“When you leave, Nigel’s going to punch me.”

Bevor Hotline Miami, eines der wichtigsten Spiele des letzten Jahres, erschienen ist, standen die Macher Jonatan “Cactus” Soderström und Dennis Wedin kurz vor dem Bankrott. Dass sie nicht auf die Couch in ihren jeweiligen Elternhäusern in Göteborg ziehen mussten, liegt an fünf Menschen in Austin (TX), die ein Publishing-Unternehmen für Indies gegründet haben: Devolver Digital.

Zwei der Gründer, der Texaner Nigel Lowrie (rechts) und der Londoner Gratham Struthers, waren auf der GDC in San Francisco, um das neue Hotline Miami zu finden. Sie suchten nach Entwicklern, schauten sich neue Spiele an und feierten mit Freunden und Partnern wie Vlambeer und Cactus. Ich habe sie getroffen, um mit ihnen über Devolver und das Geschäft mit den Indiegames zu sprechen.

Das Interview liegt auch im Audioformat vor. Die Lesefaulen unter euch können direkt zum Player am Ende des Artikels springen.

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A couple of years ago, an indie publisher seemed to be a completely impossible idea.

Nigel Lowrie I don’t know if there was the ability for that to exist. Until the game changed with digital distribution. It re-energized the PC space.

Graham Struthers To be honest, if you go back, 2-4 years: Try and get any major website to talk about a PC game, that’s virtually impossible unless it’s World of Warcraft. And also we also got completely beaten up with free2play and microtransactions. Saying that you were going to do a PC game for download was like saying you were a rapist. Or an idiot.

Nigel And there’s your headline right there.

“Saying that you were going to do a PC game for download was like saying you were a rapist. Or an idiot.”

Graham So, you know, I remember when we started working on Serious Sam HD: First Encounter the scorn was pretty heavy and it was like: What, you guys aren’t doing console? There was a real sense that it was a dumb thing to do. It’s interesting how things have changed. Because if you came here three years ago at GDC this place was awash with iOS, with free2play, with browser-based games out of Germany. If you were saying, you were going to make a PC game and sell it for 10-15 Dollars, people were like: You are fucking idiots. [Do] Free2play, microtransactions, browser-based. And two years later, everybody’s back at PC.

You’ve kind of been at the front of that, but how did you guys started out?

Graham Of the five of us, four of us were part of Gathering of Developers. But Take-Two was buying that company. And post Take-Two buying that company we all went separate ways. But the idea for us has never gone away that the developer is the most important part of the equation and not the publisher. The idea of the developer owning all the IP, keeping all their rights, not being screwed. The reason we came back was we saw it with digital [distribution]. With the world of being able to sell directly to the consumer. That was more realistic than previously sell products on PlayStation or 360 and manufacture it and distribute it all over Europe and North America. That certainly got the band back together, I guess, is the best way of putting it.

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You have a very interesting way to market your games. First with Serious Sam 3, now with Hotline Miami. How did you decide on fun marketing campaigns?

Nigel Well, every game is unique. Every game has a unique scenario and every promotion that’s done around the game needs to evoke a real sense of the game itself. We don’t want to promote a game just bland. We need to stand out from the crowd. So we need to have games that stand out from the crowd and we need to market games differently than most publishers and developers do. So looking at a game like Serious Sam that is very bizarre in some sense and doesn’t take itself seriously at all. And so we wanted a lot of those elements come through in the marketing we did for that, to get the spirit of the game out there. Hotline Miami on the other hand is a very dark game. It’s dripping with style, visually and sound-wise. So we wanted to make sure those were elements we were playing to. So we make sure that whatever happens with a game, the game itself comes through, comes alive in the marketing as well.

“Every game has a unique scenario and every promotion that’s done around the game needs to evoke a real sense of the game itself.”

Graham Something different about us is that given we’re 5 people, we have to love the game just as much as the developer loves the game. It has to be something that we really believe in. I’m not saying we have to believe we’re going to sell millions of it, but we have to believe in the game and the idea and the genre. Perhaps that’s why we don’t necessarily run around signing content. We’re only interested in things that we get motivated and excited about.

Do you get lots of new projects pitched at you by indie developers?

Graham To be honest: not that many. It’s more a question of us contacting developers and inviting developers we’re interested in. And then GDC has been a great opportunity, because the Pitch Fork Parker idea of saying we’re here and we’re looking to find new games brings people to us. But I wouldn’t say we get an awful lot of people cold-calling.

Nigel A lot of we’ve built is off previous relationships. It’s more of a word of mouth thing. It’s more us searching things we want to work with and sometimes it’s us finding them and sometimes that’s just friends being introduced. We worked with Vlambeer on Serious Sam: The Random Encounter and that went very well. And they introduced us to the folks at Dennaton, who did Hotline Miami.

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How was working with Dennis Wedin and Cactus on Hotline Miami?

Graham He’s going in his own direction and he’s not nicking any consideration for a commercial game. He’s an artist and his chosen media is games. For me, people like that…that’s super exciting in the end.

But isn’t it also difficult to work with?

Nigel The most important thing is to understand that it is their art, their game and you let them do what they want to do with that. To interfere in that would be a mistake. Some of the brilliant things that are happening you wouldn’t get with us prodding for control like some folks might wanna do. The key there is trust. They trust us, we trust them. We let them do whatever they want. And because they trust us, they send Graham builds and are asking: Hey, what do you think of this? And they WANT to know our input. And same goes on our side. We put together a marketing plan, trailers, how we want to show the game at trade shows. We take it to them. They need to approve it, because we want them to have their ideas in there as well. And so really, that’s the biggest thing: Making sure it’s an honest and clear partnership and there’s a huge amount of trust there. It sounds simple and a lot of people don’t have that and I think that’s where you see problems happening.

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Is Devolver sustainable at the rate you’re publishing?

Graham I fucking hope so.

Nigel (laughs) We haven’t thought about that!

Oh no!

Nigel Mic off, mic off! (laughs). [We have] no formal office. We have a place to meet in Austin and get together and plan the shows. But we have low overhead and 5 people that work very, very hard. We keep basic costs out. And the games we worked on, so far, have done quite well.

“If we sign games that aren’t any good we won’t be here next year.”

Graham Yeah, that’s important. Anything that we have done so far, and I hope it will continue to be the case, the developers have seen substantial royalties. When their games come out, it’s the developers taking us out for dinner. Is it sustainable? I think yes. If you think how much the world has moved, it would never be possible in physical media. So thanks to digital, thanks to companies like Steam, Good Old Games and Microsoft and Sony we’re able to do this. I guess when it comes to how sustainable Devolver is…if we sign games that aren’t any good we won’t be here next year. That we can tell you. We know that we won’t be around.

Nigel That’s true. That’s why it’s important for us to have good relationships and very, very distinct set of games. If we do a Call of Duty clone…there’s no point. If you do something like Hotline Miami or Dungeon Hearts, you move fast. There’s not a lot of games like any of those.

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What’s next for Devolver?

Nigel We’re about to announce a Call of Duty game, a Batman game, I’m just kidding.

Graham Well, we got our microtransaction based DLC Free2Play browser game which we’re very excited about?

Is it a kind of a Hotline Miami thing where you manage a village?

Nigel Exactly! Imagine Farmville, but instead you’re in 1980s Miami and you’re managing Russian mobsters.

I’d play that.

Nigel I know you would, that’s why we’re making it.

Graham In all seriousness, before E3 we’re going to be announcing our next big project which will be coming out in Q4, which we have been working on for nearly two years by the time it’s finished. It’s unusual for us to have a game in that kind of development cycle, which we’re very excited about, being developed by a team down in Warsaw. So…

Nigel You said too much!

Graham We’re super excited about it. We’ve got Hotline Miami 2, which will be hopefully this year?

Nigel …

Graham No? Maybe?

Nigel You said too much again.

Graham I should stop, he’s giving me that look.

“…”

Nigel Yeah…I thought you would go with: We have some stuff coming.

Graham He’s now got an exclusive!

Awesome!

Graham Excellent. We’re going to be at E3 and Gamescom with everything. E3 will have first-look, first playables. Am I allowed to say that?

Nigel No. Jesus Christ! (Laughs) What do you want, man?

Graham I’m not saying any more, now.

Nigel I love your output. Thanks a lot.

Graham And then we’ll be bringing everything to Gamescom, because that has been a really good show for us in the last three years when we started with Serious Sam and obviously came there last year with Hotline Miami. Busy year, a lot to do. When you leave, Nigel’s going to punch me.

Nigel Absolutely.

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Disclaimer: Nigel Lowrie hat mir nach dem Gespräch eine Flasche stilles Wasser gekauft, damit ich nicht erzähle, wie er Hotline Miami an Graham Struthers nachgestellt hat.