Episode 34: Publisher Contracts, with Robert Jønsson, Interactive entertainment lawyer at DAHL.

Peter talks about his 8-year dream and journey of creating the game Godstone. In addition to talking about the game itself, we also talk about the challenges of being a solo developer, about finding motivation, and about the work ethic it requires. Godstone is a rogue-like side-scrolling 2D pixel art dungeon crawler and platformer. It will soon release on Steam in early access.

Daniel Johnson talks about how to make a F2P mobile game and be succesful in a crowded market with a small team. Daniel is the Chief Creative Officer at RapidFire Games, where they’ve developed the F2P mobile game Backpack Brawl. In the episode we learn about Daniel's long career working with mobile games, what he learned along the way, and he gives advice and examples of what you should do to increase your chances of succeeding with a new F2P mobile game.

A co-production episode, where I talk about publisher contracts with lawyer Robert Jønsson from DAHL law. We look into some key components of publishing contracts and talk about how publishing contracts have changed over time to adapt to the evolving industry landscape.Robert Jønsson also runs his own podcast called “Game Law & Business”, and we agreed to record this episode and publish it on both our channels.

I talk to Anders Vang Pedersen about his research into the work of game producers. Anders has leveraged his network in the Danish Games Industry to conduct extensive interviews with 21 active game producers. Based on the collected data, Anders provides insights into what game producers actually do.

I talk to Constantin Lervig about his journey into working with games. We discuss how the initial creative drive for art and cartoons, led Constantin to pursue the more interactive medium of games. We also talk about the challenges of maintaining the motivation for yourself and the team, and about how the ambition to create a large game might take longer than you think.

We talk about narrative game design, and how to craft and structure a game experience that conveys stories and emotional engagement into the game without breaking the immersion. The guest is Eevi Korhonen, Senior Narrative Designer at Housemarque. She has worked on games like Quantum Break, Control and most recently Returnal. Eevi provides great insights into the work of a narrative designer and the complicated task of building non-linnear interactive narrative experiences.

I denne episode taler vi om design af free-to-play spil (F2P) med Thomas Frøhlich som er Director of Game Design hos den danske spilvirksomhed Kiloo, og har bl.a. været med til at udvikle et af de største F2P spil i verden: Subway Surfers. Thomas fortæller om hvordan man arbejder som game designer, og fortæller om de ekstra design-værktøjer man skal arbejde med i free-to-play spil. Lyt med til en nørdet og lidt teknisk snak om hvordan man kan lave virkelig fede spil der er gratis, men som folk stadig har lyst til at betale for når de har spillet et stykke tid.

Ghostship Games’ direktør Søren Lundgaard fortæller om hvordan firmaet har udviklet sig fra indie udvikler til at starte som dansk indie publisher. Samtalen byder på anekdoter fra den danske spilbranches tidlige år, samt historien om tilblivelsen af Ghostship Games. I den sidste halvdel er emnet spil publishing, hvor Søren bl.a. fortæller om forskellen på investorer og publishers, og giver gode råd til hvordan man bør forberede sig som indie udvikler hvis man vil øge chancen for at lande en aftale med Ghostship Publishing (hint: du skal selv lave dit markedsresearch og have kontakten med din fanbase).

Vi har besøg af to Dania Games studerende: Emma som er programmør, og har startet sin egen virksomhed. Hun er i gang med at udviklet spillet “Melilot V Madgic” som en del af iværksætter praktikken. Peter er multimediedesigner og er i virksomhedspraktik hos danske 3D Realms. Her tegner han pixel art til virksomhedens spil. Ved siden af har han udviklet sig eget spil “Godstone” Emma og Peter fortæller om hver deres vej til studiet på Dania Games, og hele vejen videre til at arbejde med spiludvikling og egne spil.

Der bliver virkelig nørdet igennem, når de to Diablo fanboys Anders og Allan taler om spilserien. Afsnittet dykker ned i hele Diablo franchisen. Først omkring Diablo-seriens indflydelse på genren, og de design-elementer som serien har været med til at etablere. Derefter om hvordan serien har udviklet sig, og om markedets øgede fokus på end-game content. Vi vender også live-ops og open-world planerne for Diablo 4, samt berører Diablo Immortals pay-to-win og microtransactions.