Political Animals is Looking for Educators!

While Political Animals was made for the retail market, we've always hoped that it could be used for educational purposes.  Part of our goal as a studio is to try to broaden the topics that games are allowed to talk about, and having the game used in classrooms and thesis dissertations definitely aligns with that goal.  

However, Political Animals is a little difficult to pitch to educational institutions.  As a turn-based political strategy game It doesn't easily fall into the genre of “edutainment”, and any lessons to be extracted from it are solely based on the interpretations of a teacher or student.  Lessons that might be learned include weighing the different moral decision you have to make during an event.  There could also be a discussion about campaign strategy, or perhaps the difference between different electoral systems (Political Animals uses straight majority as opposed to the Electoral College). But there are no lesson plans of any sort, or guidelines for how to use the game in this way.

This is why we need your help.  If you are an educational practitioner of social studies, politics, anthropology or any other subject where you feel that there might be some merit in having your students play our game, we would love to hear from you!  To give you an idea of how it might be used, I did an analysis of the most recent US election a few months ago.  I'm sure you could do a much better job than that.

Send us an email at ryan@squeakywheel.ph with the Subject line “Political Animals for Education” with an introduction of yourself, your school or institution and how you'd plan to use the game in your class, and we'll give you a free copy of the game.  In return we'd love your feedback on your experiences and the results, if any.  If all goes well we'd love to release an education site license similar to that done by Democracy 3. Thanks, and we hope you can spread the word to your fellow educators!

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Political Animals Sales Statistics

Hey everyone,  I know it’s been a while since we last updated you, but enough time has passed that we now have enough stats to share with you after 2 and a half months of selling Political Animals!

Preface

I’ve talked about the launch of Political Animals before, most of which you can find on our blog.  But here’s a little breakdown for the tl:dr folks.  Political Animals is a turn-based strategy game where you are an animal candidate trying to win an election and keep your morals intact.  We worked on it for two years, half of which was funded by our publisher, Positech Games.  Squeaky Wheel is a small Philippine PC game studio that has a bunch of veteran developers in it, and personally the biggest project I ever worked on was Prison Architect, for which I did the art.

The game looked promising in all the events we brought it to, as we even got a staff pick by Eurogamer as one of its EGX games of 2016.  We were on the front page of Steam on launch, and had quite a few people streaming our game, most notably folks like Total Biscuit, NorthernLion, Quill18, etc.  Given all of that, how did we do?

Did we Break Even?

We’ve already mentioned that we’ve had a very poor launch, but it helps to know exactly how badly we did.  During the whole of development our internal “break even” number was always 10,000 units x $15, which is the full price of the game.  This took into account both development costs and marketing as well as taking into account Steam’s 30% cut of the revenue.  So how did we do?
 
As you can see after two and a half months on sale we’re about 30% of the way to breaking even.  Which isn’t so terrible, except this is after the first day sales bump and the Winter Sale.  The way things stand we’ll (or rather, our publisher) be very lucky to break even by the end of the year.  The only silver lining here for the studio is that none of us put our life savings into the game.

Sales per Marketplace

There aren’t any huge surprises here.  Steam is still the dominant digital marketplace when it comes to games.  Humble and GoG combined only make up 10% of our total sales so far.  I don’t really see this changing in the short term, as Steam really just has so many more subscribers than GoG or Humble combined.

Sales by Country

It gets a little more interesting when we look at units per country.  As expected most of our units have been sold in the US.  The UK comes in a distant second, which makes sense given Positech is from the UK and has a bit of a following there.  We’re not surprised that we quite a few sales in France, Germany, and Canada, as strategy games are usually popular in those countries.

Things start to get interesting when you notice that China is right behind Germany in terms of units sold.  When we announced the launch of Political Animals we were contacted by some localizers from indienova offering a translation to Simplified Chinese.  To be honest, the Chinese market was a bit of a mystery to us and it wasn’t high priority, but given our poor launch there was little to lose, especially when they offered to localize pro bono.  Since Chinese players mostly won’t both bother with a game unless it’s localized or super popular, this guaranteed us a few extra sales.  I even took the extra effort to start a Weibo page, though I’m not entirely sure if it really matters.

The process was pretty seamless, but took about a month to iron out the kinks.   The additional sales weren’t mind boggling, but we now had numerous people in China downloading and reviewing our game, and most of them seemed happy with it.  In the two weeks following our announcement of the localization our Chinese sale shot up by 300% (from a very small number) and during the winter sale Chinese sales were second only to the US.  The catch is that Steam’s suggested pricing is 50% off of our regular US price, so every unit sold in China is worth half a unit when it comes to our break even point.

We have localization in the works for Russian and Polish, and we’re hoping they’ll provide a small boost to our sales as well.

Sales by Platform

Once again no surprises here.  Windows makes up the majority of our sales and Mac and Linux combined make up less than 15%.  The only thing worth noting here is that the Linux sales were quite disappointing given how much work it took to get it working.  We used Unity to make Political Animals, and while porting to Mac was relatively trivial, making the game work on Linux’ multiple distros was a bit of a nightmare for us.

Steam Sales and Wishlist Graph

Lastly, here is the traditional reveal of the Steam sales graph! Our sales peaked at launch, as with most games, and shows a steady decline until a small peak during the Winter Sale.  We’d definitely hoped for more of a peak during the winter sales, but given the deluge of games on Steam in 2016 and the fact that we were only 25% off I should have expected that wouldn’t be the case.
 

As you can see with our wishlist graph, we have quite the gap between our outstanding wishes (players who indicated that they want to play the game) and activations (players who actually bought the game).  I suspect what this means is that there are lot of people waiting for the price to go down to an “acceptable” level before they pull the trigger.  We’ll find out in one of the future Stream sales as we slowly increase the discount.

What’s Next?

I think we followed a typical pattern of trying to save our game the best we can by pushing out rapid updates, talking to players, etc.  At some point you have to concede that the effort involved in this will bring minimal returns, so you have to go back to the drawing board and start a new game.  We’re still currently working on a major update to Political Animals that includes local multiplayer, but we’re also hard at work prototyping our next game and thinking about how to release it.  

If you have any additional questions about our stats, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer!

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What Does it Feel Like to Launch a Game?

It's been almost a week that Political Animals has been on sale on Steam/GoG/Humble.  It's been quite the emotional roller coaster.  I wanted to take a week to absorb all the emotions and share it with gamers and gamedevs alike.  My apologies for a lack of stats.  I was hoping to share some in this post, but given I can't be too specific with them as per Steam's rules, there's nothing super interesting to show you right now.  I may do a more stats heavy blog in the future once we have a bigger sample size.

Launch Expectations

Given we're not allowed to share actual Steam data, the best we can do is compare out expectations of launch versus how things actually turned out.  We had reasonable expectations for a good launch.  Our publisher, Positech Games, has a good track record and fanbase fond of political games to draw from.  We had positive experiences from players at PAX and EGX.  We gave out keys to press and Youtubers (This is the funniest LP by far) a week prior to launch and we were getting a lot of positive feedback.  Total Biscuit even responded with a Steam key request right after I blasted my press release, which was quite exciting. And we were able to launch right before the US elections, which was our target all along.

There were some warning signs though.  The Halloween Sale happened right before launch, and that's always a terrible time to launch a game.  It was not quite as big as a summer sale, but it's always bad to chase after customers after their wallets have just been emptied.  We were also having a hard time getting traditional press coverage, which would be an issue later on.  And Positech has had games do poorly before, with Democracy : Africa and Gratuitous Space Battle 2 being the biggest disappointments.  

Launch Results

Given we worked virtually (we all live in different parts of Metro Manila and meet once a week) We'd made a team decision to get together after the launch instead of waiting for it together.  I personally went to watch Dr. Strange (entertaining movie, if you can get past Cumberbatch's strained American accent) and waited up for the launch with some close friends before calling it a night.

Note: because we live in the Philippines, the 10am launch in the US was actually 1am in the Philippines.

After a less than restful sleep, I woke up to immediately check on our first day sales so far. We'd previously been informed that we'd be featured on the front page so I was a little bit excited. I'm struggling to remember what I felt when I finally saw the numbers.  Shock?  Sadness?  Probably a stunned silence.  Surely they couldn't be so low.  I impotently clicked refresh a few times until I was satisfied that this wasn't some error.  When it finally sank in that we were probably Positech's poorest performing game, I was a little surprised at how I felt.  I just sat there for what felt like ages thinking "well, we flopped."  I sank two and a half years of my life chasing this day and we flopped.  I was a little worried about how numb I was feeling.  Shouldn't I be crying or something? Is this what shock feels like?  

I stood up and told my wife the bad news.  We sat for a bit while she comforted me.  But it was a weekday, so she soon left for work while I drifted back to stare blankly at the computer screen to click on refresh yet again.  Then I did only thing that I could do, which was try to figure why exactly we'd flopped so badly.

Why Didn't People Buy our Game?

The Halloween sale probably had a bigger impact than we thought.  It's hard to ask players for more money when they've just shelled out for games.  Double Fine also had their day of the devs bundle out at the same time, providing incredible value for just a few dollars.  While there will always be other games out when you launch, I think we picked a particularly poor time to do it.  

"Looks really cute and could be a lot of fun. But as an American I really don't associate fun with elections right now. Dread, yes."

The above quote was from a comment on GoG.  I'm not putting too much stock in just the one comment, but the electino cycle in the US takes an obscenely long amount of time, and my sense is that at this point most people just want it to be over already. Had we launched a month or more ago this might have been less of an issue.

After noticing some people on our game's discussion page opine that the game A) had great art but B) "looked like a mobile game" and C) lacked strategic depth (despite their not having played the game), I decided to take a look at our Steam store page.  I got really upset at myself at that point.  The store page is the first thing most players will see of your game, so it's important to make a good impression.  Your trailer, screenshots, descriptions and reviews all have to work together to convince the prospective player that your game is worth buying. Our store page had an incomplete description and no links to reviews.  It's no wonder people were making these assumptions about our game.  If we couldn't even put together a proper Steam store page, how could we make a good game?  Sadly, the biggest thing that might have affected our sales was something that was very much in our control, and I dropped the ball.

Lastly, I should say it is entirely possible that the game just feels too expensive for what it is, and that maybe the game just isn't good.  As for the first, I suppose we'll find out in a few months.  We've got a surprising amount of wishlists, and if a bunch of those convert during a sale, then we'll know how much people actually value the game.  As for whether or not it's good, we're happy with the feedback the game got at PAX and EGX so we're pretty confident saying we've made a good game.

Engaging the Community

Now that I'd identified some of the launch day issues, the only thing left to do was to try to rectify them as best as we could.  First, that meant fixing the issues with the Steam store page.  Next, we dived deep into the Community discussions and responded as best as we could to people's concerns. In some ways, this is a dangerous move.  Developers can get very defensive about their work, and it's very easy to get into an argument with a player and become labeled an angry dev.  Any devs who want to wade into community discussions need to approach it with an air of humility.  Always assume that any complaint is a valid concern, even if it seems dismissive.  My father in law once told me that a customer that complains is valuable, because they could just as easily have walked away without letting you know why.  If they're complaining, take that as opportunity to convince them to give you another chance.  Which is exactly what I did with one guy who was on the fence.  I asked what was keeping him on the fence, then we had a short back and forth which ended up with him saying :

"Well, with Steam offering a 2-hour refund window, I decided that I'll go ahead and grab the game and give it a whirl."

How did I do it?  It's not magic.  I never once tried to "correct" his intuition that the game was lacking in strategy.  I merely explained that based on our experience at conventions people were happy with the level of strategy, and also linked to a Eurogamer article about it.  That was enough to persuade them to try out the game, which is all I really wanted.

Aside from that, we took note of what people are saying they want from the game.  They say the game feels a bit unbalanced.  We'll look into that.  A lot of people are asking for multiplayer, so we've penciled that in as an update.  There were a few questions about Linux. Assuming all goes well that will be coming soon. More than anything it's the fact that we're engaging with the community that makes people commit to the game.  They feel like we're not just gonna drop the game and never update it again.  We're also still actively looking for press to cover the game to try to keep it in people's minds and give the game some more legitimacy.  

We've also been approached by localizers in China, Russia, etc. places where games don't traditionally do very well due to piracy and a lack of English speaking players.  Localization is definitely a pain, but maybe taking a broader outlook is the way we can keep the game relevant in the coming months and years.

Conclusion

We're proud of the game we've made.  We're also proud to contribute to the number of Philippine made games on Steam.  That may not seem like a big deal to countries with a wealth of developers and games, but it certainly means a lot to us.  It still seems almost impossible that we managed to put the game out on Steam.  

We regret being such a poor investment for Positech in the short term, but they'll make their money back over the long haul, and hopefully even sooner if we manage to play our cards right.  

As for the team, it was definitely pretty rough.  Our first meeting after seeing the sales numbers was pretty somber, but we ended it with a rousing karaoke session that lifted our spirits, if not our sales.  We'll keep working hard to make sure that this game is the best it can be, and hopefully we'll have a chance to make another one.

Thanks for reading. Political Animals is out! If you're a games journalist or streamer that wants a review copy, please check out our press kit and distribute() link.  If you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list, join our Facebook group, or follow us on Twitter!

Political Animals Campaigning at PAX

Attendance at PAX West (formerly PAX Prime) was finally surpassed by PAX East this year, but you wouldn’t think that given the line stretching out of the Washington State Convention Center.  PAX West is so large that the convention center cannot contain it, spilling over into multiple locations aroundaround downtown Seattle.  Tucked into a corner of the Expo Hall as part of the Indie Megabooth, Political Animals was shown off for the very first time in a major games convention.   

First Two Days

The Indie Megabooth tried something interesting this year where they split up the days that exhibitors would be presenting.  Since we (my wife Aissa and I went together since we both had US visas) were arriving the night before after a 20 hour flight, we negotiated for a Sunday-Monday slot.  This was a good thing, since PAX was really overwhelming and it took me some time to make sense of it all and figure out a way to make the first two days worthwhile.

PAX Panels

One of the most enjoyable and entertaining parts of PAX were the variety of panels they had on hand.  The first panel we attending was about an organization called Anxiety Gaming whose mission was to help gamers with mental health issues.  It’s pretty cool to know that there are organizations like this springing up to cater to the needs of different kinds of gamers.

My favorite panel was the “A History of the Great Wars of EVE Online” by Andrew Groen.  While I don’t think I could ever really play EVE, the stories I hear about it are some of the most entertaining game narratives I’ve ever read or experienced.  Andrew’s dissection of the political systems of two of the major coalitions of EVE, “Band of Brothers” and the “Goonswarm” was both revelatory and hilarious.  By the end of his panel I was ready to pick up his book, but unfortunately he’d just sold out all copies.  I may still pick it up on Amazon someday.

Networking

Aside from handing out flyers and pins, the second work aspect of the convention was going around and meeting fellow devs, console representatives, publishers, and media.  Networking is probably the most useful thing any developer can learn, because it creates opportunities for you down the line.  While most of these connections probably won’t bear fruit, you will always learn something new, and if you're lucky make some awesome new friends.

I first made the rounds in the Indie Megabooth, where I met a lot of different developers.  I naturally gravitated towards simulation games like Halfbus' Basement and Somasim’s Project Highrise. Other games that caught my eye were Masquerada, Battle Chef Brigade, and Dog Sled Saga. Aside from the Megabooth, I wandered around and played Amplitude’s Endless Space 2, checked out Battletech by Harebrained Schemes, and tried out Runic game’s latest, Hob.  I'm a huge fan of all of these companies' games so it was nice to be able to chat with some of the developers while playing their games.

Last Two Days

This was the moment of truth.  While we’d showed off the game to some people and had it tested by playtesters, this is the first time we were going to show off the game to the public.  I was beset by worries.  Would players like it?  Would they get the theme?  How would we be noticed sandwiched in between so many other games? Was our game even any good?  Aissa did and excellent job of organizing the booth while I fretted over some bugs in the latest build.

Turns out I didn’t need to be so worried.  We always knew that we were a niche game, but there were enough people playing and enjoying the game that I’m confident that we’ll be okay as long as we are able to properly reach our target market. 

The revelatory moment came for me when I met Philip.  Philip found out about the game through targeted advertising on Facebook.  He made it a point to find us at the megabooth and waited patiently for almost an hour while another player finished his turn at the game.  In the meantime, when he noticed that a small crowd was starting to build up and start watching the game, he would hand out flyers and even offer explanations of the game, all without any prodding from me.  The next day I met Jonah, who was also avidly handing out flyers and explaining the game unbidden.  He even emailed me afterwards volunteering to help us with QA!  It felt great when attendees started talking between themselves, explaining the game to each other and offering strategies.  The game was starting to take on a life of its own.

Serendipity

I’ve always said that the hardest thing about being an indie PC developer in the Philippines is lacking access to conventions like PAX.  Sure we have our own conventions, but our target market is the entire world, and right now, the world pays attention to conventions like PAX.  While showing off the game we were approached the gaming director of SXSW, a representative from Sony that was interested in getting the game to consoles, and a really awesome Twitch streamer named SeriouslyClara.  Clara really loved the look of the game and wanted to introduce me to a friend of hers that distributes content to Twitch streamers.  Her tweet about the game probably brought more attention to the game than any of our individual tweets.  It’s this kind of serendipity that makes shows like PAX so valuable to a small developer.

Back to Work

At the end of each day my voice was hoarse, I was exhausted, and I vowed to never do that again.  But at the end of PAX I felt myself missing it, and wishing we had a few more days to show off the game.  At the start of the trip , I was worried that no one would pay attention to the game.  Now I feel like we have to get back to work to really clean up the game and make sure we don't disappoint all the folks who came to play it!  

Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals, please sign up for our mailing list! We'll also be at TGS until Friday Sept. 16 (look for the ASEAN booths) and all 4 days at EGX.  If you want to schedule a meeting just click on the contact tab and get in touch!

Why I Made Challenge Coins for Political Animals

The salmon sushi seen above was excellent, if rather overpriced at 800 Yen.  Unfortunately that's typical of the inflated prices you find in every single airport around the world.  From here we fly to Portland, have another 4 hour layover, then finally take a 1 hour flight to Seattle for PAX.  I wanted to document the trip using one of the challenge coins I had made for the game, hence the "artfully" arranged picture above.  

Challenge Coins

I first heard about challenge coins from the excellent podcast 99 percent invisible.  Essentially they're a way for a military unit to identify and and tell a story about themselves.  They can also be passed on to people outside of the unit as a sign of gratitude, friendship, or to mark any momentous occasion.

These days almost anyone can go ahead and have a challenge coin made.  They're made for schools, companies, sports teams, etc. as a really neat way to show a sense of shared community.

I'd been thinking about getting challenge coins made for a long time.  Video games are such an ephemeral medium, especially in this day and age of digital distribution.  Sure you can "make" a game, but what do you really have to show for it if you don't have a computer screen near you?  A challenge coin solves this problem.  It gives you a physical object that you can look at and say "yup, we went and made this game."  It's a physical manifestation of the hours of stress and sweat and care that went into the production of the game, all held in the confines of a single metallic disc.

Plus, coins are super cool.

How to have Challenge Coins Made?

I wanted to have some challenge coins made before PAX, so my original idea was to order some from a company in the US and have have them shipped ahead.  I sent an inquiry to numerous companies but the quickest one to reply was allaboutchallengecoins.com.  The process couldn't be easier.  You can either download their template and design your coin in Photoshop or Illustrator, or just send them some designs with some ideas and let them figure out how to go about it.  They did a super job, but just as I was about to order the coins, I wanted to test an idea.

I knew that a lot of these websites were basically the storefront, while the actual coins were made in China.  Given that the Philippines was pretty near to China, I wondered if I could figure out a way to order direct from the supplier and save some money that way?

Wandering into the Land of Alibaba

Alibaba is the gateway to the factories of China.  Like a giant marketplace, companies display their wares with slogans and assurances of quality and environmental protection:

"Our factory is approved by many famouns brands such as Walt Disney / Coca Cola / McDonald's etc. To avoid causing pollutants, we obtain the electroplating license from China government and build sewage treatment plant."

Once again I cast my net wide and emailed a bunch of different companies.  My criteria was simple, I wanted a lower price than the US company, as well as a company that could communicate fluently in English.  As a bonus test I sent my original design ideas to them to see how they compared with the US companies.

The first companies were a bit of a bust.  One of them charged almost double the original asking price of the US company.  Another came back with enthusiastic Google translated Engrish.  But one company really stood out and offered rates that came out to almost 50% cheaper than the US company and spoke great English. 

Dongguan Jian Plastic & Metal Products Ltd. 

Dongguan Jian Plastic & Metal Products Limited has the wonderfully succint slogan of "Think of emblems, think of JIAN"  Their original copmany name, according to the brochure they sent me, was "Punctual Company Limited".  I liked them already.  

Their sales agent Ella was super professional and treated me like an important customer even though I know most of their orders were probably magnitudes larger than my measly 100 coins.   She guided me through the process step by step until the final point, which is when they asked me to fill up a form and attach pictures of the front and back of my credit card.

I know, I know, a lot of you must be freaking out right now.  That's one of the things every IT security expert tells you not to do. But I did ask around and at least in these parts this is pretty typical for a company that doesn't have e-commerce built into its online presence.  I was fully prepared to cancel this card in case any funny business occurred.  I sent in the application and waited.  I was informed by my bank that the proper amount had been charged.  Then I waited some more.  About 3 weeks later I got a call from Fedex saying my package was en route!  

So it was a little scary but the final product was definitely worth it. If we manage to make more than one game, I want to start a tradition of having coins minted to commemorate each game that Squeaky Wheel makes, especially now that I'm confident with Jian.

How do you get one?

I've been rather surprised at the amount of attention the challenge coins have gotten.  I guess it just confirms my suspicion that people really do value having some tangible to hold on to (and that coins are cool).  I initially intended for these to be souvenirs for the team and specific people that have supported us along the way to making this game.  We're also looking to give them to the first person at each convention that wins a campaign of Political Animals with more than 75% of the vote. But if there's enough interest we'll definitely look into a way where people can buy the coins, maybe as part of a limited edition boxed set or something like that.  But that'll have to wait until after launch!

If you're looking to get challenge coins made for yourself and you live in the United States, I would highly recommend allaboutchallengecoins.com but if you're outside the US and don't have a local company that makes these coins, I can vouch for Jian Pins.

Political Animals Updates!

Last week I mentioned that the Political Animals team will be attending numerous conventions around the world to promote the game.  We've been hard at work the game to make sure that convention goers will enjoy it, and I'm excited to share some of our work with you.

Particle Effects

Particle Effects are a relatively easy way to add a lot of polish to a game.  Above you can see some particle effects that affect the entire island.  The Rain particles seem particularly apt for me right now given we've been having torrential downpours recently.

The characters also have particle effect now, depending on the actions you give them.  Here Croccy is raising funds, although his animation makes him look like he's throwing away money.  I guess you need to spend money to make money!

Strategy

Despite its cutesy look, we wanted to make it obvious that Political Animals is a strategy game that you can really sink your teeth into.  Marnielle worked on different AI types ranging from Corrupt to Clean to just plain unpredictable, and three levels of difficulty.

We also noticed early on that our playtesters liked trying out different staff combinations.  We now have seven different staff types each with their own special abilities that you can mix and match to devise your personal strategy for winning the elections.

New Candidates!

We are slowly designing and adding new Animal Candidates for you to choose from.  Eventually we'll have an entire menagerie of political aspirants!  Is there a particular animal that you would like to be turned into a candidate?

Polish, Polish, Polish!

As we ramp up to launch a lot of the work now is polishing up the game and making sure everything works properly.  We think it's worth it, and hopefully you do too!

Thanks for reading. If you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals, please sign up for our mailing list!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 3

In Parts 1 and 2 of this blog I discussed the road that led to Squeaky Wheel getting a publishing deal for Political Animals from Positech Games. My intent was to show that our road to a publishing deal was built over a years long accumulation of experience, networks, and great opportunities that we were lucky to take advantage of. What the previous two posts didn't show was the actual research and work that had to be done to even position ourselves to have an opportunity at a deal.  This post aims to show that process and hopefully help other developers looking to secure a deal.

Having a build

Having a build is a prerequisite for getting a publishing deal. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and execution is key. Beyond that though, having a build shows the prospective publisher that you are committed enough to your game to actually invest your time and money (as a freelancer, those two things are interchangeable to me) in it. It doesn't have to be pretty, and it can evolve over time, but having some sort of build is crucial to convincing anyone that you are serious about actually making a game. Even Kickstarter backers have learned their lesson. Most indie games (especially if you're not a famous gamedev) without any kind of working build or even a demo are ignored.

Have a Pitch Deck

Assuming you have no time to make a build, the next best thing is to make a pitch deck. The first time someone mentioned “pitch deck” to me I had to google it, so if you're confused right now I sympathize with you. Essentially a pitch deck is a presentation showing what game you want to make, the market viability of the game, how much it will cost, and any information you have to support your pitch. Ideally you would have the pitch deck and build in tandem.

When I was doing research on pitch decks I found this very useful resource from bubbleguminteractive.com called “Pitch Deck for Indie Game Developers”. I used this as a basis for our own pitch deck, with some minor tweaks. The article itself explains pitch decks much better than I could, so I'll do a deep dive into some specific topics that I think are important.

Defining your Market

It's important to know who your market is and try to serve them. So for example our market is PC strategy gamers. How do I find out how large that market is? Luckily, we now have Steamspy, which informs me that the highest selling strategy game is...DOTA 2 with 73 million owners. Obviously DOTA is not the kind of strategy game we want to make, plus it's free to play. So let's disregard that. Next on the list is Civ V, with almost 9 million owners. Civ V is so far beyond what we are trying to make, but at least it's in the same turn-based strategy game genre that we're going for. So let's say that 9 million is the absolute highest number of people that would possibly be interested in our game.

To find a more conservative estimate, let's dig deeper and search SteamSpy for games on politics. Now we have much smaller numbers. Tropico leads the pack with 1.3 million owners. It's no Civ 5, but we can say that at the highest level, a game like Civ 5 that deals explicitly with politics has a market of 1.3 million people. Our production values are nowhere near the Tropico series, so let's look at how games with similar production values have done. Democracy 3 is the outlier here, with 450,000 people. But lower on the list are games like The Political Machine, Gremlins Inc. and Rogue State. These are games that are generally within the same production values and expected price point as Political Animals, and their owners range between 30,000-10,000 users. Now we have a good, conservative idea of the market for our game. Later on you will have to assess whether this market is large enough to cover the cost of development, but we'll leave that aside for now.

I should say that even Steamspy admits it is not 100% accurate. You should look articles that can help support your claims about the marekt, like when companies (rarely) annouce their sales figures for games. Regardless, SteamSpy is a very useful tool for making broad decisions about your market, and I'm really grateful it's around.

Defining Costs

This is probably the part of the pitch deck that developers are least interested in, but it's probably the most important for the publisher. Being able to identify and quantify what you need as devs may not be as interesting as actually talking about the game, but there is crucial information here that the publisher needs in order to decide whether to make you an offer.

I'm going to use some imaginary numbers here to help guide you through calculating what your costs will be. Let's assume that there are some monthly fixed costs that you know already:

• Salaries - $10000

• Office Rent - $2000

Now you need to think about all the other additional costs you may have. These include: Software licenses, an accountant, a lawyer, web design, music etc. Unless you've done this before, I know it can be bewildering to even imagine how to start calculating these costs. There are so many variables when it comes to making these estimates that ultimately the best advice I can give is make your best guess on these costs depending on where you live, and then pad increase that number by 10% to cover up any mistakes. So now let's say you ended up with $1000 average monthly cost for miscellaneous fees. Now your monthly cost is:

• Salaries - $8000

• Office Rent - $1000

• Miscellaneous - $1000

At this point you should have a number that expresses your total monthly costs. Now estimate the time it will take you to finish the game. Multiply your monthly costs by the number of months and you should have a general idea of how much money you need from the publisher. Let's assume you need 1 year to finish the game. Using the numbers above, you can then say to the publisher I need $120k ($10k per month x 12 months in a year) in order to finish the game.

Our publisher might kill me for saying this, but don't be too worried about getting the numbers exactly right. There will always be room for error. They'll ask you questions about your numbers, and if they feel like you've estimated too high or low they'll correct you. The key thing is that you're at least close enough to your targeted monthly costs so that the publisher knows you've done your homework. More than anything I think the publisher wants to know that you've actually considered these things because most devs don't even bother.

Aside from the hard numbers, you should also define what you need in the pitch deck. For us, we knew that even though we were all veteran game developers none of us had shepherded an entire game to completion. We also knew that we did not have access to marketing, PR, press, conventions etc. and needed help on that end.

I want to point out once again that the numbers used here are not the actual numbers in our pitch deck.

What's your Break Even Point?

This isn't quite as important to the pitch deck, but is definitely important as background knowledge that a publisher may ask you. It's also a good way for you to decide if your project is financially viable, and how much risk you or the publisher is taking with the game.

The math is pretty basic. Using the previous numbers, we need $120,000 to finish the game. Our conservative estimate for our market is somewhere between 30,000 to 10,000 users, so lets say 15,000. Let's also assume our price point is $15, since that seems like a pretty normal price for indie games these days. Now lets multiply numbers of owners (15,000) with price ($15) and we get $225,000. Factor in Steam's cut by multiplying $225,000 by .7 (to get 70%) and you get revenue of $157,500.

That means that at a cost of $120,000, if we sold 15000 units at $15 per unit, we would make $157500 after Steam takes its cut. Take $157500 and subtract $120000 and you end up with $37500 to be split between you and the publisher depending on your publishing agreement. If you want to take this further, take the $37500 and divide it by your price point ($15) and you get 2500. Subtract that 2500 from the original 15000 units which assumed as your break even point, and you end up with 12,500 units as the minimum number of units you need to sell in order to break even.

I have taken many liberties with these numbers. First off, you have to assume that Steam sales and bundles will cut into your sales revenue. At the same time Steam isn't the only market in town, and outlets like GOG, the Humble Store, or your own website can make up to 20% additional revenue. As with the previous numbers, it's not necessary (and I feel impossible) for your numbers to be 100% accurate, so your end goal here is to find a number that you and the publisher can talk about. This is useful because now you have a number of units shipped to work towards, instead of just hoping to sell as many as you can.

Finding Publishers

Now that you have your pitch deck and build ready, it's time to find some publishers. Assuming you've already exhausted your personal network, this really just involves a lot of the time on the internet doing google searches for publishers. You should do your best to narrow down your search to publishers who might even have a remote interest in your game. For example, if you find a publisher that only does mobile F2P games, don't waste your time or theirs by pitching a PC only paid strategy game. Publishers who were high on my list included Positech (because Democracy 3) and Paradox Interactive (because strategy games). If you need help finding publishers, Steam Spy can also be helpful because it lists the publishers of games. For example Tropico 4 was published by Kalypso Media, so I can add them to the list of publishers.

After that, it's a matter of emailing the publishers with your build and pitch and seeing if anyone bites. You'll get a lot of rejections, and maybe a few nibbles. Those nibbles will stretch on into really long email threads as you and the publisher get to know each other. As mentioned previously it took more than a year after our initial contact with Positech before they signed off on the deal, and there were definitely moments where I thought that it wouldn't push through. Be patient and persistent, but don't push too hard. If the publisher says they're not interested, always thank them for their time and ask for advice about why they were not interested. Any knowledge you gain that way can be useful for you in the long run.

If you have friends who are devs that have started their own companies, don't hesitate to reach out to them and ask for their advice.  You will ultimately have to make your own decisions when it comes to a publishing deal, but it's always better to make an informed decision.  These people have gone through this process before so the information they share with you can be invaluable.

Final Thoughts

This ends my 3-part series on how Squeaky Wheel found a publisher in Positech Games. I apologize if this last one was disjointed and not as easy to read as the previous two. Convincing a publisher to give you money to make your game is a long, difficult, and oftentimes bumpy road. There were many times I felt like I was flying blind so I hope that this was of some use to people. If you have questions or want me to talk about things that I missed out on, please feel free to respond in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them.

Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list!

How Political Animals Got a Publisher: Part 2

This is the second part of a series of blog posts by Ryan narrating how Squeaky Wheel secured a publishing deal from Positech Games. Part 1 dealt with his career up to the success of Spacechem, and this week we start with his experiences working on Prison Architect.

Third Big Break : Prison Architect

I've previously written about how Introversion Software first contacted me on my personal blog. The short version is that Chris Delay had played Spacechem, liked the art, and contacted me to see if I wanted to work with Introversion Software. Introversion is like the granddaddy of indie game developers. They're one of the first indie game developers that made it big way, way before Braid, Fez, etc. They had a pedigree and I knew it, and it didn't take much convincing for me to sign up to work on Prison Architect.

The story of the development of Prison Architect is kind of crazy, and you can read more about it here. Essentially the Introversion guys made some bad choices after their initial success and Prison Architect was their second chance. If things didn't go well for the game, the studio might have had to consider shutting its doors. This being their second chance, the initial timeline for the game was quite modest. Our initial contract agreement was for me to work on the game for 3 months, up until the launch of Early Access, then maybe a little more polish work after that, depending on how Early Access did. Suffice it to say that their Early Access succeeded beyond their wildest expectations, and I ended up working on the game for 4 years.

Eventually my deal with Introversion was to work on Prison Architect every other month until launch. What a sweet deal! Those 4 years were probably the least stressful years of my freelance life. It was the perfect combination of having steady income while at the same time having some freedom to work on things on the side. But towards the end of my tenure with Introversion I started getting a little worried. Previously I'd been so aggressive about posting my portfolio on all the forums I could find, I would almost always get offers for work that I had to turn down. As I grew more comfortable working for Introversion, those work offers slowly but surely started to dry up. I would need to make a big decision soon. What would I do after Prison Architect? Go back to being a freelancer? Could I still do that? Would I ever find a gig as sweet as working with Introversion?

Working with Introversion and the success of Prison Architect gave me a credibility I could never have imagined. The first time I met my friend Sagar Patel, I was hanging out with some game devs in Japan and introduced myself as “having worked on Spacechem and Prison Architect, not sure if you've heard of those games?” Sagar laughed because it sounded like false modestly on my part, but that's when it dawned on me that the games I worked on have been played by literally millions of players. Being the “artist of Prison Architect” opened doors and conversations that would previously have been closed to me. Introversion were never shy about naming me, with the most touching moment being a (very hoarse)shoutout when Prison Architect won the BAFTA for “Best Persistent Game”. I knew that I had a great opportunity after Prison Architect, and I wanted to make sure I didn't waste it, which finally leads me to my most recent break, meeting and sealing a deal with Cliff Harris of Positech Games.

The Last, Big Break : EGX, Cliff Harris and Positech Games

Cliff Harris, or rather Positech Games, is one of the most well-known UK indie game devs. His games like Democracy 3 and Gratuitous Space Battle have sold more than 500,000 copies, which is an amazing accomplishment for a single developer. Cliff decided to parlay that success into becoming an indie publisher, which is how he launched Red Shirt and Big Pharma, and very soon Shadowhand and Political Animals. I was a big fan of Democracy 3 and Cliff was always on the top of my list of possible publishers.

I first got introduced to Cliff when I rather boldly inquired with Introversion about the possibility of publishing Political Animals. I say this was bold since I was still in the middle of working Prison Architect then. I'm not sure it was the best move to ask your current employer if they'd like to publish another game you want to work on, but they seemed pretty cool with it. The short answer was that Introversion were too swamped with Prison Architect work to be able to handle another game on their own, so they asked Cliff if he'd be interested in co-publishing the game. Cliff was in the middle of publishing Big Pharma at the time, and for one reason or another, the talks never progressed beyond the initial stages. Given Prison Architect was slated to have an official launch in less than a year, I didn't have time to be too bummed about because I was too busy with work! But at least I had a foot in the door.

Introversion was going to fly me and my wife Aissa over to the UK to join them in launching the game at EGX. I knew that this was going to be my golden opportunity. We live in the age of the internet, so it's not surprising that people sometimes tend to undervalue a face to face meeting. To this day I maintain that the biggest difficulty for Filipino developers is lacking access to conventions like EGX where they can meet both fans and prospective publishers. I was going to make this trip count. I emailed Cliff and other publishers on and off (I'll go into detail on that process in Part 3 of this series) during the rest of 2015 leading up to EGX. By the time the convention had rolled over, I had secured meetings with two publishers and had primed my pitch deck (more on that in the next part of the series) and build for presentation.

EGX was great. The fan turnout for Prison Architect was so positive, and all the Introversion guys and gals were super cool. We even had curry! In the midst of all of that I had meetings with a bunch of different publishers, including Cliff. I presented to Cliff in the food court of the convention complex. We had a chat about politics, about the game, and the possibility of marketing it. I honestly don't remember much more than that, but we shook hands and he told me to follow up with a link to the build so he could review it. Later that night we had fancy burgers and drinks with Introversion and Cliff decided to hang out with us. I think we were generally of a similar temperament, quite pragmatic in our politics, so we got along pretty well. He had just helped fund a school building in Cameroon and was very excited about his new Tesla. After a few more beers we decided to call it a night (we had 3 more days of EGX left). I went back to my hotel room, sent the build, and collapsed into bed. One day later, Cliff made his offer.

The following is a collection of email responses between me and my co-founders Marnielle and Tristan:

Me: Guys, please read the forwarded email and let me know kung may feedback kayo (Let me know if you have feedback). TL:DR Positech made an offer to publish us. DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION FOR NOW and do read it and give me feedback on your concerns.

Marnielle : WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Big shout there! Obviously, I can't do feedback well due to excitement. This is great news!

Tristan: Hmm, yahooooooooo!!!!?

To be perfectly honest I was a little annoyed at how unexcited Tristan sounded (I mean seriously, what was up with that question mark?), but when I learned later on that he threw up in the bathroom afterwards from excitement and nervousness, I felt a little better.

EGX was a prime opportunity for me to meet and pitch to publishers about Political Animals. It felt a little cheeky to be going around looking for a publishing deal on Introversion's dime but I was honest with them about it and they were fully supportive and even gave me advice about getting a deal. I am fully convinced that had I not gone to EGX Political Animals would have gone the way of so many unpublished game projects, and for that I am eternally grateful to Introversion Software.

This ends Part 2 of "How Political Animals Got a Publisher" If you thought that this story about a publishing deal seems too good to be true, then you're right! I wrestled with this a bit, but I didn't want to ruin the narrative by going in and out of the nitty gritty details of preparing for a pitch and securing a publishing deal. I've reserved part 3 of this series to talk about making pitch decks, hunting down publishers emails, and presentation gaffes. Thanks for reading, and if you'd like to be updated on the latest Political Animals news, please sign up for our mailing list!