Publisher Profile: popagenda

For this week’s Publisher Profile, we spoke with Genevieve St-Onge of popagenda, learning about the various things the company does beyond service-based publishing in its work to help developers succeed on their own.

Who are you?

Genevieve St-Onge, popagenda: My name is Genevieve St-Onge, and I’m the San Francisco-based third of popagenda, a Montreal-based indie games label. I’m a brand manager by trade, and a PR person by accident.

Can you tell us a bit about your company?

popagenda’s a bit of a weird beast. We’re somewhere between a behind-the-scenes indie publisher and a marketing/PR agency, working with both developers who self-publish and publishers who need support, offering full fledged publishing services without the long term financial commitment. That includes marketing strategy, PR, social media, production support, first and third party relations management, business development, release management, you name it. Our partners pick and choose what they need, the business model that works for them, we join their team, invade their Slack, ship their game, wrap up the contract, and leave.

We started the label early 2018 with 20+ years of combined experience in the games industry on the marketing, social media, and production fronts – Nick and I came fresh out of Square Enix Montréal, and MC (Marie-Christine Bourdua) was a producer on Fez and Rogue Legacy. It was pure happenstance that our careers were all simultaneously in places where it made sense for us to squad up and go freelance, and the combination of our three skill sets sprouted one of the most multi-functional teams I’ve had the chance to be a part of throughout my career.

The short version is that we just wanted to use our acquired skills and knowledge to help others in the most significant way, but also to work with cool games and create a space where our personal work/life balance would be a top priority.

What work do you do to help developers reach an audience? How do you make developers’ lives a little easier?

Nick brings infallible industry knowledge to the table, solid handling of social media strategies but most of all incredible game design insight; he’ll break your builds, deliver full mock reviews (as an ex-journalist), and bring you pain, but in a really loving way. MC is on top of everything that has to do with production and possibly the biggest organization nerd I’ve ever met. She runs efficient and emotionally-intelligent production calendars, which is quite a feat in this day and age.

We’re also lucky to have grown a really cool network of contacts throughout the years that we’re incredibly grateful for. My entire career ironically ended up being a string of roles in which I had to build everything from the ground up, which would ultimately put me in a position where I had to do a lot of business development, setting up relationships with agencies and first parties, putting together publishing pipelines with platform stakeholders across mobile, PC, consoles, even Facebook (I know), and demo games to media or work with some of the best PR folks out there (whom I miss dearly). All the while being elbow-deep in strategy from a brand standpoint and going through multiple greenlight processes to assess product sustainability on different levels.

The teams we work with get to benefit from all that. We’ll handle their titles as if they were our own, building their release strategies, nailing their key messaging and PR pacing, planning and running their events, pitching to our key media partners and content creators, connecting them with publishers, planning and presenting to first party partners, handling porting houses, and we’ll go to the bat for them under all circumstances.

What is it that you’re on the lookout for (genres, content, etc.)?

We’re open to receiving pitches at all times regardless of genre, platform, or team size. As long as they’re made with love and seem financially sustainable (we’ll tell you if it isn’t the case).

What do you look for in the games you choose to publish? In the developers you want to work with?

We’re looking for signature games that we personally would play, and teams that we’d invite over to dinner. We are very picky in terms of the contracts we sign, but if you’re a cool human with a cool passion project, we’re in.

Is there anything developers do to make themselves more appealing to publishers? Anything they do that makes them less appealing to publishers?

Be realistic and clear about your needs. Be up-front, be honest, be humble. Signing a publishing deal isn’t a power play, and if seems like it, get out. Also, be aware that publishers receive a thousand pitches a day, so it needs to be succinct, catering to them, eye-catching, and to the point. Also, just call us. We also can help with that.

About The Author

Joel Couture

Joel has been covering indie games for various sites including IndieGames.com, Siliconera, Gamasutra, Warp Door, CG Magazine, and more over the past seven years, and has written book-length studies on Undertale and P.T.. Joel is constantly on the lookout for digital experiences that push the boundaries of what games can be, and seeks to delve into the creative process, meanings, and emotion labor that goes into the work of artists worldwide.

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