Episode 51 - Vibes based publisher - Sam de Boeck and Daniel Lyozov

So for me it was kind of frustrating and I was like if I am a publisher then I will not do it this way. And that is, I have to admit, way more complex than I initially thought because of the volume of games that you received. So that is a major thing that I underestimated. Like I'm going to respond to everyone personally with an email covering why we're not signing. That is something that I had to let go. Oh man, yeah. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Business of Video Games. Podcast with me, your host, Chams, George Johnny and my co-host, Fernando Rizzo. Fernando, how are you doing? I'm doing great, Chams. That's fantastic to hear. I say I'm the host of this podcast but for the interview in the episode today I actually lifted no fingers whatsoever. No, I'm flying solo like the people demanded after last six years. Exactly. Which means also that probably my wife will listen to the episode which is a good thing. So that's why we did it. That's why this is one for you. This is the podcast where we uncover the inner workings of the video games industry and try to make sense of it all and this episode is no exception. What will we be talking to a few people navigating the publishing space for now and it will tell you a little bit more about that in a bit. I will, as always, thank all of our listeners and our few but brave Patreon supporters that help us keep the show plugging on. What's the stupid brave? You like the marine? I will say there are more and more of them than ever since we shifted model earlier this year. So it seems to be working. Fernando, we live in exciting times in the games industry. I mean, we live in exciting times in everything. Not just the games industry but yes, absolutely. Right now, I think most of the US naval forces are making their way towards the Persian Gulf for some training exercises. We'll see about that. Who knows where they'll be next week. But closer to home, which is our games industry, there was a little bit of news just very recently about some managerial changes over at one of the major players in the Western gaming field. Microsoft Phil Spencer retiring after 38 years. Sarah Bond. Right. His right hand person and the head on show of Xbox. Well, and the air apparent. Air. Out. And a new person coming in who's the tech precess of all things AI was that unfair description of the situation. You'll have to ask the AI if that's unfair or not. Yeah, no, that's a sharp line. I'm sorry. The her name is. Yeah. That's right. No, I mean, there's a lot of change. There's also, you know, not for nothing. There's double A and and indie publishers going to put. Yeah. Amazon is packing up shop. And for all appearances, getting the heck out of games. Yeah. Right. So it's getting tougher and tougher. Nikon file for bankruptcy. Yeah. Yesterday. But we bring it back to Microsoft. What's your gun and any hot takes on what this means? I think I mentioned the leaked email from Phil Spencer a few years ago where he emailed the Microsoft CEO Satya and wrote, we're coming in third in this race. We have to do something. And that was kind of the. You know, behind the big move of buying a lot of content. And again, Microsoft is sitting on some of the best studios in the world, some of the best, you know, between King Minecraft and Activision Blizzard and all the amazing studios that they have. And a pretty damn piece of hardware. They're still coming in third. Well, and I think something that's maybe just as important is that is that. Game Pass has been a huge source of capital. And that's what for game devs for years. Lots of studios and publishers are building their business plans to one degree or another are round chasing game past it. Yeah. If Microsoft changed a strategy under this new paradigm. That's a big shit. Yeah. And do you have any hot takes on on Isha Sharma herself? I mean, I don't. I think it would be uncharitable of me to try. No, this is never really held you back in the past. Okay. Yeah. Good point. Yeah. All right. Here comes a hot take. No, look, I think she's trying to engage with folks online. And I think she's being quite forthright about the fact that she doesn't really play games herself. And she's coming into this as a business person. Yeah. And, you know, we're business people. Shams. We like business people. But I got to say that does make the hair on the back of my next stand. You know, I think the interesting part about this is that I, to me, I have a matter I haven't really heard about. But she strikes me as a shoot operator that the people have talked to you said positive things. I will say that they did spark the whole like do you have to be a gamer to be able to run a games business kind of thing? And I'm up to minds of this. And I think I think it really peg the topic overall. And people kind of pointed out to Strauss Zellnick, the CEO of. Okay. And take two. And he said like my job is to hire the best people and motivate them and then get out of their way. Sure. And I think if that's your philosophy, then I don't think you need to be a game's person necessarily. No, but that is that is that her philosophy? No, and I don't know. And I think it then it relies on the fact that somebody in the room needs to be really good at games. And sometimes it will be making decisions that you as the non-gaming CEO need to disagree with. And it's going to come down to like the finer points. And you know, I'm do you have to know? Is it a plus? Absolutely. Could it be a liability? I think that's so too. You and I often talk about the fact that one of our favorite Star Trek movies is. Wrath of Gone or the undiscovered country directed and mostly written by Nicholas Meyer, who had insane single episode of Star Trek before he got called. No, didn't give a damn about Star Trek. And he made some great. But he understood what made Star Trek great. And I think if Asha comes in and understands the fundamentals of what makes their Microsoft business really great and the Xbox and the games business great and she can rely on good lie and good lie to do that. I think I look forward to kind of seeing where Xbox goes. I think the worst thing for the industry would be if Xbox is not around. There's some takes from Shamus Blackley, for instance, that this is going to be the steady hand that rocks the cradle of the palliative care. The palliative care. What an incredible quote. Yeah, he's saying I think she's going to be the one escorting Xbox to dig that and people I think rightly came out and said this is absolute insanity. We're talking about Microsoft. This is a huge part of their business. Sure. Some of the bets haven't fully paid off. But just because you've. It hasn't gone as well as you hope you don't pack it in. If you're sitting there with Minecraft king and Activision Blizzard. Are you like, no, we're done. I mean, that's not going to that's not going to hold monster anyway. I don't know what but then I think and one last kind of pivot and the one with an actual subject this week's episode. To what degree is Asha going to have a free hand just giving the size and scope of Microsoft's investment slash pivot to AI. Yeah, right. That I think remains to be explored because is my because there we've been since since I recently like Microsoft is maybe backing out of some of the investment commitments now we're making to open AI and stuff like if Microsoft getting called feet about the AI stuff and they want to keep them a blood based business. Where do they want to just double down on AI be the future of absolutely everything in which case is Xbox that import. Yeah, good. Okay, so let's move on and set up the the episode. Our guests in this episode are Sam the work at the founder and CEO of Oro interactive and with him he has Daniel the publishing producer and they're going to be talking about the ins and ups and downs of their business. And we're going to be learning about that it's going to tie into a bunch of stuff. So I'm not going to say anymore let's listen to the interview and then we'll come back and do a wrap up. Hi and welcome to the show Sam and Daniel. Thanks you guys so much for being here. Would you mind introducing yourself. Hey, my name is Daniel and I'm the head of business development and scouting at or and this is how I sound. And how do you say this is my voice. My name is Sam. I am the founder and CEO at or which is still kind of weird for me to say. But yeah, I found the company so pleasure to be here. And what when did you found the company and how long ago is that and what were you doing before you. It's it's quite a journey to say the least company was actually founded. Well, the name at least was founded in 2020 in which I didn't want to do a vacation. jobs anymore. And I was like, I am studying marketing and I love games. So who knows? I can set up a small freelance company and do some working in this industry, which was easier set than done. But at least the company name originated. And I did a few gigs left and right and I had a lot of fun. But the actual company got founded last year in May. And that is the point in which I basically found that or moved into the publishing direction. And how would you sum up what Oro is in a couple of minutes? So I would say Oro is a vibes based publisher. And I know that Daniel would love to hear this. So we're very much focused on vibes. The easiest way to describe would be if we were the love child of like devolverine critical reflex. We're not as niche, I would say in experimental games like a critical reflex and devolver. I mean sometimes you look at a game you're like, yeah, it's kind of like a devolver game. So I guess we're somewhere in between. But in the objective way of saying is that we focus on catchy creative games regardless of genres. But that can spark social buzz. So when we look at a game and we can envision the headline of our email towards press and content creators, then we know we have a game that we can work with. Yeah, I would add that you know, this is what concerns the player facing side of things. And in terms of like the industry facing compared to other publishers were incredibly small and fast. Not kind of what differentiates us. And would you say, I mean you mentioned devolver there is kind of a model. But you're different from devolver, right? One of the things Oro does is you, it's right on your website that you guys kind of only provide funding sometimes. Whereas sort of the classic devolver, rough, ure style indie publisher from back in the day is full fat, full funding. How are you guys different? So we're at a point right now in which we can do both comfortably. In the beginning was out of necessity. I would say because it's not easy to suddenly I am a publisher now and I will fund games. I mean it's kind of difficult to get to a point of being a publisher because it's as you know, it's quite costly to develop games. So basically in the beginning I did a lot of freelancing, pure, pure wise conduct creators, media, etc. But I was always on a service basis and I like to be even more motivated to make it work. And I wouldn't say the gamble but at least the excitement that comes with a project being released and knowing how it will do until it's selling was very exciting to me. So that's why I thought maybe I take a risk with the company and offer our services not on a service-based level. But rather on we take a small cut, obviously it's not as big as a rough ure or devolver because we take way less risk. But at least we were invested and motivated to make it work. And I think that to me is the biggest motivator of doing a really good job. It's like seeing if it pops, it pops and everybody is happy and it's not just you get paid by the end of the month and that's it. And tell us about some of the games in your catalog, you guys was murky divers? Was that the first game or was that kind of what's the story? So that was actually the first game that kickstarted it all. It was basically a studio that I knew from before. And they knew of my ambitions, you won, they do publishing. So the offer was basically we have a conceptual game, which was at that point like a little style game, but in the ocean, underwater. And they mentioned like, hey, we know you want to do publishing. So who knows, this could be a win-win in which this is the first one. That is not on a service-based level. So then I said, yeah, let me take a look at it. It looked really cool. And I said, okay, let's do it. So I took the gamble. It was just me at that point and Stan, or I had communications, who is actually my cousin. It's like it's a very local family business. But the two of us basically did that. And luckily for us, it worked out really well. The game sold, I guess, now over half a million copies. And from that point on, I opened a lot of doors because we realized that we can do it. And the excitement grew even more, like we were hungry for more. So that's where we decided like, okay, instead of services, let's keep taking these risks and fully focused on publishing, but then on a no funding basis. Whereas now we have the means to actually fund games as well. Gotcha. So you started out as quite a non-traditional publisher, but are you becoming more of a traditional publisher? I wouldn't call as a traditional publisher because for us, the way we work, we're only four people right now. So we're very, very small, which I think is the biggest advantage of Oro is we, when we sign a game, they know that they work with all of us. It's not a charismatic CEO and scout. And then here's the brand manager. Bye-bye and I'll see you at the quarterly meetings. It's not how we do it. We work very much together with the team all the time. And because we're so small, we're also very efficient and nimble, we can move a lot of work in a small amount of time while keeping it nice and close with developers. And obviously we don't have the reach, well, I wouldn't say the reach, I wouldn't say, I would say the means financially, at least, as a developer over or over of you because they're way bigger companies. But I think we've proven so far that with even tiny budgets like us, we can do a lot of things. And I think the bottom up organic manual work is really paying off for us because we do everything organically. We don't have, well, I mean, we do everything internally, so that means that technically we don't have a marketing spend because we make the trailers, we do the PR, we're basically the internal PR agency and trailer agency, so there is no cost externally. But we do everything basically on a almost zero zero dollar budget with great success so far. I would also add that the lower funding amount kind of works really well with our team being so small because our team being four people means that we don't really take on projects that are like three years away from completion because our producer, Hans, can only take so many projects at a time while putting a lot of thought and care into each of them, which means that for us, it makes a lot of sense to take on projects that are six, nine months away from being shipped, sometimes even like three months. The shortest turnaround was a month and a half from signing to release to like spin up an efficient marketing campaign. And so then we don't need to put a million dollars in each game because those games don't need as much because they will be shipped quicker. But how do you do? And when you get a game like that, that's three months away from ship. Is that a game that's three months away from ship that's sitting on a hundred thousand wish lists or is that a game that where you guys need to build it? And then if it's the latter, how the hell do you do that? That's the million dollar question, right? I mean, we have done, I think the best example is order 13 because that was I think so far. We are now doing an even shorter campaign with this isn't even poker. That's a month, but the game hasn't released yet. I downloaded that, yeah, yesterday. So the game hasn't come out yet. So we don't know if it will be successful. We truly hope it will be, but we don't know yet. But we do know that order 13 relatively speaking was very successful. And that was a campaign of roughly one and a half months. And that was the developers. I know them personally really well. They just came to me and said, look, we have a really cool project that we think can do well. We'd love to have you to take a look at it. And maybe together we can find a way to push it in a short amount of time. And what we did was we looked at marketability. What does this game need in terms of ingredients to be viral? What are the social elements to it? And one of these was, what if we add this cute kitten cat in like a spooky warehouse with a monster and then people will think like, hey, is this the monster the cat? Is this like something will happen to the cat? Or and it sparked a lot of social buzz way more than we ever expected to be honest. But this was one of the ingredients that we together came up with with the development team. And that allowed us to latch onto and then leverage in our pure end campaigns and TikToks and stuff. I think if you have a game with explosive potential, you don't need a long campaign, you just need a good campaign. If you announce something and people know it's coming out in three months, it will more likely stay in their mind. Before it's released, rather than you announce a game, it accumulates 100,000 wishlist over two years. But by that point, nobody really remembers what it was and why you wishlist at it. I mean, I guess that an example that springs to mind is roadside research, which you guys, you must have signed that. Oh, yes. I'm not sure when exactly this year, but absolutely. I guess the beginning of the year. So that one just sort of sprang onto the scene out of nowhere. And I think Daniel, I'm going to put words in your mouth. That one clearly had explosive potential, because it went from nothing to, I mean, it must be on a couple hundred thousand wishlist. 400,000. Okay. 400,000. So what, what, what is it? What's the explosive potential? What, what, what, what's the ingredient that you guys seem to be able to consistently? I think we're pretty good at noticing, as you mentioned, like the key ingredients that we need to let Chantu for pure. Because if we don't have these ingredients, it makes our lives exponentially harder. It's just not possible to do it with, I would say a more vanilla type of game. And I mean, that's not an offense to anyone else. I mean, I've talked to Tim of Who The Tours lately. And he has an amazing portfolio of amazing games. But we wouldn't be able to do these types of games in that time span. It's impossible. So, he's, I mean, his strategy is different, right? He's cultivating a very exactly or sort of vertical. You guys are more effective. We wouldn't be able to do this in the way that he does. It's just not fitting to our style of publishing. But for roads at research, for example, just the picture for like aliens running a gas station. Immediately, everybody's like visualizing or trying to visualize, how is this, what does this look like? How does it work? What's the bigger? Is there like an invasion going on? What can I do? Is there probing involved? Like the number one question always. But these kinds of elements, like they just spark social bus. And that's exactly what we need. And obviously with the team as well. It's the same team as other 13. So it's our second project together. We worked on it from a marketability standpoint as well with like a really good trailer, but also aliens in different colors, the beer bellies. Like it's so obvious also with the piece of paper in front of the faces. Like all of these add up. And that's what we need to do proper PR and push it. Gotcha. Daniel, you're in charge of scouting. What's what's an oral game and what isn't an oral game? I think Sam already talked a bit about it. So an oral game is a game that can be described with one sentence. We need to know from the get go. And that is a sentence we can come up within like 30 seconds of looking at the game. We need to know that we will know how to talk about this game to our content creator friends to press to communicate it to the players with a trailer. And so it's very important that it's easily definable. You know what's cool about the game. Ideally it is a game with explosive potential, although we're not opposed to getting some flavor picks here and there, just if we think the game is really, really cool and we would love to have in our portfolio, we can still pick it up. But yeah, I don't I don't think there is a. There is a ready formula right we will look at a game. And because we have seen a lot of games over the years, we can kind of immediately tell if it has it or it doesn't have it. And then we need to figure out if it works for us or if it doesn't. And so it is a little bit intangible, but all the games that we publish what they have in common is we like them personally, they fit our style and also we know how to talk about them instantly. Gotcha. But so you would say that Oro is trying to like hash out a particular stakeout a particular vertical and say, come to us for this kind of game. The way critical reflex maybe is for for horror stuff the way who the horse is for strategy stuff. That's not that's not what you're not necessarily. I think one thing that or does differently from a lot of publishers in terms of the services and I swear it will make sense in a second is that we don't really do social media community management. And we prefer that the developers do community management themselves because a just works better more authentic beat they deserve to have that community capital and carried that over to the next game. So in our campaigns and that has worked really well so far we mostly rely on you know what's marketing people call earned media so a content creator is basically press. And so for us it's not really as important to have that audience attached to a publishing label you know like for hooded horse people follow hooded horse because they like strategy games or for critical reflex because they like to start a style of weird horror games. And so for us and it is more about reaching out outwards and not cultivating a publisher community community. We were happy to help developers create their communities and we're happy to keep working with those devs on their next games but we're not trying to create you know or following necessarily. Sure I mean very few publishers in the history of modern video games publishing have ever managed to do it right it's extremely hard to vulver arguably yeah people don't I mean I don't think it is the average consumer even know what a publisher is I don't think so. I mean I when I was at Greek reflex people constantly were saying that mouth washing and buckshot are made by the same developer and the mother gives us a yeah. Consumers don't why would they even dig into the details of the stuff yeah it's your were blowing smoke up our own butts if we think people know what publishers are do yeah I agree it's also extremely time consuming to manage that's also because we're such a small team that we just we prioritize our activities towards the developers and making sure that the project pop rather than focusing more on who we are as a label. And as Daniel mentioned it's like that's I guess the summary vibes based publishing is like it's got feeling when we see a game and basically everyone on the teams counts in some way or form because we just all scroll through social media and whatever and if we run into something that we're like whoa it's kind of cool. We just drop it in the channel everybody looks at it and then we say like yeah cool this can work maybe who knows and then Daniel reaches out or who knows we already had a point of contact and then we evaluate evaluation process is really easy if everybody is excited then we do it and then we sign within sometimes a week few days there's that's the easy green lip process. That we have at or which means that we can act very quickly as opposed to some other publishers so that's again kind of a different way of doing publishing. Can you keep that up is or are going to be ten people next year twenty people a year after that no the goal is to remain as small as possible for as long as possible without it hurting the services that we offer to the studios. Obviously it is impossible to manage a back catalog of ten twenty thirty games over the years by only four people it's just it's impossible so we're very realistic and however because we're such an efficient company we are very careful about adding more people to the company. We have our pillars communication the publishing production business development the goal is now we have everybody in place and we're a well or machine and if we see that there is a need for an additional person within each of these demands. We will 100% at somebody to it but it's on a need basis and we just we chat all the time about this to manage the bandwidth and the workloads because obviously I don't want people to burn out and be like because I want to stay small you have to work fifty hours a week now it's just not possible and I don't want to want to put this on to the team but the goal is to remain as small as possible to not lose the efficiency. So you guys I think have demonstrated to anybody satisfaction that you've got a nose for what people want what do people want these days. Tell me about I look at the landscape for games this year right and I look at some of the stuff that's popped off and I think my surface level take is graphical fidelity is not as important as it used to be or my mind. As it used to be or maybe it never was people are more interested in mechanics people are super interested in co-op. What else would you like tell me what trends can you see in the marketplace? Small question I know yeah yeah yeah Maybe a bit of a hot take and doesn't really Mash well together with what we've been just saying about the types of game. I love this already We like I feel like People Like a game that goes against the grain quite a bit You know the trend is we're doing friend slops this year Then you know dispatch you're gonna sell couple million a copies in in a week You know expedition 33 is gonna pop off like a double-aid JRPG and I think there is always room to just make whatever you passionate about and then it'll pop off Because just have so many players there are people who like any you know like All sorts of things so I don't think I feel like if a trend has a name You kind of a little bit too late in chasing it right you know Friends lops have been on the rise for the past like three four years basically especially after a lethal company obviously But at this point if you're just starting out I think like it's a little bit too late But yeah, the The stuff that is beyond the surface was like people still like hope experience is quite a lot obviously that's not gonna go away anywhere I think I honestly I don't think the trends are that important. I think it's Exactly what Daniel says is for us as well. We always Try to find something that isn't come like everything Basically is already being done or at least it's very hard to find games that haven't been done before but sometimes you find them and then It's amazing, but it's also very risky Because you don't know what to expect right like it's it's more difficult because how do you position a game is because there's nothing like similar There's no trail there's no trail to follow and now I mean obviously with rotate research like we're not reinventing the wheel right like this is not the most Wow, I have never seen this in my life type of game But it combines what we believe like two genres for the first time which is the life sim simulation and the front slap and The combination of those two together makes it a pretty unique positioning that is I wouldn't say it's a blue ocean because Everybody loves the term blue ocean. I wouldn't say it's yes There is no blue ocean, but at least it has less sharks in the water So we know that if it's done well, we have a frame of reference But it can also be its own unique thing in that space in that sub niche and that's exactly what I think is interesting and from a business standpoint is Juggling risk versus reward So that is the interesting things that we look for but as Daniel mentioned like people if they like something it doesn't matter They will just buy it anyway regardless of which genre that is popping But yeah, it's just more difficult for us to judge if it's gonna pop But also in terms of graphic fidelity. I'm really looking forward to seven generation of consoles nostalgia Come back, you know, we've had the sx for a while now. Let's let's do the ps3 piss filter games now Yes, how brown can a game be let's bring that back Yeah, good shit What What would Why why would somebody sign with Oro and not with one of the big Big name publishers if I'm a dev and I've got a contract offer from That is a question that we have to answer Quiet often when we talk to the devs We trust you guys so get get get ready for Yeah, so I mean we are still a full service publisher, right? We still provide the full suites of services the regular publisher does with the small cabit of social community stuff that I mentioned And then like some like like some said We are a team of four so you get to meet all of us and you can quickly figure out before signing if you'll just enjoy working with the whole of the team because Why would you lock yourself into a contract and work for years and years with someone you don't potentially like and in our case, it's super easy and When you work with a big publisher, you're still gonna be working on average with like four or five people We just don't get to choose them so in terms of the attention and care you receive from a publisher There is really no difference. It's just we take on fewer games than a larger publisher And on top of that we have really good terms. I've worked at a few indie publishers and I've seen a lot of contracts and we have I think in terms of publishers the best terms that I've seen honestly I know one project funding place that has better terms than we do, but they're not a publisher So one thing I think that and I've talked to loads of folks in this sort of new wave of publishers that have you know Better terms than then the stand so the standard indie publishing contract the standard raw fury developer style And the publishing contract to oversimplify is we'll give you the money to make the game We'll pay for marketing. We'll pay for loke and it's gonna be 50 50 Game comes out. We're going to recoup some or all of that cost Or maybe we're gonna recoup all that cost and then a bit more and then we're gonna go 50 50 from there so To grossly oversimplify you guys are part of this wave of sort of newer publishers with more generous terms than that Maybe sometimes there's no funding or there's less funding, but there's You know the devs get a higher proportion on the back end. Maybe there's no recoup or a limited recoup One thing that I've noticed talking to folks in those sorts of setups is that The publisher in that position has a lot less sort of caret and stick to Get the dev to come along with the publisher's ideas, right? In the old system where you know the publisher is doling out the money you need to pay the rent every month You listen to that person right the dev is going to do if the publisher says hey the game needs more rabbits and They're dangling next month's check over the over that Devs will do it In a position where you're not funding the game You're getting a minority share on the back end you're very much the junior partner in the relationship, aren't you? how do you balance being the junior partner in the relationship with Trying to get the dev to come along with some of of what you want to do like so you guys I've talked about I think part of your secret sauce being we can help you shape the product to be more marketable to be more To have that explosive potential. How do you get people to listen think it's It's important to know that I don't see us shaping the product. It's rather we give our expertise on What does a game need to pop in the time frame that we think the game? Should be shipped in right like we don't interfere in the creative vision of the project It's rather we do some research we point out like this is how we feel about it and then we give it to them and then it's up to them basically to decide Do they see this fitting into the game's vision or not if not skip it? If it does then implement it obviously But to come back to the question is the reason why it works is because we do a lot of Talking before and we really feel out the relationship before we will never sign with the developer that we feel can make it like Advantage of us and our good terms we Attach a lot of importance to meeting with the developers before we sign is basically the four of us in a call with the studio Depending on how many people it's like a lot of people in a meeting and then we just chat. It's not negotiation. It's just feeling each other out because we also have a good feel for studios like is this a studio that we see ourselves working with and if we have any doubts at all about a studio Then we don't do it regardless of how how promising the game is so it's it's very much got feeling again on a people level Before we offer them anything even though the game might be the most amazing thing ever So for us that balances is out balance it out because then we're not the junior partner or equal partners and the terms don't reflect the balance in the relationship I also want to add that. I don't think it's a good relationship dynamic, the characteristic thing that you describe for a non-date. So yeah, we just want to work with partners that come to us because they value our expertise and think our opinion is something they should consider. And if we do a good job, then we can relay how we feel about the game and what something should be changed or adjusted without threatening the developers livelihood. No, I mean, look, you're right to say that's not a healthy or at the very least, it's not a dynamic that's conducive to long-term relationships. Exactly. I can count on one hand the number of times I've talked to a dev who's gone back to work with the publisher multiple times and their opinion of the publisher is just like, oh, yeah, we love them. It just doesn't really happen. Like, I don't matter what. So if you guys can actually cultivate, let's do this interview again in five years. I'd love to see how much repeat business you guys are getting. And where are they getting repeat business, right? Or does it research? Yeah, well, Rootside Pitnik is research is the second one. And then, yeah, Rootside, we have the monology and that format is also the same developer that the monology already, it was already released when we picked it up, but we basically offered a combo deal telling him like, look, we really like your work. We want to know what's up. Are you working on something new and he was working on something new? And so we offered him like, we can also take care of the monology to prove what we can do. And then you already build a sense of trust with the developer in the meantime while you were working on that format. So for us, we immediately, like, the performance of the game improved significantly for the monology, which gave a lot of trust and made our relationship live in healthier. The dog is interrupting. Look, I've got my own dog. I'm surprised he hasn't started kicking off. Yeah, don't worry. Okay, so when you guys talked earlier about PR, I mean, me, I'm a thousand years old. I hear PR, I think PR means press releases and trying to get an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun. And you don't mean that. No, we, I wouldn't say we're doing things differently. I mean, it's still the same ingredients, right? Like for us, the core ingredients are by far content creators, YouTube, Twitch, whatever. But then also news creators. Those are the people on social media that cover news. Hey, have you seen this new co-op game play with your friends type of channels that cover a wide variety of new games? And then you have the traditional press, IGN, Kutaku, Rob Paper Shotgun, etc. So it's a combination of the way we do things differently is we're a bit, I wouldn't say old school, but we attach a lot of importance to same as with working with developers is that the human connection, we do everything manually. We don't use any software, no PR tools of reaching influencers, no key distribution tools, nothing. We do it all manually and actually we, I mean Stan, he's doing an amazing job at this. He is just scarring the internet for relevant content creators based on a data set of games that we think has similar audience or at least an overlap. And every time we do a campaign, we do the exercise. Obviously, over time, you build up the database of yourself that we can use as a starting point. But even then all the time we do a research on games, that's me and Stan, and then Stan is truly in detective modus in which he just goes through YouTube, Twitch, whatever, finding people that cover these types of games. We put them in one large set and then we know like this is a highly targeted set and sure it's not 10,000 people, but at least the thousand or 2,000 people that we reach out to, we know 100% sure that it will be relevant and then the art is in how do you pitch it. So we always showcase the value to those content creators because it's a game that they want to play. It's a game that we believe can pull in huge amount of numbers, which is ultimately the goal of them. So we phrase it in a way that it's a win-win situation and it's not us pushing again a new game that may be unrelated to their threats, which causes low coverage rates. So for us, this is how we do it differently, and that is basically old school manual work, no AI or software or tools, whatever, just excel and Google to get the job done. Nice. Yeah, I mean, the Google sheet remains undefeated for that kind of work. That is true. What's the biggest thing you've messed up, Sam, so far? What's the biggest? Obviously, the history of the company is, you know, it's not 100-year-old Japanese Ibotzu, but you must have some stuff you've done in the last year or two where you thought, I wish I could do that over. Tell us about it. I wouldn't say big elements, but it's a combination of multiple smaller things, right? I'm only 27. I have never run a company before, and now I'm in charge of four, soon five people, and obviously there is no playbook to running a publisher, which means that I got to figure things out on the go, which I'm luckily surrounded by a few, I would call them mentors that help me guide the waters of publishing. So I'm very fortunate that I have those people, but ultimately, of course, you make mistakes, and it's not life and day mistakes, or like, if I fuck this up, then the company's going down. I think I have a good understanding of what I don't need to do to fuck the company up. But ultimately, it's figuring out along the way, and that means that you will make mistakes. And so far, nothing major has happened, and fortunately, but I'm sure that at some point I will do an upcy, and I'll be like, fuck, this is terrible. What surprised you the most about publishing since you got into it? I think from the out, publishing from the outside is one of those things where people look at it and go, it's like advertising, right? Everybody has an opinion on advertising, so they think I could be advertising. You can't, not everybody's got the skill set. What's the thing where from the outside, you were like, oh, every publisher is doing this wrong, and now that you're actually publishing, you go, oh, okay. I was the same thinking like my naive, I was already thinking about this when I was in my early 20s, like five years ago, I was like, I want to be a publisher, and I'm going to do things better than everybody else, because I am ambitious. Yes. Of you. Every publisher is doing that, but naive me was thinking that obviously I was only doing promotion up until then, which was, I wouldn't say easy, but I was used to it, and I was like, okay, I can manage, so I can become a publisher. However, there was way more to it than just doing promotion. There's so many moving parts, juggling, developers, development timelines, all of this that I didn't have to take into account before, which made it exponentially more difficult for me to manage. So I quickly realized that I am not able to do this on my own. So Stan came joining the team very quickly, but I then realized, even with the two of us, it's just impossible to manage. We would make mistakes, big mistakes, because the workload would be too high. So to me, it was very crucial to get towards a team that is super solid. So Hans joined the team, and he's been managing as I had a publishing, the marketing strategies and such, and he's doing an amazing job and producing as well. And then Daniel, I knew Daniel as well from a while back, and I knew that he would be the perfect person to join Oro. So I just lured him in. We kept talking, I was like, is there a possibility that you join Oro one day, and then one thing led to the other, and then at some point he joined. And now that we have the team set in place, and we're working on more and more games together, it falls into place. And that to me is the coolest thing ever, seeing that if I take one or two days off, it just keeps running. Like it continues, and it continues very well. Wow. The power of the education. But to me, that was, I was the naive self thinking that I have to be involved in everything and try to do these kinds of things. So for me, the most challenging thing was letting go and trusting people to do a better job than me. So that was tricky from a personal standpoint, I would say. No, but that is, I mean, that is the classic new CEO problem. seeing it a million times. I experienced myself when I was a CEO and I coached lots of people through it since then. You have to succeed through other people because there's not enough of it. Exactly. To go around. You can't do it all. And you shouldn't do it all, even if you could. I'm not going back to the solo days again. Having a team is very comforting in some moments. But yeah, also to come back to the question because I kind of deviated from Edith. I think the majority of my, what I want to improve is the speed, the efficiency. I think that is the most important thing for Oroiz. The efficiency has to remain as high as possible because I work at a different company before in which I was in the development side and tried to pitch games to publishers and it took ages and ages and ages as sometimes to get a response even. So for me, it was kind of frustrating and I was like, if I am a publisher, then I will not do it this way. I'm going to respond to everyone personally with an email covering why we're not signing. Oh man. Yeah. That's, I was going to say, that's a beautiful sentiment but one that will not survive the attack with reality, especially once you've shipped a couple of games and your name is out there, your inboxes must be just delusional stuff. It's not possible to respond to everyone with a proper email elaborating on why we didn't sign here. That was my naive self thinking, I can do it but no, I'm not able to do it. You mentioned there's no AI in the the oro process. Correct. Could AI do what oro does? I mean, who knows in 20 or 50 years, but I don't think so because of the gut feeling. It would blow my mind if they can train something to a level of our gut feeling. And not just my gut feeling, just the team in general. I think the combination of our gut feelings together is quite strong and cohesive. So I don't think so to be honest. No, definitely not. I'm inclined to agree with you. I think the more the more time I spend in the industry and the more time I spend looking at what sells and what doesn't, the less certain I get about anything. I don't think I don't think you can train an AI to do that stuff. Where are you guys based? You're based in the Netherlands, right? No, Belgium. I still say Belgium. It's quite sensitive to be honest. No, it's kidding. We love the Netherlands as well. But no, I'm based in Belgium. You're my policy. We're neighbors. So we're all in the same time zone. So Sam and Stan are in Belgium, Hans is in Denmark, I'm in Germany. Which can be a bit of an issue in terms of picking up games. We have so many amazing games coming out recently in the past few months from the West Coast. And if we want to have regular working hours, it's a bit tough, but it's convenient that we're all close together and we can meet up in person as well. How often do you guys meet up in person? Well, the company is pretty new, but we did meet up this summer. Just when I joined to commemorate the moment with a group picture that we used to announce the board of allegations. Very stylish. Hopefully we'll do it at least. We go to some events like Gamescom, it's all almost going to be there. So there's also that. But hopefully we'll do yearly. The goal is to meet at least two times a year. Gamescom is basically in the middle of wherever one lives. So it's an easy event to go to and it makes sense to meet up there. But ideally we have at least one more or two more events yearly. We're just to get together like we did last summer. Because otherwise being remote all the time can be, I mean, you want to build a team. So it's important that the teams see each other and just have fun together, hang out. You can only do it in person. So true, true that. What games come for for a modern publisher? Is it for scouting? Is it for meeting partners? Is it for getting FaceTime? What is it? It's not for scouting for us. Well, I mean, a little bit of course. It always is. But for the most part, I would say it's some FaceTime with bigger partners, consoles, storefronts, whatever else is going on in that moment. It's for hanging out. You obviously. I was just about to say it's for hanging out with friends. And it's just, you know, the one of the two events a year where you can get pretty much anyone to meet. And it's more European centric, which is more relevant to us, I guess, than GDC. And there is a bit of scouting, but I find that most developers who are working on games that we're interested in, they're not going to go to a bigger event or to an event at all. We'll find them where they are. We'll find them in like, we'll wear discord servers. We'll find them on Twitter. We'll find them on itch or wherever else. So events are less so about scouting for us, especially the bigger ones, like small regional ones. Yeah. Say, say, say more about that though, Daniel. Like what, what is it about the kinds of devs you're interested in that will lead them to not go to a event like that? Well, I mean, a lot of developers that we talk to are just some guy in their apartment working on a game because they find it cool and like poking around good dough engine and putting that stuff out on itch. They're not even thinking about going to a games conference. Maybe they're not even thinking about their game being a commercial product in the first place. If you have the budget to go to gamescom, it is also pretty likely you're working on a bigger project and maybe you're pitching your three year death cycle game that needs like $700,000 and then we're probably not departing for you. How many games are in the portfolio right now? Come on. If anybody should know it's you to be grabbed the let me grab the shit. Where's that Google? It's like right now. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven and one unannounced. So eight in total. Yeah. Still so manageable. But yeah. So what's the plan? Ship two or three games a year? Four to six. The goal is to have four locked in place and then to have room for like the hey we've come across something amazing and we still have bandwidth to sign and do it in a month if we're crazy. Like the poker game we did now or we're doing now is I think it was signed like two weeks ago or maybe three by now two weeks something. Hey, it was like yeah, it's basically because of roadside research that got pushed to Q1, 26. So we had an opening or like yeah, I mean we can do another game maybe for before the end of the year if the stars align and then we saw that game or like yeah, poker clicker. It's like one of the pillars that we think is very exciting like the idle clicker games. But then if you add poker which is a very known I mean I guess I wouldn't call it gambling but like a card game. It is but that to us was exciting because of the combination and it's very very juicy and effect. It's like a dopamine fiesta. So we thought yeah we can take this if the death is okay with the timeline and he pitched this. I want to get this out of the door before the end of the year or like fuck yes. Let's sign. So the stars align and it was like from first contact to signing was within the week. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Usually publishers tell devs like yeah don't come to us if your game is two months from ship that is way too late. But in our case it can actually work. It works fairly often. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What are you guys playing right now? You go first Daniel. I still need to think I have a okay. Let's throw off backlog. Okay. Um yeah. I'm a huge CRPG nerd and I finally got around to playing Warhammer 40K RobE trader. Ah. Yeah. Yeah. It's good isn't it. It is it is very good. I I have read that the Act 4 is going to be a whole different game in terms of the difficulty so I'm dreading that moment because uh playing on the normal difficulty it is already fairly challenging. I'm not the mid-maxing kind of nerd. I just just love CRPGs and and role-playing. And then on the side, I'm still doing a bit of Clover Pit and a bit of Mega Bunk and Slots and Dagger's is next on the line. Mega, Mega Bunk. I thought I was, I thought I had, I played so much because we work at Kabuda, we work with Chase and Carrots, the halls of Tourment guys. I was like, I've played so much halls of Tourment this year. I've loved it, but I was like, okay, that's enough Survivor's games for one lifetime. I've had enough, but then, yeah, Mega Bunk got its claws back into me again. It's freaking good, Mega Bunk. It is, it is very good. I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of the, of the humor, you know, like, Internet memes. But, but the game, the game itself is so good. I just, I don't care about it. Yeah, no, no, I'm, I'm not in it for the memes. I'm in it for the, for the dopamine. Yeah. So I actually just wrapped up this patch, which I thought was really good. I'm a, I'm a big fan of these episode based types of games because it's manageable for me to like, I just dedicate like an hour to hours to a game at night and then I'm okay with it. It's done the episodes and then I can just move on and the next week and come back to it. So for me, it's, an interesting way of playing games because it's also how I play games. Most of the time, it's just like, one or two hours, then done and then again and again and again. So I really enjoyed that one. I also played my fair share of Arc Raiders. Together with Stan, we played a bunch of Arc Raiders recently. And then I'm actually now, I played other wilds on Game Pass, but I think they removed it. So I was like, fuck, I didn't complete the game and I listened to the soundtrack quite often because the music is amazing. And I was like, I am now obligated to complete that game because otherwise I'm just a fraud. So now I bought it on Steam and I'm actually working my way through again. So I hope I can complete it this time so I don't feel like a fraud listening to the music all the time. Yeah. Oh nice. See, and the Microsoft people will be like, ah, see more proof that Game Pass doesn't cannibalize sales. I think I played it like three or four times now. So it doesn't matter where it's located. I'll still play it again, probably somewhere else in the future. I mean, that is the true mark of loving a game when you buy it on multiple platforms. I've got a couple of those. A few of those as well. I think I've into the breach. I think I've bought into the breach on three different platforms. For me, it starts you, I think I have started you, on all platforms. Just lovely starting. All right. Boys, anything we didn't get into that you wanted to talk about? Any any hot takes you've been hiding hiding from me that you're just waiting to bust out. Secret sauce. I mean, secret hot takes. I have a hot take. It might be a while, but my hot take was, I did a little little talk on it recently as well about how data and analytics don't matter at all scouting and evaluating. You open a can of worms now, picking into game which games to make as and indeed develop yourself. Okay. Hang on. Now we have to get into this. So hang on. So tell me if I'm rephrasing your your thesis correctly, Daniel. So you're saying, this is advice that you're giving to. Wait a second. And what you're telling them is don't bother looking at any kind of metrics or numbers just make the game into your heart. Just one, just one. And that's early validation metrics and numbers. But when you're thinking about which game you're want to make, don't look at what genre is a selling well. And don't think because the median copies sold for like a survival craft game is this amount. That means that your game is going to sell at least this as well. And don't put it in your pitch deck because that's not based on anything. And if you're a publisher and you evaluating game, don't do that as well because another indie publisher is that have those, you know, matrixes and processes and data and all that stuff that comes into evaluating like sales forecasts type, type deal. Yeah. I think it can be a lot simpler. You can kind of just look at the game and you think like, squint your eyes a little bit, is that going to sell like 50 game month one? Yeah, we think so. Okay. That's that's that's our realistic scenario. This is very on brand for the vibes based. I mean, that is as accurate as you can be without any like actual data about your game to back it up. I think of yes. No, yeah. I have to say I agree with a lot of that. I mean, I spent a lot of time. I was at a big publisher for a few years and one of the things we spent a lot of time doing was refining forecast models. And I remember, you know, how did I work constantly? Well, it's like, what's the point of doing this? The forecasts are always science fiction. We have no idea. I saw it both recently of a Friedeman pitching to a future friend games to Thomas. His his game slots and daggers. And was just the message was, hey, I've been working on this during the weekend. Looks kind of cool. I think it may be something. What do you think? And then you like insert like a clip of like 30 seconds probably. That to us, we take it any day over a pitch deck of 20 pages with numbers that were taken from some database. And then it's like, hey, because of the median, you should sign us because we only ask for like a fraction of the median. So to us that just doesn't make sense, we'd rather get the vibes based pitching as well. Just show us the game because if the game is cool, then and we're convinced that we don't need the exact data to evaluate a yes or a no. Like 90% of the decision is already made purely on the game and the initial effect of like, oh, cool, the impression. No, and I think one thing that you guys are totally right about is just that if you don't have a deep passion for the thing you're building, why you building it. I mean, and if you look at the stuff that has popped off in the last few years, it's stuff that isn't necessarily the most beautiful game isn't necessarily the most complex game, but it's a game where there's something at the heart of it and that thing sings. Yeah, there's a mechanic or there's a vibe or there's something where somebody clearly put a lot of love and a lot of effort into it and that's what makes a game click with people. Yeah, it definitely translates into the final game and players do pick up on it. Well, Euro Interactive, Sam Daniel, it's been a real pleasure having you guys on the show. Thanks for having us. Likewise, thank you for having us. Right. Cool. Fernando, that was a great episode. I'm really sorry, I missed it. What are any big takeaways, surprises that you felt? It kind of felt like a very insightful conversation about the difficulties of indie publishing that we've talked about, risk, partnership, intuition and also balance in that against the realities of spreadsheets and stuff like that. The coming of age story, maybe a little bit. What really interested me about these guys is that when you and I were dealing with game publishing Shams back and also erecting pyramids and hinges, I'm not sure and I'm speaking just for myself here, but I'm not sure that I looked at games through the market ability lens the way these guys do and to the degree that they do. These guys are looking at games and saying, "Could I make a tick-tock out of this? Is this an Instagram reel that people are going to engage with?" That's a fascinating lens and you look at the success that they've been having. They just released roadside research at the time of recording. Roadside research just came out the last week or so. It's doing extremely well. Every time these guys ship something, it just seems to validate their hypothesis and it's a very different hypothesis from the one you and I were operating under when we were working. I think that we talked about this many times in the past. The past two, three years we've seen maybe 60 publishers be launched and most of them have not made it. Who are the torsors? One that we follow is quite costly, of course, and they've been very, very successful. Or is another, we've unite, tried to get Helen Bernel on the podcast for a very, very long time. Her publisher, the cult recently announced that they're closing doors. So there'll be more of this and hopefully we'll be able to unpack. But it's great to see or interactive and they're finding their niche because I think honestly at the end of the day, one of the things that is a big success indicator is your ability to focus and another word for focus is being a little bit niche. That's my take. Yeah, it's a good take. It also just, you know, I think there's a lot to learn about the way these guys do market it. And I think if you're involved in selling games and any capacity. I think you probably benefit from following these guys on the different platforms and casting an eye over what they do because they're very good. Great, fantastic. Okay, that's it. We're going to be back in two weeks with another episode. It's probably going to be a two-parter, the next one. Yeah. And until then again, thank you for spreading the word about podcasts, sharing the word on social media and your platforms or choice and supporting us on Patreon. Until then, Fernando, what will you be playing? I've got a hard drive full of next-fest demos that I need to sort through. You know what, surprisingly great is this battle-star galactica game? Mmm. Real good. Okay. I love me some Adama. Yeah. Well, he makes a very brief appearance in this, at least in the demo. What do you play? I'm a. It's just pathetic. I'm rotating between magic, the gathering and hell-divers. I don't have a whole lot of time. No time for us. But my newest obsession, and I will pull up steam and tell you how many hours I have. And this is not my friends. This is me, despite having a new born, a company to run, and like nine bajillion things in a podcast, I've clocked in 121 hours since December 22nd on the bizarre. Oh, yeah, you told me about this. Okay. I'm going to pull my finger out. Next episode, we'll talk. Okay, great. Have a good one everyone. Take care. Bye-bye. Bye, everybody.