This week, we sat down with Nicolae Berbece of Those Awesome Guys for our Publisher Profile, chatting about how they work to alleviate some of the aggravations of social media and promotion.
Who are you?
Nicolae Berbece, Founder of Those Awesome Guys: Heyoo, I’m Nicolae Berbece, the founder of Those Awesome Guys, the studio behind Move or Die and recently turned publisher.
Can you tell us a bit about your company?
The company was founded in 2012 out of the necessity of having a legal entity to release a game on Steam. We were originally (and still are) developers at heart. We developed our own game from scratch and self-published it on PC, and in the process of doing so, our marketing endeavors were complimented by many people from the industry.
So, earlier this year, I figured we could put more focus on marketing and take this huge burden off of developers’ shoulders and allow them to focus on game development. Therefore, we published our first game, Monster Prom, earlier this year, which managed to crush its 3 months sales estimates in the first 48 hours.
What work do you do to help developers reach an audience? How do you make developers’ lives a little easier?
We value consistency quite a bit. We try to maintain a good schedule for social media and we put a lot of effort in our trailers, which I’m responsible for :). We create all the marketing assets needed for social media, and we even dip our fingers in the development process as well, helping out with names for updates/DLC, and even graphic design for them.
We go to events to help out with booths and we maintain good relationships with both platform holders and service providers like localization, porting, and testing companies.
What is it that you’re on the lookout for (genres, content, etc.)?
Since we’re fairly new, we don’t have a “thing” yet, like Chucklefish’s peaceful pixel games or Annapurna’s… weird games. We are on the lookout for any game that is doing something interesting. I’m personally a big fan of pushing this medium, and I want to encourage good design. Based on the 2 titles that we have out already, you could say that our “thing” is party games that start with the letters “Mo…”
What do you look for in the games you choose to publish? In the developers you want to work with?
On one hand, we’re looking for games that do something interesting in terms of design. We like to think we have a pretty good eye for games that can sell well. The problem is, every now and then we stumble upon a game that is really good that we love, but clearly won’t sell. Here, we’re faced with a very tricky decision knowing that we have to keep the lights on…
On the other hand, because we’re developers at heart and we know what indie devs are going through, we want to help with design advice as well, because I’m a huge fan of “Designing with marketing in mind”. This means that the developers we sign with have to keep an open mind when it comes to development and co-develop the game with us. Which turns out to be a very tricky thing because we all have to pass through that “IT’S MY BABY!” phase with our games.
Is there anything developers do to make themselves more appealing to publishers? Anything they do that makes them less appealing to publishers?
Our fetish is to see incredibly passionate devs pushing their games our of their comfort zone. We love to see developers with beautifully-crafted pitch decks, but at the same time, that might mean they already know what they’re doing, and the next thing you know, they ask for $400k for a team of 2 for 4 months. So, the best Tinder match for us are developers who love developing, while respecting and hating marketing at the same time.
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