Kefir on working with publishers: "No need to be afraid to ask and discuss"
We continue the mini-series of interviews within the framework of the WN Dev Contest. In them, the jury of the competition shares tips on working in the game market. This time we talked with Yuri Lyashenko, producer of Kefir studio.
WN Dev Contest is a competition of games created on Unreal Engine 4. Held by WN Media Group in conjunction with Unreal Engine and Reboot Develop.
Yuri Lyashenko
App2Top.ru Q: What mistakes do developers usually make when they start working on a game with a publisher?
Yuri: The most common is overestimation of forces and underestimation of deadlines.
App2Top.ru: Can you give me some advice on how to avoid this?
Yuri: The only advice that can be given in such a situation is not to overestimate your strength and even more so underestimate the development time. It is absolutely obvious that the fewer the iterations, the more predictable and accurate the assessment, so the decomposition of tasks is our everything! At the very least, this will allow you to determine in advance the backlog from the schedule and the points where you need to push up.
If it is not possible to finish the work on time (and even a twenty-hour working day and an eight-day working week do not help), partners should be warned about this in advance. The phrase "we need another six months", uttered two hours after the planned release failed, smells a little unprofessional.
App2Top.ru: Are there any other common mistakes?
Yuri: In general, it is a rather controversial position to average all developers and broadcast about "mistakes" from a very conditional pedestal of their experience. Perhaps it would be more correct to talk about the problems that young teams may have both at the stages of initial communication and already in the process of cooperation.
The main advice is still the same (if, for example, we talk about working with us): there is no need to be afraid to ask and discuss. It is better to consider any issue – from scaling the team to the further direction of the project development – from different angles. We have encountered something ourselves, so we have practical experience, somewhere we can just share our opinion, but in any case, such communication is much more productive than stubborn movement into the unknown with complete disregard for problems.
App2Top.ru Q: When the discussion of cooperation begins, is the amount that will go to marketing negotiated?
Yuri: I think that each publisher has an individual approach here, so I'll tell you about the attitude to this in Kefir.
There are two approaches to promotion: "a good game sells itself" and "let's put up brochures in elevators."
It is clear that you need to strive for the first, but it is also stupid to deny the power of marketing. If your project is so cool that any user without a doubt tears $0.99 from his heart, then advertising will only increase the curvature of the growth of the graphs (and here all restrictions in numbers will be removed). If no one is interested in following the intricacies of the game plot, then no amount spent on promotion will help.
Unfortunately, it is quite problematic to predict with absolute accuracy the behavior of players after the release, even when you do everything according to the guidelines of the Guild of game designers, using the most reliable analytical data. Because of this, discussing some iron figures does not look like a very adequate idea.
If we talk specifically about Kefir, then we have a certain budget for experiments, but it is also significantly adjusted for different projects.
App2Top.ru Questioner: Assuming that the conversation about marketing has started, how much does it cost to ask?
Yuri: It's worth asking for exactly nothing. If you trust your business partner, let him do the work in which he understands better and has more experience than others. And if you don't trust me, then why did you sign up for this at all?
App2Top.ru: Continuing the theme of promotion. What is the usual ratio between spending on production and promotion?
Yuri: On the budget of all the buried games, it would probably be possible to build the first Hyperloop ring, and for the cost of advertising them, the second one in the opposite direction. There is no direct relationship between the cost of development and the creation of a hit, and we talked about the promotion of unnecessary projects a little higher.
App2Top.ru : There are many publishers on the market today. Each offers special conditions. What is the publishing house for you? How does your work on the external product begin and when does it end?
Yuri: Probably the biggest difference between us and other publishers is that we are not a publisher. As it was before, so it will be after: our main passion, work and vocation is game development. We are not interested in projects that just earn money, we are focused exclusively on hits both in our own performance and in cooperation with external teams. Since we think a little bit about creating successful products, this is our main advantage: we will tell you how to make it even better!
Our cooperation can begin when you have a vertical slice of the game, or maybe earlier, when there is at least some kind of playable prototype, or maybe a little earlier, when there is no project, but there is a team, or maybe a little earlier, when there is no team, but there is one described on the notebook sheet the idea of a future chart flipper. We will always be able to find options for interaction and provide our support both in the theoretical part, as we discussed above, and in the technical part (as well as in terms of working with analytics and marketing).
Of course, one should not think that this is all charity. We don't give money to everyone. Our selection is close, the requirements are high (we are unlikely to be interested in any social farm). But since our main income has always been and will always be related to game development, in most cases, even financially, we will be able to make a much more interesting offer!
So, going back to when our work as a publisher begins: at any moment and at any stage. When it ends: it is stipulated in the agreement. But the vast majority of our relationship lasts for many years with absolute pleasure for both sides.
App2Top.ru : What kind of game are you looking for in the competition?
Yuri: We are looking primarily for developers: those teams that are burning with the idea of unusual and cool games. It doesn't make sense to talk about any kind of binding on our part to the genre/platform/tools. Anyone who really wants and knows how to create hits can make them in any niche.
