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Matapos makipagtulungan sa EA at Ubisoft, ang pinuno ng marketing sa Level Up Gaming ay tumigil sa Gamereactor camera sa tropikal na kapaligiran upang pag-usapan ang tungkol sa AI at ang pang-unawa nito sa komunidad ng gamedev, mga bagong channel upang i-market ang iyong mga laro, ang pagkakaiba sa pagitan ng mga publisher, at ang kanilang kasalukuyang katalogo.
"Hi, Gamereactor friends. As you can see, we're in this tropical environment.
This is Madeira. This is the Madeira Games Summit.
And I'm here joined by Erinrose. Thank you so much for joining us."
"You were part of one of the many panels and workshops and sort of meetings that are happening behind the scenes here.
But we want to sort of, the message to convey to other developers that might be interested in the industry and how to get better, right?
And your participation, your panel was about AI and the use in video games development that we're seeing as of late."
"And you were hosting it.
Which would you say was the takeaway that might be useful to those developers?
So, one of the first things that came out from the work is that we all have questions.
We all want to know what each other's doing and sharing."
"So it was really about sharing.
And one of the key, I would say some of the key things is about governance and policy.
A lot of experimentation is happening.
And some piloting from a publishing and a development side."
"But often the governance, the strategy is missing.
And it's really a critical point to be able to have policies and guardrails in place as you roll this out slowly across an organization.
And to have HR and teams sort of engaged with that in a transparency and clarity of process."
"Because there's a lot of friction and concern for employees on this front with AI.
And with marketing as well.
You have to be very careful with that right now, right?
Absolutely."
"We have probably the first real opportunity from a commercial impact is AI on the publishing side of things.
And I think we perhaps don't have as much technical expertise to integrate and implement in a way that would be more effective for us."
"So it's really an opportunity, particularly from the publishing side.
There's always this concern from an implementation workflow and pipeline from a creative and development side.
But I think the first commercial impact really could be from publishing."
"So it's really trying to develop more the technical skill to be able to implement that.
And then how you communicate all that.
You help studios and developers to sort of define or build their narrative and their audiences.
What's the key to doing that?
How are you helping them define that sort of identity?
So that they have a clear message and how to convey their games to that audience."
"I think it's always critical that a game developer understands who they're making their game for.
And really developing the persona or personas.
So it's that target audience and understanding what drives them."
"And with that, you have the unique selling points, the positioning statement.
And that really is the guiding force in everything you're doing in your marketing.
From those unique selling points, from that positioning, you're able to develop your content pillars."
"How you're going to talk about your game.
What's going to be relevant and important for your audience and your targets.
So that's really critical and it's often forgotten in the process with developers.
Equally, they don't engage the community or their players early enough and often enough."
"They're creating things in a silo.
And nowadays we have Discord.
We have ways to talk to people.
We can do playtests.
Nothing is a greater pleasure for someone who's interested in your game than to playtest your game."
"Taking that feedback, not only from a bug, concept level, but from really the concept that you're developing with them.
You mentioned Discord.
Which other ways would you say are trendy or new in the marketing area for small studios to market their game?
What is something that they have to learn right away in this current moment in time?
First of all, I think definitely engaging and developing a plan of communication in Discord."
"I think developing your karma for Reddit is something critical.
And engaging and supporting, contributing to indie game subchannels, subreddits there, is going to be really important.
Everything in Reddit is not about promotion, but it's about support."
"And as well, new channels being like TikTok.
The quality is not as important as something for YouTube shorts, but it's creating that and following those hooks and those cycles is going to be important for your game."
"And with the things you said now, like defining your identity, your narrative, and also the way you use new channels, is this a way for them to relay less on publishers?
Or how can they approach that?
Are they too reliant on publishers?
I think it's really important for any studio, whether they go for a publisher approach or self-publishing, they need to invest as much understanding of their audience and building up the channels themselves."
"Because even if they decide they want to go with a publisher, a publisher is looking for traction.
A publisher is looking for a studio that's not only developing a game in isolation, but that's already showed that they've built an audience."
"It's very similar to the world of modeling now.
You can't just be a model.
You have to be a model with a following to be on Paris Fashion Week.
You already have to have 500,000 followers."
"You're like, I can't just be beautiful? No, you can't just be beautiful.
You need to have 500,000 followers and then you'll be on Paris Fashion Week.
So it's a similar model.
Everybody has to be building their own brand these days."
"Interesting comparison.
I wanted to ask you about your past experiences with both EA and Ubisoft.
Of course, they are huge publishers.
Long ago."
"Long ago, okay.
But I guess that shaped you, what you do now marketing-wise.
And they are, you know, from the community, we can perceive them as something similar, huge publishers."
"But they are quite different.
They are different origins, different types of games.
They publish, they publish now.
So, yeah."
"How would you compare them?
Or is there anything that you would like to share from those years and what you learned there?
So Ubisoft was a very long time ago and it was aspirational for them to be in the top publishers at that time."
"And to see where we were and where they've come, it's incredible.
And that's such a pleasure to see.
And being a French publisher, French creative, has this sort of what-if approach that I'm always awed and inspired by."
"It allows you to soar and sometimes to crash, but they dare.
And that's what I always admire about Ubisoft.
EA is the big machine.
It's the big game."
"It's in the game.
It's in the game.
And that experience, that was for me as an American, US citizen, first time working for an American company at that time when I worked there."
"And you're in a big structure and a big system.
And it was impressive.
The good side of the corporateness and the structure to that and sometimes the negative side of that too."
"But to really see all the wheels turning was quite exciting.
And finally, tell me a bit more of what you guys do now at Level Up Gaming.
I think you've answered part of this, because you help out studios and developers with marketing strategies."
"But what else can you tell me about your current...?
Level Up Gaming is a Saudi publisher.
And so we publish independent games from around the world.
We have Saudi games, but we have games from all over, all types of genres."
"And we work with great studios developing great games.
And we look for studios.
It's a great concept, but it's also a great team.
That's really important."
"A team that's open and ready to run with you.
So we're partners.
And I think that's the most critical point, is when you find a great game and you find a great team, you partner together and you help publish them."
"So we've got a lot of great games coming in the pipeline.
Anyone that you would like to mention now that you can disclose?
Sure, I got a cute little one.
It's called Petunia's Purgatory."
"It's a little Lovecraftian, creepy, cute, idle desktop game.
It sits at the bottom of your screen.
You have to pick, you do your farming simulation, but you also sometimes have to sacrifice some animals, get the blood."
"It's that creepiness.
So it's a real fun one.
Thank you so much for your time, Erinrose.
Enjoy the rest of the Summit.
Summit, let's call it a reunion."
"Indeed."
