Aaron Nemoyten: Hey, welcome to Make Games Drink Coffee. My name is Aaron Namoytan. Guess what? It’s another two-part interview. Today I’m talking to Des Gale, an indie game developer, producer, and currently also partner relations manager with Unity. This episode, part one, is focused on game publishing and funding and on answering questions about how and why games with narratives focused on diverse protagonists and situations or aren’t funded. For context, Des worked at the indie publisher Fellow Traveler, first as a production manager and then as their head of production for nearly four years. Fellow Traveler is known for publishing narrative-focused games that tackle unusual themes and feature diverse protagonists. So, Des would know better than most what that side of the industry is like. Des also worked at Square Enix as a producer on Life is Strange, which… being a low budget narrative adventure game about a teenage girl from Oregon who can rewind time is a far cry from Square Enix’s usual blockbuster RPGs. For anyone listening not familiar with the industry, a publisher in this context is a company that does some combination of funding and or marketing and promoting games that have been developed by another studio. They’re a vitally important part of the game industry ecosystem, especially when it comes to funding games that the bigger companies that develop and publish their own games in-house would never make because they’re too small. For every, I can’t believe this is the real number, $400 million AAA blockbuster game like Battlefield 6, there are hundreds of indie games from small teams all over the world that only exist due to the availability of outside funding from small publishers. Was that enough context? I’m trying to give more context so non-developers listening to the podcast aren’t totally lost. Anyway, we also talked a bit about Des’s current project, a short film about a very personal story for which he’s running a Kickstarter. Be sure to listen to the end of the episode for that.

Des Gayle: Hi, I’m Gale and I work for Unity on the customer success team ⁓ and ⁓ the I pretty much just solo indie dev.

Aaron Nemoyten: So one thing I wanted to ask you about is, You’ve got some experience as producer for some really interesting projects, including at Fellow Traveler ⁓ and Square ⁓ on the is Strange series. there’s a lot of games coming out of Fellow Traveler that are telling ⁓ more diverse, unusual, interesting stories. And is Strange, certainly an anomaly in the AAA space. I kind of don’t even understand how that game got funded, but obviously it found its audience because there have been sequels. And I kind of want to hear your perspective on publishing games for people that don’t normally, you know, get to see themselves as protagonists, for example, games finding their audience? How is the decision making process working in the companies that are deciding to publish or develop those? just ⁓ give me insight into how that works.

Des Gayle: Cool, that’s a good one. I’ll do Life is Strange quickly. came onto that quite late. I joined a couple of months before we shipped episode one. So I wasn’t involved in the pitching or signing process. So Square Enix London studio, they was kind of like the third party publishing team. Yeah, they go and sign out these AA-esque projects. to expand the Square portfolio that doesn’t obviously compete with what ⁓ do. Life Strange. was a lightning in a bottle project. ⁓ We learned a lot. And obviously themes were great. ⁓ The story was great, but… ⁓ We tried doing the episodic release, which if we could go back in time, we wouldn’t do. if we look at a recent game, Dispatch, they did an episodic release, but they did what we should have done and they had everything in the can and just released it on a regular cadence. That’s where we went wrong. All the episodes weren’t ready, so the gaps between each episode started to increasingly get bigger and then audiences are just like, okay, cool, we’re gonna go play something else now. it’s tough.

Aaron Nemoyten: Understandable. ⁓

Des Gayle: even stats between episode one and episode two were horrific. You’re like, wow, how is this even a thing? I’ll speak a bit more about of Traveller, because was awesome. One thing that I loved about fellow traveler is they had a very clear ⁓ niche and portfolio of games. So, know, if you’re a ⁓ you get to fellow traveler, like you know what you’re gonna get. And when I was in the interview with them, that was their great pitch, right? They were like, hey, we think if you buy one of our games, there’s a good chance you’re gonna like another one. ⁓ ⁓ the attachment rate. between games was really, really good. motto or ethos was purposefully to find these games from parts of the world that are not traditionally given a platform in certain budget ranges, they were playing on hard mode, right? So you’ve got narrative games, underrepresented voices, and then you’re like, okay, great, well, how do we make that commercially viable? because the genre is tough. And then it’s like, from a publishing perspective, it’s not just about the money. It’s about all the other support that you can give them as well. And we were quite good with our portfolio. roughly eight to 10 a year. And it’s like, okay, look, these three, they know what they’re doing. We can talk to them like once a month. These middle six, ⁓ okay, should speak to them maybe every two weeks. And then one or two, like these were the proper like, Interesting game, interesting story, not super great on the sort of like actual game development side, but if we don’t sign it, no one else is going to, and we believe these stories should exist. So yeah, it’s quite balanced on that side. And we had a pretty good due diligence so. I scout Spencer would find a game in front of the green light and then we’d just sequentially go through, right? So the production gate was me. Is the budget okay? Do I believe the team can make it? And how much effort is it gonna be for me to produce them? Basically, they’re the three key things. If they get past that, we pass it on to marketing. And then that’s a case of, okay, do we think we can sell it? Do we think our audience base is with And again, how much effort is it gonna be for us to market the game? Get past those two things. a finance guy would cross the T’s and dot the I’s then ultimately ⁓ Chris the boss would be like, yay or nay Roman Emperor style. ⁓ But yeah, that worked pretty well. Most of the games I was involved in weren’t like, know, industry wide critical hits, but ⁓ Fellow Traveller they’re great. They hit the targets we need to hit. And think the other that a lot of people forget is a metric is can the team make another game? And ⁓ we did that often than not. And a couple of teams were so successful that they didn’t even need us anymore.

Aaron Nemoyten: Mm-hmm.

Des Gayle: And we see that as a win, like that’s an absolute win. had the option to do next game with us. They were like, actually we’re fine. It’s like, yeah man, awesome. This is great. And are going gangbusters. Their game, they side with somebody else is fantastic. If you’re a you have to want elevate voices and share these stories. ⁓ And ⁓ I’m not throwing shade on that Like some publishers are purely spreadsheet based. Like they put it in, if number isn’t correct at the bottom, it doesn’t get signed. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. one thing I really like over the last three four years there’s these pockets of niche publishers. And I think that’s great because as a dev, you’re like, okay, I’m not gonna waste my time with these 50, because they don’t sign my types of games, but these 10 or 15, it’s like, yeah, that’s targeted. And if I invest my time there, even if I don’t get signed, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna get good feedback or fast notes, right?

Aaron Nemoyten: Do you think that the publishers that are not signing games like this to some degree, do you think that the data is actually available to support these games being signed if they would just look for it a little bit harder?

Des Gayle: Yeah, I’ve had a lot of discussions around this. So, and I didn’t really understand it at the time, but one publisher was saying to me, like, this game is too cheap. Like it’s not worth our time or expense to publish this game. And I was like, how could like you’re, you’ve got infinity money. is, how’s the thing? And then we can say, okay, cool.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah.

Des Gayle: to speak to this one game, we need to speak to our legal department that has a fixed cost, right? Whether we do it or not. Okay, great. Then the marketing department, is however many people need to do the due diligence on it. Okay, great. So just for us to say, no, it’s not a good thing. We’ve already spent this much money, which is like more than the dev budget. You’re like, right, right, right. Okay, okay. ⁓ But even for me just thinking, just a minute, but what’s your tax liability, right? Like you’re gonna have a tax bill at the end of the year. So you might as well just blow on this, it’d be fine. Don’t worry about it. And yeah, so yeah, data. yeah, the data is there. I can’t really argue about like audience, because like, yeah, if they don’t think the audience is a match, I wouldn’t do it either. also my risk profile is a bit higher. So when I was at Collective, I just thought it was a really massive opportunity. Like Square, I’ve gone like, hey, we’ve got this little indie department, go and sign some cool stuff. Obviously don’t sign any JRPGs, because we’re never going to say yes to that. But go and not quite have fun, but go and find some stuff. And back then I was like, okay, you why don’t we have a portfolio approach, right? Why don’t we just try stuff? Let’s go for some VR games, let’s go for some like puzzlers and you know, action adventure games. And I think my ex colleagues won’t be grumpy for me saying this, but it was a good thing, but it ultimately turned out to be a bad thing because Collective didn’t really have an identity what type of game they signed, right? And I think that’s a little bit difficult. because obviously if you go to the big parent square, you know what you’re get, right? You’re gonna get, JRPGs of varying degrees, and they’re all gonna be great. but yeah, if you look Collective, you can say, ⁓ wow, we a racing game, ⁓ we like a first person shooter.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah ⁓ ⁓

Des Gayle: We had a 2D puzzler, ⁓ couple of narrative games, and you’re like, a couch co-op game. You can say, ⁓ man, like what’s going on here? all those games deserve to exist, but like as a label, ⁓ it’s very position. But yeah, so sorry, answer, but yeah, the data is there for sure. I think this discussion comes every time there’s a success.

Aaron Nemoyten: ⁓ actually had a discussion with someone at ⁓ ⁓ ⁓ funding landscape and how publishers are doing, especially indie publishers. ⁓ we got onto the topic of Devolver Digital having a really, really clear brand identity in the early days. ⁓ now they’ve branched out a lot. And sometimes you see a trailer for a game and then you see the Devolver logo and you’re like, really? ⁓ They’re publishing a lot of fantastic games, but it is interesting. They started out in that lane where, you know, made a big splash with Hotline Miami. And what if they’d stuck with that? And if they wanted to publish other types of games, they sort of spun out a separate label. Cause like Annapurna Interactive has a, this is the type of game we publish brand, or at least they did for a while. ⁓ And Devolver has published some games that you’d think Annapurna would have published. So I get what you’re saying about specializing and about not having too much of a portfolio approach. And I can understand that, you know, really, really big publishers with ubiquitous names can have a portfolio approach because they have the marketing. know how and resources to just blast whatever they want out to everybody. there’s a few steps below that, that a lot of publishers are operating where they don’t have those resources, they don’t have that expertise. And so they have to specialize. And so, yeah, I totally understand. Like, you know, I love New Blood. but New Blood is not gonna publish any fellow traveler games and vice versa, right? So they’ve got their lanes and their lanes are working well for them I’m not gonna be mad that the company that published ⁓ Dusk gonna publish some like… know, queer narrative adventure game or something like that’s fine. They could do their thing.

Des Gayle: because there’s a couple of them, know, White Thorn have been pretty good in the cozy space, you know, I think, ⁓ yeah, having that relationship as close as you can to the audience is really good. ⁓ And funny you mentioned Alip Erna. ⁓ because this is kind of like what they’re one of those stories where like, oh, okay, it’s tough to sell story led games with certain economics, right? Like there’s definitely, you know, a ceiling on the ROI, right? Which is tough because when you’re in a spot like I am where… and many other devs are, you know, you’ve got 20 odd years experience, you’ve got more gifts and stuff like that. Like there is a bare minimum unit cost, right? And then if you want to make something awesome, you kind of need people again on your similar level. And obviously you can bring in some mids and juniors in, zeros start to add up very quickly. And then… I mean, there’s something I do know about Annapurna, like some of the deals that you’re like, oh man, like I’ll tell you today, you’re not getting that money back. Doesn’t matter how good the game is, like there’s a weird, I don’t know you call it, side wave or whatever, but like once you hit this budget, you’ve got to do exponential work to that money back. feel sad about another publisher or label actually.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah

Des Gayle: EA originals. I had high hopes for that because you’ve got a billion dollar company and like who have lost more money than rounding errors, right? Like, know what mean? They’re just like, yeah, it’s fine. Perfectly placed of like, yep, we’ll take a punt on that. We’ll take a punt on that. And like, it doesn’t need to make its money back. anyone’s going to make their money back, it’s going to be us because we know how to shift units, right?

Aaron Nemoyten: ⁓

Des Gayle: So yeah, I don’t know what they’re up to now. I don’t know if they’ve closed completely, these big billion dollar companies should have these little labels just be doing, yeah, you know what? Just go and find some fun stuff. Because yeah, they spend more on toilet roll every year, so why not?

Aaron Nemoyten: So I’m checking the EA original site. They publish split fiction. ⁓ it seems like they’re at the point where they’re basically doing one game a year. So, cause it’s split fiction, it’s immortals ⁓ ⁓ if that’s the word. ⁓ And then ⁓ something’s Zao, ⁓ of Kinzia. There we go. That text was tiny and I forgot the name. ⁓

Des Gayle: Okay. I… Yep.

Aaron Nemoyten: They’re, you know, they basically they’ll publish a game by that tall guy that talks a lot at the game awards and once every three years and it’ll be the game of the year. And then they’ll publish some other thing in the off times. ⁓ But yeah, I mean,

Des Gayle: Joseph, yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten: You know, I think what they’re doing is great, but they’re not doing very much of it because, you know, it’s, they’ve got a ⁓ busy marketing calendar and you know, as a public company, I’m sure they’re like, what are our quarterly marketing beats? And you could only have so many. And I get it, right? Like I’m not, I’m not saying that they’re doing the wrong thing by doing that. And I was an EA for a while. I worked on a mobile game and I understand that you, if you’re planning a calendar, and you’ve got a whole bunch of stuff going on from different teams. Like you have to coordinate otherwise you’re going to drive your shared resources crazy you don’t have one marketing person per game. You have a team of marketing people that all have to coordinate for every game. ⁓ So, It’s really cool that we have it takes two and split fiction and you know, the other stuff that they’re doing. But I mean, I definitely get that it’s frustrating that they technically have all this money to burn and they’re just like doing stock buybacks instead of investing in developers more. I’m not gonna say any names because I don’t wanna, you ⁓ the names have been changed to protect the guilty, but ⁓ I do know ⁓ that there are people who are going for… ⁓

Des Gayle: Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten: money that is earmarked to do ports and asking for a lot more than they need because the funding situation right now is so difficult that if you can say like, yeah, I’ll port my game to the thing you want me to, here’s how much I want for it. If you could get that money and then earmark half of it to go do something else, like, why not? Because there’s no other way, right? So. You know, these things happen and I know that there are plenty of deals that are just based on like, I know someone, I trust them personally. Sadly, that’s how business

Des Gayle: Yeah, so with the funding thing, so and can say this now, I don’t want to do anymore. ⁓ Whenever were pitching, I would always ⁓ tell ⁓ the budget should cover a game and a half, right? Because obviously deliver what you promised us and the game you said you’re gonna make, do that. But, know, as soon as you’re past like,

Aaron Nemoyten: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Des Gayle: deep into alpha, maybe on the way to beta. Like you should already be working on the next game, the prototype for the next game. It’s the only way you’re gonna keep your studio open because you absolutely should not rely on revenue, right? Because it might not come. And I mean, even if you have a wildly successful game, day one, it’s gonna take Valve, PlayStation, Xbox, whoever. it’s gonna take them a month or two to pay us. And then we’re gonna take another month to pay you. So like there’s a gap there that you’ve got zero money. But yeah, ideally once you’re past alpha, you should be pitching that game and fingers crossed get it signed before you even finish this one. So you just continually be like, ⁓ okay, cool. Because even like stepping outside game development and thinking about humans, stability is a good thing.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah. ⁓

Des Gayle: And if your team’s stable and they’re happy, know, happy teams make better games. So, yeah, that was sorry. Yeah, that’s one thing I always say to teams, like you need a bit extra.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yep. ⁓

Des Gayle: There’s also another side of it where people on this sort of like sourcing or procurement teams don’t necessarily have all the skills necessary to do that job well If you’re a dev listening, definitely don’t call out the 50, you know, 25 % of this money is for something that’s not for us. Don’t do that. But you can easily hide it across, if you can make the game for 18 months, right? You can spread it out and save people. Like no publisher is gonna check that you’re paying Steve the amount of money that’s in the spreadsheet. Like no one’s gonna do that. So.

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah.

Des Gayle: you you spread it out that way, like definitely do that for sure. there’s one other point. ⁓ man. ⁓ I ⁓ this my bias as well in terms of ⁓ like diversity The problem is those pots, you know those pots are limited semi-finite, right? So I’m always an advocate for ask for how much you need because anything more than that, you’re taking away from someone else that looks like you. And that is not the point of that fund. the fund is too small, that’s a different conversation. ⁓ yeah, I’m not gonna call them out, but like there was a couple of publishers ⁓ in UK that got some of that funding ⁓ and like give all of it to the dev. And you’re just like, ⁓ like that’s dev money, not publisher money. ⁓ Yeah, so it’s all great. Like it’s all horrible, but. ⁓

Aaron Nemoyten: Yeah.

Des Gayle: I mean, it came out in the wash and they, yeah, they survived. Like the publishers survived, but it was rocky for them. Like it was a shitty thing to do. But yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten: ⁓ think we can it up, but I just, wanna ask, do you have any other burning topics you wanna talk about?

Des Gayle: Yeah, so I’ve got Kickstarter going at the moment. ⁓ It is for a short animation project that I ⁓ wrote. ⁓ There’s a couple of reasons for it. So ⁓ making it in ⁓ Unity. ⁓ made a decision before I started working there. So ⁓ get this publicity for free. ⁓ But yeah, but the reason, ⁓ everything I do, is never just about the specific project. It’s always, okay, what can we do here that helps us on project X or Y? So know ⁓ that in ⁓ two or three of the games, wanna have in them. So ⁓ I can take this time to learn how to that in Unity and we can take it back to a game whilst also getting this done. And then personally, so this project came about because my sister passed away. I didn’t really deal with it very well. And I tried to make a game about it, but it didn’t feel like the right format. percolating for a while. I was like, okay, cool. Okay, why don’t I make it a linear piece of content? And then you do the research and you’re like, Guess what? Doing 2D animation is very expensive and takes a long time. Cool. How do I shortcut that? That isn’t ⁓ using AI. ⁓ settled on, yeah, okay, well, I can do it in a game engine. can buy a reasonably priced mocap suit, act out quite a lot of it. And then… ⁓ the I can expect where the money is gonna go is getting animators to clean that up. And the theory is that saves time. So yeah, that’s where I’m at.

Aaron Nemoyten: Mm.

Des Gayle: Hopefully we’ll make a beautiful piece of art and it will be shared far and wide and someone who takes the 10 minutes or less to watch it, just has a, know, puts a bright full step in their day.

Aaron Nemoyten: Des Gayle, you so much for being on Make Drink ⁓

Des Gayle: Thank you very much for having me. It’s been a great time.