Flashbulb Games: The Pros and Cons of Independence

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Few games offer as much freedom as Trailmakers. Whether it's spaceships, aeroplanes, ships, or even submarines, you can design and build exactly the kind of vehicles you dream of. And in the game's vast open-world, you can go wherever you want, from outer space to the bottom of the ocean.

For its developer, the Denmark-based Flashbulb Games, Trailmakers was a truly liberating project, as their own creative freedom had been a long time coming - and came at a price.

From University to Microsoft

I've sat down to speak with Ole Teglbjærg. He is the co-founder of Flashbulb Games and has been part of the journey from all the way back when the studio was called Press Play - and even before that.

Originally, Teglbjærg studied journalism at Roskilde University. However, when he learnt that he could earn twice as many credits by taking a scientific course, he decided to take up programming. Through this new path, he met Rune Dittmer and Mikkel Thorsted, and after their final exams, the trio founded Press Play.

Although they were now their own bosses, they didn't feel especially free. Press Play started out as a multimedia agency, and in the beginning they mainly focused on internet advertising and other contract work. "If this is what it's like, then I don't want to be self-employed. I might be my own boss, but it doesn't make me happy in any way," Teglbjærg thought at the time.

Later on, the studio landed a deal with DR (Denmark's national public service broadcaster) to make games for a children-oriented online platform. This proved the catalyst for what would later become Max & the Magic Marker, the studio's first and most successful game. Like the later Trailmakers, the creative platformer focuses on freedom and creativity, as the player uses a magic crayon to draw objects such as platforms and traps that aid Max in his journey.

Max and the Magic Marker saw the light of day in 2010 and was followed by a sequel, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. The latter was a launch title for Microsoft's Xbox One, and this was no coincidence, as by then, Press Play had been acquired by the Seattle-based tech giant.

A Tumultuous Time at Microsoft

It all started with a meeting during Gamescom. At the time, Microsoft were looking for developers to create games for their Windows Phones and Kinect peripheral. Press Play fitted the profile well and secured some contract work. But the relationship changed in 2011, much to the delight of the Danish studio, which at the time was struggling to make ends meet.

"At this point things weren't going that well at Press Play, so we suggested to Microsoft that instead of having to make a new deal for each project, we could perhaps make a deal for three or more games. Some time later, they came back and said: 'Instead of you doing three or five games, how about we just buy you?' We didn't need to be told twice. Our finances really needed that at the time," says Teglbjærg.

The deal was finalised in 2012. Under Microsoft, Press Play not only published Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, but also the co-op focused platformer Kalimba which garnered critical acclaim and even got nominated for Best Original Property at the BAFTAs.

Our entire support team was moved over to support Minecraft

Unfortunately, Microsoft's gaming division was in trouble. Xbox One lagged far behind Sony's PlayStation 4 in the console race and, as is often the case with the Seattle tech giant, they ended up solving their problems by throwing money at another company. In November 2014, Microsoft paid 2.5 billion dollars for the Swedish developer Mojang, the creators of Minecraft. For Press Play, this led to big changes.

"Our entire support team was moved over to support Minecraft," Teglbjærg says. "Fair enough. But it also meant that the people who had agreed that we were a good investment were suddenly no longer around us. We ended up with a boss who sat in the UK for a bit, then in the US, then back to the UK, then back to the US again. It was fairly chaotic."

Teglbjærg describes that at the time, there was a lot of uncertainty internally in Microsoft's Xbox department about which strategy to pursue in order to get back into the console race. Priorities shifted constantly, and it all ended with Press Play and Lionhead - the studio behind the popular Fable games - being closed by Microsoft in 2016 as part of a major shift in the company's strategy.

The Price of Freedom

When Press Play was shut down in 2016, the studio was working on the survival game Knoxville. This project ended up being cancelled, but two of the studio's other prototypes were given a second chance. One became Deep Rock Galactic, developed by Ghost Ship Games, while Flashbulb Games, the successor to Press Play, started work on Trailmakers. With some money left from the sale to Microsoft, they now set out to realise their dream game.

"We've always been huge fans of Lego. It was the framework for Trailmakers. And then we'd seen how Besiege, which came out right around that time [in 2015], had done really well. We were very fascinated by this open way of making games, where it's more about systems working together than a story and a grand narrative," Teglbjærg explains about the inspiration for the game.

But while the studio was now free - both from contract labour and Microsoft - there were still plenty of restrictions. The most pressing ones were of a technical nature. Flashbulb Games wanted to make a physics-based multiplayer game, and that proved quite a challenge.

"There wasn't really any technology that could execute physics in the way we wanted to. Fortunately, we had a network programmer, Villads [Bønding Einfeldt], who's something of a genius and who developed a system that all our games have since been based on. We work in Unity, and underneath that, we have a network layer that is insanely fast. It allows us to make physics-based multiplayer games with relatively many players."

The other major challenge was something as prosaic as selling the game. There is a lot of competition in the market for creative sandbox games - not least from Minecraft, the best-selling game in history that had, through no fault of its own, closed down the studio once already. To succeed, Flashbulb Games, which publishes Trailmakers by itself, decided on a focused strategy from the beginning, relying mostly on influencers or, to put it more bluntly, they wanted others to sell the game for them. "Influencers were at the core of everything we did. This also meant that we created some systems quite early on for how to work with influencers strategically," says Teglbjærg.

The initiative seems to have paid off. Trailmakers received a lot of attention during its Early Access launch back in 2018. The following year, the game was officially released for PC and Xbox One, and is now also available for PlayStation. With over 5 million players across platforms, the game has been a huge success. However, Flashbulb has also come to the realisation that the game "is not turning into Minecraft after all." As a result, they have been busy with other projects as well, including the physics-based party game Rubber Bandits, which was released towards the end of 2021.

The Advantages of Creative Control

According to Teglbjærg, one of the advantages of being independent is that it has been possible to build a close relationship with influencers and fans. But there are also challenges when trying to sell your game by yourself. For example, Teglbjærg admits that they initially "messed up the price of Rubber Bandits." At release, the game was sold for around 17 euro - a high price considering that the experience is best enjoyed with up to three friends who in turn also will need to buy a copy. As a result, Rubber Bandits quickly received a permanent price reduction.

"One of the things we learnt at Microsoft is that, in many instances, they're not significantly better. They just have more money."

Despite the pricing issues, Rubber Bandits still gained a lot of players, as it was made available on Xbox Game Pass from day one. It appears, there are no hard feelings following the break with Microsoft, and Teglbjærg says that overall the studio have been quite satisfied with their presence on Microsoft's subscription service.

"Microsoft pays pretty well to get it on Game Pass day one. Of course, that was a good argument for why it made sense. Then you can always try to guess how much it cannibalises your sales. Another reason that it made sense to release on Game Pass was that we got a fairly large influx of players filling up our servers. This means that the waiting time is quite short if you want to play with other people."

Flashbulb Games is currently owned by Nordisk Games, a subsidiary of the Egmont Group, which also owns studios such as Supermassive Games and Avalanche, the developer of Just Cause, and holds minority stakes in several other studios. However, Flashbulb Games has retained full creative control and continues to publish its games independently, which, as mentioned, has brought both benefits and challenges.

"One of the things we learnt at Microsoft is that, in many instances, they're not significantly better. They just have more money," Teglbjærg explains with a smile. "When we started over with Flashbulb, it was a huge relief not to have to deal with the fact that there was suddenly a marketing guy in Seattle who thought this or that asset had to be a completely different colour for our game to sell. Now, it's much more about following our hearts and believing in ourselves."

One of the most significant differences is that they no longer have to go through the highly formalised process at Microsoft, where you must reach various milestones and where creative decisions often have to be approved from above before they can be further developed. Instead, the development process is - for better or worse - more fluid, Teglbjærg reveals.

This has enabled Flashbulb to regularly add new content to their games, and after seven years on the market, the wheels are turning faster than ever for Trailmakers. On March 6, the biggest update to date was added to the game. The free expansion, called Trailmakers - Pioneers, adds, among other things, a full 10-hour campaign with missions where players must gather resources, craft new blocks, and fight an evil corporation.

If anything, the expansion - with its focus on crafting, mining and survival - reminds us a bit of Minecraft. Perhaps a fitting irony for a developer that has experienced its share of twists and turns during its nearly two decades of existence.