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Talking pitching, costs, and scale of indie games in a tricky environment - Rami Ismail DevGAMM Interview
Good 'ol Rami is back before Gamereactor's camera as one of the most recognisable indie ambassadors and counselors to talk all things independent video games, including current atmosphere for funding, pitching, and publishing.
Audio transcription
"So we are in Gdańsk for the DevGAMM and it's always nice to catch up with Rami.
I think it was two years ago in Tenerife when we overviewed the industry as a whole and it's always nice to talk indies and to talk industry with you."
"So first and foremost you're here to give some tips to indie studios that are going to be pitching.
So what would you say is the main takeaway? What would you say is the, you know, do this, don't do that.
Right. I think the main thing I try to teach the indies is to move quick.
So a lot of indies that I meet spend a year and a half, two years building their first prototype before they ever show it to another player or a play tester or a publisher."
"And it's so much time lost because it's really hard getting funding right now.
The industry is in a tough place. Funding is low.
So what you get is these developers that spend two years of their life trying to build the perfect prototype and then realizing that no publisher wants the game that they're building."
"So really move fast and don't try too hard.
It feels counterintuitive because of course you should care about your game but like I see a lot of developers like researching every publisher that they pitch to and I'm just like, you know, go online, find a list of publishers, just pitch to all of them."
"Right. And then they'll figure it out. They'll say no if they're not interested, they'll see it.
And sometimes you get lucky. A publisher that normally you wouldn't believe would publish your game might be interested. You never know. So it's very much that.
Like move fast, don't make too many assumptions."
"And I think the final part, this is more of a creative direction thing but I think it's relevant for pitching as well, is really know what your game is.
Yeah. Communicate it proper.
Be able to talk about what the heart is, what's the core of the thing."
"A lot of them struggle with that. I can see that from interviews.
Sometimes they really don't know how to.
Yeah, they talk, they say like, oh yeah, no, the game is meant to be engaging.
I'm like, yes, that's correct."
"Not only being passionate but also being like, you know, in the game.
Being able to communicate it. Like the feeling.
If I played your game and I loved it and five years from now I forgot the title and I forgot your name and I want to communicate this game to a friend, what is the one sentence that I could tell them that they could put into Google and then find your game? That's what I need to know."
"Not that it's fun or that it's a roguelike.
Completely agree.
So you said that the industry is at a tough point right now.
But other than layoffs, we can talk about that later."
"Do you think there's saturation?
You mentioned publishers and indies pitching to them And of course there's lots of projects for them to...
There is saturation. Absolutely."
"I don't think that's the main issue though.
I think fundamentally the main issue is just that the model of making games, even indie games, or at least what we generally call indie games in the commercial sphere, right?
The costs have just ballooned, right?
And it's because of the publishers to some degree because they can afford a $300,000 budget with a $200,000 marketing budget."
"So if you're a solo indie trying to build a thing, you can't compete with $200,000 in marketing, right?
You have to get really lucky and build a Balatro or something.
And even Balatro had marketing support."
"We're just in a weird spot. Everything is too expensive.
And so what we're seeing is this push down.
We're seeing this push towards making smaller games, worse graphics, faster timelines, things like developers like Strange Scaffold are really good at that, right?
And so I'm very hopeful about that push."
"I hope we see it in AAA as well, a bit like smaller, more sustainable projects.
But for now, the economics of games, they don't make sense.
They're not sustainable. They can't grow."
"It's a bloodbath out there. It's genuinely scary.
If we are seeing this saturation from solo to AA, and then AAA studios and publishers are trying to go smaller, scale down and go AA, then the saturation is going to be even bigger because we've seen this a lot."
"Developers who used to have a lot of creative control over their projects became so massive that they had to scale down.
Yeah, but not just that.
They became reliant on external funding."
"Exactly.
That takes away that creative freedom.
And control, yeah.
So perhaps that's going to be...
Because everything is expensive, everything has to be safe."
"And because everything is safe, nothing makes back its income.
It's a really frustrating loop.
Because the answer really is, give a bunch of cool developers a bit of money to do something weird."
"Whereas it's all about the publishing methods and the cuts and the shares.
And don't forget, a lot of people want to blame the indie publishers.
Even though partially they are at fault of the situation we find ourselves in, they're in the same situation."
"The press is in the same situation.
The media is in the same situation.
We're seeing websites close down.
We're seeing publishers close down."
"We're seeing developers close down.
Just the entire ecosystem of games, I think when we are through this, it's going to look completely different than how it did even two years ago."
"Yeah, I always appreciate when someone acknowledges what the press is going through as well.
And what you just said, how much this is going to change in two years' time."
"Because when we talked last time, it was two years ago.
That's completely different.
And I remember we were going through "own goals" of the industry.
And also the transition from junior to mid-level, which kind of goes back to what you said about indie having to be faster."
"So what do you think about that?
About juniors that are higher nowadays, and then that transition that was so screwed back in the day.
I mean, it's worse now."
"Because right now we're seeing, especially in the larger companies, we're seeing a push to just get a bit of juniors entirely.
Seniors and then new wave.
AI?
Yeah."
"Right?
The thing that we're seeing right now is we're seeing large companies like Warner Bros. the other day, lay off massive parts or entire verticals of their company, but keeping the IP."
"So they have none of the people who know how to build it.
And the system.
The trademark Nemesis system.
So they have the IP."
"They have the patents.
They have that.
What are they going to build games in?
I don't know.
But I'm feeling fairly worried that they're thinking that you can do it with much smaller groups and then supported by AI."
"Which I think every developer can already tell them that that's not going to end well.
But they're going to try anyway.
Yeah."
"I guess you didn't have any time to take a look at the indies.
Not yet.
No, I'm very excited.
And then you have the pitch later on today."
"Yeah.
If not from this.
You know, this is a tradition of ours back in the times of Gamelab where you would say my pick would be this one."
"So as of late, any indie ideas or games that you would like to highlight, but for us to, you know, to make them stand out a little bit."
"Yeah, but I would love to check you there.
I would love to check them here though.
I like that.
It was always at the show."
"How can we, can we shoot that as a later part?
We can.
We can.
We can do like, okay, this is, this is like a cut."
"And then after your, your thing is last thing today, right?
Then hopefully after the pitches and having taken a look at that, we will add a little bit."
"And if that doesn't work out, I'll just send you the list and you can just read.
Yeah.
We can, we can write it down."
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