Skystone Games' Bill Wang: "We can't rely on large paid UA campaigns. Instead we focus on word of mouth marketing"

As part of WN Dev Contest, we are discussing the industry with the jury members. In this installment, we catch up with Bill Wang, co-founder and CEO at Skystone Games.

Bill Wang

WN Dev Contest is a competition for Unreal Engine game developers. It’s held by WN Media Group in collaboration with Unreal Engine and Reboot Develop.

GWO: It is a popular opinion that the publisher is not just looking at the game, they also assess the team behind it. What is a good development team for you, and how do you identify if they got what it takes?

At Skystone, we are passionate about providing high-quality content to players around the world. We are looking for development teams who share our passion, have skills and experience to execute, and are humble and treat others with respect. 

Publishers often appoint a producer to oversee a project. Can you tell us in detail what the producer does at your company?

David Brevik, the creator of Diablo and former President of Blizzard North, is our focal point for dev projects. David has deep dev experience from running big studios with several hundreds of developers to developing a cross-platform game by himself. Our team plays builds and shares our feedback with developers.  

It happens, though, that hhe team has one vision, the producer has another. How do you usually resolve conflicts like this?

We offer creative guidance and help solve specific issues during the dev process. We constantly share our feedback with studios. That said, we respect our development partners and let studios decide what they should do.  

What kind of game are you looking for at the contest?

We are open to work with studios around the world. We have no restrictions on genres. We are looking for multiplatform games with unique selling points. As we are a start-up and cannot compete with large publishing on marketing budget, we cannot rely on large paid UA campaigns to acquire players. Instead we focus on branding and word of mouth marketing. We are not looking for another MOBA or battle royale game. We want to launch game titles with unique selling points.