Originally published at: https://xboxera.com/2023/11/01/how-can-indies-stand-out-chat-with-long-gone-days-developers-thoughts-on-the-power-of-marketing/
I think I speak for all of us when I say that, at some point, all of us have thought of a game idea. Maybe its something cool, something with unique game mechanics, or a perspective you want to see realised. Usually that game idea sticks around before being vaulted alongside last night’s dinner. But some take their game ideas further than that and leave their mark on the industry: I’m talking about our beloved indie game developers and how each and everyday, there’s someone or a group of cool people working to make their dreams come to life.
And when that game is nearly or finally ready to be played, oftentimes there is a rather unfortunate problem that begins to rear its ugly head: your game is shipping alongside many other games, especially AA and AAA-sized titles with massive marketing budgets, almost always totaling the other 50% of the game’s production cost. And its a problem that hits not just indie devs but artists as well—the overlap between creation and marketing is very tiny. Games are often lost between these major releases, heck even between the cracks of instant indie darlings as well.
To get some insight on what indie developers go through to get their games realised, I had a chance to have a chat with turn-based role-playing game ‘Long Gone Days’ developers Camilla and Pablo—the duo of the Chilean three-team This I Dreamt studio had just released their first game nearly three weeks ago after years of development. Not only did we talk about Long Gone Days and its themes, but we also talked about the industry as a whole and what indie developers can do to stand out against major players and even packed years like 2023 has amicably demonstrated. We look at how players perceive games as well as how indies can and do help one another out. And of course, we discuss what the future holds.
Grab a cup of tea and enjoy our hour-long chat.
Do note that this interview has been editted for clarity and readability with transcription tools, but I did my best to ensure that the spirit of our back ‘n forth wasn’t lost.
Genghis
OK. Introductions! My name is Genghis and I’m with XboxEra. I’m part of the writing staff and we generally, focus on all things Xbox, but sometimes we branch out. In particular, I like to or. I like to talk about indie titles a lot because I feel like that’s a part of gaming that really needs lifting up. Can I see who I’m talking to today? The lovely people in this room.
Camila
Well, I’m Camilla. I’m the artist. I’m the original creator of Long Gone Days. This is Pablo.
Pablo
Yeah. I’m. I’m Pablo. I’m the game designer and we both with Camilla. We also wrote the script of the game and right now we’re missing. Camilo, who is our programmer, but we are just our three-person team.
Genghis
A three-person from Chile?
Pablo
From Chile, yeah, yeah.
Genghis
That’s really cool. I want to I wanted to ask, you know, I remember seeing the press release. Camilla has been working on this game. Since you were 12 years old, I believe.
Camilla
Yeah, but I didn’t continuously work on it during. All this time. But I discovered RPG Maker when I was 12 years old. Hmm, so I needed a story, so I started creating the characters. And I started and abandoned (the project) several times because I didn’t know about, I don’t know about game design or writing or stuff like that. And but during this whole time, these characters, like they were with me, and I kept drawing them and developing their stories. But the real development of the game for the prototype started by the end of 2015.
Genghis
That’s honestly pretty amazing. I mean, the fact that you held on to that idea for so long incubated it, it just got, you know, got long gone days out, which, hey, congratulations, you guys shipped it last week on PC, Xbox, PlayStation. Yeah. I mean, shipping a game is no easy feat. As I’m sure you know, could tell me a little bit about the game?
I watched about an hour of gameplay. I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to play it yet. I really liked what I saw. I especially loved the little sniping minigame. And then alongside that first person combat focus that I really enjoy from the Shin Megami Tensei games, Strange Journey is one of my favorites. Could you tell me what inspired all this? Could you tell me a little bit about the game?
Pablo
The game stars Rourke. He’s a soldier from a private military company which is very secretive, and he is sent on his first mission to initially to support the Polish Army or that’s what he said. But he soon realized that that’s all a facade and that it’s mostly his own army. He’s trying to start like a sort of some sort of international conflict. So, once he realized that, he decides to desert and try to stop the plan of his army.
So along the way, he starts meeting a lot of people who are being affected by this. All of them are civilians who, like I said, have been affected in different ways by the actions of this military company. And with the help of these people, he finally tries to find a way to stop the whole operation.So, the sniper mini game comes about because the main character is a sniper. So, we wanted to have that aspect of his character shown in some kind of gameplay matter. And also, I think part of the inspirational also was the Shinigami series because Camilla is a big fan of those games. So, we saw that as an opportunity not only to show the fighting or the parallel system in a way that, Maybe not a match to that sort of game, but also it helps us to develop some sort of battle system that felt that match the military aspect of the game where you can shoot the different body parts of the enemy and have different kind of interactions like that.
Camila
Part of the idea came from the limitations of the RPG maker engine. Well, I something in the RPG maker communities that you don’t want people to be able to tell that your game was being made in RPG Maker, so you try to innovate with making some changes to the value system. But since I don’t. Know don’t know how to code. Use it like a lot of pictures. In part the well, the game has the body targeting system. Where you can choose whether to shoot at the legs, the arms, the head or the torso, and that also that idea came from studying about sniper techniques.
And how do you that not all these, because people usually think about headshots when they think about snipers. But there’s a lot of techniques to reduce movement, and more kind of more like defensive move, like disarming your opponent. And that’s where the idea came from. And at the time, I thought it was like really original. But then I learned about background story that a similar system or, I don’t know, fallout also had some kind. Of system but. But yeah, people. Have liked that system a lot, so I’m really happy with it.
Genghis
You know, I thought. That was a pretty cool system when I saw it. I also especially like the art of because I saw about two or three combat sequences with soldiers pointing rifles right at you, and I thought. About how I don’t know if this is. If this is the intention of your narrative, I’ve only I seen it up to the part where I believe Rourke meets a human child, I’m not sure if they’re aliens or anything like that, but he realizes he’s not armed. Is not the enemy and. As he reaches out to him, one of his superior officers kills the child. And you know, when I was looking at this when I was looking at the combat system, when I thought about it, actually I’m like. Was this also trying to like? I don’t know. Maybe try to humanize your enemies, because I believe there’s also non-lethal combat options in this game, which I feel like games could use more often as so many titles feel like shooting galleries, especially the AAA stuff. Also, in regard to all the military, all the military, all the you did talk about how you looked into sniper techniques, did you research? Did you research any, I suppose just military stuff in general, as you were writing your script?
Camilla
Yeah. The funny thing is that I was never into like. Military fiction or stuff like that. So, I started researching specifically for this game because I wanted it to be based on the real world and I didn’t want any magic or stuff like that. And I also didn’t want characters to be shooting. I don’t know animals or civilians, so. Military was like the like, some kind of like the best answer. And yeah, I spent a lot of my teenage years.
And up until recently, watching the documentaries browse, lurking like military forums. Because I did want to depict like the part that’s not so often shown in military fiction, that is the side that doesn’t show weapons or something cool, or the very I don’t know, patriotic side of work. I wanted something more like what you will see in. I don’t know band of brothers, the Pacific, where the. The more emotional side. And also, I really wanted to show how it affects civilians because, well, I’ve been very. I don’t know what’s the word, but I I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about war during all these years, and people tend not to empathize too much with the casualties, of course.
For civilians especially. Mm-hmm. And they only see, like, ohh, I don’t know. 10,000 people died in this war. And people are like, OK, but they only care if I don’t know if there was someone like from their own country involved. And it shouldn’t be that way. We should be. We should all care. Like I don’t know. Like there’s this point that the no man. Is an island. That it means that we all suffer when humanity loses one of us. I think that that’s the kind of message we wanted to share that even if these people are. I don’t know. Like they’re not relatives or acquaintances. We should be able to care about them and how war affects them, and it affects everyone in the end.
Genghis
How do you guys feel about the gaming slate of 2023? I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of. Kind of carrying a lot of games on my back right now. They, you know, Long Gone Days. Actually, I believe it launched between. It launched between Forza Motorsport, a launch between the Cyberpunk expansion pack it launched. To look through the list here really quick of what just came out on Xbox alone, I mean we have from space we have the we have many indie titles, wild card football. Builder Simulator, Sword Art Online, Project Blue, Assassin’s Creed Mirage. Long Gone Days launches between a lot of high profile releases. How did you guys decide on your release date? First and foremost, that I’m not really all too familiar with how that stuff works. Could you tell me the thought process behind it?
Camilla
Well, honestly. We wanted to release. The game a bit early. But it wasn’t completely ready, and of course we didn’t want the bug-ridden build to go live. We know well. Everyone knows that October is October, November and December. They’re like months where knowing the game launch, but we also what we care about the most is that our players have been waiting for a really long (time).
Genghis
I noticed the game launched in early access in 2018.
Camilla
Yeah. So, we really wanted to. To make it available for players. So, while we know it wasn’t like the best. Business decision maybe to launch it in October or biggest? A priority was making our players happy. So yeah, we didn’t want to wait until, I don’t know, January or something like that.
Pablo
Oh yeah, that also we took advantage of it of the chance of participating in packs that was on I believe. September. So, we could do a bit of promotion for the game. So, it didn’t launch like. Like without any bus before it. But yeah, it’s a bit complicated, but we also saw a lot of. Like the difficulty of launching a game during the whole year, basically because of indie games. Are always competing with the AAA titles and right now, like every month, there’s like a big release. So, it’s something like that.
I don’t think it matters that much when we launch it, because there’s always going to be the chance that it’s going to be like. Like Eclipse by the really big launch. But at the same time, like Camilla said, we had a lot of like loyal fan base made during the Early Access period. So, one of our main priorities was to give them the full release as soon as we could and. I think that even though October is a difficult month for releases, indie games have the quality of. Being a more of a long run of maybe time to for people to find, find the games like they move more of the word of mouth. Kind of yeah.
So even though we released the release window is really important for the like a big bunch of sales being made on the Rep. State we still feel like we can get the attention of people in a longer time period. Because we haven’t seen like games that when they launch, they don’t really have much bus behind them, but once there’s like a I don’t know maybe some. Someone like a streamer or something, starts playing it or just because of word of mouth, people start to discover this in the like hidden gems like they say sometimes, and they get a new life and they’re still kind of find their audience.
Genghis
Those are great points, so I definitely agree. Because I’m pulling up some Indies right now that I’m currently playing through the one title I mentioned, project Blue, it got it launched a few years ago, but through the release of a new console platform on Xbox, I was able to give it a shot. And it’s actually really fun. How do you folks, I mean I if you don’t mind me asking, totally understand if you don’t want to answer this one. But how do you guys feel about the sales performance right now for Long Gone Days?
Camila
We have seen like a lot of movement, lots of beautiful fan art, the reception from the players has been amazing. They have already helped us find all the possible bugs in the game. And the total response has been amazing. Like people, we’re always afraid that what if people hate it, hate it or. Obviously during early access, we had a more limited audience of people. And we thought that maybe now that it was going to reach a bigger audience. I don’t know. Haters were going to appear or something, especially because of its political things. But no, everyone is still like, so we are really happy with that.
Pablo
Yeah. And we also, we also we weren’t we were a bit afraid of people getting the wrong idea when they saw like screenshots of the game, because maybe people were gonna think ohh this is a JRPG about soldiers and weapons and stuff. But. Then they will going to find like a an emotional story with more dialogues than battle scenes. So, we were afraid maybe people would get the wrong expectations of the game, but right now it’s just helped us a lot on trying to find the right team from the for the marketing material. So that way we are putting forward the idea of the game being more of a story driven experience that it’s mostly based on the.
Feelings and experience of the main cast, so I think we can. Having the players’ expectations in line with where our idea for the game was, I think that the reaction of the player base has been really positive and sometimes I think that we expected like that sort of reaction. I feel like the game draws an audience that are. More, sensitive and also more. They really connect with the characters. So like Camilla said, we’ve been lucky to have a lot of fans doing fan art or talking about to us about who character is their favorite. And that’s been really rewarding since the launch.
Camila
Oh, Long Gone Days has also been included in several bundles. On niche like I don’t know the like likes mother bundle, the Palestinian aid bundle, the bundle for Ukraine. So, a lot of our audience also resonates a lot with. The human cost of work and they appreciate a lot this kind of like. Ohh and also. Well, this is like a throwback to a previous question, but once we released the game on early access, we had like a limit somewhat limited audience, but it was still pretty successful. But some years later, when we were included in the Black Lives Matter bundle, like or community exploded like there was like the game came back to life. And even though a lot of people got the game. Through the bamboo. Some still build the game again to support. We think that. Yeah, games like don’t just die after they’re released, like they’re still like plenty of opportunities. Like what we all have seen when cutting with, I don’t know. Among us, for example, and stuff like that.
Genghis
Oh yeah, no, I definitely agree. I think that’s just really goes to show how awesome, like how strong a community can be and not only lifting up the games presence. But also. How do I. Oh my gosh, I completely figured out the other point I was trying to make, but no, definitely a strong community is essential for a game for any game, really. And actually, I think that’s one way. Indeed. Titles in general can kind. Of push themselves out of the crowd of not just AAA’s. Not just AAA, actually. You know I play more than just my PC and my Xbox and my PlayStation consoles.
I play on my mobile phone, I play, I play MMO’s run by fans, MMOs that have been brought back to life, you know, like ToonTown Online. Pirates online. So many things are competing for my time, so many, so many things are competing for gamers times. So, when you know when Colby mentioned the topic of this, this chat, you know how can indie titles, you know, rise above everything that you know that’s currently vying for my attention? I won’t lie. And I’m a little. I’m still kind of nervous about. It like what’s the answer? I thought about a few things. You know, you actually, you guys actually brought that up. You’re awesome and loyal community. I’m glad to hear that. I didn’t even know the game was available in those those bundles. I should check them out if they’re still out.
Genghis
Now what was I going to bring up, oh yes—marketing! Serenity Forge helped you guys. Really, they properly marketed the game because you know, Pablo said he was worried that you know that people might have the wrong idea but and I mean, I as a player I saw what they gave me and I already knew what it was gonna be about, so props to them, but I guess can every indie developer do that? How hard was it for you guys to get in touch with Serenity Forge?
Pablo
Well, Serenity Forge got in contact with us from the very first demo release that Camilla made back in 2016, I think. Well, to put the gaming context Camilla started developing. The RPG Maker version of the game, she did a small version small demo that was, about like 40 minutes long and that with no real intention of making a final game. She was working more for like a like a portfolio piece to maybe get a job in the industry. But once she published it, it got a lot of attention. Because the game was really fun, was really good, it had more or less the same themes that the final release had. And the attention make it possible to do a small Indiegogo campaign. For crowdfunding and that got the attention from the people at first, but we were a bit skeptical about working with the and a publisher because we’ve seen.
A bit of bad experiences here on the Chilean in the scene because of the mostly because of the deals that sometimes they can be a bit let’s say a bit predatory in the sense of taking a large cut or maybe finding that a team from a smaller country could be maybe I don’t want to say taking advantage of but they still didn’t make a very favorable deals. So, we wanted to have complete freedom in our time to develop the game and also to don’t feel the pressure of maybe a set-in stone release date. Or something like that. So, we didn’t want to. Sign with anyone during that time, but we still kept in contact with the people of Serenity Forge, because maybe down the line it could be a good opportunity. So, when we were close to finishing the game, we won a grant. from Latin gaming that was used to finance a small marketing campaign.
And it was being offered with the people at the Propoganda Marketing agency. And when we had our first meeting with them, they said sure we can have something. That will work for you, but if you want to make a bigger impact, you will need to maybe try to launch the game on different platforms. We were because we are just a three-person team. We were planning to releasing the PC version and just only that., when they say that we were thinking about how can we do something like that because we really couldn’t afford to work on different ports at the same time that we were finishing the. And we talked to them about the contact that Serenity Forge made. And they suggested that we write back to them and see if we can work, at least on the publishing of the console version of the game. And that’s the deal that we have with them. So that came about like, I don’t know if it like late last year or the beginning of 2023.
Camila
It was in. October of last year.
Pablo
Yeah. So like—
Genghis
Sorry for cutting in, the port started last year? The development of the ports?
Pablo
No, no, the deal started on October, but the ports took a really short time. They started this year, and it was finished (this year). Maybe some weeks before the launch of. The game. But, so that’s when we started working with them. And what made us want to work with them was first, they’ve been following the projections, his conception. Like they’ve been really big fans of the game and we found out that the. I don’t know, is Zhenghua the CEO of Serenity Forge? I don’t know. But like he’s one of the he’s in a leadership position and he’s a really big fan of the game like he played it. He has his favorite characters, he really connected with the story so. That gave us the confidence of saying yes we can. We felt that Serenity Forge was really going to help us. Was that because they really knew the game. They were going to show it in the way that it deserved.
Pablo
Be hard to participate in events in America or in Europe on. In places, so having a partner that could reach out to that audience for us was really important for the success of the game.
Genghis
Wow. No, that’s. I didn’t even I didn’t even realize. All the background details that could go into that that, you know, Serenity Forge in particular from all the published titles I’ve seen from them, they really know how to pick out the unique titles. So, I’m glad they were able to. Reach out and you know. Help you guys publish your title and I have heard of, you know, publishers not paying their developers for completed work and promises. It seems to happen all the time in the industry. Honestly, I don’t blame some developers or many developers for not wanting to go with a publisher.
And so, in that case, you know is when I’m thinking about all this, what I’m thinking about, OK, if an indie developer doesn’t want to go. With a publisher. What else can they do to? To make their game known. And I was thinking back. Do there was an indie game I’m playing right now? It came out about a week or two ago. It’s called Islands of the Caliph. I don’t think. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. It’s only on Steam. It’s a keyboard only first person, Middle Eastern inspired RPG. Made by two developers and I found it from just a random post on Twitter.
Maybe one way for a game to be, to become popular, or at least known because so many titles released on Steam, or Heck, you know, when I look at the Xbox new games list there are games that Xbox doesn’t often see as many releases as PlayStation or the Nintendo Switch eShop, or yeah, even Steam where Steam you have 10s if not potentially almost hundreds of games a day, you know. And so if that’s not, I mean you can’t just rely on Twitter to get your game out the window. I thought about Game Pass, PlayStation Plus subscription services like that, but I also realize that’s not too easy to get into as one might think. Could you tell me a little bit about how you how you guys would feel about going into a service, a subscription service?
Pablo
I think? That it depends a lot like I don’t really. I’m not really so sure about how they work internally, but there’s also a lot of discussion in the in this scene about how sometimes that may not be favorable to everyone. So I think it will always depend on the deal. Also, like you said, like not everyone get the chance to be a part of those sort of deals like you really. I think that for us, if we didn’t have a partner like Serenity Forge, we will never even think about being a part of one of those subscription services because I don’t think they will. Reach out and if we get a chance like that. We will need the support and the because like being outside of the US made it a bit difficult to. To make those sort of connections, that sort of contacts with the, the main platform holders.
Camila
Yeah. Something I wanted to like highlight. Is that because we are from Chile and we don’t have like too much access to other? I don’t know, like investors or publishers? One thing that really helped us is that during 2019, Rami Ismail. Yeah, he invited me to be part of that. And because I was able to go to GDC, that’s the only time I have ever gone to GDC. I was able to meet Zhenghua. At that time, and I think from what I’ve seen, because I made a lot of contacts, I don’t know on Twitter. Or stuff like that. Or only the ones I met in real life? They become like, I don’t know, like good contacts. Like they really trusted me. Once they get to know me in person. And I also feel a lot more confident about working with Trinity Forge, because Zhenghua is such a charismatic guy and it’s really easy to trust him.
Because, well, I wasn’t very sure about working with other publishers, even though we met with like a lot of them. It’s not like they gave me a reason to not to trust them, but I don’t know, we didn’t want to just give it away to or to share it with anyone. Yeah, that’s we really appreciate the work like from well especially from Rami. And other developers that help people from other countries like ours to get a bigger audience and well for the game you mentioned, like islands. Of the caliph. I think this is exactly the kind of crowd that could help boost this game.
Genghis
Rami, actually it’s interesting that you bring him up because I follow him on Twitter. He is such an awesome advocate for any developers the consulting he does the work he puts in to getting the word out especially you know because as you folks mentioned is Chilean. Developers, it’s hard to reach. It’s hard to reach a completely different, you know, an English speaking audience. It’s not that easy. Even though the world may seem to speak English to everyone in America. You’re out of that. If you’re out of that circle. Ohh, no, it’s a it’s hard to get in and you know, I have. I’ve been thinking about that too. If I were because. I were in a country where it’s even I don’t want to say I think of South America or Europe or Asia as like layers of like. Ease of access to getting the resources you need to publish a game, but it also kind of is like that because if you were in. I want to say. If you want to if an even poorer region, like if you were a Palestinian game developer, what are the chances you’re going to get any help to publishing your game, you know? And that’s you know, that’s where your the advocates come in. But how do you meet those people too, especially when you don’t have Internet or anything like that? Oh gosh, that’s a loaded question.
Camila
Yeah, well, I remember that well the, the same panel I mentioned more reason to be. During the year I was in there. Was a. A developer from Syria. Another one who was from South Sudan. And well, the one from South Sudan, he started developing his game like. He gets to know computers when he was like a teenager. And he will have to walk like, I don’t know, two or three hours to the Cyber Cafe. To play, I don’t know, GTA. And he started developing his game like that. And for the for the guys that was. From Syria that I’m sorry that I don’t remember their names. He actually had to leave Syria in order to pursue a career in games because, well, all of the economic blockage. And there’s like no way to put your game on Steam, because I need I need. I initially thought that ohh I’m from Chile and if I can do it, everyone can do it. But of course there are countries that are way more restrictive than ours, like Chile is still like pretty. I don’t know if advanced, but it has economic stability in. Is everything OK? Yeah.
Genghis
So I was just I was looking for the little hand symbol. You did? I just wanted to raise my hand real quick. I just wanted to mention. Sorry. You know, Venezuela is been has been going through a lot of economic downturn and very recently, you know, people are leaving the country and doves. There was a developer of a well known game series.
Camila
Yeah, Valhalla, I wonder how they did it?
Genghis
Ohh yeah, no I was that was many years ago. That game came out. I can’t even. 7 years ago, and Venezuela was in trouble, and now (the situation is) worse, so you know. So, I just wanted to bring that up as you were mentioning. Sorry for cutting in, please continue.
Camila
Now, yeah, and that’s totally OK, but yeah. It’s surprising that how many places are still like so isolated. Well, because of these economic restrictions. And yeah, I always wonder how the guys from well, how I managed to launch such a cool game because. Well, and they’re. Working with a publisher, I think that’s from Australia. With a name I can’t pronounce. But yeah, it’s. I hope it gets easier for developers from all over the world, especially right now. It will be amazing if that’s from Palestinian could more easily release their game(s). I remember when we were in a Palestinian Aid bundle, there was this very short game about the experience in Gaza, I think it was called Liyla and the Shadows of War. It’s like right that that game managed to get out to the world. And we need we really need more stories like that.
Genghis
I definitely agree. Yeah, that’s gosh, it’s. In a way that’s also kind of luck of the draw being able to. Oh, what’s the game? Oh I see it in the chat, thank you Pablo! I appreciate it. Yeah. No, the that’s, that’s just. It’s just luck of the draw, I suppose. Even just being able to. You know, find the support you need to get your game out there in countries that are much worse off at the moment. And yeah, I guess I think for a lot of. I don’t know if I want to make this connection, but you know the conflict in palace and cause and Israel right now. I think a lot of people may resonate with your game and the themes of war. And all that. I thought about besides that, besides, besides meeting with the publisher or contacts, one thing I want to suggest to game developers, or really just anyone making something, I always appreciate a good press kit.
I always say, even a good press kit is crazy important because it when I do want to talk about indie games, I just I just posted about a game right now. Sociable Soccer 24. There were, there was artwork in it, there was a press release, info, Word document, whatever that that’s great. But you also need, if you can get a trailer, even if the trailer isn’t good. If you’re making that thing alone, I totally understand. It’s not not easy making a video, but just having that. Is important because you know when people see a game screenshot, sometimes a game screenshot can really pull you in. There was a a Polish developed game that I reported on about a few months ago. It’s like a 2.5 D horror title. My goodness, I can’t quite remember it. Let me see if I can remember. Let me see if I can find it.
Ohh, Holstin—I’m sorry I misheard you completely, Camila. Holstin. Yes. I’m so sorry. Bad hearing. I play loud music all day!
Camila
It looks so good.
Genghis
It does, yes. And that’s it. That’s a game that, you know, you see screenshots you’re like. That you know that that pulls you in, but not every game can do that in my opinion. So, a trailer is definitely important. What do you guys think? And I remember your press kit was really nice, so I was able to get your game out in a nice little news post just like that. What are your thoughts?
Camila
Well, I don’t really know what to answer, but well before I went into game development, I worked in marketing, so I always learned the importance of, I don’t know. See you and you know keywords and being able to promote your game in a way or how to communicate. Stuff so. We always were like marketing our game from also, for example something like this that I started talking about the game like the same week I started developing the game. It got a lot of traction from, I don’t know,
Philip. Well, it was called Gama sutra as well and other sites because we really make, we made marketing into something. During our development, it takes a lot of effort to especially small teams. Teams like us cannot don’t have the budget for it. I’m just, like, really obsessed with the game. So that’s why I spend. A lot of time on marketing. But it’s very important for a game to have a trailer, promotional picks and stuff like that.Pablo
Yes and one of the things that is really cool about the indie scene in general, like in on Twitter, on Instagram, or in different forms, is that they also are really good at sharing their experiences and giving advice to new commerce. And one of the things that I think everyone says and gives us an advice is that you really need, like you said, a really good press kit, a really good strategy to market your game on social media, putting clips. Like different ways in which you can use you’re the small time you have to market your game, put it in a in a good use and be really efficient with it. And like we were talking earlier about Rami.
And he also, I think he’s the one who made dopresskit.com. I think it is that it’s basically a template for Indies to use to create a rest kit. And there’s also a lot of advice to how to create an engaging trailer, for example, like, how long should it be? What type of scenes to put on, and also one of one of the things that is really useful in every aspect of. Developing. Is that the GDC bolt? It has a lot of material regarding like marketing, like how publishers work, how to market your indie game, how big studios do it as well. So, you can learn a lot of good practices and how to. To basically make your indie game to be known by. The by the public.
Genghis
Most definitely agreed. Yeah, there are. There are a lot of resources you can find on the Internet right now. There’s definitely not as easy as it was maybe 10, even maybe I would say five years ago. To getting the information you need to put out your game and actually going back to, you know, indie developers and social media platforms and all that. One thing I really appreciate that appreciate about these communities is that they prop everyone’s game up. Everyone is willing to help each other out. And that’s something I like to see. And that’s also one thing.
Genghis
One thing I thought maybe a developer might be their lover might be scared about showing their game to the world. But you know. Unless you actually put it out there. You know, no one will see. Yeah. No, thank you for all those suggestions, Pablo. That’s because. I guess it does. It doesn’t come easy the the idea of making a game might seem easy, but then when you realize all the working parts, you’re like ohh, maybe I should just maybe I should just go get like another degree. Do you guys have any other ideas on what a developer might be able to do to get their game out the door?
Camila
Yeah. Well, in my particular case, something that has helped me a lot. Is that well? Because I’m a woman. A lot of women developers like I don’t know Becca from Arcadian Atlas. Or Nana made like Virgo versus the Zodiac. Who are also working with part because there aren’t too many, like women, developers of indie games like the that are like the head of their stuff. We’re a tightly knit community, so we help each other games up. And the same thing happens with the Latino community. And I think that’s something that the developers from.
Emerging territories. Can do too. Like to promote their games like. They we all are happy to help each other and even not only people who are from our same race or nationality, but. I don’t know all the people from the southern hemisphere. We can come together on hyper our games. We’ll be happy to help developers from the Middle East, from South Asia and stuff like that. Well obviously from everywhere, but we’re proud of people from this. Part of the world to get to be noticed, especially by the by the press.
Pablo
Yeah. And also , not only indie games from like emerging countries like Camila said, but also one thing that helped us a lot was just trying to contact developers and ask for ask for advice. Like maybe people don’t. Want to do that because they feel like they’re bothering them or like they’re wasting the. Time, but luckily for us, when we asked, people replied and took the time to give us like their advice and said what we should do or if they didn’t know something they always said it. Also, so we were really lucky to get to meet other deaths in that way and made us made the job a lot more easy, like for example. When we launched the game on early access, it was it was a really difficult choice to make. But we contacted the people that made Crisco. , another indie game that was released successful and we asked them for advice because they launched their game on early. And they had no issues on replying to our questions. And then when Camila was lucky to go to DC, she got to meet them and strength the relationship with our both our studios. So it’s a good choice to try and contact other depths because most of us have been on the same have had the same issues and been on the same like place that maybe you are when you are beginning your project so it’s not. It’s not a thing that you should pass over and also luckily most of the in the game Dev community is really generous, so it’s something that you really should think about doing.
Genghis
Yeah, great points from both of you guys. Thank you for that. I mean, you know, I think if we have more of this material available in other languages, that’s definitely something that can help the language barrier. Again, it’s a huge issue. You know, I know events are great. Definitely. I know you guys went to PAX, GDC all that. But I do recognize or I I’m assuming those are not always easy to get to especially with visas getting an American visa depending on. And you know where you’re from. Good luck. Right. But if you can, it’s great. Press kits, press kits. Yeah. So many materials available for you to make one. And I think I mean if assuming you’re the artist for the game that you know that should be.
That should be the number one of your number one priorities. I also know that marketing, I mean you’re right, it does going back to what you guys mentioned earlier, marketing takes time and it eats into precious time that you could be using to polishing your game because yeah, like any software project. You’re never really done, you know. Yeah, you a game is gold. But , one thing when I did a bit of when I was doing a bit of programming, , a couple of years ago that I made a small application. Can’t remember what it was though, I always there was always something I could add to it and then it kind of it features, you know, feature creep and all that stuff. And lastly, you know you’re right. You know, communicating with other indie developers.
Don’t be afraid to talk to other people, right? I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone bark at me for messaging them because I won’t lie, as a press person, even sometimes I’m a little like, could I e-mail this this company? Are they going to be OK with my e-mail? So I always try to be as nice as possible trying to get information out of, you know, out of them about their game, but either almost always they respond if it’s, you know, it’s either immediate or late, sometimes they don’t. But I’ve never been yelled at so. Yeah, I know these are, these are great ideas guys. Thank you so much!
Genghis
I suppose we should, we ought to start wrapping up. But before we go, I did want to ask you guys, are you guys? Playing anything right now. Are you guys actively playing any games? Yeah, this game developers yourselves.
Camila
Well, we, we do have some ideas written down. But we don’t want to announce anything yet because.
Genghis
Ohh so you are making another game.
Camila
We have some ideas, but we haven’t started like developing. It’s more like some kind of. Pre production phase.
Genghis
Ah okay, okay
Pablo
I thought you. Asking what we were playing right?
Genghis
Yeah, I that was my, that was gonna be after. I’m sorry, I can omit that if you’d like!
Pablo
But we’re both right now playing Cyberpunk. It’s the only game that we have time to play. But yeah, since the release of Phantom Liberty, we took that game for spin again, and it’s been really fun.
Camila
Yeah. We really like that CD Project Red makes like great side quests. They’re not just like delivery requests from ohh, get me this item and. Hand it over. They really have like the wrong stories with a lot of, well, a lot of morality is involved as well. So it’s really inspiring to play these kinds of games and after that, I. Think I’ll try to play Starfield. But I have a lot of indie games I should play first.
Genghis
Oh, I totally understand that. I haven’t even. I haven’t even played Starfield. I haven’t played Cyberpunk. I haven’t played any of the big games this year. Believe it or not, I’ve been too busy. I’ve been playing just about anything else. I got done playing Bang-on Balls a little while ago. I don’t know if you saw that. It’s a silly game. You play as a ball and you go between different movies like movie sets. Kind of a platformer adventure game. Very silly. It came out of early access, finally about a week or two ago.
If you’re just looking to make things explode and all that. I highly recommend it, I’m still playing a bunch of indie games right now and I don’t know when I’ll even get to Starfield. And you know, that’s probably blasphemy to our site, to our staff members, but also the people who are going to be reading this interview. But hey, yeah. I still haven’t played Hi-Fi Rush either, so I haven’t played any of the big Xbox titles that came out this year.
Camila
Yeah, I wanted to say that an indie game I’m playing that I really recommend it. It came out like 2 years. Ago I recently had. Time to play, but it’s Opus Echo. Which is a Chinese game. Hmm. And it’s like, it’s incredible. Like, it has this low Poly look. But the art direction is amazing and it’s I think the only reason why it didn’t get the attention it deserves. It’s because the. Developers are from. Like if it was made, I don’t know. Probably in the US. Like it will have one like game of the year or. Something. But I remember I actually get to know this game because Rami mentioned it. I think that what this that was the start of the game getting to be more known in the in the West.
Genghis
You know what? It sounded familiar, and when I went to, when I clicked on the link, I remember. I played this on. Game pass. I don’t remember why I stopped playing it though, but I remember it thinking “I’ll get back to that”. Thank you. And you know it is, you know, that’s also a good point. Mention games and that launch in East Eurasia and all that.
They’re unknown here. I’ll talk about a game to somebody here in the States and all that and I’ll say oh, you know I play. I play Granblue Fantasy and then they’ll say “what?” And I’m like, you know, it’s a really popular mobile RPG. I don’t know if you guys know. I totally understand if you don’t, but 36 million people have played that game already and you’ll barely find a soul that knows it here, you know? That’s another layer you have to break right? Getting your games known from across completely different culture to here. Thank you for that suggestion, by the way.
Camila
And they recently announced a new game!
Genghis
Oh really?
Camila
It’s pretty. It’s also called Opus, but it’s pretty something.
Genghis
Prism Peak. Yes, I see it.
Camila
Yeah. Wow. And it looks really nice.
Genghis
Wow, this is nice. Yeah, I love. I love. I love animated art styles like this. I actually Speaking of, I really love the art style of your game. Yeah, you’re welcome. It. It looks great. I did want to go back to something you mentioned earlier about, you know, how people look at RPG Maker games.
Camila
Thank you.
Genghis
This game is still made in RPG Maker, correct?
Camila
No, no. We switched and had to make the game from scratch in unity because back then RPG Maker had some memory leak issues. Actually, the developers working on Omari had the same issue and they had to like. Use another engine later. They managed to fix like the build on RPG Maker, but . But yeah, a lot of developers switched from RPG Maker to another engine back then.
Genghis
OK. Yeah. No, that that makes sense even I mean a memory leak issue is going to be. That eats into your development time, so forget that and I’m sure switching to unity also made it easy to port to Xbox and PlayStation and switch. I believe too. The game is on. Yes, OK, yeah, no, your game looks nice. And people who there are people who look down on our PG maker. Names too. I. You know, I’ve never. It’s. That’s ridiculous. You know, KEMCO is a publisher that releases many RPG Maker games. But if you play, you know, the and people are like, oh, look, KEMCO. I don’t want to use this word, but you’ll hear things like “KEMCO trash” or something.
And I’m like. No, they actually have a lot of unique game idea. Is that you know if you would give them a try, I think you’d like them. I mean, there’s Golf RPG story. There’s this, like restaurant RPG they have. There was this game that takes place in this world about law and order and stuff, and that’s like. You won’t. You won’t see that in, you know, like the more expensive AAA industry.
Oh, one last question from me to you. Is there a question you’d like to ask to your audience. Anything you’d like to hear from them to you because you know our site has a little forum and chat box and. If you want to hear some thoughts.
Pablo
Maybe I want to know what’s everyone favorite character as of right now. Because we have, in a small community in discord. There is like a couple of favorites that doesn’t deviate much, but we want to know if there’s, like more variety, maybe on new players that are getting the game.
Genghis
OK, perfect. Anything from you, Camila?
Camila
I can’t think of anything right now. To be honest.
Genghis
Understandable. I know. It’s like an out of the ballpark question. Maybe I should have asked that ahead of time. But yeah, just something fun.
Alright, thank you so much Camila and Pablo!
My time with the Long Gone Days developers was a fun one, one where we not only explored themes of war in relation to what folks are experiencing in Gaza and Ukraine, but what impact games can have on a person. We also talked about marketing and how tough that can be for a small developer who can make fun games but just might be too shy to reach out and signpost their works. One way developers can mitigate this is to open up! Reach out to your fellow developers through social media as this can be a helpful tool even in countries where a game development community is effectively zero.
The gaming indie scene is amazing and you will find the help you need to get started on your dream project. Don’t be afraid to email not just once but even two or three times as follow up. We’re all busy bees and exchanges are frequently lost despite best interests—trust me, I know. And of course, social media: bellow your game out to the masses!
A good press kit is always helpful, especially to folks like myself who would love to talk about your game. Press kits are incredibly useful as they are a condensed description of your title and that helps bloggers and the like get the word out on your game faster. Pablo mentioned indie advocate and consultant Rami Ismail’s free press kit creation tool, which you can find right here. There are many tools like this made by developers that can help with even the most annoying of issues like contract generation. Don’t let your dreams be dreams, you can make your game.
But above all else, my chat with Camila and Pablo yielded plenty of great insight on how someone makes their dream game, and I can’t wait to see what This I Dreamt does in the future. Long Gone Days is available on Xbox consoles and you can check out the game by going right over here to the Xbox Store. ∎