Getting your game a publishing deal has never been an easy thing to do. Right now, it’s especially hard given that for many publishers, if it doesn’t seem like a guaranteed hit, it likely isn’t something they’ll take on. This is something that Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, or rather the actual person, Luca Galante, takes great issue with, and in a recent interview he spoke more broadly of his issues with publishers, and his thoughts on now being one.
“I see a lot of publishers I don’t like, and I think that’s my way to define what a good publisher should be, probably,” Galante explained to GamesRadar. “I see a lot of publishers that try to exploit the platforms just to make money, basically, because the video game industry is very obviously an industry that makes a lot of money. There is a lot of money to make. I see that these publishers will try and just exploit platforms for money.”
He went on to note how there are publishers who will put out simply incomplete games, or early access games that never get finished, and that for him, “what a publisher should do is, first of all, make genuine games, genuine products, something that has some real value, and then understand that not everything can be a breakout hit.” Galante also spoke of the importance of post-launch support, and for him this is “definitely a big thing from my point of view that publishers should be able to offer.”
As of now, Poncle has published two games, Berserk or Die, a beat ’em up where you have to mash your keyboard to beat enemies, and Kill the Brickman, a Brick Breaker-esque, turn-based roguelike game, both of which are cheap as chips (£3 and £4 respectively).
It’s these kinds of affordable games with smaller teams that Galante wants to lean towards in publishing, and in particular his priority is to find devs “that are very transparent in what they do, they want to talk with their community, and they have a real, genuine passion for making games.” Not only that, it’s important to him that these devs get to realise their vision by enriching it, as opposed to forcing in things like microtransactions or season passes.
Galante is, perhaps most importantly, fully aware with how lucky he got with Vampire Survivors, and that’s why he wants to publish other games. “We definitely made some mistakes when it comes to putting the game out there, but we learned a lot, and wanted to try to sort of share what we learned with other indies. It was a way to try and give something back to the indie community, share the luck.” Good luck indeed! At this point in time, every dev needs every ounce of the stuff they can get.
