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Episode 45: Dan Pearson (Head of Marketing @ Draknek & Friends)
258 Plays21 days ago
Alan is joined by Dan Pearson, Draknek & Friends' newest member of the team. Topics include his career from journalism to game development, the challenges of marketing puzzle games, and designing puzzles to get into the mind of players.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Draknek and Friends Podcast
00:00:22
Speaker
Welcome to the Draknek and Friends official podcast where we peel back the curtain on puzzle games and the people who make them.
Introducing Pearson: New Head of Marketing
00:00:28
Speaker
I'm Alan, the head Draknek at Draknek and Friends and today I'm joined by Pearson who has just joined Draknek as our new head of marketing.
00:00:38
Speaker
How are you doing today?
Pearson's Early Career in Video Games
00:00:39
Speaker
hey I'm doing good yeah it's uh New Year, New Start, all that. It's nice to be here. Great. um Yeah, can you start out by giving us an overview of your career in video games?
00:00:51
Speaker
Absolutely, yeah. I will give you the bits I remember at least. I've been doing this for about 20 years now. um I joined the industry in November 2006. And I was doing such a soul-destroying temp work job um that I literally just started Googling dream jobs um on my lunch break as a way to try to alleviate the encroaching horror.
00:01:16
Speaker
um So I just sat down one lunchtime and just Googled video games journalist. And the top result popped up with an open vacancy that had been posted two days before. I was working. I was living in Brighton. I'd moved down there about sort of six months ago. And this was in Brighton. Um, so it really felt just like divine providence, to be honest, it was incredibly lucky. Um, that job was working with Eurogamer. Um, and it was, you know, bottom of the ladder, it was literally just doing, um, admin stuff. It was writing captions for screenshots and, and doing a lot of CMS stuff.
00:01:51
Speaker
Um, But it was fantastic. I was there for 11 years in the end. Nice.
From Journalist to Gaming Enthusiast
00:01:56
Speaker
And and when you joined, like what were the games that you were playing at the time that made Video Game Journalist the the dream job?
00:02:06
Speaker
so at that point, I was, we're thinking about 2005. So this was pre-Xbox, I think, right? Certainly pre-iPhone. I was probably playing still quite a lot of,
00:02:21
Speaker
first-person dungeon crawlers on PC, probably. I think I'd had a bit of a gap from games, actually, sort of, I guess, over the period of time where I'd been post-uni.
00:02:35
Speaker
So, yeah, I'd sort of come back into it a little bit. um I had, again, in that same sort of job that I really despised, I had ended up coming across um ASCII gaming um and playing quite a lot of a game called Slashem, which stands for, it was NetHack Slashem, Super Lots of Added Stuff Hack Extra Magic. And because it was all done in ah ASCII, it basically looked like a spreadsheet to anyone who didn't really know what they were looking at.
00:03:06
Speaker
So I got away with basically sitting and playing that um pretty much constantly in this horrible job where I was supposed to be cold calling people and trying to get them to buy computers from the government. um And it really...
00:03:18
Speaker
I don't know, it really kind of accentuated the things that i I love about games because, you know, there's this incredibly basic looking thing ah that's just a load of alphanumeric characters, essentially, but just crafting this entire world. And it was, you know, it's free to download. It is essentially endless. It is incredibly complex. And there's so much depth to it, so much to learn.
Pearson's Journey at Eurogamer
00:03:41
Speaker
um And that really kind of just reignited a lot of of what I love about games because I think I'd started to get a bit disenfranchised by big shiny graphics and essentially just shooting people in the face for no reason um and that yeah it really kind of rediscovered it also you know rediscovered my joy of uh playing games while i was working so i was able to turn that finagle that into a career somehow cool and yeah you were you're a gamer 11 that's quite a while yeah it's it was ah a really nice place to work um they was family run um i'm still friends with ah a lot of the folks i met there uh rupert the ex owner is is still a really good friend of mine um and yeah a really nice place it had a real kind of cottage industry sort of vibe when we first started when i first started there it was
00:04:31
Speaker
Five of us, I think, working out of Rupert's um parents' conservatory. ah His mum literally used to bring around trays of tea tea and biscuits, bless her. And that's where that whole you know empire started. He'd been doing it since he was 16. I think he was 18 when i I joined, maybe a little bit older than that, 22. And yeah, he turned it into a you know a multinational sort of media conglomerations of one of the best respected companies in the business. so It was a really, really lovely time
Transitioning from Journalism to Game Development
00:05:02
Speaker
to be there. was a lot of very talented people there as well, worked with some some fantastic writers and and people from other parts of the business.
00:05:09
Speaker
So I was on Eurogamer for about four or five years, and then I um switched over gamesindustry.biz, which is the B2B publication there. um And I was a bit reticent about that at first because I thought, well, I've got my dream job. I'm literally being paid to play video games. um And then you know they said, where do you want to go and work on?
00:05:28
Speaker
shops and financial reports and that sort of thing instead. Well, not really, but it's something new at least. So um I did take that on and I absolutely loved that. I think that was probably the the highlight of my time there actually working on GI because I was being sent all over the world, meeting many of my childhood heroes, and still getting to play games, but not having to write the reviews for them. So I didn't ever have to look a dev in the eye after I told them the game was awful.
00:05:55
Speaker
um So yeah, that was that was ah a really, really, really great time. a Fantastic sort of 11 years there. I look back on it with a lot of fondness. And then you took the time-honoured jump from video game journalism to video game development.
00:06:14
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. For the time-honoured reason of I need to pay my mortgage as well. um Yeah, video game journalism, Certainly, it didn't used to, and I'm pretty sure it still doesn't um make you ah a a rich man. So um having been doing that for a while, and I'd sort of you know i i become editor in chief at GI, i had basically the best job doing what I could do, doing what I did that was possible.
00:06:39
Speaker
So um my old colleague, Phil Elliott, who was working at Square Enix at the time, um got in touch and just said, you know we're looking for someone here who I think you'd be a good foot fit for. And that was it. Yeah. After 11 years, I moved on and and went to work at Square. um That didn't last that long. I was only there six months. um I don't think anyone ever really worked out what the job I was supposed to be doing was, me included.
00:07:03
Speaker
ah Technically, it was a business business development or internal business editor. That's right. um It was an interesting job. I was sort of there as a peacekeeper between some people in the company and sort of occasionally writing a a slightly sort of antediluvian and, and unuseful report for people. Um, but it was the trigger I needed to kind of get out and into, into the other side. So I, I'm very grateful to Phil and square
Exploring Interactive Video and Consultancy
00:07:30
Speaker
for that. Um, and it was a, you know, it was a really interesting six months as well, working in a gigantic, international publisher like that was, was certainly very eyeopening coming from the side of the business that I'd had before. Um, so yeah, it was a, it was, it was interesting time, but didn't, didn't last that long.
00:07:47
Speaker
um And then since after that, I went to work for a law firm briefly, a chap called Jas Purewell, who had been our in-house kind of lawyer um at Eurogamer. Not in-house, he was our our consultant lawyer. um I got to know him well there, and um I spoke to him and he said, oh, we're we're actually looking for a business developer to to come and join the the firm that he ran. So they worked very closely with people like Face Punch and people No More Robots and a few others. um And my job there was to basically help out with with face punch things primarily. Helped with the porting project of getting rushed onto console and building a merchandise program for them and a few other things. and So again, a complete sort of left turn, a new start. And that was, yeah, that was also a very rewarding couple of years, actually. Some some really nice folks there have all gone on to be
00:08:41
Speaker
be very influential in the world of of games law. um I think Jazz has now retired at a sickeningly young age, having sold his firm to a bigger law firm. And i'm I'm very, very happy for him. Bless him. He's a good man.
00:08:55
Speaker
um But yeah, that was an interesting two years. and that was That also ended in my ah my first and um currently most benevolent um redundancy in the games industry ah when that company did get born out by bigger firm. It's a kind of weird job. you're You're working for a legal firm, but that legal firm is kind of hiring, is like offering your services up to do not really legal work.
00:09:20
Speaker
Yes. like like basically being an external biz dev person yeah yeah general dog's body a business for someone picking up the rest of it um yeah it was interesting because know obviously introduced myself as i'm you know working at pure well and partners and always followed that up with i am not a lawyer it's almost like a mandatory legal requirement to point out that you are not able to give legal advice um Yeah, really interesting kind of way to combine those businesses, I think. I mean, Jaz is a very smart guy and very much an entrepreneur. He was, and I think still is, he may not be any anymore, he was the also the chairman of Face Punch. So he had a sort of business interest there as well, as well as being their counsel and as well as doing a few other things for them. So yeah, it was very interesting. And then then when that got, was acquired, they didn't need me in that role in this much bigger firm. um So he he gave me a very generous redundancy payment and um moved on to start my
Joining Draknek: A Passion-Driven Choice
00:10:21
Speaker
own consultancy. After that, actually, that's when I i first founded my one-person marketing and comms consultancy and was doing a few bits of odd work for
00:10:29
Speaker
Various other places, did some work for Eve Online and a few other publishers. um And then ended up working for ah a US company called Genvid, um who had created a kind of bespoke proprietary tech for ah mass interactions on video streams, which I thought was really a kind of fun idea. um Basically, the the plan was that you would be able to stream any kind of video content and people would be able to interact with it directly, um you know, in a a mass audience, whether that's on mobile or on a platform like Facebook or whether just through a browser or even just through consoles eventually.
00:11:10
Speaker
um Some really interesting ideas, really interesting tech. um And I was signed on there as a product marketing manager. So again, a completely different job from anything I'd done before.
00:11:21
Speaker
and He said, don't worry, I know it's got marketing in the title, but you won't actually have to do any marketing. um Plot twist, it was a lot of marketing, understandably, because it was a marketing job. um So the the first thing that was trying to kind of create a community for this this this software development kit, um which enabled this kind of interactivity. um And that was it was a tough sell because nobody had done it, right? we were We were trying to persuade people to essentially design a game around this particular form of interaction. um And we weren't able to offer them any kind of
00:11:55
Speaker
guarantees or even examples about how well things are done. So they ended up pivoting to becoming a ah publisher business and licensing IP from various other places and creating these experiences themselves or with external partners.
00:12:07
Speaker
ah So they did a few things along that those lines. They did a thing called Rival Peak, which was a kind of um sort of 24-7 live service Facebook game that was emulating a reality TV show, like a Survivors kind of thing,
00:12:25
Speaker
um where you had a sort of 12 or 16 kind of characters who would walk around around this island. And you could just check in on them anytime, see what they were doing. You could interact with them by pushing towards certain jobs or finding out what they were thinking about. And then each week there would be community votes on particular plot points. There was TV show as well that was kind of produced weekly that had updates about everything that had been happening. It was really kind of high quality. had Will Wheaton on it, who presented it.
00:12:55
Speaker
um really high-end kind of project. um But again, it kind of ah it struggled a little bit, which was a bit of a shame. And then they went on to do various other things with Marvel and Walking Dead as well. So um they're still going. they um They downsized considerably. They had a huge amount of investment and then sort of had to shrink their staff a bit. So that was that was redundancy number two.
00:13:20
Speaker
um And yes, that ah a American corporate redundancy is a very different experience from a friendly, generous redundancy from a personal friend.
00:13:32
Speaker
ah That was, yeah, that was brutal. That was weekly catch up with my, my boss, the head of marketing there. Three minutes of conversation, utterly unaware. are you doing? Yeah, good. Yeah. How was your weekend? Yeah, very nice. Actually hang out with the kids. Have you seen this? You know, if you watch this on TV, great. Yeah. Oh, by the way, this is ah HR. I'm see you later. And that was it.
00:13:51
Speaker
ah And by the end of the call, they'd already cut off all my access to Slack and email and everything like that. So that was um that was a bit of a shock, um particularly after I'd kind of here been lulled into a false sense of security by the first one. um So after that, I then went on to work, did a bit more consultancy and and sort of odd job stuff for a while. I got hired as a consultant by a company called ah RCP, Remote Control Productions in Munich, who's the head of whom i I've known for a long time, friends with for a while, Hendrik um Lesser. So,
00:14:26
Speaker
Started working for him, and then he sort of took me on full time um after being a a consultant there and was their head of communications, basically. So um but again, really a really kind of unusual structure for a company there. They've got a central kind of production house, which provides a few services,
Draknek's Work Culture and Team Dynamics
00:14:44
Speaker
finance and and ah HR and various other things. And then they have a a family of about 16 indie studios who are all kind of part of the same company who virtually integrated and and you know get to use the services from everyone. And it's it's a nice kind of self-supporting um sort of model. So that was, yeah, that was fun two years because there was always something new to work on there as well. you know Different teams doing different games, um managed a couple of of relatively major launches when we were there for the for the company. um
00:15:13
Speaker
But then there was a lot of pressure on and a couple of projects. And like everybody last year, they were or in 2014 or 24, they were really struggling. I had to make some more redundancies. um So that was that was redundancy number three. um And that was in the middle, basically. It wasn't it wasn't the American first up against the wall kind of scenario, but it it wasn't quite as fluffy as the first one. But yeah, there's no there's no hard feelings about that. um And then I sort of spent a couple of months back on consultancy and then ended up working for a company called Cyber Temple, which is a brand new kind of
00:15:52
Speaker
ah Kazak Studio. um They are run by a guy who used to be in finance over there and had the dream of making ah ah the game that he'd always imagined from his childhood, um which was called Dark Switch, which was a nice little city builder set in a tree. So it's all kind of vertical um space saving and some really nice mechanics in that, which is, I think, still due to come out in March this year. And that was a fun little project, really enthusiastic, fresh new team.
00:16:22
Speaker
um But they essentially sort of over budgeted, ran out of money. Classic story. There were a couple of delays. It was supposed to come out in November last year and then was delayed and then was delayed again. So ah they just ran out of runway a bit and had to had to shrink. and So I was there as ah a consultant.
00:16:38
Speaker
um And then I sort of wended my way to Yordor via Mary reaching out to me through increasingly sort of desperate linkedin post of my well uh we i think uh uh callum underwood uh recommended you yes the uh the the one person in the industry that literally everybody knows and also likes yeah so kind Usually if you're universally known, you're certainly not universally loved, but he manages to ride that line, bless him. He's a very good guy.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah. and now you're here. Dreadnought's going to start taking off to Stratospheric Heights. Absolutely. Yeah, going to be front and center of the Awards. You're going to see billboards everywhere. Yeah. I've already bought all of the buses in London. So, yeah, we're on for a good start.
00:17:29
Speaker
Great. And as a marketing person, you've advised me that spending all of our money on London bus billboards is a sensible investment. Absolutely, yeah.
00:17:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that and maybe the back of cigarette packets. I feel like that's a really gross market. Some of the pictures they have in there really depressing. And I think, you know, perhaps those people could just do with cheering up with a nice little bright, colourful puzzle game instead of a picture of some diseased lungs, you know.
00:17:56
Speaker
Excellent. um But yeah, what appealed to you about working for Dragnac? um I mean, I've always loved puzzle games um and I really wanted to go i come back and work for a a company where I felt like I was you know contributing directly rather than being sort of ah an anonymous cog in the machine. I've always worked preferred working with with smaller teams, particularly teams that are kind of passion-driven and that have found their niche.
00:18:23
Speaker
I think if if you find a company that is working in a relatively narrow niche and doing well and having a good time, then you found ah a very happy group of people, I think. Because generally, if you're if you're into something like that and you you manage to succeed, then you're doing a good job. um So I'd not actually played.
00:18:42
Speaker
think I'd played. I'd seen Locke. the book in a bookshop before, but not not played it. Oh,
The Allure of Puzzle Games
00:18:49
Speaker
wow. Like yeah actually actually out in the real world. Yeah. I i i remember seeing it. I didn't realize this until after I played the digital version. but I remember seeing it, I think, on a counter in Waterstones, actually. Wow.
00:19:00
Speaker
And picking it up and thinking, wow, that's really interesting. That would work really well as a game. I wonder why they've made it as a book. Oh, well. No one no need to think about that. I'm sure someone will deal with it. And you did. well done for that.
00:19:12
Speaker
But yeah, i i I really like working with with small teams, small passionate teams. um And sort of as soon as I spoke to to Mary on um on a call, i was like, yeah, i think I think these are the guys.
00:19:23
Speaker
um And you know having having met all of you since, I'm still pretty yeah pretty confident in that. um So yeah, it's been it's been really lovely so far. um And you know the the the timing factor works out for me. you know the The fact that it's kind of not a A 40-hour-a-week job as well is nice. That gives me some time to you know get on with with other things.
00:19:44
Speaker
and So, yeah, it's a really lovely balance for me, and I'm i'm finding it very inspiring so far. it's It's chipping away at the old facade of of of grumpy 20-year veteran. The cynicism is wearing away. yeah absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I feel polished and refreshed.
00:20:02
Speaker
Oh, amazing. I mean, it probably helps that we've just had a two-week holiday day break, but, you know. Yeah, I mean, yeah, work for two weeks, take two weeks off. I'd love for that pattern to continue, if that's something we can discuss. No comments.
00:20:17
Speaker
I think, you know, big companies now pushing four-day weeks. Why don't we just push a two-week month? I think that's the the next step in employee rights and empowerment, to be honest. Uh, I mean, we, we've, we've not spoken a lot on the podcast about this, but like, yeah, if if basically everyone at Dratnik works, uh, part-time hours, uh, equivalent to like 18 hours a week.
00:20:39
Speaker
Um, and that's both on the publishing team and also when we're making a game, we tend to have that structure for the people making our games as well. um and like we could we could do like two weeks on two weeks off it's like a 40-hour week but that would be so much more draining i think yeah yeah i think um It is a very nice – it's a nicely kind of compartmentalised way to work. And I know obviously you do more hours than the rest of us, so you don't actually get the benefits that you're able to offer us. No, I mean it's my company, so it's kind of this all-consuming thing. take weekends, which has not always been the case. Yeah.
00:21:21
Speaker
uh no and i i i do do still work the four day week like saturday through monday i i try to not think about work stuff as much as possible but uh yeah i've not managed to squeeze in everything i need to do into 18 hours a week unfortunately no um yeah i'm glad uh i mean it's it's it's good that somebody's working this basically so that there is always someone at the pumps but um Yeah, i've i've I really admire the kind of the the business model that you set up, really you know, the focus on sustainability rather than, you know, the ridiculous kind of growth figures that we've all been exposed to working in the industry, right? of This expectations of consistent and constant exponential growth that just don't make any sense at all. So someone focusing on sustainability and
00:22:10
Speaker
Keeping the company going, again, I say, particularly with with finding that niche, I think is is so refreshing. it's It's really good to, we often talk about games being a sort of passion-led industry, right? But I think the reality is actually most people after a couple of years, they're not generally passion-driven in the industry. And it's really nice to find a team who still is.
Marketing Challenges in Puzzle Games
00:22:30
Speaker
Awesome. Uh, yeah. Any, any like other, other than all those nice things, like anything you want to comment about the, like what, what, what's it actually like to work here?
00:22:45
Speaker
Uh, yeah. All of the emails come in like a sliding block puzzle format, which is really annoying. Just list of words. You have solve wordle to get into the Slack client. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
00:22:58
Speaker
constant IQ tests. Otherwise, you know, if you if you're unable to solve cipher but by 9am, then yeah, you're not getting paid for that week. But other than that, yeah, it's ah it's it's it's really great. i't Got to keep you on your toes. Yeah, absolutely. You got to keep it sharp, you know. um But um yeah, I think ah i but yeah I really, really am and enjoying it so far. i don't um I don't think there's anything that's sort of taken me unaware. As I say, working with a ah team of people who like each other and are very likable is a huge, huge boon for me. I think if you're going to be spending half your waking hours doing something, you you may as well be doing it with people that you respect and admire. So that's that's a nice thing. I'm not going to name the companies where I've not been able to do that. That would be churlish and petty of me. But um there have been there have been some, definitely. um So yeah, it's ah it's a really friendly, welcoming place where everyone's pulling in the same direction. There's no
00:23:56
Speaker
egos there's no um defensiveness or territorialism at all it's just people mucking in and and doing something that they they love and doing it well so yeah big fan so far awesome and yeah you you mentioned that you you've always liked puzzle games are there are there any that you want to like call out and like chat about like ah particularly like ones and why why you like them Yeah, absolutely. I mean, um you know, big one for me last year, like everyone was, was blueprints. um
00:24:31
Speaker
And that, you know, that structure, I really, really love that kind of, what's the word for it, that kind of almost like fractal topography of it, of you walk into a room and you're like, okay, there's a chessboard puzzle, for example, I've got to solve that. And then you're like oh, but there are chess pieces over there as well. And that's what I do. Oh, and these pictures on the walls, those are bit strange. you know And you gradually feel yourself almost like that kind of fever dream kind of thing of starting to connect all this stuff and you know literally did get into my dreams as well, I think. um I love that kind of consumption of ah of a new world, you know that feeling of being in a kind of giant digital kind of escape room.
00:25:15
Speaker
um I really, really like that. I love physical escape rooms as as well. So that was that was ah ah kind of the closest I feel like I've found to that sort of experience.
00:25:27
Speaker
um So really, really, really enjoyed that. um I didn't play that many puzzle games last year, actually. And I i struggled ah a little bit to fill my list of nominations for game in the year.
00:25:38
Speaker
um But I think historically, um i mean, I've absolutely got Lost in the Witness as well. That was another one that that really got into my dreams. You know, was seeing those grid patterns absolutely everywhere. It was ah when I was much younger and played a lot of Tony Hawks, you know and you'd walk down the street and just be seeing skate lines across bus tops and buildings and things. It was like that with a Witness. Anything that had a vague grid pattern to It was like, oh, maybe if I stand slightly at different angles to this, ah you know, barbed wire fence, then something magical will appear.
00:26:10
Speaker
um So really, yeah, really, really and enjoyed that. um that's That's, I think, one of my favorites. Really liked Talos Principles 1 and 2 as well. I think they' they're both really nice teams too, which is good. I've spent reasonable amount of time at Reboot in Croatia and got to know a lot of those local doves, and the yeah the guys who made Talos Principles were generally very good eggs. So lots of the first-person puzzle games then?
00:26:34
Speaker
Yeah, I guess that was, those are the kind of, The ones I remember more because they were the sort of big ticket ones I sort of played on a TV or or a PC, right? And played a lot of of other stuff on on mobile as well, you know, always have at least one of those kind of Rusty Lake style escape the room games on the go.
00:26:53
Speaker
Back in the day, I would sit and play those, the very early kind of flash game escape the room games, and that sort of thing. um I think the first time I played Sokoban, was actually in that game Slash'em that mentioned. There's a whole slide side thing in there where you can, you know in one of these ASCII dungeons, if you go down a a different set of stairs, you end up in a ah sort of 25-level Sokaban puzzle challenge, and where the only way to get to the exit of each level is by by pushing the crates. and So I think that was my my first experience of that. and probably played quite a lot of that during that as well.
00:27:28
Speaker
um I think the things that really got me into it first, again, with the first person was probably the, the missed games, you know, um, playing that on the family PC as a, as a very young man, I was just obsessed. Um,
00:27:44
Speaker
Because it made me feel clever. you know I'm not going to mince words. I like feeling smart and that's what it did. you Did you play any of the remake of the Myst games? Yeah, I did. I played... think I played the remake of Riven. They've remade them a couple of times now.
00:28:00
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I i think I remarri played the remake of Riven and I played this new one, Obduction, is it? okay um And really enjoyed that. And I actually, I was i was lucky enough, that came out just before I think I left um games journalism and I was lucky enough to um interview him.
00:28:21
Speaker
um He's a very interesting man. And I've, you know, I think I'm fascinated by the kind of minds that can design puzzles, you know, like yours and his. I think that's a, it's just an incredible sort of skill.
00:28:35
Speaker
And particularly with the end of those kind of big visual puzzles and things like that. I um i really struggle with this stuff. I have a thing called Aphantasia, so I'm sort of mind's eye blind, so I can't imagine any pictures in my head.
00:28:49
Speaker
So I find that kind of act of being able to create those puzzles essentially adjacent to magic, really, along with being able to write music. um So I'm a big fan of of that kind of stuff. But I i also just love simple systems-driven things, right? Discovering new systems and ah learning how they work, particularly when you've got what is ostensibly a very simple system that kind of unfolds into that manifold complexity. you know um As I think a few of the Dracnet games do really, really well, you know just layering on various different interactions and rules to to create a much more complex thing out of quite a simple structure is is something I really enjoy.
00:29:26
Speaker
um Getting a handle on the the the boundaries of those rule sets, I suppose, and then learning that you have to kind of break them and transcend them is It's always a really fascinating thing. um And I think probably Portal and Portal 2 were the first time i I really kind of got that idea of, oh, you're supposed to kind of try and break this. It's not a ah play by the rules and color within the lines kind of game. It's a you know...
00:29:54
Speaker
do whatever you you you think that might work. There's definitely parts of Portal that's like, oh I'm going to put the portal on the portal-shaped hole in the wall. Right. yeah ah yeah Yeah. I think that's the first, you know, that the narrative as well, that lightheartedness, that kind of tongue-in-cheek brutality of it as well. I think it's, you know, as a product, it just holds together so well. I think the, in terms of individual puzzles, you know, there were the few in there that were great. There was a few in there that were just a bit frustrating but um i think it's a you know as a with the mise-en-scene and the general kind of feeling of that game that's still one of the ones i will remember for until the day i die i think yeah definitely um yeah i feel like a a consistent through line of the podcast has been um how hard it is to market puzzle games
00:30:45
Speaker
um and uh like this is a a challenge that you you're just now getting to grips with so i think there'll probably be a a really interesting conversation like six months from now where you're like pulling your hair out yeah podcast why did you explain that is going to be this hard um but yeah i'm i'm curious like uh you you don't you don't have a lot of like lessons learned yet but like what do you what what's your take on how to market things that are inherently like a little bit niche or a little bit of putting o yeah i think you know puzzle games are in quite a unique position for that because they have that nicheness right and i think
00:31:31
Speaker
They're still seen even within games as kind of a bit nerdy or a bit specialized. But then they also have that enormous, enormous broad mainstream appeal, right? Just the the general idea of solving puzzles, you know, of of making yourself feel smart, crosswords, you know,
00:31:52
Speaker
connect the dots, whatever you want to to do, you know it's they're hugely, hugely popular. And it transcends pretty much every possible demographic. right and you know there's There's very few identifying properties of a puzzle game lover other than the fact that they just they like playing puzzle games.
00:32:13
Speaker
And that makes it a huge pain in the ass to try and mark it, to be honest, because You know, they it's it's a tricky thing to try to to find the kind of unifying principle for it to try and reach people. And really, the only thing you can work on is, oh, you already you know like and play puzzle games. OK, here's some more.
00:32:28
Speaker
um But it does also mean that you can you can keep expanding the audience. And if you are able to build that kind of um dedicated audience who who knows that you're making good stuff and will come back every time for it because, you know,
00:32:42
Speaker
they are quite also quite a starved market. It's it's you know not a a market with a huge amount of quality releases in it. um You can build a very loyal audience as well. So that's that's the plan. I would like to step up a bit more on some of the community stuff and you know start um trying to broaden that audience, you know see where we might be able to find new players and you know convert them into to people who enjoy us as a brand and that as marketing speakers made even me feel a little bit nauseous. nothing Nothing more than I like them. People enjoying my brand. Absolutely. How was it Christmas? lot of people enjoyed my brand. Good times. Yeah.
Effective Strategies for Marketing Puzzle Games
00:33:24
Speaker
um But yeah, it's ah it's it is a tricky genre, right? And I think all niches are quite tricky, but I think that aspect of having that you know almost universal appeal to a
00:33:38
Speaker
a sort of fundamental human need in people, I think, of problem solving, right? We are problem solving creatures and it's what we do socially. It's what we do for fun. It's what we do for work quite often.
00:33:53
Speaker
um We're really good at it. And we're always looking for for ways to to make that more interesting and to you know to interact with systems like that. um And i think that's I think that's really, really fascinating because I think anybody can be turned into a ah puzzle fan it's quite difficult to get someone to the level where they will actively go out and and seek that and, you know, become a puzzle nerd, I suppose. um So it's kind of, you're working on two quite different levels, I think, with the marketing of reaching those really hardcore people who absolutely love it and will, you know, complete all of your optional special challenges day one and write to tell you how you really should have made it much harder.
00:34:33
Speaker
um But you're also reaching, you know, the the pensioners who just want something to sit and look at whilst they're and sat on the porch um or you know kids who are playing on the bus or whatever so it's ah yeah and and the marketing to those different audiences like completely different yeah absolutely yeah yeah because some of them you're trying to say this will absorb you and consume you and it will be all you think about for six months and you'll love it and for some people you're like hey you could play this while you're on the toilet and that's it right and never think about it again
00:35:06
Speaker
um so yeah a a tricky a tricky one to read you know despite the fact that you are probably never going to find both ends of that market in the same place either um bringing people and kind into communities is always good but it's also a ah there's a lot of a lot of competition for people's attention and i think increasingly now people have also got a little bit more cautious about kind of joining a load of communities and and signing up for discords and all this stuff because it can become quite overwhelming, you know, if you end up in a lot of them. The signal to noise noise ratio means it stops kind of being a useful way to gather information. So, yeah, it's still something we're thinking about. How do you think people feel about email newsletters these days? Because obviously we've we've got ours. but yeah Yeah, they've had a bit of a resurgence, I think. yeah
00:35:58
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I know there's been a ah few other, you know, big ones started in games recently, you particularly in the B2B space. um But, you know, equally, I think there's there's there's kind of a ah a resurgence of them generally. You know, everyone and his wife has got a sub stack now. um It seems to be the new kind of ah podcast alternative. um So um I think you're you're not allowed to initially officially say you're ah a white man in his 40s unless you've got a sub stack now instead of a yeah a podcast. But um it's, yeah, I think it's it's it's making a comeback. And I think,
00:36:35
Speaker
it maybe sort of reflects a bit of that that need to not necessarily be interacting all of the time with people and be able to just sit and and read something about something you're particularly interested in.
00:36:46
Speaker
um I think so many people, you know, we we we are exposed to so many things and so many interests and it's it's actually quite difficult to find time to really get into a specific thing, I think, because we're constantly pulled into so many different directions. So,
00:37:05
Speaker
um those people who really are into into the puzzle. So we can hopefully serve them that. And then those people who just want to keep it a bit more casual, you know, an email newsletter works for that as well, I think. But like all of these things, signups, you know, getting signups is kind of tricky um and spreading the word can be kind of tricky.
00:37:23
Speaker
um And with the best will in the world, you know, most of the time, you know, that most of what you write isn't going to get ready, either which can be very depressing when you get those open reports and I remember that when I first started working on the newsletter for gamesindustry.biz, which was, you know, very successful, very, very well signed up for.
00:37:42
Speaker
um And seeing that we'd got about a 30% open rate or something and being absolutely devastated at first. thing God, what are we doing wrong? That's good. Yeah, exactly. That's actually really, really good. You should be pleased with that, you know.
00:37:56
Speaker
um So, yeah, I try not to look too closely at the stats now. But um I think it's, yeah, I think it's a useful medium, definitely. you have any any tips for indie developers making niche puzzle games for like how to and to get the word out a little bit better?
00:38:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think you know one of the things we've we've discussed even over the last month you know is that um increasingly really what you have to rely on in terms of of PR is is influencers and and streamers rather than press.
00:38:30
Speaker
And I think That's maybe slightly less true for puzzle games um than other types of games because they don't always play as well on stream. Right. and also It's not because puzzle games will get better reception from traditional journalists. It's because it's tougher for streaming and YouTube and Twitch.
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So we don't get anything easy. We just get the easy bit made harder. Yeah. So that's, yeah, that's that is it's a tricky thing to find ah ah a streamer who will focus on that. But if you can, I think it's it's ah it's probably your best kind of option. And I think increasingly we're sort of seeing that games that have that kind of virality aspect, right, whether that is a a weird, unique mechanic or whether that's, ah you know, a particularly you know, strong character branding or whether it's, you know, sometimes even just the, you know, the the person who's making it becomes the the product themselves. You know, I think we've seen a few of those kind of um puzzle celebrities rise and fall, um the varying degrees of good grace. um And, you
00:39:41
Speaker
that can ah that can really help. um But I think, yeah, just getting it getting it out there with with some kind of unique factor is is is a big win in terms of getting it into streamers' hands.
00:39:53
Speaker
um Because if you can immediately grab someone, you know, the the reality of the the attention kind of market now is if you haven't got someone in the first 10 seconds, then they're gone, right? You know, if you've got basically as long as they are forced to watch the the YouTube advert for again, to really hook them in. And if you haven't, then you're kind of screwed. So having something that's got, you know, that that unfolds slowly, that starts with kind of simple rule sets and then gets that gets bigger can be really tricky for that, right? Because you you have to sort of sit there and go through the bits that people know first. But um yeah, something that's got a really
00:40:31
Speaker
eye grabbing kind of mechanic, right? Something that's that's got that unique thing can be a really good way to start getting that exposure. The flip side of that is it can, you can become a victim of your own success because you can start to look like quite a one note experience. You know, if, if it's all about that particular um kind of mechanic, and then you can, you can start to look like you haven't really got much else of a game there, or people can feel like they've already played it by the time it comes out because they've sent it so
The Art of Puzzle Design
00:40:57
Speaker
much.
00:40:57
Speaker
But I think obviously the best advice for any small indie publisher, any small indie puzzle developer is, you know, come speak to us and we will we will publish and market We'll all your problems. Yeah, absolutely.
00:41:09
Speaker
Absolutely. And we have infinite infinite bandwidth, so don't don't worry about if if we're already publishing some stuff. now we we can we can we can publish every puzzle game ever made.
00:41:20
Speaker
Absolutely. And then you can be in the every possible game ever made bundle on on Humble Bundle in 20 years' time. um Before we wrap up, do you have a question for me?
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah, was wanting to ask about the process of puzzle design actually because as I say it's always sort of fascinated me from even from you know things like RPG style or point and click style puzzles um you know a bit easier to understand how you go about that and go okay well use the monkey on the waterfall or whatever which really annoyed me and monkey on a woman as a kid but um the idea of of creating kind of systems first and saying right we're going to base on this and then we're going to maybe introduce this other mechanic
00:42:11
Speaker
That fascinates me, right? And the idea of building that complexity without destroying everything you've done, making sure that there's only like a single answer to the problem that you're setting as well and that you haven't just missed another very easy solution. i have no comprehension about how that process works and what comes first and how that all gets put together and how much revision is. So I'd love your insight on that.
00:42:39
Speaker
I mean, the answer to all of those component parts is kind of the same, which is just playtesting a lot. um Like, i I generally don't even know if something is good until I've got it in front of people and I'm watching them have realizations and like i might I might think something's a bit boring and then I watch somebody play up. oh, though there's this nuance to it that I just hadn't realized that that that's the interesting part. Okay, great. And then, for yeah, got to watch hundreds of people find bad solutions to your puzzles so that you can fix those solutions and then make a new version and that's got a different bad solution. Yeah.
00:43:18
Speaker
To some degree, ah sometimes it's fine if there's multiple solutions, as long as they all have the same bottleneck of like the interesting thing that that level is about.
00:43:29
Speaker
There might be a few different ways of doing it, but every solution to the level involves doing that in some way. And that's often fine for me. um But yeah, i don't have a good solution to like finding the the unintended solution solutions that don't work the way want other than just like brute force, throw it at the wall, get people to play it until they find ah the problems.
00:43:52
Speaker
um And in terms of like systems or like ordering of mechanics or how to rearrange things, a lot of that also comes from watching people play.
00:44:04
Speaker
And I think I i said this on ah one of the podcasts in the last couple of months, but I don't remember which one, but like a lot of it is about... developing this internal understanding of the player's brain and figuring out like, oh, I can make a puzzle and imagine the things that an average player is going to try in it and the things that are going to be in their brain and the things that are not going to be in their brain and therefore what they're going to try first and how I think they'll respond to it. and
00:44:42
Speaker
and what what they might not be actively thinking about, so they might struggle to make a like jump to do something specific. um A lot of the time you need to like watch people to like do that, but some of the time I can like skip a step and go, like well, I think that this is going to be a problem area. And sometimes I'll do something about it immediately, and sometimes I'll... like confirm that and like send it off to players and go, yeah, okay. Well, I was, I was hoping that wasn't going to be an issue, but it's an issue. So I'll do something there. But yeah, having, having a sense of how the players will think, um, is one of the most valuable tools in my arsenal for like figuring out what's the best way to introduce concepts to somebody is. Hmm.
00:45:33
Speaker
Um, because like, if I can see a bunch of people getting stuck on one level, that's like a data point. But really the important thing is understanding why lots of people are getting stuck on that level. Because once you understand the why you have the tools to figure out how to teach them better, the thing that they're missing.
00:45:52
Speaker
If you just know where the problem is, but not why they're struggling there, then you, you kind of don't have the information to solve the problem. Hmm. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:46:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's that's really interesting, actually, that idea of of trying to understand how other people think. And I imagine that gives you great insight into the way you think compared to to other people as well. Oh, I'm i'm not nearly that self-reflective.
00:46:22
Speaker
That's a shame. but um Yeah, no, that is that is fascinating. as I suppose as ah as a sort of and addition to that, do you find that there are... kind of clear cultural differences in the way that people approach puzzles or think about puzzles. you know they're Interesting.
00:46:39
Speaker
I've heard that people, people but multilinguists, I had a friend who was Italian and he spoke ah English perfectly. He spoke um Turkish perfectly, I think, and he spoke Japanese perfectly.
00:46:53
Speaker
And he said that when he thought in different languages, he would think quite differently because of the structure of the language. you know He said Japanese was very good for kind of analytical stuff, for example. um I wondered if there's any reflection in in that in the way people approach puzzles or the way that they think about things.
00:47:09
Speaker
I have no idea. I've never tried bucketing my playtesters in a way that I'm like paying attention to the any kind of through line there. um Like, obviously, like we'll always have play testers who are like some, some will just breeze through a bunch of puzzles and some, um, like it's, it's much more valuable to have play testers who are more like average players. Like they, they make like even people who don't play a lot of puzzle games, like you'll get the most useful data from, um,
00:47:40
Speaker
Like the people who breathe through, like, okay, well, did you solve that because it's easy or because you're smart or because you've played hundreds of games like this? um Whereas since we are trying to make something that um the average granny could pick up and have a nice time with, think,
00:47:58
Speaker
ah We're not like dumbing it down, but like we are like it's more important for me to have the idea of how that granny thinks than how um the average puzzle game designer thinks.
00:48:12
Speaker
Because... ah that's the kind of person who it's most important to teach the concepts they're going to need. Whereas a lot of people who are like puzzle sickos, they're probably very capable of picking up tricks, even if you're not doing a great job of tutorializing everything that they need. um ah Yeah.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a lot of that shorthand in puzzle games as well, right? and I think but that's in in all games. ah it's It's fascinating to see you know When you sit down to play a game with someone who just hasn't played any games or hasn't played a game for a long time, and you realize how much stuff that you pick up about a game just because you're used to it, right? What elements of the UI might do what or how to do basic things. and i think Or even even level design. There's definitely a degree of learning to read a puzzle and go like, ooh, that that's interesting. Why is that thing there?
00:49:08
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. What does that thing being there allow me to do or prevent me from doing? Yeah, why has that all got a little nubbin in it when none of the others have that sort of thing? Yeah.
00:49:19
Speaker
um And I tend to like designing puzzles that are are very elegant and streamlined and like you boil them down to the smallest possible um version of that idea, ah the one with the least red herrings, with the the least greebles that aren't relevant to the puzzle,
00:49:42
Speaker
um so which which I think has helped for for that kind of like... okay, well, everything here is going to be relevant in somehow, in some way. But a lot of people just aren't thinking about puzzles in that way.
00:50:01
Speaker
And it's a very difficult thing to teach them to think about that.
00:50:07
Speaker
Yeah. And I think there's, i mean, that's, that again is ah is a tricky balance to ride, right? Because part of the joy is that unprompted discovery, you know, going, oh, God, that works like that. Of course it does.
00:50:19
Speaker
Of course that's how this works. you know um But then there's also the the horrible frustrating of frustration of going, this is a very limited set of possible moves. i You know, something like Ahsoka Bami, like there's only three or four things I can do here and I can't make any of them work because you just haven't seen that one thing that sort
Podcast Closing and Credits
00:50:38
Speaker
of changes stuff. So letting people discover things on their own and feel smart and and develop that kind of vocabulary i suppose and whilst also keeping them interested enough to get to that point it's a really tricky balance yeah uh thanks for your time dan it's been a pleasure thank you and uh yeah i will uh we love to be back here again with some uh some more thrilling stories about my past
00:51:05
Speaker
And thank you for listening to the Dragneck and Friends official podcast. Our music is by Priscilla Snow, who you can find at ghoulnoisemusic.com. Our podcast artwork is by Adam DeGrandis.
00:51:18
Speaker
Our podcast is edited by Melanie Zawodniak. Please rate and review us on your podcast service of choice and be sure to tune in next episode for more interesting conversations.
00:51:33
Speaker
you