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A portfolio that has nothing "tiny" about it - Interview with tinyBuild at DevGAMM Lisbon
We talked to Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of the publisher, reviewing their past and present projects, as well as some future indie releases.
Audio transcription
"All right, I'm in Cascais for the DevGAMM, this is day two.
We are standing at the, you know, TinyBuild booth, you can tell.
And I'm here joined by CEO Alex, thank you so much for joining us."
"We were here yesterday talking about Potion Craft, but now we can talk more games.
So, first of all, you know, you had this recent release which was successful and was a very quirky different game, which is DuckSide.
So what can you tell me about the success and the release of that game?
Yeah, so DuckSide is our first game that was developed and released in under a year, which is like an exciting pivot for us because now we have multiple studios working in-house, they can share technology."
"And I really am into games where, you know, like MMO style shooters, survival shooters, where you have no leveling, where you have no XP systems, where it's all fair play and your, essentially your progress is your skill level, and your loot is what you can lose at any given time."
"So, you know, it's a game about pain and tears disguised in a quirky little duck shooter where ducks with guns try to kill each other and then build bases and then destroy each other's bases.
So it's a really high-stakes game that subverts your expectations and we're really happy with the way that people have received it."
"How are people, you know, what's the feedback you're getting from the community?
How are people playing this game, actually? What are they doing with the game?
So you see, in these style of sandboxes, there is no condition of win, right?
So you decide when you win."
"So you can, you know, go farming, you can go do PvE events, you can kill bots, you can get a bunch of loot, you can build a huge base.
Or what I like to do, and sorry guys for admitting this, is I will sit in front of your base with a shotgun, wait for you to do all of that, and as you enter your base, I'll attempt to kill you and take all of your loot."
"And then we'll exchange compliments in voice chat.
Only compliments, alright, alright.
So when you're seeing this, this is happening mid-November, but also when we're publishing this, it means we can talk about Of Ash and Steel, which is your new game, we got a press release about it, we're readying it as we speak."
"So what can you tell us that's coming up with this game?
So Of Ash and Steel is one of the many directions that we're investing into.
And I grew up playing a lot of RPGs, and we really wanted to get something special for the RPG genre, right?
Where you choose your own adventure, where you follow a really interesting story, where you get distracted with so many side quests."
"So I'm really excited about Of Ash and Steel, and it just shows like, you know, in contrast of Duckside, of Potion Craft, that you guys talked about yesterday, and Of Ash and Steel, we're investing into a really diverse portfolio, so we don't have like a very specific target audience."
"I just love working on really cool games, and doing homages to genres that I personally grew up with.
And you just mentioned Potion Craft once again.
What did it mean to you guys, to your portfolio, to the catalogue of games, you know, the variety of genres that you guys are offering, and also the business as well?
What does it mean for you guys as a publisher?
Well, I mean, games like Potion Craft come every now and then, when we were expecting a few hours of gameplay from the demo that we published a couple of years ago, and then we launched the demo, and then we realized that people are spending tens of hours in it."
"And that's a really good sign, because the common denominator through our whole portfolio and our business decisions is time.
We are fighting for people's time, with other games, with Netflix, with your phone, with TikTok, etc."
"So whenever we see that a game has a huge time spent, which, you know, DuckSide just came out, and it also has a very high time spent.
Like, we're talking about 10% of users spending over 20 hours in it."
"And right now 4% have spent over 50.
It's only been two months.
You don't have that much time in your life.
So games like Potion Craft with that high replayability, with, you know, that cozy feeling of it, that is also what we're looking for and quite heavily investing into."
"And I think I read on your profile that you actually are interested in players spending thousands of hours.
So how do you sort of overview this as a CEO for the publisher?
How do you try and scan the market and try to scout for these sort of games?
We're talking about very, you know, varied genres."
"Well, you're right that the genres can vary, right?
But there are common denominators.
For example, we don't really like games with a definite win condition, right?
We like games that are based on levels that you play only once in a linear fashion."
"Because, you know, think about it.
You create a game with 10 levels.
Each level takes an hour.
It's therefore 10 hours to beat, right?
You add level number 11, you've added 10%."
"You add level number 12, you get diminishing returns the more you add.
And this is why games take so long to develop these days.
And what's worse is that, you know, it's kind of like if you're building a house or, like, have some sort of long renovation project, halfway through it, you're burned out."
"Like, you really need to take bite-sized chunks of this.
And when you talk about systems-driven design, it's a completely different approach.
You add systems that interact with other systems."
"You focus maybe on multiplayer.
You focus maybe on user-generated content.
You focus on replayability of really satisfying mechanics.
So it is a challenge, and I can see how a lot of developers struggle with this and then end up in their content grind, spending years on development."
"And I just want to tell people that, hey, there are other ways.
You know, come talk to us.
So it's not just about scouting for projects.
It's about scouting for teams that can actually think like we, like thinking internally."
"Any other highlight that you would like to, you know, extract from your catalog?
Of course, you have Streets of Rogue, Hello Neighbor, or perhaps from the upcoming games for those who are not into TinyBuild as of yet.
Well, our biggest franchise, Hello Neighbor, we just announced that we're working on Hello Neighbor 3 and the movie."
"So those things are really exciting to me.
I say watch out for those.
How is the movie going to be?
Well, the only thing we have revealed about the movie is that it is being written by one of the writers of the Five Nights at Freddy's movie."
"That's all we can say.
Looking forward to playing more of your games in 2025 and looking forward to that movie as well.
Thank you so much for your time, Alex. Enjoy the show."
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