs to do to secure a publisher all right so now unlike before

you need to prove the product market fit right like that will definitely help if you’ve already got strong amount of wish

list I’m talking 50k wish list or above really then people will absolutely take

you very very seriously ideally try and do that without having done a next fest

because if you’ve already done a next fest or if you’ve already started early access that might turn off a lot of

publishers um so if you can get that momentum going without doing a next because that next fest you can only do

it once per game right and it’s quite an important beat for indie games going on Steam so if you can get that momentum

without doing an Xfest great um also try and uh there’s a lot of pitches where

it’s like we want to do an early access at this point and then a full release at this point which is totally fine to

include in your pitch but when you pitch it position it as the early access is a

optional thing it’s not a must thing because some publishers don’t like doing early access on Steam um and

it’s it’s because when you do an early access you don’t get all the features um

available to you for full release of a game in terms of like marketing the game on Steam um and uh it there’s

inefficiencies that happen because of the fact that you’ve done early access so yeah it ends up becoming quite um

uh like expensive in terms of time effort and money from a publishing perspective to do an early access game

right so like if you’re self-publishing by all means you know if you need the

feedback from the community and if you need that revenue to be able to finish the game absolutely do the early access

but if you’re talking to a publisher some publishers are like “Well if we if we release a game as an early access

considering our brand as a publisher the community might respond quite negatively towards that because they’ll be like

well you’re a publisher like you you should fully fund the game and release a game when it’s ready not do an early access and get money out of us when the

game’s not finished right?” And so that’s like one community kind of lens

thing but in terms of like the actual how you build momentum and hype and

create success on Steam some games you’re building momentum and hype and

then you do the early access and you get like a huge injection of interest in the game and then it ticks along and then

you get to the full version 1.0 and people expect it to do another jump because now it’s version 1.0 but

actually it just plateaus it just carries on as usual right that happens more often than not actually so to do an

early access game and to do a version 1.0 release successfully it takes a lot of effort and time and careful curation

for it to be done really really well and not a lot of people have figured out how to do that really well to be honest and

I I think they want to make sure that when they do a release they do the release really really well and give it

all of the time and love and effort to make sure it’s a super successful release rather than doing sort of like a

I wouldn’t say a halfass release but you know like maybe taking a risk almost by going early access right because if you

go early access like why are you doing it you’re doing it maybe to get feedback early so you can focus on the right

areas of the game give it the right polish that it needs and make sure that the right scope feature sets in the game for the version 1.0 the other major

reason why a lot of self-publishing indies do it is because they need that revenue to be able to support the game

funding wise to get to version 1.0 if you’re a publisher money is not really

the issue right if feedback’s really the issue then actually you could do that feedback stuff behind closed doors you

could do closed betas whatever right and get the feedback that you need without having the game potentially getting

negative reviews because of the fact that it’s unfinished going into early access and then impacting the momentum of the game later on so um I don’t know

there just I’m probably waffling at this point but like there’s multiple reasons why publishers are a bit hesitant about

going into early access with their published game so if you’re going to position your game as something that you

might do an early access with position it as you might do an early access rather than we definitely want to do

early access right um or at least call out why you want to do the early access

and then from that you can have a conversation with the potential publisher about well what other avenues are there to achieve that goal rather

than doing early access um also I’d recommend people to find a way to get to

the top of the pile of all of the other pitches going into a publisher what is the secret to get to the top of the path

yeah that’s just it man so like if you think about like pitching your game to a publisher like sending a job your CV for

a job application for some vacancy in a company right like if you if you’re looking for a job you write your CV you

find a vacancy on a website for a company and you’re like “Yeah I really like that company and I really like the

sound of that job i want to send my CV in.” You know do you just send it through their job application portal and

hope for the best or is there a different way for you to get that CV in and make sure your CV is seen by the

hiring manager right that’s what I’m talking about when I say get to the top of the pile so like when you’re pitching

to a publisher there’s like various companies you can go to to make sure you do get to the top of the pearl to make

sure that your pitch isn’t just going through some submission portal and you’re not sure if it’s really seen or

taken seriously at all like one option is you know someone who knows someone

right and you get a warm recommendation like those warm recommendations are like really quite valuable so if you know

someone who has previously worked with that publisher or knows someone at that

publisher and can go “Hey I can do a nice intro for you and connect you great do that.” Right if there’s a way for you

to meet that publisher face to face physically do that that’s also super

powerful because you do that before sending the application in yeah so like usually when you go to like a game

conference or game event there’ll be like some kind of online tool where you

can book in a meeting with someone and therefore you’re not submitting your game through their website but you’re

just saying “Hey can I meet you at this game event?” And I can pitch you my game for the next 20 minutes 30 minutes whatever the the slot is of that of that

meeting right and then you can actually speak to them face to face and you can communicate

beyond what’s on paper yeah yeah you got the energy you have a back and forth it’s a big difference for sure last

thing I want to say before I forget I recently joined the Slack for the UK games industry and I know a few people

in there who you can just say hey I have this does anyone know someone who knows someone and it’s pretty brilliant for

that so that’s one example how to kind of do that without I guess being cringe like well I don’t know one well there’s

communities you can join and then try to leverage a community not necessarily like individual relationships yeah definitely i’m in that same Slack

channel by the way but like yeah so you can if you don’t already have an existing network create that network

right so that you can do that kind of activity like maybe there’s socials or

some kind of online or physical social event where you can go and join in with

people in the industry and therefore you know use that to kind of try and forge connections um whether it’s on Discord

or Slack or whatever it may be there’s like so many of these things where you can kind of take part so you could do

those things um there’s also things called like game agents i don’t know if

that’s quite common knowledge but there’s teams companies who represent studios and their sole goal mission is

to find publishing deals or raise money for studios that require that funding so

you can pitch to those kind of service providers and see if they would have you on their portfolio obviously they only

want so many clients and they’re only going to take clients that they really gel with right that fits their strategy

a ref share model as well it depends some of them are on retainers some of them are on retainer and some kind of

ref share some of them is purely on a ref share so it totally depends that’s good practice right because they’ll

probably give you feedback yeah they would too yeah absolutely and they’ll help you polish your pitch they’ll

connect you to the right investor type people publishers and whatnot that’s

that’s a big unlock i just realized I think like if I’m a developer like I know there’s some people I helped get

introductions who are looking to fund a game and they never mentioned pitching to these people and I used to actually make those introductions like oh these

people help people find publishers maybe talk to them and then I’ve seen them in person kind of roasting the deck saying

this part a publisher won’t like that because of XYZ it’s like ah well they won’t get that from the publisher because usually the publisher doesn’t

want to get the horror story like ah you know they shut down our game so they

might have kind of hesitant to give that direct feedback so I think that’s actually a very big thing to take away is where yes

obviously talk to the publisher in person but you might as well leverage the freeish feedback even if you don’t

end up using a game agent to pitch them so you can like sharpen the pick the the

famous ones are agents like DDM ISM CAA

Rocket Ride Guild i mean the list goes on there’s like there’s a bunch of agents out there um so look for game

agents uh they could be really really good um also at Kando we kind of do that

work we act as an external scout for publishers so we don’t take a retainer

or ref share from the studios but we have contracts with the publishers so for the developer it’s free and we just

make we’re like a head hunter right in the recruiting world we’re kind of working with the hiring manager and

we’re making sure we put the right candidates in front of them sort of thing yeah it’s very similar to what I used to do as a recruiter i used to

recommend devs just rather than pitch to studios directly go find all the agency

recruiters that do your job get on those calls and they usually will roast you and tell you the current jobs before you

start applying and I think this is a very good parallel yeah yeah yeah totally um and then maybe another thing

is like this is an obvious one right but like do your research like absolutely do your research let’s break it down though

what does that mean like what you say that but why are people missing it in two different ways I’d say do your

research one is do your research about your segment about your game like who are your closest competitors why does

why would anyone care about your game when you release it like what makes your game special why would someone care

about in the context of the market where does your game fit so you’re saying that some developers are saying this game is

great because it’s great and then their deck is not including the fact of where that game fits Exactly that’s exactly

right so like you know really understand your segment become a subject matter expert within your field so know all of

your competitors inside out play all their games really understand like what

makes your game sing against them what features do you have that they don’t have what scope size depth is your game

versus theirs and how are you positioning your game versus their games right and don’t badmouth the other

competitors that are out there ever because you might be pitching to someone who actually worked on such a game or

has a really good friend that worked on such a game it’s a really small industry at the end of the day so you know but

definitely take away learnings from your competitors and apply that to your game so do your research in terms of your

segment is one and then part two is do your research on who you’re pitching to right understand what it is that they’re

looking for understand and really kind of like distill

and and uh um digest what language they’re using and try and use that when

you’re pitching to them so they’re like you’re speaking my language right you totally get what I’m looking for you’re

exactly the game that I want to I want to sign and you’re exactly the team that I want to work with so do your research

on the at least on the really hot prospects not you don’t you can’t do it for all of the publishers that are out

there cuz there’s so many but like maybe have like a top 10 this is my hot

prospect publisher list and dig into those 10 like deeply really study them

before you start pitching to them and maybe even tailor your pitch slightly to make sure that it’s in keeping with

exactly what that publisher is kind of looking for and what their activities are um I think if you did all those

things so let’s recap prove the market fit get to the top of the pile and doing

your research then your chances of success will increase dramatically i

just feel for the developer who like I guess skipped and then didn’t know that they’ve skipped a stage and then they

find out 6 12 months later right because they’ve put they put all that time in

when like is there a thing where a publisher just does not give that feedback and like is is there a lot of

developers out there who just simply don’t know this and they just they keep I guess trying to pitch a game is that

common it does happen yes it does happen and the thing is when you submit a game

you know submit your pitch to a publisher you’re not guaranteed to get feedback sometimes publishers will just

not respond right some of them won’t respond policy right yeah and some of them will respond and they’ll give you

like the answer is a yes or a no or whatever and when it’s a no maybe they don’t go into the details of why exactly

it’s a no and even if they do provide some detail it will be really top level right it won’t it won’t ever be like a

deep report like that’s not this page here for example yeah they’re not going to give like detailed feedback like why

would they that’s not that’s not what they’re there for right they’re they’re there to focus on the games that they they they want to work with and they

can’t write a detailed report for every rejection they provide when they’re looking at a th00and 3,000 games a year

so it’s just it’s it doesn’t it can’t be the onus on them it just wouldn’t it

just wouldn’t work um so you we while I always say to developers take every

rejection as an opportunity to get some feedback and learn from it at the same time you have to kind of uh you know

have the right expectation about how much feedback you might get from a publisher right and if you’re face to

face with someone and you’re pitching and they give you a no on the spot um take it graciously and take that moment

to learn as much as possible because if you’re in their face you can literally just change the dynamic of the

conversation try and get almost try and get a no is better right you don’t want someone to go “Yeah yeah yeah we’ll look

into it later.” And then actually just reject you a month or two down the line right you want to know like it’s a no

now and then change the conversation to what can I do to improve this pitch and do you know anyone else I can pitch this

to right because a lot of these game scouts talk to each other all the time and it might be that they know someone

that is actually looking for your kind of game and if you’re in their face and you’re like like tell me what I need to

improve then they’re more likely hopefully to be a bit more honest and give you the rest of that time of that

meeting to talk about what needs to improve for them to maybe in the future

you can pitch back to them once you’ve shown that progress and made that improvement or maybe in the future they

can introduce you to the to the right team that is looking for what you’re kind of pitching for um it’s much easier

to get that kind of feedback face to face than over email yeah naturally 100%

and you can like we said earlier like go to the game agents go to the I guess not

necessarily I there was one person who described it like you have tier one publishers tier two tier three and I

think game agents is I guess the one below it’s like if you’re going to start pitching you don’t go to the criminal or crop because you usually only get one

first impress you always get one first impression so you want that to be your most refined pitch but generally

speaking I would say you you have up to three shots per publisher like three

attempts per publisher for the same game i’d say if they say no the first time

there’s a really good chance when you send it through again a few months later with improvements they’ll they’ll look

at it with some seriousness the second time and there’s a slim chance but there

is a chance that they’ll look at it the third time as well but beyond three times it’s like it’s probably never going to happen that’s good to know okay

amazing so just wrapping up Bobby cuz we’ve covered a lot of ground in terms

of something you wanted to get off your chest potentially so if there’s a developer listening to this and with the

context of listening to this conversation like what else would you tell them what would you want to leave them with i’d say um like I’ve got so

many pet peeves harry can we do quick round can we do a quick FL honestly I don’t even know where to

start but all right I I’ll try and give like good uh good recommendations right so um

like say for example this year I didn’t go to DICE in Las Vegas and I’m not going to GDC in San Francisco and I’ve

I’ve been to those events multiple times over the years like it’s like you know it was almost like a staple diet in my

calendar i would go to these events right and um this year like I mentioned

earlier I went to Lithuania that was for my first time never been to Lithuania before until then and I’m going to uh

Serbia for an event there for the win conference and then I’m going to Romania uh for an event there and I’m going off

the beaten track and the rest of the cando team are actually going to the kind of regular events that I used to

always go to right so that they’re going to I don’t know like Gamescom Latown and

Reboot and Blab Nordic Game Conference and Digital Dragons and all of this like yeah like they’re great events they’re

really really good events so definitely if you’re um planning on pitching your

game going to these events to meet people face to face is I think very very

important and highly advised but like you don’t have to go to just the big

ones right like think about your calendar of at what point is my pit

going to be at this point ready and then later in the year maybe my build will be this much more polished so actually I

should have an event plan for just after that or maybe a month or two after that um and then it doesn’t have to be

physical events it doesn’t have to be the most prestigious expensive events right you can go to a website called

game comp guide the it’s like a game conference guide website and you can see all of the events that are happening

throughout the year you can see which ones are physical events which ones are digital only which ones are hybrid where

it’s both online and physical you can see when it’s happening how much the ticket price is how to take part in the

event blah blah blah go to that website plan your event out budget for it right

in terms of time and money and actually have like an event schedule

and you if you went to GDC like from Europe that’s what a grand two grand for

the flight maybe it’s like four grand total to go there a couple people who I know went like the whole it’s like $350

a night for the hotel you know buying a bottle of water can cost you like $5 $10

it’s crazy expensive and it’s like all right if do I go to GDC and spend all of my money there and put all my eggs into

that basket or do I instead go to a different event and another event and another event and another event and

increase my chances that way right and you can actually think about things a bit more strategically in terms of making sure you get most bang for buck

um so go to gamecomguide.com that’s a good that’s a that’s a proper

pro tip that is honestly like do that and then also um like talk to me if you

want find me uh on LinkedIn or go to my website u maybe I can help secure your

publishing deal um or talk to any of those agents that I mentioned um or

maybe you can um try and like like network

like locally and online you know and really start engaging with the games

industry beyond your team and beyond your geographic location so that way you

can have a bit more of a sort of halo effect right and you can start to really collaborate as an industry and try and

um you know get those warm intros that you wouldn’t have otherwise had maybe that’s great so we got go to the actual

event game conference guide but yeah there’s a lot of events I’m on the gameguide.com there’s pretty much one sorry there’s

pretty much three or four every week so like for example the events I’m going to I’ll be going to a lot of the pocket

gamers I’ll go to GDCY festival which is one in Cyprus and one thing I would add

to what you said some of these conferences do meetups which aren’t public but they’re like really regular

and amazing so the Cypress one they do a monthly meetup and a lot of it’s paid for no thing to get in but literally

went there everyone’s got name tags decision makers CEOs publishers literally having a monthly meetup so I

guess putting in that energy to find out where those monthly meetups are and trying to get there that’s a very nice

environment I feel to kind of network and with either it be with other developers but also other publishers

absolutely yeah yeah sweet fantastic all righty Bobby thank you so much it’s been

a pleasure where can people find you what’s the best way uh you can find me on LinkedIn um or you can find me by

going to the website kandoofactory.com or you can go to blue sky and find

candoactory there as well sweet so everyone those links will be in the

podcast description bobby thanks so much and everyone at home hope you enjoyed this playbook all righty