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How Publishers Shape Gaming: Ben Kvalo on Publishing and Indie Success
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In this episode of Player Driven, Greg sits down with Ben Kvalo, founder of Midwest Games and a seasoned industry professional with experience at 2K, Blizzard, and Netflix. Ben shares his insights into the evolving role of publishers in the gaming industry, the challenges indie developers face, and how Midwest Games supports underserved creators around the world.
Key Discussion Points:
- The Role of Publishers: How publishers provide vital services like marketing, quality assurance, localization, and platform navigation, beyond just funding games.
- Timing and Adaptability: Why market timing and the ability to pivot are essential for a game's success.
- Developer-Publisher Relationships: The trade-offs between retaining creative control and accessing the resources a publisher can provide.
- Insights for Indie Developers: Tips on pitching games to publishers, avoiding common pitfalls, and understanding what makes a game stand out.
- Midwest Games’ Mission: Highlighting the studio's commitment to supporting developers in underserved regions with innovative titles like The Legend of Babu and Toon Water.
Featured Games from Midwest Games:
- The Legend of Babu – A "baby God of War" adventure game featuring a lovable canine companion.
- Toon Water – A pixelated Souls-like Western blending Bloodborne and Red Dead Redemption.
- Dark Sky – A JRPG-inspired deck-builder offering a unique non-roguelike twist.
Where to Find Midwest Games:
Follow Midwest Games on social platforms to stay updated on their latest announcements and upcoming titles.
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Transcript
Introduction to Player Different Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Player Different Podcast. Here's what we're about to listen to in today's episode. We are talking with Ben Coelho. He is the founder of Midwest Games, and he's going to talk to us about what the role of a publisher is. It's an ever
Evolution of Publisher Roles
00:00:12
Speaker
-evolving role, which he'll talk about how it transitions from facilitating distribution to now offering things like marketing QA and a lot of other things you can do think about as well.
00:00:21
Speaker
ah how timing and market awareness are crucial, right? As much as a good game is important, making sure it's timed right in the market is very important as well. And then balancing
Market Timing and Developer Trade-offs
00:00:30
Speaker
trade-offs as well for developers, right? When you look for a publisher, Indie has to take a look at what the trade-offs might be when retaining revenue, IP control, and so on. It's a really informative conversation we have with Ben today. Let us know what you think afterwards. Let us know if you have any other questions for Ben. We'd love to ah we'd love to talk more through it and enjoy the episode.
00:00:51
Speaker
Hey, everybody. Welcome
Ben Coelho's Career Journey
00:00:52
Speaker
to Player Driven. Today, we are joined by Ben Koalo. He is the founder of Midwest Games, and he has a portfolio or a summary of jobs that go back to 2K as a project manager, as well as a project manager at Blizzard. He led program management at Netflix, and he's also serving as the president of the Wisconsin Gaming Alliance. Ben, it's a pleasure to have you back. Is there anything you want to say? No, I'm just excited to be here, excited to chat, as always. It's always a always something fun when we get a chance to chat.
00:01:24
Speaker
Yeah, I love it and I appreciate it. And it's Friday before the holidays, so I appreciate you making the time. But
Role of Publishers: From Physical to Digital
00:01:31
Speaker
today I want to really kind of talk about what a publisher is because I remember growing up, loving video games and seeing published by, developed by, and I always wonder, like, what does that really mean? And now that I'm in the industry, it makes a little more sense to me, but I'm hoping we could kind of explain to some other people that may not really understand the full concept. Let's start is, can you just kind of give us the breakdown of what the role of a publisher is?
00:01:55
Speaker
yeah I mean, it's
Impact of Digital Platforms on Publishing
00:01:56
Speaker
it's interesting and complicated in the same breath. And you know if you think about um the game development and then getting ultimately to store shelves, because like the history of publishing has changed over time.
00:02:12
Speaker
If you look at what traditional publishing did it was literally it brokered the relationship between somebody that was trying to put out content and the literal shelves that that content lived on at one point.
00:02:28
Speaker
And so for a long history within the publishing realm, it was the ownership of those channels. And it was really hard for somebody as an individual content creator to put out something to a channel.
00:02:44
Speaker
Now that's changed over time. If you look at Steam and many other platforms, it's much easier to get it onto a platform than ever before. And so the relationship of a publisher has changed with that. It's more about, well, how do you get noticed on these platforms, knowing kind of the people and the algorithms and all of the things that are going that are happening on a platform. And so a publisher really, to simplify it down, as a developer, works on the game.
00:03:19
Speaker
And a publisher works on everything around the game to make sure that it is going to market in the best possible way with everything that's needed.
Beyond Financial Support: Publisher Services
00:03:28
Speaker
And a publisher knows what is needed and the most up-to-date information. A game typically takes at least 12, 18 months to multiple years, three to seven years. And the platforms change over that time period. So if you're a developer and you're only going to platform With those cadences by the time you have returned to a platform to put your game on it It's changed dramatically from the time you did before and so a publisher is always up to date with that information Which allows you to your your velocity to market is is much faster
00:04:07
Speaker
than it would be if you're just trying to figure it out every time you go. There's very few publishers worldwide um and there's a lot of game developers and so I think that's always kind of been a challenge. And also the other thing I'll say about you know kind of just publishing in general is is a lot of it comes down to the money aspect of things.
00:04:29
Speaker
And traditionally there were no avenues to get your game made i unless you had, you know, personal dollars that you were able to to do. um And so the publisher's role has also helped fund it. Now there's so many other routes to get funding that a publisher, their Java is not solely the funding piece. And in fact, I think it's going to be changing it further where it's really the services piece and something that we're expanding on at Midwest as well. Can you break that down a little bit and the services aspect? Because it makes sense, right? Years ago, it was hard to build a community around the game because a lot of these channels didn't exist. There was no Discord. Steam was there, but maybe not as it community
Comprehensive Publisher Services
00:05:18
Speaker
focused. right And as you mentioned, yeah
00:05:20
Speaker
There's a lot of avenues to get out there as ah as a game developer right now. So when you're an indie gamer and you're trying to determine, do I want to go a publisher? Do I want to get funding some other route? What are some of the services that you you kind of think a publisher can offer that that help enable them?
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, so one of the main ones that people immediately think of is marketing. Marketing, PR, community supports, social support, asset creation, all of those areas to help you help just get the basics down, like making sure that you have the art around your game that can be showcased in the best possible way and really stand out, you know, especially like if you look at Steam.
00:06:03
Speaker
You go, go into there, just see a ton of artwork like just covers and and you want something that can stand out in that platform so the marketing paid marketing influencer marketing. i All of those pieces are a big, a big piece of what a publisher is but what.
00:06:22
Speaker
You know what makes a publisher different than let's say a marketing agency that you could hire to do some of those things as well is all of the other pieces that are involved, including like production. So production support helping with milestones helping to understand where where you are along the journey towards releasing the game, what is going to be needed along that journey, quality assurance, making sure that the game is tested and and making sure that it's up to the quality bar. Because we know if if you don't have a really polished experience and you try to put it out in today's world, you will get crushed by the consumers.
00:07:07
Speaker
And so QA is such a vital piece. Localization, if you're trying to go wider, there are some key languages you need to be putting into your game, which means you need to set up the game in the right way, which is part of what a publisher helps to do is really ensure that the game is set up for success in multiple languages and can can really be put in because you know you look at a language like German,
00:07:36
Speaker
And the words get ridiculously long. And if you aren't set up, but it's not just like, oh, I'm just going to put you know the dialogue in. No, it really has to fit right in both the screen experience, how someone you know expects to see that dialogue show up, and that it's not like running into itself or overlapping with other things. There's a lot that goes into that.
00:08:04
Speaker
And then um some other aspects include release management, i where, you know, how do you get it onto these platforms?
Business Development in Game Publishing
00:08:13
Speaker
Each platform has a different certification process, what is needed in order to do that, and the relationships around the platforms. And then the biz staff piece. So much of You know, ensuring that a game has a return on investment and is profitable is additional layers of business development, including what once you have a game out, licensing it out so that, i you know, additional platforms can use it. You know, Amazon's free games with Amazon is an example of that.
00:08:53
Speaker
um and And then also making sure that you know you have opportunity to support to new platforms over time. You want to take it from PC to Xbox to PlayStation. um All of those are porting and and we either no porting vendors or know that no how the process works or have people internally as a publisher that can help you port because it can be pretty costly, $50,000 to $150,000 to port to a new platform. and so You have to really know what you're doing and and justify what it is and then there's you know different programs that help you do that as well and and the relationships around that.
00:09:32
Speaker
Plus like a lot of other biz dev opportunities, whether it be in the physical space or other things that kind of come up and we manage all of those pieces as well. And then obviously the finance piece which I've already talked about but So yeah, you really have to you have to be able to do all the tactical work, all the marketing work, know the financials, know the market opportunities. So a lot of data work as well and kind of combine it all into one thing that that makes a publisher.
00:10:03
Speaker
Is it fair to say basically you're taking a lot of things off those developers' plates that maybe they don't even think about, right? Maybe they don't even know that, hey, I need to think about marketing. I'm not even there yet. Is it fair to say that that a publisher is going to help you and enable you to do that? And probably at scale, right? So costs can come down? Yeah, it it's exactly. it It's its you know different. Either developers don't know.
00:10:28
Speaker
or don't want to do those things. And a publisher takes that off a developer's plate so that they can focus on what their core, you know, what they most likely want to do the most, which is develop the game.
00:10:46
Speaker
And so a publisher really kind of helps helps with everything around it. And as things pop up having a publisher available and say, Hey, I've never done this before. How do we do this and publisher can come in and be like, Okay, this is this how we can go about it or Or just know other people that are that do those kinds of very specific things that that pop up over time. Because there's always new business opportunities and things. And so the publisher is really a connector and a network um for a developer to really tap into whatever whatever they need in the moment. I
Indie Studios and Publisher Agreements
00:11:22
Speaker
don't know the proper way to ask this, so I'm going to ask it it is, what is a studio? and
00:11:29
Speaker
point like it doesn't have to be but Midwest, right? But what does a studio give up to sign with a publisher? Yeah. So there's a couple different ways to think about it. You know, what, what a developer has is they have rev share in their game and they have IP that they're building essentially with the game that they have.
00:11:57
Speaker
So that is what they have to give and oftentimes then what they don't have is money to develop the game. Whereas a publisher has money and they have time and they are looking for something that will maximize within the time that they have the potential you know dollars that they have to invest in something.
00:12:26
Speaker
and And so that is typically the relationship, is a developer is giving up back-end dollars, rev share, for front-end money and support um off of a publisher's time. And ah and a publisher you know it can only sign so many games, so it has to really maximize whatever that one game is that they are they are signing or the multiple games over time within their portfolio. And so it's kind of an exchange between that. But how that looks, it can look in so many different ways. um The thing is that publishers make the most majority of the revenue in the industry. like it It's an unfair advantage to have a publisher because it gets you a lot of things. Now, that's not saying every publisher, but in general, it is an advantage to have a publisher.
00:13:24
Speaker
um ae So off of that, you know, it is, what are you willing to give up rev share wise and IP traditionally, you can see anything from, you know, your rev share giving up 70 to 30%, like somewhere in that range, I'm sure there's deals that go above or below that, depending on the factors, but you have to think about like, ah all like, it's really just a calculation of how much are are you asking a developer or a publisher to invest um and then what do what does the publisher think is the market return on that investment and off of that that they will calculate out what they would need from a rev share perspective and then the IP rights come into play depending on the philosophy of
00:14:19
Speaker
The publisher I'm a fan of IP rights but but of making sure the developer still has majority IP rights because I want them making sure that but then the one the ones driving forward.
00:14:34
Speaker
what the IP is doing, what the next thing is, but I love being attached to it because that is the most valuable long-term piece and we can help it get into additional places over time. you know each Each publisher is going to have their network that brings certain things to the table. you know For me, my team's background includes you know me at Netflix or my CMO from Crunchyroll. Additional things that over time, each one of those companies are getting into games and getting into games content. And so those are valuable connection pieces that you want that you want your publisher.
00:15:15
Speaker
to have and so it might be worth giving up more in order to get somebody that has those connections and so yeah it's ah it's a balancing act there's no ah no one does it the same as another person some people have it very open and transparent some people ah hide it because they the deals are highly dependent upon what the game is and and what they're asking for um There's no perfect way to do it. um and And publishers get critiqued ah around this piece of things quite a bit because there isn't as much transparency. I understand why there isn't. That doesn't mean that there can't be more. I think there can be more. But it is very much a balancing act between those multiple multiple factors.
00:16:06
Speaker
I'm thinking and of an example as you're talking through this and tell me I'm completely wrong, right? But I want to know if I'm on the right track here. As you know, back in the day on N64, I see the controller behind you, right? Goldeneye came out and it was, everyone loved it. And then Rare got acquired by Microsoft, but they couldn't publish Goldeneye. Is that because Nintendo was a publisher for Rare during Goldeneye and had the IP rights to that specific game?
00:16:30
Speaker
a it It probably had something to do around some level of exclusivity. Back then, especially, exclusivity was was a huge factor that's kind of died down these days, especially Xbox not really doing exclusive content in a large way.
00:16:47
Speaker
So yeah, there's likely some kind of licensing piece to the game that didn't allow for it to go, or they just didn't want to port it. um i there's there's ah There's a lot of factors when multiple companies and there's acquisitions and all that stuff come into play. The agreements get very complicated. And so
Complexities of IP Rights and Contracts
00:17:11
Speaker
that is likely a factor and in kind of why it stayed on a certain platform,
00:17:17
Speaker
Or that they just didn't see the market opportunity, which seems a bit ridiculous considering. But but you just never know ah exactly the the reason unless you know the contract. So a lot of people speculate why certain things happen.
00:17:33
Speaker
Really, it all comes down to the contracts and what's allowed and what's negotiated between the developer and the publisher and and the platform. Sometimes the platforms get involved as well and you have some kind of deal bes with that is appropriate between three different entities and it it creates a lot of complexity and then trying to lead through that complexity and and bring it to new places or trying to do something after the fact.
00:18:00
Speaker
It gets very complicated. It's why a lot of IPs are strung up in such complicated webs that they can never have anything ever made. Again, because a certain company has certain rights, a certain piece, and they get signed off on something, whereas another company also gets signed off.
00:18:19
Speaker
And getting two companies to agree on on something that might not benefit them much i just becomes ridiculously complicated. And that's why ultimately a lot of IP gets shelved and can't ever be used because there's no way to really bring all of those disparate pieces to the table and and use them in the right way. When you have your own indie studio,
00:18:50
Speaker
How do you know it's the right time to start looking for a publisher? Do they come to you? Do they do they pitch to you? I mean, what's what's what are those signs that it's time to start finding them? So game studios come to publishers. Publishers very rarely go to game studios just because from a volume perspective, you know we get hundreds upon hundreds, I think thousands of pitches at this point. um And we're a very small publisher. If you're known, like the amount that you just get sent is absurd. And there's it's a really challenging space to be able to keep up with the volume of games that are being made and pitches that are out there.
00:19:42
Speaker
But ultimately you should be trying to get a publisher as early as possible but you need something to show in order to do it. So the balancing act is the minute you have something that can portray what the future game is going to look like or play like, that's when you really want to start.
00:20:02
Speaker
looking
Pitching to Publishers: Timing and Strategy
00:20:03
Speaker
for that publisher and looking for that that partner or that investor or whatever route you want to take, it really comes down to when you have something that you can showcase for for those folks to really get a good idea. Because what you don't want to do is show something that's so early that they get the wrong idea of what it is. And you also don't want to wait so like so long A, because part of it being you just can't. Like a lot of devs will have the money or the time to work towards getting the prototype, but getting something to alpha or beta, like it's just very expensive and they likely don't have the team built out to do that. And so really it's like getting something that is is ultimately just, just is going to show off what your idea and what the potential of the game is.
00:21:00
Speaker
So in these studios basically want to have a little bit of a portfolio of their game showing either artwork or gameplay or some sort of story or all the above and how it's running so they could be able to submit portfolio and you can get, or the publisher can get a better perspective of of what is being built.
00:21:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's really, you know, this is where like even AI benefits a developer um because like the concepting of something, like say, hey, it's gonna look like this. um AI is really good at doing that without a ton of work. Now, actually developing that is really tough and AI is not gonna, you know, only can do so much. And so the the idea of, of creating a concept or or you know the narrative piece of it, you can tell a story pretty easily. Now you have to have the time to do it and can you break it down in the right ways? The story piece is more easy to tell. And that's where a lot of decks are pretty heavy on the story piece of what what this world they're building and all that kind of stuff is. But what is going to make a difference is, well, what differentiates
00:22:12
Speaker
is it the gameplay is it ah you know are you blending genres? Are you making a new genre? Are you going off of something that exists and you are improving it? um And really the proof is in the pudding with that. You got to really see it, play it to know if that that's actually going to become true. And so, you know, your your history and background help and indicate that like you've done it before.
00:22:42
Speaker
But you know a lot of people claim that they've done it before and you know they worked on these big these big games or something like that. And you know I think a publisher gets more wary of that. because so often people are like oh well i worked for company and I worked on this huge game and it's like cool but so did a thousand other people and what makes you the one that can make a new experience and so that's it's it's the challenge of like vetting out and doing the due diligence around somebody are they the ones that actually drove forward something were they ones that you know iterated on a small piece of that which is okay like there's nothing wrong with that and and a hard part is
00:23:24
Speaker
is is it an indicator like Even if you work on a small piece of something, it doesn't mean you can't do something in prep. For a publisher, like trying to figure out what the right formula of things, and who to take the bet on when there's thousands of people saying I've got a great game, it's gonna do great. ah It's really difficult to know like which ones truly are and in the even tougher part is great games go out almost every day now and great games fail all the time. So having a great game
00:24:02
Speaker
is a baseline to get in to the market.
Market Conditions and Game Success
00:24:07
Speaker
And so it's what is going to make it stand out in market that ultimately becomes a major factor.
00:24:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think some people, or or maybe what's often overlooked is that timing is probably one of the most important factors in all of this. When's your game coming out? And you can be as specific as you want, right? But it really depends on how the market's going to adopt it. I mean, you often see games pushed because, hey, we know this game's coming out here, and we don't want to release against that, but right? I mean, no matter what product you have, whether it be a game, whether it be a SaaS service, or any type of product you're putting out there, timing is probably one of those key elements ah that's often overlooked because a crappy game can hit it if the timing is right and and all of a sudden it finds the audience, right? It really can go either way. Well, yeah, you just you just never know. And yeah, timing is is an incredibly important piece of all of this. And you have very little control over it. You know you try to aim for the right timing or what you think is the right timing. And then some other market factor comes in that you had no idea about that. you There's no way you would have known about
00:25:15
Speaker
And it ruins your launch or the other end where something happens, you know, I know a a game studio that Put out a game that did incredibly well and it just happened to come after a highly anticipated game that was very similar, failed pretty badly in market. And this other game was like almost the, ah oh wait, well they failed. This one's actually the one that we we were hoping that one was. And so then suddenly they got all this momentum.
00:25:49
Speaker
off of a disgruntled group of people around a game that suddenly what attached on this other game and made that other game succeed in a much larger way. And so you just never know. You can't predict those those kinds of things happening. um But what you have to do is react to the market. So what I encourage folks to do is is be ready to pivot towards how the market is reacting to the game or to other market factors and be in the moment because being in the moment could make the difference between being successful or not.
00:26:27
Speaker
I want to go back to something you said a little earlier, is that if you're a big publisher, you're getting probably hundreds and hundreds of games and trying to determine which one's the right one. Who at the publisher is actually looking at these games? It depends on how the how the structure is set up and every publisher does this differently. Some, it's a single person that makes their the executive decision. um A lot of times, if it's especially if it's a larger one, they have a business person that's valuing putting together all the details into debt laying out the opportunities and and then presenting it to a group of people. Some people do it by committee. some people do it ah like We do a process that goes to like certain groups over time.
00:27:13
Speaker
And essentially, you know, if it gets into that process, it means it's already, you know, top 30% of what we receive. And then from there, it goes through to each group, they evaluate it in their own ways, give feedback to it, and essentially dissent as well, like saying like, you know, because if it's in the process, we like it. But saying like, Oh, these are the areas that I don't think it's gonna be able to overcome whatever piece it is, which is valuable to me because then I get everyone's input in a way. And they're, they're thinking critically about the opportunity ah ahead. It allows people to get involved, but it's not a committee committee making decisions really tough. I don't believe in committees. um And ultimately, you know, on our end,
00:28:06
Speaker
um I'm the person that's accountable at the end of the day, um and so right now I'm that person making the call. That might not be the case long term, but having the one person that's accountable for making the decisions on something I think is is a useful way. But yeah, it's it could be it could be any which way that you can imagine. It
Evaluation Process of Games by Publishers
00:28:29
Speaker
could be ah could be the way that they evaluate and source games and make decisions around it. It sounds like a dream job being able to check out all these games, but it's probably once you're in the weeds of it, it's like, oh, God, there's so many things I need to look at, so many games I need to install, so many whatever. Yeah, mean yeah so so many games you need to play. It's tough. like Playing
00:28:53
Speaker
games that aren't finished is not necessarily a very fun thing because it's a lot of broken things. You have to like look at like if to look through all the the fact that the whole thing is broken and see what the developer is doing and building. So in a way, it's really fun because you know if you're if you're somebody that enjoys um you know but the opportunity of something, the excitement of something new and are willing to like you know look past some of the the challenges that are are right and more immediately in front of you. You can see like, oh yeah, I could see it being this thing. But getting it to that point is also vastly complicated. And so yeah, it's a it's a fun piece of things. And then you know for game developers,
00:29:42
Speaker
um You know, it's, uh, it's just, it becomes, it becomes so challenging to present something to a, to a publisher because it's just, there's so much unknown. And another thing, you know, I'll say is, uh, as much as every developer is like, look at my life completely unique, completely like.
00:30:11
Speaker
like ah like I created this thing, game, um through no fault of their own, sometimes an unconscious piece, I might have seen five other games that are almost exactly the same thing. um Even if it is, you know,
00:30:30
Speaker
original in some way. It's hard to be original these days because you get influenced a lot of times subconsciously from other factors, from the things you like, and you put that into it. And much
Challenges in Game Design and NDAs
00:30:44
Speaker
as you think it's original, when you're sitting in, you know, my seat or other publisher seats, it looks a lot of the same across things, which is why, you know, if if a developer ever feels like they're or they're ever curious why a publisher is hesitant to do sign an NDA or anything like that, it's because we see five of those things. So let's say we go forward with one of them, and then one of the other ones goes, you stole my idea.
00:31:16
Speaker
It's like, no, somebody else pitched something completely separate. And we went forward with their idea. And if you have an NDA in place, you can create complications. And then also NDAs are are hard to actually like legally like getting someone to have repercussions from breaking an NDA is incredibly tough to prove and in court. So it's adding legal complications to something that already has a lot of complications. And it's just, and I get how developers feel about this because they're in their, like to them it is original. To them it is that it's just people don't realize the kind of influence the culture has will come up with a very similar idea top of it. Are there any red flags you can share with some of those indie developers out there that they may want to avoid or pitfalls when they are thinking about their pitch to a publisher?
Common Pitfalls in Game Pitches
00:32:21
Speaker
a i mean There's plenty of things. Like pitch decks, I've seen at all the range of different types of pitch decks. Don't try to show your entire game in a pitch deck. You have 10 to 12 slides at the most to show what a game is. um But you know red flags will come around. The kind of content you're trying to put out, you know A lot of times developers aren't thinking about the audience they're trying to hit. They're making a game for themselves, which can succeed. Like sometimes those types of games do succeed because it just happens that the game for themselves also happens to be a game for a few million people as well.
00:33:03
Speaker
But then other times a game for yourself is truly just a game for yourself. And so, you know, someone being aware of the audience that they are trying to hit is is a green flag for me. But if they don't have that information, they're not thinking about that.
00:33:23
Speaker
you know That's something that we then are going to have to put some work into if we are interested in the concept because they haven't you know they haven't presented any evidence in that that area yet. um Some other red flags, or if if you don't know how to lay out a milestone schedule,
00:33:44
Speaker
Or you don't know how to um you know accurately look at competitive you know an analysis of who are your comps in market.
00:33:58
Speaker
if If you can't accurately like you know compare against what is already out there and be able to say, hey, this is one of why there's an opportunity, um you know that's a flag to me. Or if it's just you know you just throw out, oh, yeah, Minecraft or something like, just extreme where you're like, okay, that just makes makes you roll your eyes. Sure, do like a higher level one, but also do a moderate and a low, because if you can show all three, then you can see, okay, well, even in the low scenario, again, it's still got, let's say, a return on investment, or it's still made money, um like because that's that's what a publisher is, as much as it's like,
00:34:42
Speaker
You know, we, we love games. We just want to get games made. Um, we also have to make money or we can't continue to fund more games. And, and so we have to take it through the lens of what is the opportunity, but you know, most publishers don't really know. Um, you know, I think I take, I take the stance of.
00:35:10
Speaker
No one, like the consumers decide what is a successful game. It's like, if you look at all the data, the amount of games until you have like a franchise that are able to continually put out something off of the successful previous thing.
00:35:28
Speaker
Creating new IP and putting out something new is incredibly hard, and it's really random, which is why it's a bit of a percentage of games. If you work in a certain genre, and the genre has a breakout rate of, let's say, 25%, that means if you do four games in that genre, like like statistically one of those should break out. And when I say breakout, it means make over a million dollars.
00:35:54
Speaker
And that data is available. You can see a lot of that, especially like the Steam data piece of it. and And so those are the kinds of things that I think you can succeed with is looking at the data. That doesn't guarantee like statistically you go over four. Statistically you go two for four. you know it i it's It's just planning understanding the data and making some decisions with the data in mind. But you know you also have to lean into areas of, you might not have much data. If it's truly a new genre and you attempt on something, you're not going to have a bunch of data to say, oh, this is going to succeed you have to
00:36:32
Speaker
then take a bet off of what you think something can do and know that that's a riskier bet. And as a publisher, you you have a grouping of the riskier bets. And then you have a grouping of the more conservative bets, the ones that you know statistically do better. strategy games, like in tactics on PC, like on Steam, those statistically do better on that platform. And so those are safer bets, but they also are bets that, you know, strategy games don't necessarily travel well to other platforms, you know, Xbox, PlayStation, like some do, right? but But overall, they don't tend to port well. So you have a bit of a ceiling on those types of games, whereas some other new approach, you just never know what it's going to be, but it's also highly risky at that point. And so a publisher's job is really to mitigate risk across a portfolio and and try to balance it in many different buckets. And those buckets can be very different depending on what the publisher is.
00:37:35
Speaker
I love that.
Current Projects and Partnerships at Midwest Games
00:37:36
Speaker
And you know I do a lot of posting on different social networks now. and It's funny, I kind of see a resemblance where if you're releasing a kid's game, maybe you want to make sure you hit the switch and maybe you want to make sure you hit another thing. right Knowing where your audience lives, where they play, where they do all this stuff, I think maybe gets often overlooked. And I think that's great. And I know we're running up on time and I have one last request from you ah so you so you can go and you can enjoy your holidays. But you want to talk about any of the games that you do have going on it at Midwest right now that you're helping publish.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah. So we, in the last like month and a half, two months, we announced two more titles for a portfolio. One of them, we announced the Xbox partner preview showcase called the legend of Babu. um This is like a.
00:38:24
Speaker
a baby god of war or like dog of war uh is the other the funny one because it's a it's basically an adventure game like legend of zelda style um with with your companion is a big dog named babu uh and babu um and sapir go on this adventure sapir's trying to find his mother uh who has been stolen by demons and he has to go across you know this land that's very similar to like Avatar the Last Airbender, you know the four elements and and It's really an incredible like story and just a fun experience if you've ever played Kenna, it's very similar to Kenna in some ways and we're super excited about that game and what what
00:39:13
Speaker
what Babu could do and how excited people are to see this big fluffy dog, which you can ride, you can pet, you can play as. So we we announced that one. And then we just announced that the PC Gamer um most wanted to showcase a game called Tombwater, which is basically a souls-like western. So Bloodborne meets Red Dead meets like, you know, classic Zelda, a pixelated adventure. It is is an awesome RPG. I found it randomly um at a small event in Columbus, Ohio called GDEX that I was the only publisher at and found this incredible developer, a single person developer, Max Moraz, who has done just incredible work in his career.
00:40:11
Speaker
and uh and he hated my favorite part of it was he when i first met him he had hung his sign with a mic stand and a broomstick uh and and then he won game of show because he has just an absolutely like a masterpiece on his hands And so we're really excited to announce that and excited for people to check that out. So those two, like you can wishlist, you know, game we just put out recently and actually, you know, has been just put on sale as well, is a game called Dark Sky, um which, you know, the best way to describe it's like a non-roguelite
00:40:54
Speaker
Deck Builder, that's like a JRPG. um Incredible title from an incredible studio in New Mexico. And then we have a ah bunch of others as well that we put out over this last year, ah including the Lullaby of Life, Duck Paradox, and Hive Jump 2 Survivors. And we're doing some bundles and things like that with Midwest Games, so you can get them all at a discount with ah with the Midwest Games bundle.
00:41:21
Speaker
But you know incredible you know indie developers from underserved places around the world. um you know Ledger Babu is from Turkey. The lullaby of life is from Mexico. you know I mentioned Ohio. um And so you know trying to help support these underserved developers. And then the other one we have, we've announced previously that hasn't come out yet.
00:41:46
Speaker
is Four Is What from a studio in Wisconsin. Josh, which I know you've met before a couple of times and chatted with. And Josh is doing just incredible things at Pyramid Lake Games. And they have a great party game called Four Is What, which we're really excited about and definitely go wishlist that as well.
00:42:07
Speaker
Cool. We'll have information about Midwest games. We'll have linked to their Steam stuff so you can see all this information. This was awesome. Ben, I really enjoy learning all about this and how a publisher works. I appreciate it. And if there's anything else you have to say, go for it, but I really appreciate your time today.
00:42:22
Speaker
No, I appreciate it. Uh, you can follow Midwest games on all of our socials. Uh, we have a couple of big announcements coming in January, so get ready for that. Um, but, uh, yeah, hope everyone has a happy holiday. So if you do as well, Greg, and, uh, I appreciate the time.