For many indie developers, building a game is only half the battle. Without the resources and reputation of AAA studios, publishing companies play a vital rolein the indie world- providing the publicity, support, and funding to help smaller devs achieve their full potential. For Garrick Campsey, the solo dev behind upcoming action-platformerLAZR, locking down a deal with a publisher isn’t as straightforward as signing the first contract that comes your way.
In his experience, indie devs face a difficult task in finding a publisher that provides the support they need without sacrificing control of their project. Game Rant spoke with Campsey about his experiencefinding the right publisherwhile putting together a full game by himself.
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For LAZR, Finding a Publisher Meant Making a Compromise
When Campsey first published early gameplay fromLAZR- the result of a challenge from afriend on Discord- he immediately started seeing the fruits of his labor on social media. After his sample got some attention he was “immediately approached by a bunch of different publishers,” Campsey said. He was faced with a decision. Some publishers were offering a lot of money to developLAZR, but things weren’t necessarily so clear-cut. “A lot of the other contracts that I read were essentially loans where, if the game didn’t make money, I was on the hook for that,” he said. “That was a step that didn’t feel comfortable to me.”
After deliberating, Campsey settled on a deal with Top Hat Studios. TheNew York-based publishing shopgave the developer a contract that was so attractive that he had to talk with them “to make sure it was real."
“They offered me a contract that was fair and that wasn’t taking advantage of me.”
The longer Campsey dealt with Top Hat, the more he felt justified in his decision. “The more I worked with them, the nicer they were to me, and the more they explained things to me,” he said. Early on, Campsey made a mistakein a Kickstarter campaignforLAZR- he hit a button that he wasn’t supposed to, and sent out a survey nearly eight months before it was supposed to become public. “There’s no way to undo that,” Campsey said. “But, Top Hat helped me through it. Even when I screwed up, they showed me how to fix it instead of just hanging me out to dry.”
His partnership with Top Hat has even afforded Campsey employment opportunities. After working with the publisher for some time, he joined the company as a multimedia producer as well as an indie dev, a decision that he said has sapped his free time but that he enjoys.
For Campsey, the quest for a publisher was rife with pitfalls. It’s “an issue that I don’t think indies really address,” he said. “The more money that you get, generally, the more strings that are attached, because you don’t have a big name. There are a lot of predatory publishers out there.” Asan indie dev, the cash that some publishers provide can be pretty attractive, but he said it’s easy for a smaller designer to lose their work in a big-dollar publishing deal because of the strings.
“I had to make a hard decision to turn down a lot of money from some publishers, and go with an option that gave me enough money to do what I need to do but still let me retain control over the IP, and a lot of other important stuff,” Campsey said. “There are a lot of compromises you have to make, and I think that the smarter choice is to take less money, and to go with a publisher that has a proven track record and is also a developer,versus a big publisherwho has a lot more power over you to dictate terms.”
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While Developing LAZR Solo, Campsey’s Focus was on Self-Discipline
Game studios, even ones that operate on a smaller scale, benefit from numbers.A team of developerscan divide and conquer, expediting the process and distributing the task of game design more evenly. That’s not a luxury that solo devs like Campsey have. He faces a unique set of challenges developingLAZR, the largest of which, he said, is discipline: things like waking up at a specific time, or setting designated work hours.
“Motivation doesn’t work that way,” he said. “I may be laying in bed at 10:00 p.m., knowing that I should go to sleep in the next 30 minutes so that I can wake up and start working at eight or nine.” Despite that, Campsey said that he’s sometimes struck by inspiration late at night, and finds himself staying upperfecting a mechanicor implementing a new idea. “How am I supposed to go to sleep after that and then wake up at 9:00 a.m.,” he said.
“It’s this horrible balance between ‘am I doing enough,’ and ‘am I doing too much, and I need to take care of myself.’”
Although Campsey is doing something that he loves, he faces a challenge in trying to balance developingLAZRwith a productive lifestyle. “I have to make a lot of compromises,” he said. “I have pages and pages of notes that I have to go through and figure out which are good ideas and what I need to work on every day.”
It’s been slow-going.LAZRis just aSteamdemo at the moment, with no solid release date in sight. Despite that, Campsey says the last thing he wants to do is rush through development. “I really do hope to do Early Access this year. My main bottleneck right now is completing all the levels and the bosses. I could rush that out, but I don’t want to.”
Campsey spends a lot of time implementing and perfectingLAZR’scyberpunk style, its enemies, and its bosses. “I like thinking of those unique interactions and experiences that players can have,” he said.
Even if that takes time, Campsey hopes his game will be worth the wait. “I don’t want to rush it, and I really want to make something unique and memorable,” he said. “I think that has lasting power, versus something that’s kind of disposable.”
LAZRis in development for PC.
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