Shade & Ember Interactive

Small independent game studio out of the east coast, making new open world & strategy titles for PC and console.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@SeaCritDev @Pirat_Nation Scab behavior posting a link on someone elses thread so I apologize in advance, feel free to remove it if you don't want it here. Anyway I did a fuller write-up on my comment, going into depth:

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

Epic is a dumpster fire and heres why

If epic wanted to beat steam all they would have to do is

1. Find the friction for indies, thats (a) external marketing and (b) having to work against the algorithm.

2. Reduce both forms of friction.

Epics priority would be finding indies with promising games, and effectively acting as a publisher, but for epic's own platform.

Epic doesn't do this because 1. Epics employee base is incompetent 2. They're incompetent because none of them understand the customers, thats players. 3. They don't understand players because the people they hire don't have gaming as a hobby, at all. 4. None of their executives are players because all epic hires is MBAs, 5. MBAs are trained to ignore bottom up feedback and only hire those who cant compete or challenge them 6. Epic and companies like it then devolve into an echo chamber. 7. The echo chamber, made of mentally weak people, then collapses to internal baseline priorities (maximize *short term* investor margins) and external priorities (appease political radicals and ideological lunatics with axes to grind).

The end result is epic is a lousy product.

Why focus on indies though?

Corporate hegemonic drives and politics has turned the AAA studios into a K-shaped competitor pool: the few rare unicorns, and scabs trying to be them. It's a dead end, and AAA is going moribund. The cost basis of investment in these AAA publishers makes no sense unless you're specifically investing in studios and publishers working on blockbuster titles, and even then it is questionable in my opinion, but feel free to consult a financial advisor. They probably understand the gaming industry about as well as epic.

Indies on the otherhand, barring luck, *must* understand everything, and I mean everything, about their genre, their tools, their players, their market, to have a chance of succeeding.

No one is going to work harder, for less, than an indie.
It's arbitrage, and Epic, like most publishers are missing it.

The VC model works, but publishers are choosy for some god-aweful inexplicable reason.

Heres the way a VC works:
1. Make a ton of bets, say 100 investments in 100 startups

2. 98 fail outright, 1 breaks even, and q becomes a unicorn, and pays for itself, all the failures, and then some.
Thats it, thats the model in full.

And in a market like gaming, there are two primary modes a title blows up:

1. Virility and matching player preferences and current demands for new, original, or, oddly, derivative works.

2. Massive investment by third-parties, and AAA stakes.

Number one is the domain of indie developers. All day, every day.

Very small 1-4 man teams primarily develop titles for ideas, aesthetics, and mechanic combinations *they as gamers* want to see. Some of this energy overlaps with, and gets siphoned off by modding now, and modding has become vastly larger than it was even 10 years ago. But the premise remains the same.

Players either want new, never been done, or (at least done well), OR they want slight variations on their existing favorite titles, because what they really want is not a new game, but fresh content and (minor) gameplay variations. Thats all.

Its why zombies as a genre never die. Its why fallout-esque games never cease to be popular. Its why arma-likes and souls-likes are evergreen.

Indies and small studios understand this, epic and the publisher circuit do not.

Whoever does will not only eat steam's
Breakfast, they'll also take their lunch money and dinner too.

Traditional investing in the game industry fails because the market is particularly fast, a moving target. Epic and big publishers are static. VC-style publisher investment is a machine gun.

For my part I hope Gabe and steam are never unseated. Let competitors eat crow. They all were so busy looking at the money in hand, that they forgot about the people who were holding the money: the players.

#steam #gaming #gamedev #epic

@OfficialNewell @Steam_Support

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

If epic wanted to beat steam all they would have to do is

1. Find the friction for indies, thats (a) external marketing and (b) having to work against the algorithm.

2. Reduce both forms of friction.

Epics priority would be finding indies with promising games, and effectively acting as a publisher, but for epic's own platform.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

Epic is a dumpster fire and heres why

If epic wanted to beat steam all they would have to do is

1. Find the friction for indies, thats (a) external marketing and (b) having to work against the algorithm.

2. Reduce both forms of friction.

Epics priority would be finding indies with promising games, and effectively acting as a publisher, but for epic's own platform.

Epic doesn't do this because 1. Epics employee base is incompetent 2. They're incompetent because none of them understand the customers, thats players. 3. They don't understand players because the people they hire don't have gaming as a hobby, at all. 4. None of their executives are players because all epic hires is MBAs, 5. MBAs are trained to ignore bottom up feedback and only hire those who cant compete or challenge them 6. Epic and companies like it then devolve into an echo chamber. 7. The echo chamber, made of mentally weak people, then collapses to internal baseline priorities (maximize *short term* investor margins) and external priorities (appease political radicals and ideological lunatics with axes to grind).

The end result is epic is a lousy product.

Why focus on indies though?

Corporate hegemonic drives and politics has turned the AAA studios into a K-shaped competitor pool: the few rare unicorns, and scabs trying to be them. It's a dead end, and AAA is going moribund. The cost basis of investment in these AAA publishers makes no sense unless you're specifically investing in studios and publishers working on blockbuster titles, and even then it is questionable in my opinion, but feel free to consult a financial advisor. They probably understand the gaming industry about as well as epic.

Indies on the otherhand, barring luck, *must* understand everything, and I mean everything, about their genre, their tools, their players, their market, to have a chance of succeeding.

No one is going to work harder, for less, than an indie.
It's arbitrage, and Epic, like most publishers are missing it.

The VC model works, but publishers are choosy for some god-aweful inexplicable reason.

Heres the way a VC works:
1. Make a ton of bets, say 100 investments in 100 startups

2. 98 fail outright, 1 breaks even, and q becomes a unicorn, and pays for itself, all the failures, and then some.
Thats it, thats the model in full.

And in a market like gaming, there are two primary modes a title blows up:

1. Virility and matching player preferences and current demands for new, original, or, oddly, derivative works.

2. Massive investment by third-parties, and AAA stakes.

Number one is the domain of indie developers. All day, every day.

Very small 1-4 man teams primarily develop titles for ideas, aesthetics, and mechanic combinations *they as gamers* want to see. Some of this energy overlaps with, and gets siphoned off by modding now, and modding has become vastly larger than it was even 10 years ago. But the premise remains the same.

Players either want new, never been done, or (at least done well), OR they want slight variations on their existing favorite titles, because what they really want is not a new game, but fresh content and (minor) gameplay variations. Thats all.

Its why zombies as a genre never die. Its why fallout-esque games never cease to be popular. Its why arma-likes and souls-likes are evergreen.

Indies and small studios understand this, epic and the publisher circuit do not.

Whoever does will not only eat steam's
Breakfast, they'll also take their lunch money and dinner too.

Traditional investing in the game industry fails because the market is particularly fast, a moving target. Epic and big publishers are static. VC-style publisher investment is a machine gun.

For my part I hope Gabe and steam are never unseated. Let competitors eat crow. They all were so busy looking at the money in hand, that they forgot about the people who were holding the money: the players.

#steam #gaming #gamedev #epic

@OfficialNewell @Steam_Support

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@JustBotBecky When I think of Rose, I think of her throwing a priceless jewel into the ocean and it makes me friggin lol.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@PuzzleMindsa Rent it to harry f*cking potter?

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@Huberticus_ So smash bros, but for genres, got it.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

Throw it between them, watch them tear each other to pieces for that morsel of bread.

Sell tickets and take bets. Throw them some cash at the conclusion of the show.

You own their asses now, they are your *employees* now. and gratitude, or resentment, is always superior to an apology.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@LeightinLife @Mae_DayJ I'll tell you a secret, people who judge others and discard that persons history and character? Those people are scabs.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@RScottWilson @babooshka187 @Cultination1 I actually just came here to post this exact gif. Office spacec is a masterpiece, like the crouching tiger hidden dragon of solipsistic films.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

Really interesting post and all I have to add is a caveat: approximations are always wrong, but can be arbitrarily close to correct (vanishing epsilons).

The argument therefore doesn't rule out languahe models converging arbitrarily close go 100% factual reliability.

In practice that will be good enough for mosg industries. Already is, frankly.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@JAMs_Steam @Pirat_Nation And lets not forget private equity attacking steam through lawfare.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@JAMs_Steam @Pirat_Nation Its the same set of misbegotten spiteful mutants that tried to take over steam and gaming the last decade.
The strategy is called encirclement. They're using private capital to do it.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

So how long have you worked for the marketing company that salvages executive's reputations when their attempts at ragebait marketing backfire?

Idgaf about the ragebait, but it was obvious even back when the tried it with the joker. Hire better trolls, im sick of the slop-tier marketing bait. It's boring. As cutthroat as competition has become, any company that can't keep the salt harvesting original these days is NGMI going forward.

This is that. Nolan peaked. Or his marketing agency did, happens to the best even.

Rep salvaging is just kinda lame. Reads as only half-committed to the plan. But feel free to try it anyway. Just don't say I didn't warn ya.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@LeConnea @CEO_AISOMA This is a novel mode of thought. Well done.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@JHildenMinton @Math_files You total madman, you.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@GLabsPlus @Math_files Came here to write some of this.

Also. treat n as a function.
Some functions, when you add a 1, explode. It's not entirely relevant, but it just made me think, is there a more general statement, where we don't assume n is a natural number?

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

@_rygo6 Well this post is an instant follow.

[Shade & Ember Interactive @SEI_North]

Everyone in that video needs to be sent to a work camp. Not like a gulag or anything. But like an actual camp, where they voluntarily learn to do real fucking work. Will they volunteer? Of course not, and so, they must be incentivized with lies about free coffee, scions, and wifi.

Call it a "tough mudder" type event. Make them read Gulag Archipelago for bonus grades. And make sure they have plenty of selfie opportunities.

They'll probably fucking pay for the experience.