What Does A Healthy Publisher/Developer Relationship Looks Like (With Real Contract Details!)

Squeaky Wheel and Maccima Games teams celebrating the contract signing. Will the happy times last?

Publisher and developer relations have always been fraught with peril.  There is a natural imbalance that occurs when a much more experienced entity with capital deals with a financially naive developer that wants to put their art out into the wider world. Recent news has borne this out, as I have heard of another publisher mistreating or wilfully misleading a developer.  The point of this article is not to name and shame (and honestly, depending on when you actually read this, I could be referring to an issue from 2019 or from 2022), but rather to show what a healthy publisher/developer relationship can look like. I will also be providing actual contract details for Ruinarch (wishlist now!) to serve as a datapoint, as I believe information asymmetry is one of the key issues that leads to developers being taken advantage of.

First off, let’s define our terms.

Publishing

A publishing deal is one that first and foremost provides funding.  For absolute clarity, I will refer to any deal that offers no money as “distribution” which I will describe later. I am aware that others may disagree with my definition, but I believe it is important for developers to hold that distinction in mind. 

Aside from capital, a publishing deal typically also offers knowledge sharing and advice.  This means advice regarding all aspects of game development, from programming to marketing.  This is most useful for a first time developer, but even accomplished developers derive value from having a new set of eyes on their game.

In exchange for capital and information, a publisher will typically ask for profit sharing based on revenue generated after they recoup their costs. Basically, since they fronted the money, they want to be assured that at the very least, they will be able to recoup the risk that they took spending that money in the first place.

This profit sharing agreement can take many forms.  For example, the publisher could ask for a 75/25 split on revenue until they have recouped their costs, and thereafter the split is 50/50.  For our own deal with Maccima (as I’ll discuss later) we get a 100% recoup first before splitting the deal 70/30 in favor of the developers.

Distribution

A distribution deal is one that provides no funding, but basically provides marketing and distribution support in exchange for revenue.

I am personally quite wary of distribution deals.  The up front money from a publishing deal establishes “skin in the game” for the publisher.  As a developer, I am also more appreciative of the up front money because it immediately takes a lot of the risk off the table and lets me make the game without fear.  A distribution deal feels to me like I have taken most of the risk by making the game on my own, then someone is going to come in at the tail end of the process and take some of my hard earned revenue.

However, to paraphrase Shark Tank , “70% of a hundred thousand dollars is better than 100% of 0 dollars”.  There are many reasons why you would want to take a distribution deal:  

1. You are a developer that just hates everything to do with marketing and money and you want to hide in your room and code all day. 

2. You trust the people behind the distribution deal, and they are up front with exactly how much money they are planning to spend on marketing (this shows skin in the game).

3. You already have an established game and want to expand to a market that you are not familiar with, like China or the console market.

These are all valid reasons to accept a distribution deal.  As a developer you will have to make the hard decisions about whether or not a deal is suitable to you.

First Contact

Publishing deals can take a long time to negotiate, and there is a lot of wooing that happens even before the first draft of the publishing deal is presented to you.  Before we secured a deal for Political Animals, I had written on and off to Positech Games about the possibility of a publishing deal. Cliff brushed me off the first few times, but I eventually wore him down (politely, mind you), and in a meeting at EGX in 2015 where I presented him the current prototype of the game sealed the deal.

I first noticed and reached out to Maccima Games on February 9, 2019.  Soon after, I visited them to try to get a better idea of the team and how serious they were with the game.   I broached the idea of possibly publishing the game, but also told them that if they wanted to try for a bigger publisher (eg Paradox Interactive), I would use my digital rolodex on their behalf and try to secure interviews for them.  Early on I already established that no matter what happened I wanted to help them succeed, which helped to build trust between us.

The Pitch Deck

A few months later I invited Maccima to an invite-only PC dev session with some other local devs, where we would get to show each other our games and give each other advice.  I chatted with Marvin, the head of Maccima, to get a sense of where they were in development. I explained to him how much money in the bank we had, and how I’d approach a publishing deal.  He told me that they were still interested, and were now preparing a pitch deck for publishers in general. 

I have written about what should be in a good pitch deck before, and Maccima’s pitch deck nailed the most important parts.  It was solid, and their expectations were reasonable. Most importantly, the amount they were asking for was something that we could afford.  After reviewing our finances with our COO (wherein we definitely answered the question of whether we could afford this risk), we decided to offer them a contract.

Here is a link to Ruinarch’s (formerly World’s Bane) Pitch Deck, with financial data removed as requested by the developer.

The Contract

Finally, here’s the main event, a copy of the contract in place between Squeaky Wheel and Maccima Games. One of the nice things about being a small indie dev/publisher is it allows us to share things like this without dealing with a large bureaucracy. I made sure to ask permission from my cofounders as well as Maccima games, and would not be sharing this otherwise.

It’s important to note a few things. This is not meant to be an example of the “best” contract, merely an example of an actual contract.  What works best for us may not work for you. The point is to negotiate until you are comfortable with the contract.

This document is a copy of the original, with personal details, dates and actual dollar amounts removed. I have left the comments in to show that this contract was crafted after negotiation between the two parties.

In the following paragraphs, I will discuss some of the key parts of the contract that you should pay attention to when negotiating your own.

Sales and Rights

Sections 3 to 7 cover what the rights of the publisher are with regards to the game. For example, we wanted exclusive and worldwide rights to sell and publish the game on PC/Mac and Linux, extending to DLC. We have right of first refusal for any ports or sequel, but if we’re not interested, then the developer is free to shop the game around. It’s made clear that all business transactions must go through the publisher.  So for example, on the off chance that Epic Games (ahem) wants to throw a bunch of money our way, they would be dealing with us, not the developer. As a courtesy to the developer they would be included in any discussions, but its important that there is only one point of contact in these kinds of decisions. There are also numerous protections for the developer, such as stipulations that we cannot create sequels, ports, or DLCs without the agreement of the developer.

Royalties and Recoup Rates

Sections 8 and 9 deal with the numbers.  These sections get very detailed, and explain how much of the royalty goes to the publisher, how exactly those number are derived, and how the money will be transferred to the developer. There was a lot of clarifications involved in this section, as you can see from the comments. To protect the Developer, they will be given direct access to financial data (which we can do with Steam).  In absence of that, we promise to share documentation of funds received.

Termination

This is maybe one of the most fraught parts of a contract, but also one of the most important.  A publishing agreement is a relationship, and like all relationships, it can go sour. This section stipulates what should happen in that rare case, and it can be the key to an amicable separation or a messy divorce. There was also a lot of discussion here, but the basic agreement is that we can terminate the agreement if the developer continuously misses milestones.  The developer can terminate the agreement if we continuously miss payments. 

The most interesting part of this is subsection e, which states:

e) The Publisher agrees that Developer cannot be held liable for delays due to acts of god, sickness of key staff, and other events beyond Developer’s control.

This is something that the developer asked for specifically, and which I agreed to immediately.  While we’re all in this business to make money, we must also remember that sometimes life happens, and we have to make room for that possibility.  

Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate

If you leave this article with only one lesson, it is that you should negotiate. Contracts can be changed. There is no such thing as a one size fits all contract.  It is the publisher’s best interests to not have changes made, because each change requires lawyers, which cost money. Any change in the contract may also affect their contracts with other developers, and so the costs cascade and increase.

But as a developer you must be comfortable going into this relationship, so if there is anything that really jumps out at you that you feel is unreasonable, ask for it to be explained and if necessary, changed.

Conclusion

We are not presenting this contract as the perfect contract by any means.  In fact I suspect that the contract will be picked apart by developers, publishers, and especially lawyers for various reasons. Ruinarch is also still in the middle of development, so things can still go sour.  We have already agreed with Maccima to extend development because the initial time estimates were a little too tight. Here’s hoping that we will still be friends come next year.

Our goal is that having this out there can help prepare other devs and prospective first time publishers manage their expectations and offer at least one data point for what an actual contract looks like. We also hope that both developers and publishers understand that at the end of the day, this is a relationship, and both sides need to make sure that even as they look out for their best interests, they must take the time to make sure they are on the same page.  The best contract in the world cannot fix a bad relationship, but a contract dispute can be fixed by two people sitting across from each other and negotiating in good faith.

Thanks for reading, and hope you found this useful! If you want to support us, please wishlist Ruinarch.

Why We Decided to Publish Ruinarch

If you follow Squeaky Wheels’ Facebook, Twitter, and Steam developer pages (and if you haven’t hint, hint please do so!) you’ll by know by now that we have just announced that we are publishing another studio’s game.  As with many of Squeaky Wheel’s milestones, I wanted to take the time to dig into our thought process on why and how this happened.

But first, we’d like to introduce you guys to Maccima Games and their debut title Ruinarch (Wishlist PLEASE!). 

Ruinarch is a wickedly fun evil overlord simulator where you cause havoc on people’s lives before taking their lands. Inspired by story generators like Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, create an infernal narrative for your victims as you poison food, raise the dead, and inflict endless misery upon them.

If any of that spoke out to you, wishlist it now! Ruinarch is coming out in Early Access sometime in 2020.

How Did This Happen?

It’s really kind of crazy how Squeaky Wheel and Maccima Games hooked up.  About half a year ago I randomly saw one of maccima’s tweets of a screenshot and thought “Hey, that looks cool!  I clicked on the Twitter profile and saw that their website used the .ph (as in Philippines) domain. I checked out their website and we even more impressed with what I saw, and immediately chatted them up, asking about their game, and how I’d like to meet up some time to talk some more. 

I came away from that meeting even more impressed, but we weren’t really in a position to make an offer at the time.  It just felt good that there were other people making PC strategy games in Manila! I offered to help introduce them to people when they were ready to think about publishing, and only asked that they send us their pitch document as well to give us first dibs on a possible publishing deal

A few months pass, and Maccima came to us with a pitch.  The pitch was professional, and most importantly realistic in terms of schedule and numbers. Maccima was a well run team that could operate independently of Squeaky Wheel, meaning we wouldn’t be wasting any time at all and effectively doubling our game development output.  

After taking a hard look at what they needed and our financial state at the time, we decided that this was a financial risk that we could take. Even if the Ruinarch flops, Squeaky Wheel would still be able to stay afloat. So after about a month of negotations, we signed Maccima to a publishing deal in August, and we’re so excited to be finally able to share that now.

But why bother with publishing? Squeaky Wheel is still a tiny studio that doesn’t really have deep pockets. While we wouldn’t go under if Ruinarch flopped, that was still money that might otherwise have gone into our profit sharing pool.  Tl:dr publishing Ruinarch is about more than just money to us. If you want to know more, just keep reading.

Nurturing an Industry

While I cannot speak for my other cofounders, part of what drove me to start a studio was a personal desire to help grow the Philippine game development industry. This fascination with building an industry all started with the time I read Richard Florida’s Flight of the Creative Class.  In it, popular economist Richard Florida espoused a vision of the world where cities would compete for creative class workers (defined as people in science and engineering, architecture and design, education, arts, music and entertainment whose). Inspired by the book, I set about to do my own small part by helping to nurture the local game development industry.

At the time (about 10 years ago) I saw my role as community building. I helped to revitalize the local IGDA chapter, holding monthly meetings (against the wishes of some local studio managers) and creating a space where devs could meet and learn from each other.  We started the first Manila Game Jam in 2010 to coincide with the global game jam, and I led the community for 3 years. It was often a struggle, but I firmly believed that if we had a strong community, the clustering effect would help propel individuals and companies to be at par with the world, and create a game industry that would funnel investment and money into the Philippine economy.

I’m proud of what we did, but I’m a little less naive now.  I don’t think that the game industry on its own can lift up any country’s economy out of the mire. I don’t think there is any way to leapfrog our way into being an industrialized country, which I strongly believe is a prerequisite for any country or city to have a strong and growing creative class. 

Squeaky Wheel 

As fulfilling as IGDA was, three years had taken its toll on me, so I took a break to focus on myself and my freelance career first. This culminated in my work on Prison Architect.  While it was immensely gratifying to be a part of a game that truly shaped the industry (so much so that Paradox Interactive bought the IP!), I felt that PA was as far as I could go as an individual. That, combined with the ever nagging impulse to nurture the local industry, was one of the things that led to the formation of Squeaky Wheel (if you are interested, read about the long road to the creation of Squeaky Wheel and how we landed our first publishing deal this three part blog series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  

Running Squeaky wheel has been quite the experience (read restrospectives from 2016, 2017, 2018).  We launched a game that flopped. We launched a game that succeeded.  We’re nowhere near as successful as many other companies, but we are in the extremely fortunate position of being able to survive and support ourselves.  Now that we are in that position where we’re no longer on the verge of collapsing every month, why choose to spend that money on other people rather than ourselves?

Why is Publishing Important To Us?

Publishing a game means so much more to the local industry than simply handing over a bunch of money to another developer.  All of the funding that Squeaky Wheel has had so far came from outside the Philippines. That may not seem like a big deal to developers from other countries stacked with publishers but let me tell you : it feels fucking good not to have to rely on outside funding. What makes this more special for me is that game development is one of the few industries in the Philippines where you can create almost literally create something out of nothing. A decade ago, most local funding came from foreigners, oligarchs, and deeply entrenched business interests. I am immensely proud that bunch of weirdo gamedevs from varying lower to upper middle class backgrounds came together to create a studio that can now support other studios. It is a sign of the maturity of our industry.  It says “we can do this on our own now”. Being able to say that, and being able to support another studio’s creative endeavor, is worth so much more than the money we put into their studio.

Where Do We Send our Pitch?

So are we really a “publisher” now?  Well, not really. There was a huge confluence of circumstances that led to this point.  We’re not actively looking to publish any more games than this (especially since we don’t really have the budget!) but who knows what the future might bring?

Thanks for reading, and hope you found this interesting! If you want to support us, you can buy Academia: School Simulator or Political Animals, or wishlist Ruinarch.

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 3

In Parts 1 and 2 of this blog I discussed the road that led to Squeaky Wheel getting a publishing deal for Political Animals from Positech Games. My intent was to show that our road to a publishing deal was built over a years long accumulation of experience, networks, and great opportunities that we were lucky to take advantage of. What the previous two posts didn't show was the actual research and work that had to be done to even position ourselves to have an opportunity at a deal.  This post aims to show that process and hopefully help other developers looking to secure a deal.

Having a build

Having a build is a prerequisite for getting a publishing deal. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and execution is key. Beyond that though, having a build shows the prospective publisher that you are committed enough to your game to actually invest your time and money (as a freelancer, those two things are interchangeable to me) in it. It doesn't have to be pretty, and it can evolve over time, but having some sort of build is crucial to convincing anyone that you are serious about actually making a game. Even Kickstarter backers have learned their lesson. Most indie games (especially if you're not a famous gamedev) without any kind of working build or even a demo are ignored.

Have a Pitch Deck

Assuming you have no time to make a build, the next best thing is to make a pitch deck. The first time someone mentioned “pitch deck” to me I had to google it, so if you're confused right now I sympathize with you. Essentially a pitch deck is a presentation showing what game you want to make, the market viability of the game, how much it will cost, and any information you have to support your pitch. Ideally you would have the pitch deck and build in tandem.

When I was doing research on pitch decks I found this very useful resource from bubbleguminteractive.com called “Pitch Deck for Indie Game Developers”. I used this as a basis for our own pitch deck, with some minor tweaks. The article itself explains pitch decks much better than I could, so I'll do a deep dive into some specific topics that I think are important.

Defining your Market

It's important to know who your market is and try to serve them. So for example our market is PC strategy gamers. How do I find out how large that market is? Luckily, we now have Steamspy, which informs me that the highest selling strategy game is...DOTA 2 with 73 million owners. Obviously DOTA is not the kind of strategy game we want to make, plus it's free to play. So let's disregard that. Next on the list is Civ V, with almost 9 million owners. Civ V is so far beyond what we are trying to make, but at least it's in the same turn-based strategy game genre that we're going for. So let's say that 9 million is the absolute highest number of people that would possibly be interested in our game.

To find a more conservative estimate, let's dig deeper and search SteamSpy for games on politics. Now we have much smaller numbers. Tropico leads the pack with 1.3 million owners. It's no Civ 5, but we can say that at the highest level, a game like Civ 5 that deals explicitly with politics has a market of 1.3 million people. Our production values are nowhere near the Tropico series, so let's look at how games with similar production values have done. Democracy 3 is the outlier here, with 450,000 people. But lower on the list are games like The Political Machine, Gremlins Inc. and Rogue State. These are games that are generally within the same production values and expected price point as Political Animals, and their owners range between 30,000-10,000 users. Now we have a good, conservative idea of the market for our game. Later on you will have to assess whether this market is large enough to cover the cost of development, but we'll leave that aside for now.

I should say that even Steamspy admits it is not 100% accurate. You should look articles that can help support your claims about the marekt, like when companies (rarely) annouce their sales figures for games. Regardless, SteamSpy is a very useful tool for making broad decisions about your market, and I'm really grateful it's around.

Defining Costs

This is probably the part of the pitch deck that developers are least interested in, but it's probably the most important for the publisher. Being able to identify and quantify what you need as devs may not be as interesting as actually talking about the game, but there is crucial information here that the publisher needs in order to decide whether to make you an offer.

I'm going to use some imaginary numbers here to help guide you through calculating what your costs will be. Let's assume that there are some monthly fixed costs that you know already:

• Salaries - $10000

• Office Rent - $2000

Now you need to think about all the other additional costs you may have. These include: Software licenses, an accountant, a lawyer, web design, music etc. Unless you've done this before, I know it can be bewildering to even imagine how to start calculating these costs. There are so many variables when it comes to making these estimates that ultimately the best advice I can give is make your best guess on these costs depending on where you live, and then pad increase that number by 10% to cover up any mistakes. So now let's say you ended up with $1000 average monthly cost for miscellaneous fees. Now your monthly cost is:

• Salaries - $8000

• Office Rent - $1000

• Miscellaneous - $1000

At this point you should have a number that expresses your total monthly costs. Now estimate the time it will take you to finish the game. Multiply your monthly costs by the number of months and you should have a general idea of how much money you need from the publisher. Let's assume you need 1 year to finish the game. Using the numbers above, you can then say to the publisher I need $120k ($10k per month x 12 months in a year) in order to finish the game.

Our publisher might kill me for saying this, but don't be too worried about getting the numbers exactly right. There will always be room for error. They'll ask you questions about your numbers, and if they feel like you've estimated too high or low they'll correct you. The key thing is that you're at least close enough to your targeted monthly costs so that the publisher knows you've done your homework. More than anything I think the publisher wants to know that you've actually considered these things because most devs don't even bother.

Aside from the hard numbers, you should also define what you need in the pitch deck. For us, we knew that even though we were all veteran game developers none of us had shepherded an entire game to completion. We also knew that we did not have access to marketing, PR, press, conventions etc. and needed help on that end.

I want to point out once again that the numbers used here are not the actual numbers in our pitch deck.

What's your Break Even Point?

This isn't quite as important to the pitch deck, but is definitely important as background knowledge that a publisher may ask you. It's also a good way for you to decide if your project is financially viable, and how much risk you or the publisher is taking with the game.

The math is pretty basic. Using the previous numbers, we need $120,000 to finish the game. Our conservative estimate for our market is somewhere between 30,000 to 10,000 users, so lets say 15,000. Let's also assume our price point is $15, since that seems like a pretty normal price for indie games these days. Now lets multiply numbers of owners (15,000) with price ($15) and we get $225,000. Factor in Steam's cut by multiplying $225,000 by .7 (to get 70%) and you get revenue of $157,500.

That means that at a cost of $120,000, if we sold 15000 units at $15 per unit, we would make $157500 after Steam takes its cut. Take $157500 and subtract $120000 and you end up with $37500 to be split between you and the publisher depending on your publishing agreement. If you want to take this further, take the $37500 and divide it by your price point ($15) and you get 2500. Subtract that 2500 from the original 15000 units which assumed as your break even point, and you end up with 12,500 units as the minimum number of units you need to sell in order to break even.

I have taken many liberties with these numbers. First off, you have to assume that Steam sales and bundles will cut into your sales revenue. At the same time Steam isn't the only market in town, and outlets like GOG, the Humble Store, or your own website can make up to 20% additional revenue. As with the previous numbers, it's not necessary (and I feel impossible) for your numbers to be 100% accurate, so your end goal here is to find a number that you and the publisher can talk about. This is useful because now you have a number of units shipped to work towards, instead of just hoping to sell as many as you can.

Finding Publishers

Now that you have your pitch deck and build ready, it's time to find some publishers. Assuming you've already exhausted your personal network, this really just involves a lot of the time on the internet doing google searches for publishers. You should do your best to narrow down your search to publishers who might even have a remote interest in your game. For example, if you find a publisher that only does mobile F2P games, don't waste your time or theirs by pitching a PC only paid strategy game. Publishers who were high on my list included Positech (because Democracy 3) and Paradox Interactive (because strategy games). If you need help finding publishers, Steam Spy can also be helpful because it lists the publishers of games. For example Tropico 4 was published by Kalypso Media, so I can add them to the list of publishers.

After that, it's a matter of emailing the publishers with your build and pitch and seeing if anyone bites. You'll get a lot of rejections, and maybe a few nibbles. Those nibbles will stretch on into really long email threads as you and the publisher get to know each other. As mentioned previously it took more than a year after our initial contact with Positech before they signed off on the deal, and there were definitely moments where I thought that it wouldn't push through. Be patient and persistent, but don't push too hard. If the publisher says they're not interested, always thank them for their time and ask for advice about why they were not interested. Any knowledge you gain that way can be useful for you in the long run.

If you have friends who are devs that have started their own companies, don't hesitate to reach out to them and ask for their advice.  You will ultimately have to make your own decisions when it comes to a publishing deal, but it's always better to make an informed decision.  These people have gone through this process before so the information they share with you can be invaluable.

Final Thoughts

This ends my 3-part series on how Squeaky Wheel found a publisher in Positech Games. I apologize if this last one was disjointed and not as easy to read as the previous two. Convincing a publisher to give you money to make your game is a long, difficult, and oftentimes bumpy road. There were many times I felt like I was flying blind so I hope that this was of some use to people. If you have questions or want me to talk about things that I missed out on, please feel free to respond in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 2

This is the second part of a series of blog posts by Ryan narrating how Squeaky Wheel secured a publishing deal from Positech Games. Part 1 dealt with his career up to the success of Spacechem, and this week we start with his experiences working on Prison Architect.

Third Big Break : Prison Architect

I've previously written about how Introversion Software first contacted me on my personal blog. The short version is that Chris Delay had played Spacechem, liked the art, and contacted me to see if I wanted to work with Introversion Software. Introversion is like the granddaddy of indie game developers. They're one of the first indie game developers that made it big way, way before Braid, Fez, etc. They had a pedigree and I knew it, and it didn't take much convincing for me to sign up to work on Prison Architect.

The story of the development of Prison Architect is kind of crazy, and you can read more about it here. Essentially the Introversion guys made some bad choices after their initial success and Prison Architect was their second chance. If things didn't go well for the game, the studio might have had to consider shutting its doors. This being their second chance, the initial timeline for the game was quite modest. Our initial contract agreement was for me to work on the game for 3 months, up until the launch of Early Access, then maybe a little more polish work after that, depending on how Early Access did. Suffice it to say that their Early Access succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, and I ended up working on the game for 4 years.

Eventually my deal with Introversion was to work on Prison Architect every other month until launch. What a sweet deal! Those 4 years were probably the least stressful years of my freelance life. It was the perfect combination of having steady income while at the same time having some freedom to work on things on the side. But towards the end of my tenure with Introversion I started getting a little worried. Previously I'd been so aggressive about posting my portfolio on all the forums I could find, I would almost always get offers for work that I had to turn down. As I grew more comfortable working for Introversion, those work offers slowly but surely started to dry up. I would need to make a big decision soon. What would I do after Prison Architect? Go back to being a freelancer? Could I still do that? Would I ever find a gig as sweet as working with Introversion?

Working with Introversion and the success of Prison Architect gave me a credibility I could never have imagined. The first time I met my friend Sagar Patel, I was hanging out with some game devs in Japan and introduced myself as “having worked on Spacechem and Prison Architect, not sure if you've heard of those games?” Sagar laughed because it sounded like false modestly on my part, but that's when it dawned on me that the games I worked on have been played by literally millions of players. Being the “artist of Prison Architect” opened doors and conversations that would previously have been closed to me. Introversion were never shy about naming me, with the most touching moment being a (very hoarse)shoutout when Prison Architect won the BAFTA for “Best Persistent Game”. I knew that I had a great opportunity after Prison Architect, and I wanted to make sure I didn't waste it, which finally leads me to my most recent break, meeting and sealing a deal with Cliff Harris of Positech Games.

The Last, Big Break : EGX, Cliff Harris and Positech Games

Cliff Harris, or rather Positech Games, is one of the most well-known UK indie game devs. His games like Democracy 3 and Gratuitous Space Battle have sold more than 500,000 copies, which is an amazing accomplishment for a single developer. Cliff decided to parlay that success into becoming an indie publisher, which is how he launched Red Shirt and Big Pharma, and very soon Shadowhand and Political Animals. I was a big fan of Democracy 3 and Cliff was always on the top of my list of possible publishers.

I first got introduced to Cliff when I rather boldly inquired with Introversion about the possibility of publishing Political Animals. I say this was bold since I was still in the middle of working Prison Architect then. I'm not sure it was the best move to ask your current employer if they'd like to publish another game you want to work on, but they seemed pretty cool with it. The short answer was that Introversion were too swamped with Prison Architect work to be able to handle another game on their own, so they asked Cliff if he'd be interested in co-publishing the game. Cliff was in the middle of publishing Big Pharma at the time, and for one reason or another, the talks never progressed beyond the initial stages. Given Prison Architect was slated to have an official launch in less than a year, I didn't have time to be too bummed about because I was too busy with work! But at least I had a foot in the door.

Introversion was going to fly me and my wife Aissa over to the UK to join them in launching the game at EGX. I knew that this was going to be my golden opportunity. We live in the age of the internet, so it's not surprising that people sometimes tend to undervalue a face to face meeting. To this day I maintain that the biggest difficulty for Filipino developers is lacking access to conventions like EGX where they can meet both fans and prospective publishers. I was going to make this trip count. I emailed Cliff and other publishers on and off (I'll go into detail on that process in Part 3 of this series) during the rest of 2015 leading up to EGX. By the time the convention had rolled over, I had secured meetings with two publishers and had primed my pitch deck (more on that in the next part of the series) and build for presentation.

EGX was great. The fan turnout for Prison Architect was so positive, and all the Introversion guys and gals were super cool. We even had curry! In the midst of all of that I had meetings with a bunch of different publishers, including Cliff. I presented to Cliff in the food court of the convention complex. We had a chat about politics, about the game, and the possibility of marketing it. I honestly don't remember much more than that, but we shook hands and he told me to follow up with a link to the build so he could review it. Later that night we had fancy burgers and drinks with Introversion and Cliff decided to hang out with us. I think we were generally of a similar temperament, quite pragmatic in our politics, so we got along pretty well. He had just helped fund a school building in Cameroon and was very excited about his new Tesla. After a few more beers we decided to call it a night (we had 3 more days of EGX left). I went back to my hotel room, sent the build, and collapsed into bed. One day later, Cliff made his offer.

The following is a collection of email responses between me and my co-founders Marnielle and Tristan:

Me: Guys, please read the forwarded email and let me know kung may feedback kayo (Let me know if you have feedback). TL:DR Positech made an offer to publish us. DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION FOR NOW and do read it and give me feedback on your concerns.

Marnielle : WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Big shout there! Obviously, I can't do feedback well due to excitement. This is great news!

Tristan: Hmm, yahooooooooo!!!!?

To be perfectly honest I was a little annoyed at how unexcited Tristan sounded (I mean seriously, what was up with that question mark?), but when I learned later on that he threw up in the bathroom afterwards from excitement and nervousness, I felt a little better.

EGX was a prime opportunity for me to meet and pitch to publishers about Political Animals. It felt a little cheeky to be going around looking for a publishing deal on Introversion's dime but I was honest with them about it and they were fully supportive and even gave me advice about getting a deal. I am fully convinced that had I not gone to EGX Political Animals would have gone the way of so many unpublished game projects, and for that I am eternally grateful to Introversion Software.

This ends Part 2 of "How Political Animals Got a Publisher" If you thought that this story about a publishing deal seems too good to be true, then you're right! I wrestled with this a bit, but I didn't want to ruin the narrative by going in and out of the nitty gritty details of preparing for a pitch and securing a publishing deal. I've reserved part 3 of this series to talk about making pitch decks, hunting down publishers emails, and presentation gaffes. Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 1

In this blog post Ryan writes about his gamedev career and the path that led to a publishing deal with Positech Games.

I love hearing stories about how people achieve success in their careers. It's interesting to see how unique each story is, but also how similar. There is always hardship that needs to be overcome. There is always a benefactor or a stroke of luck that the person, if they are generous, credits with their success. It seems a little self-serving and egocentric, but I've been wanting to share my story for a while. It's important to show that publishing deals like this don't happen overnight, but are the result of hard work, persistence, and a whole lot of luck. 

Starting in the industry

Nokia 6600, once the top of the line Symbian device.

I got into the game dev industry after a yearlong stint at a call center. I'd graduated with a Fine Arts degree in Visual Communication, which usually leads to an advertising career. I couldn't land a job with any company, but luckily I had a good command of the English language. Working nights and talking to angry American customers burned me out though, so when I saw an ad looking for a mobile games artist, I jumped at the opportunity. That was the first mobile game explosion, the one that hardly anyone knew about. Tiny J2me games that you downloaded on WAP, where the telcos got a huge cut of the sales. The App store wasn't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs' eye, and without a marketplace, one mobile games company after another folded. The company I joined lasted a year. Same as the next company I joined. The third one belonged to a giant media company that paid shit wages, and so by the time my first big break came, I'd already left and was working a cushy job designing UI for a mobile messaging company.

First Big Break : Disco Pixel

Disco Pixel's latest game, Jungle Rumble.

Trevor Stricker from Disco Pixel contacted me out of the blue in 2007 asking if I'd be willing to meet up while he was in Manila. He'd resigned from SEGA after working on NBA2K and wanted to put his royalty money to good use. He'd found my portfolio on Deviantart and thought I would be a good fit for a DS game he wanted to make. I can't remember if I was suspicious or not. This was 2007, and this kind of micro-outsourcing was still pioneering at the time. I guess I was a sucker for compliments (my kindergarten teacher once noted that I respond best to praise) and at the very least he was buying dinner, so I had nothing to lose.

It's weird the things I remember from our meeting. We had dinner at a Japanese restaurant called Sugi. I told him he was the first Jewish person I'd ever met. He told me I was the first Filipino he met that didn't eat meat (I do eat meat, but at the time a tofu and mushroom meal sounded really good to me). We got along well enough, and towards the end of his trip he said that I was the one that really “got” his project, and he wanted to sign me on as his lead artist. I was excited and terrified at the same time. My UI job paid pretty well and in terms of salary as an artist I thought I'd pretty much peaked. Trevor promised to pay me a lot more, but that also came with the risk of his startup failing. I was 26 and had nothing to lose, so I accepted his offer.

About a year later, the 2008 financial collapse happened. Disco Pixel had been talking to some publishers about funding the game. It actually had gone as far as internal reviewing with some major publishers, but ultimately Trevor decided to fold the company for the moment and find a job. I had just lost the goose that laid the golden egg. My wife and I like to joke that “By the grace of Trevor” we were able to travel around Asia (shoutout to Cebu Pacific) and put a downpayment on a condominium. Little did I know that downpayment was going to haunt my dreams for years to come.

The experience with Trevor and Disco Pixel opened my eyes to the wider range of possibilities when it comes to a career in game development.  Previously, I felt limited by my options in the Philippines.  Working with Disco Pixel showed me that the internet had created a whole new world of opportunities.  But had Trevor not taken a chance on me, I probably would never have dared to risk going freelance in 2008.

Intermission : Learning to Freelance the hard way

After Trevor decided to take a break from being an entrepreneur, I was faced with my own major dilemma. I'd already been replaced at my old company. The game companies that were hiring at the time all paid substantially less than my previous gig with Trevor, and with monthly payments on my then newly bought condo looming, I needed to make money fast. I had a bit of runway left from my leftover savings, so I decided to try my hand at being a freelance artist. I had no idea what I was getting into.

All I had to my name was my portfolio. So for the next few months I signed up for all the internet forums with job ads I could find, looking for any job that would pay me so that I could create portfolio material. I didn't say no to anything, and ended up working on a 2D side scroller built by a man who had created website to cater to family friendly games all the way to sprites for a “Thong Girl” video game. I would literally wake up every single day looking for jobs and negotiating with clients in a singular, desperate effort to make sure I could pay for my mortgage every month. It was the white collar version of living hand to mouth, and I spent many sleepless night worrying about the inevitable drought of work.

I have to say that I was never the best artist out there. But I was willing to work hard, often for below US rates, and I'd like to think that my communication skills also helped. They certainly helped when my next big break came in the form of Zach Barth and Spacechem.

Second Big Break : Spacechem

I forget which forum I found Zach's ad looking for help with Spacechem. What I do remember is playing the free games I found on his website and thinking “This guy is on to something.” He had a small but devoted fanbase and an obvious knack for creating games that caught people's attention (his game Infiniminer was the inspiration for Notch's Minecraft). So when he replied to my inquiry I was super excited to start working with him.

Spacechem was the first ever game that I accepted a royalty agreement on. Previously I never wanted to risk royalty agreements for work because I never believed that the games would make any money. I believed that Spacechem had a chance at being successful, but still couldn't bear the risk, so I negotiated with Zach and we arranged for a smaller royalty in exchange for a minimum monthly payment. Looking back I probably should have stuck to the original, larger royalty agreement. But I've never been much of a risk taker, which is something that will continue to come up in the future.

The success of Spacechem is now a matter of historical fact. It allowed Zach to leave his cushy Microsoft job and start Zachtronics Industries as a full time gig. My Spacechem royalties finally gave me some breathing room from the day to day grind of freelancing. I toyed with doing concept art a bit, bought some videos and practiced hard. I wanted to see if I could get a job as an illustrator, painter, or concept artist instead of working on in-game sprites. But it was not meant to be. A couple of months after the successful launch of Spacechem I got that fateful email from Chris Delay of Introversion Software. He'd liked my work on Spacechem, and was wondering if I'd be interested in working on a game called Prison Architect.

Spacechem came out at the dawn of the indie revolution.  It was part of the list of games like Braid, Minecraft, and Fez that were the vanguard of indies making a dent in the game development industry.  While these games would never match the graphical fidelity or budgets of the AAA developers, they didn't need to.  They proved that it was now possible to survive as a small independent developer serving a niche of gamers.  Zach's success with Spacechem was probably the first time that I ever thought about the idea of making my own game or building my own studio.

Intermission 2: The Best 2 weeks of my life

There is a two week period that I will always refer to as "probably the best two weeks of my entire life". My wife Aissa and I were on our honeymoon in Japan. I had just gotten my first royalty check from Spacechem. I had sealed the deal with Introversion Software and was already sending some concept work to them. The “hardships” of the past were behind me, I was enjoying a wonderful, hard-earned present with my wife, and the future looked very bright indeed.

This ends Part 1 of "How Political Animals Got a Publisher" .  Next time, I will discuss more about my work with Prison Architect, how I met Cliff from Positech, and if there's enough space talk about the nitty gritty of hunting down publishing deals.  Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals, please sign up for our mailing list!