Interview with Devolver Digital Publisher

Hello and welcome to another episode of App Stories. I'm John Voriz and with me is Federico Vitici. Hello again, hi . Today we have another very special Apple Park episode. We're here in the podcast studio at Apple Park, and thank you, of course, to Apple having us here and doing all the work to get this show on the internet. And also, I want to thank our three sponsors for this episode. That's Sofa , Agenda and Drop Zone five. We are going today for this special episode, talk to ADA finalists and winners. We've got a couple of both. We've been doing this for a few years and we've been doing it for a while, yeah. And people keep winning these awards and not even finalists . So maybe they'll give us an award sometime if we do a lot. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think so yeah. All right, well look, we want to save all of our time for talking to the winners and the finalists. So let's let's get started and bring them in. We're back and for our first interview of the day, we have Katarina and Andre from Gentler Stories who are going to talk to us a little bit about the Outsiders, one of the ADA finalists this year. Welcome to the show, both you. Thank you for having us. Could you, I mean, we've talked to you before. Catherine, we know each other. We interviewed you and someone else from General Stories a couple of years ago and you're back obviously with another ADA finalist nomination. And I wanted to get a sense for how the outsiders is different than Gentler Streaks because Gentler Streaks is an app that I use a lot myself, but it's designed for people who want to get in shape and track their health and their wellness , but without kind of the stress and the intensity of a lot of the apps that are out there in the app store. And I know the outsiders is a different approach. It's kind of almost like from the other end of the spectrum, I'd say. And I want to kind of get a sense for how those apps differ. And kind of also where did the outsiders come from? What kind of inspired that given the work that you've done in the past? Yeah maybe the why, right? Why we even started working on the outsiders . You put it very nicely about what gentler streak is . And that's how I perceive it. And for me, it's perfect. Like it's the holistic approach to well being. It's something to keep your habit going . But for Andre , it was not enough. So at the office , he's a designer and product owner also of both apps. And with gentle streak, he always wanted more charts, more data, like more power to it. Oh we just kept clashing at the office because it was like, yeah, but it doesn't belong in it. Like it's going to ruin the experience for people who feel included in the fitness space now because of these apps . So at some point like, we had a couple of heavy discussions and at some point we said no, we're going to risk it and we're going to create a separate app for that niche group, which Andre essentially is . So he no longer needs to use the four apps that he was using before like because he will talk himself, but he is progress oriented. And gentler streak is not about progress being progress oriented. It's more about how can we support you in being and staying active in a way that responds to your body's needs and your current form ? So it's not about chasing goal, it's not about personal best . And I think the average user of Gentle Street also doesn't need all that data like me myself, I don't dive deep into the charts, you know, I don't need, I just want to know where I'm at and that I'm doing well queuing it, that kind of thing. Yeah, and that I can plan a little ahead. And you know, John says that he's a big user of gentrosic and he is. The problem is that sometimes he sends me these screenshots of his sleep data. He's so bad . I am . I will tell you that you're in numbers. Okay . Yeah, today's my readiness score today for the outsiders was very low because I've not been sleeping a lot since I've been at school. I think we're in the same room. Like mine is twelve. Okay, yours is worse than mine . But on a more serious note , I wanted to ask you two very different apps, rightight . But I have to assume that some of the lessons that you learned from Gentle Streak , despite the differences between them, you were still able to carry over some of those lessons to the new app. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah . Now I would maybe give it over to Andre, who's the product owner and like, right ? I mean, yeah, hi . So glass and stuff. I mean with Gensa Street, we really put lots of attention into detail. So user experience, user interface is really important to us . And yeah, and we learned that this if you believe it or not, this also believes a lot to users. They notice that every time I go into a small detail that takes me hours to perfect it , users notice it. So this is what they carry on to the outsiders . We put lots of I mean, I spend lots of time detailing, perfecting every little detail . And maybe for some users who want just more metrics, more data or sometimes a bit angry that we spend so much time into a user interface because like there is an update that's only about the interface but at the end it's worth it the app feels right because of that . How was it to design , you know, with last year IUS twenty six liquid glass? Yeah. How what's the process being like for you guys? I mean for the outside outsiders , it was really easy because Outsiders is available only for IOS twenty six . Only quit last . Yeah, because we have released the app in September just like when the IOS ninet sixy was released . It was a bit harder for Gento Streak because we have to keep two designs in one app. For users who don't update to IOS ninety six, the Gento Streak is available in the old design. But yeah, I mean the process was, I mean, it's very simple. It's more or less it's all out of the box . I mean, my first designs were, of course, made on the old design because I started designing in like January last year and the WWC was in June. But it was like it was very straightforward. Apple's videos that are available after WWC are really very good so it was easy. And supporting supporting the outsiders is therefore even easier for us because we only support we only support one UI . I'm curious what it's been like bringing whether with the outsiders, you feel like you've brought in a new audience of users or whether you're kind of shifting some people from Jungler Street to the outsiders? How do you feel what's the mix like between those two groups? I would say both. Both happened because Andrea obviously wasn't the only person who was using Gentleer Streak and three other apps with it. We also had a group that's, I would say out of my head, I don't know for you, but just from hearing from people . I would say a quarter of Gentler Streak users users is similar to Ray ? And a lot of those folks are now on the outsiders or using both apps . But I think also with the app with the outsiders, we also now gathered completely new audience as well. There is like more into data . You know, the thing is the gentler streak works for everyone . They could also use it. It's not that because some people , the name is maybe a bit misleading sometimes because people think, oh, I can only be like I can only do soft exercise. It won't allow me to push, but it's not like that. It does allow you to progress. Basically the guidance, the core of it, is the same as in outsiders . It just the way how we look at it and how we interpret that data is different because we're talking to a different person . So for those more heavy users, let's say , I think the outsiders it, resonates much better , also because of the language of the tone of voice. Like in Gentle, we really try to be soft, like treat you to help you be more self compassionate to listen to yourself, to yeah, to maybe connect better to how you really feel not to just rely on the app all the time, but to maybe establish a better connection with self and we really try to be to be gentle, to be understanding, soft , funny sometimes . While with the outsiders, it's a different audience . So it's also a different tone of voice. It's more straightforward . Right, right. And not that long ago you added support for I think like Garmin devices and other ways of kind of gathering data into the outsiders. I'd be curious to learn a little bit more about that because I mean, I think that I've tried different kinds of ways to track my fitness, including like some sensors and things like shoes and that sort of thing. And one of the things I really noticed was when I was when I've been using the outsiders, which I haven't been using very long, but I noticed that I felt like I got a more complete picture of everything because not only it drawing in whatever information it was drawing in from maybe a third party product, but it was so well incorporated into Apple Health that I felt like I had a better broad er overview of my readiness or my progress and that kind of thing, where you can't get that always when you have just like maybe one sensor that's measuring one thing . Yeah , I mean Gentle Streak and the Outsiders they both read from Apple Health Kit so that everything that is stored there is available in our apps , but not all trackers save or record every data in the Apple Health Kit and that's the proble m that we found and the first integration is integrating the Garmin Garmin Connect. We plan to integrate other devices in the future and inte integrating garming first was actually the problem we have . I'm a road cyclist and on the bike you don't wear Apple Watch. I mean, if you're serious athlete , you have a bike computer because it's more convenient and you have it has even more data. So I'm using Garmin by computer and the problem was that Garmin doesn't store everything in Apple Health Kit. We had to fix that solution. So I do that. Yeah. So that's why we integrated Garmin, and we also planned that for other devices in the future. So more users can use our app Make sense. I would think that that audience too would want to be able to do that because they have specialized equipment that's maybe a little more specific. Exactly sport. Yeah, exactly because some devices are really made for a special workout type. Like Apple Watch, I mean, it's perfect for me for running, for fitness, everything and for walking for, tracking that. But on the bike, you cannot use Apple Watch really. I mean, if you're serious about it because looking at the watch riding, it's not convenient . And there are also other sports that using other devices is more convenient. Before we go , anything from IUS twenty seven Watch twenty seven that you've seen and that you're thinking about for working on in the summer ? I mean generally speaking the, outside there we don't have AI in it because you really carry privacy very much and you know the AI talks with servers so we don't want to dispose users' data to the servers. And also what we were talking at the beginning, sorry to interrupting, but I think it's important . We spend so much time on creating user experience , you know, obsessing about every pixel, about every word we use, about where we put something, how it makes you feel, then leaving it up to LLMs to do that magic and then serve you something totally off like it ruins the experience. And we think right now we're not there yet. So we're not the first to jump on the train just for the sake of it. We'd rather do it ourselves, have full control . But once we're there, we're probably Yeah. But if I want when I'm talking about privacy , Apple introduced on device AI processing. And that's what is really interesting to us. Yeah. If this will work like we want it to work, and if we can rely on that I believe that we will put AI on our app. Nice.. Great, great Well, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure talking to you and congratulations again on being an ADA finalist. That's really fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. This episode of App Stories is brought to you by Sofa. Sofa is a downtime organizer for iPhone, iPad, and Mac and the Apple Vision Pro that helps you organize everything you watch, read, play and do. It's built around five things organize, track, play plan , and remember . You can build lists and groups, including smart lists that fill themselves automatically based on filters you set . Sofa tracks your TV show season by season and it has five different tracking modes for books and games . There's even a full podcast player built right into your library with a queue, offline downloads, carplay, and per show settings. The plan section gives you a media schedule, plus real world experiences with itineraries, budgets, maps and weather , and the remember section gives you a logbook with a stats dashboard of everything you've ever enjoyed. 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You know, I think we should start with what Pine Hearts is all about in case people who are listening don't haven't played the game yet. Yeah, I mean, Pine Hearts is a really emotive story Rob Madden, the creative director and co founder of Hyperliminal Games lost his father in his early twenties and created Pine Hearts as a journey about loss and reco . And it takes them back our character Tyke, back to Scotland to the Highlands, where they would go to a caravan park and look to do various activities . And that journey of Tike is about how you recover from loss. And you meet characters along the way and there's a Scottish Ruin castle and a little bit of golf. So there's fun and engagement but also ultimately climbing that mountain that Rob never did with his father. Yeah. So it's to do his father proud. Yeah , after their loss. And even though it's love and loss that it's not a heavy game it's a comforting, wholesome game that people love to curl up on the sofa. Sounds like it has a lot of Scotland in it too. And it does, yes, lots of whees instead of little s and lots of little scottish terms along the way. Yeah . But you know, it resonates with everyone because you know, everyone has been through that process and the game has had amazing feedback from players and it's touched a lot of people's hearts which is what you know, Rob, 's ambition was to was to achieve with the team. Great. That's great. I find it so fascinating when in the video game industry you see a game that tries to confront a heavy theme like loss , but while still entertaining you in the process and that I think is something so unique about video games as a medium that 're communicating you're trying to communicate something , but at the same time it's interactive media, right? And so I have to imagine that designing an experience for users while starting from a foundation of loss and grief , it's challenging . And it is challenging because the puzzles distract you from the heaviness as well and it's got humor in it . you So have to help someone fix their tent. You need to find the hammer to do that. You have to get some boulders down. So you've got a backpack and you've got tools along the way . And so you've got that distraction but, knowing that your journey is to make your dad proud. Right. And that's necessary, right? Because you cannot be too heavy handed. Like you cannot just say, oh, this is a game about loss and grief and we're going to hit you over the head over and over and over with this idea . So that balance of the gameplay and the puzzles , but also the story , I think that's what's really remarkable , right? Yeah . Can you how long was the development process ? It was over two years or two in development and as a studio's IP you can imagine it was a labor of love . So every time we thought the game was maybe finished, there was always just that little bit more that we wanted to put in . But I think the finished product does justice to the team and to Rob and his family , which I think was a, as I said, real neighbor to love. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I know that the game has an emphasis on accessibility. Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, sure. So in the menu system , if you I know you can't see this, but you can go into the menus quite easily . And then you can see that there's simplified controls . There's easy easy black and white for viewings as well . There's languages . There's all sorts of various font sizes, font size, you know, font as well . So it has over ten features to help people and it's front loaded so that you can you can choose that before playing a game. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, the visual support has color blocking or black and white and you can just you can add that in even if you're halfway through the game you can go in and change it quite easily and our head of UI UX design Sierra was really passionate about accessibility running through the game right from the start . So that really helped us to find what we were looking for because the ethos of hypoluno games is games for good . And I think we all know at times the games industry's reputation can be dominated by certain high profile titles . And I think there are so many amazing games out there that touch on so many different themes and subjects so, it's fantastic to get this recognition from Apple for the studio and the developers back in Dundee in Scotland and around the UK that work for the studio. What's the reaction being like from the audience , what are some of the stories that you like . Obviously a game like this, I have to imagine that it resonates like you said with everybody. Everyone goes to this. Everyone goes to this at some point some sooner or some later. What have you heard from your patients? Yeah, a lot of the reviews are very much that as I say, they curl up on a sofa. They want to play it on a rainy Sunday afternoon and even though they've gone through it themselves , they may have thought oh this is the right time for me to play this game and they get well in they well up at the end of it but it's such a beautiful story that they're cheering cheering little taik on. Yeah. I know that when we took the game first out to some festivals events and Rob was there, he was dumbstr uck by the reaction from people who just said, you know, I get this . Thank you. And that's the messages we get into the studio and in a lot of the reviews that come in as well is how it 's just touched a chord with people . And I think that reaction is what really fueled the fire within the studio to really create the best game we could. And as a studio , I imagine that it's a fine line that you got to walk when it's a project so personal for an individual while also having to account for the collective of a studio. Yes. Right. It's a tough balance because we are a work for hire studio as well . And so the work for hire that we do fuels our IP investment . And so we have to strike that balance between the two. And these are choppy waters in the games industry currently. So navigating that brings its challenges . But you know, we're coming through the other end and we're positive about the future. What's it been like pouring the game to two Apple platforms ? You know, multiple screen sizes , tash controls , some of the lessons that you've learned, some of the stories that you've heard from users. Well, it's in unity, so it's lent itself very well to IOS. So originally it came out on Steam and Switch on august twenty fourth, so may twenty fourth and then august twenty five is when we brought it out into mobile and it was hyperlum ino who worked for Secret Mode on other projects and they self published the Steam version and came to Secret Mode saying You're really good at publishing. Can you help us out with the marketing and the partnerships? Sure . And we want to bring it to mobile and that's where the relationship comes in. Yeah. And it was a learning experience for us to maybe stick to what you're good at . And and stay in your lane a little bit more sometimes. But again, you know, you learn on the journey about the actual narrative of pine hearts. And we were very fortunate to work with Secret Mode as a publisher. We have a great relationship and they have elevated Pine Hearts significantly to gamers and everyone is benefiting from that. So yeah, it's a good end to the journey. And it's because it's in try before you buy and right. Secret Mode really supported that that mechanic within Apple. Yeah . And we knew that the good relationship with Secret Mode and Apple would elevate pine hearts and it has done. Here we are today. Yeah, it's a great feature that people can play the game for thirty up to thirty minutes and really get into the game and then make that decision and that again is a fantastic feature that Apple have introduced. Is there anything at WWC this year that you've seen that interests you for either Pine Hearts or maybe another title that you're working on. You're going to make me try and sound like a developer here. I know that and that's tricky for me. I have to say I've just been blown away by the whole the whole event the scale of it and the way that the setup and how we've been looked after , yesterday's keynote speeches were just amazing in terms of upgrades that are coming as well. So I couldn't sit here and pick out anything particular just that it's been incredible and going up on the stage together to get the award. Yeah. So it's been a special few days. It sounds like that was a really nice event. Yeah, I know some other people who were there as well. I think I just wanted to say, I think it's such a perfect fit . The inclusivity award , given your focus on the things that you've done with the UI and obviously the work that Apple has been doing in accessibility for so many years, right? Yeah, that 's it's really a nice match And even the type of before you buy makes it accessible because it's yes. It's your choice. If you really love this, carry on. Well, thanks so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time and congratulations again on the award. That's really fantastic. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you . This episode of Abstories is brought to you by Agenda. 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Best of all, Agenda is free to use forever and any premium features that you unlock during a subscription stay unlocked permanently. Visit agenda. com to learn more. Again, that URL is agenda. com That's agenda, date focused notes deeply integrated with the Apple ecosystem . Our thanks to Agenda for their support of the show . Alright, folks, we are back and now we have the developer of Tide Guide Tucker to join us because Tucker won the Apple Design Award Visuals and Graphics. Welcome to the show, Tucker. Hi guys. Thank you for having me. Congrats. Thank you so much . Thank you so much . I'm beyond humbled and honored and proud to be a recipient this year. Yeah, now that and you've had a bit of a journey because you were up for the award in past years, I think, right? I was three years ago. I was a finalist . Flighty won that year, which is one of my, of course, favorite apps and great . That was cool to see , but nice to get the cube myself. Well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about what your app does, what Tide Guide does, and kind of the origin story of it, where did it come from? For sure . So tide guides an ocean tides and marine weather app , exclusive to Apple platforms . The app was inspired by growing up fishing with my grandfather in the waters off Cape Cod and just being a huge fan of the ocean and its beauty . And so I've tried to incorporate those themes into the app with the full colored background , the gradient that changes throughout the day. I am not a developer by trade. Oh, that's interesting coming from an A winner. So I actually wanted to be a Hollywood filmmaker when I was growing up. Okay , and went to film school and studied cinematography and started teaching myself to code from YouTube to build tools to use on set . And so that's kind of what started my app development journey. This is before AI before . Yeah, this was like ten years ago. Okay . And so Tideyad specifically has actually grown alongside Apple platforms and Swift and Swift UI . And so as the technology has gotten a lot easier to use and learn and integrate , that's allowed me to build more advanced features. When did the app come out originally ? I think what is it? two hundred twenty? twenty seventeen, probably. Okay, eighteen. That's as old as app stories. Yeah, it is. This very show was started in twenty seventeen. Yeah. And so you have seen a lot of the technologies over the years. There's a lot of change in that time span. What is it that you what are some of the things that have helped you the most over the years? Probably swift UI and the Swift Charts framework . Being a visual guy seeing your UI update as you write the code . I mean, it's such a huge unlock in terms of one refinement, but two like motivation and inspiration because they're like, okay, I'm almost there. Like I can keep going. I can get this to look the way I want it to look. What was the transitional liquid glass like for you? It was so fun. So I think a big I've been a big fan of liquid glass from a good moment they announced it seems like a great fit for an app that's about water for sure, for sure . It was a blast to incorporate . I love the interactivity of it and the speculative or speculeness throughout the UI actually gave Apple invited me to the Developer Center in the fall to give a presentation on my adoption of liquid glass in the app , which is a really cool experience . It's in the Apple Developer app now and that was kind of mind blowing. You mentioned being a visual person. Yeah. And I got to ask, is that coming from your film school background? Absolutely. Because it's the phone, the canvas, it's very similar to the composition of a film. You're rotating it one way. So you're still dealing with layout and hierarchy, shadows, colors . Hm m, that's fascinating. And I assume that scaling the app to different Apple devices and screen sizes, that's also part of that, right? Yes, absolutely. And it's fun because bringing the app to different devices and platforms, it kind of takes a different role in the day in my users' lives. So like the iPad app is designed to be kind of wall mounted . If somebody just leave it on the wall so very data cent ric yes. Okay . Data centric, glancable . People live like on the ocean . Yes. Exactly. And it's so cool because that was like a feature that I had thought would be sweet. And then users like will send me a photo of the iPad mounted on the wall. And it's like that's so cool . Thank you. What are some of the stories that you've heard from people interesting . So I've had actually a few really interesting use cases . I have a user in Alaska that has a kayak tour company and he uses the app to check the tides ten months in advance so he can see if he can access a remote fjord at a certain time of day. Can you predict that? Yes , yeah, so tides are very predictive. I don't know, so forgive my ignorance on this subject. And I actually there's another use case the volunteer rescue crew of the Scottish Coast Guard wrote in . They wanted me to tweak how I had supported shortcuts. They needed a new step so that they could make a flow, right? When a message comes in, they can tap a button that gets all the current conditions and then sends it out via WhatsApp to their crew. Oh, that's cool. So you got a shortcuts request? Yes, from the Scottish Coast Guard. And it's like, okay, I could certainly do that. It'll be in the app next week. And then they sent me a photo of the rescue boat and they're like, thank you, Tucker McCobbin Tide Guide for helping us save lives. It's like, that is incredible. Unreal. Like, I never thought that would I can only imagine that's not the kind of thing you think about when you start building it out. Yeah. I imagine you get an email from the Coast Guard. You may be expecting something, I don't know, bureaucratic, like to support the latest compliance and security , whatever. And instead it's a shortcut . That's incredible. It's unusual. Let's talk about the announcements this year. Yeah . Liquid glass, some refinements and AI . Anything that caught your attention ? I'm really excited about, I think, a lot of the performance and stability improvements throughout and the further integration of Siri . I had adopted app intense thoroughly a couple years ago when it first came out and so I'm excited to play around with the snippet views being able to say like, hey, share this with someone and having control over what gets shared I could pass in TI data or a view a custom rendering of the graph I haven't really poked around yet. It's been a busy couple, you know, day and a half, you know, it feels like a week. It feels like 're yeah, excited to dive in for sure. I have to imagine that. I've only briefly glanced at the documentation , the idea being that you should not be able to quickly and reliably search with spotlight. Yes, right? So you can pull up your tide data , ask serious question and incorporate it with other apps, do whatever you want. So that's the kind of thing that I guess you will be busy this summer probably looking at for sure. Yeah , poke around. I don't know how many people are like, you know, sharing tide data per se , but making stations searchable like that. I could see people may be incorporated into other apps for themselves too. Like maybe putting it into their calendar, something in their calendar for what the prediction is down the road or that kind of thing. I like that idea. We all write that one down. We work we review a lot of apps . To go back to your to your journey as a developer . Do you have competition from bigger companies ? Maybe not bigger companies, but maybe other small developers It's really fun to get recognized on this stage . It also puts a spotlight on the app . With the introduction of all of these new models recently, it's so easy to have copycat apps . And I've learned quite a few that have, I mean, there's one, you know, almost screen for screen. It's like, hey , that is Tidegut . It's just with a different name. And so flattery is the or copying someone right. It's the finest form of flattery. Sure . But my competition, I think, is mainly from other people seeing it and saying I can just build that as well . Yeah. What do you do to kind of keep try to keep ahead of that sort of thing as a developer? Keep listening to my users and build what they want and maintain the relationship with them , you know, because that's my absolute small little business. And so that's how I'll keep them loyal and drive revenue. I don't think the Copycat app gets an email from the Scottish Coast Guard. I agree . Not yet . I think what's really impressive also is the design of it all. Like the color grade really nice I think in this , I mean, we're fortunate enough that we get to talk to a lot of indie developers who care about the craft and the care . But if you look, as you mentioned, elsewhere these days with AI , I think it's becoming more and more of a rare thing to see a single person, an individual truly caring about the gradient , the way that this rounded corner looks like and working on it year after year after year and just kind of refining it and really polishing it. Yeah . I mean, it's it's fun to have a canvas that you can keep painting on . And it changes every year it does, which is exciting, I think. It's an invigorating. Yeah, sure Do you prototype or do sketches drawings? Yeah , so I'll do I'll take a pen and paper and draw out what I'm thinking . And now I mean now I'll just send that to my agent and then he'll put that into my design system. What do you use? I use Codex right now. That's a good choice. I guess I've tried a few, but yeah, you know, you kind of bring your skills with you so you can go from one to another , which is nice. Yeah . All right, well , congrats. Congratulations. Again, thank you so much. Thank you guys for having me on. Thanks for being on the show. This episode of App Stories is brought to you by Drop Zone five. Drop Zone is the essential drag and drop product ivity enhancer for the Mac and version five is a major new release. It lives in your menu bar with a customizable grid of always ready actions, so moving, organizing and, acting on fil es becomes fast and effortless. Drop zone five is redesigned for Mac OS Tahoe with liquid glass and it adds multi grid support so you can keep separate grids for different workflows , projects, or contexts , each with its own layout and categories. Every grid gets a drop bar, a place to park files for later. There's deeper terminal integration too, with a command line tool that lets you run actions, add files to the drop bar, and switch grids right from the command line. Out of the box, you get built in actions to move or copy files, open them in any app, short en URLs, resize images, share and upload to Imager, SFTP or S three , plus dozens more installable actions and a custom action API if you want to build your own . You can trigger it all with a keyboard shortcut or the MacOS share service . App Storoys listeners get fifty percent off the usual thirty five dollars price at Aptonic. com slash app stories . Again, that's apptonic . com slash app stories for fifty percent off drop zone five, the essential drag and drop iv Pityroducthanc Eern for Mac. Our thanks to Drop Zone for their support of the show . Hey everybody, we are here for our final interview of the day. We have Mark with us from Devolver Digital, the publisher of Ball Pit, which won was an ADA finalist in the Delight and Fun category. Welcome to the show, Mark. Thank you very much for having me. The setup you have here. I know. Well, it's not ours . It's I gotta say they keep sort of up in their game at Apple every year . It's even nicer. I mean, last year was nice. This is even nicer . It's starting to look more and more like a living room. At this point we'll have a whole apartment and we'll just stay here for the week when we're at WCBC studio audience. I think Federico does have this many iPhones though, probably. I don't know Well , Mark, let's talk a little bit about Ballpit because Ballpit first debuted on Steam and Console, right? This year and came to Apple's platform not that long ag o really. I mean a little earlier this year and march twelfth, March. Okay. And what was that what was that like? I mean, in terms of getting taking a game from one set plat ofform s to another . Right. So for just as a level set, you guys have played it. You're already somewhat familiar. A big fans game. Yeah. Some number of hours have been spent. I a high number of hours, maybe higher than I should admit. But yeah, great question. So I mean, Devolver originally generally is a PC and console publisher for Indie games Although we have a very robust mobile catalog as well . But generally speaking, we go to mobile once we feel like a game has like reached a certain level of commercial . Yeah, exactly. It's reached a certain level of commercial success, first of all, with the thesis being if it does well on PC, then the chances are good that if people see it on mobile they'll recognize it and they go I know that game. I want that game . And with the second piece that's equally is and more obvious is would it make a good mobile game? Like would it would it feel good? Would it translate well to touch? Right. And in the case of Ballpit in particular , if it's amazing, right? Like from the first time you pick it up, you can easily say this would be a fantastic one. Well, the first time I played it on another platform, I thought, oh this should come to the iPhone. This is going to be amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which we had exactly the same , the same gut reaction and couldn't be more pleased with what the outcome has been because first of all, Apple has been tremendous in how they helped us roll it out not only in terms of promoting it but also with some guidance on how to approach the business model and now it's gone on to get some half a million installs and four point eight star rating. And so we're very pleased with how it's all gone. Yeah, the game really took off. I mean, I think there was a lot of anticipation for it in the first place, but when it was initially released, it really talked took off like a rocket right straight to like, oh a lot of people thought this, you know, this was their game of the year personally. And I think that the timing of when you brought it to the iPhone was really good because I got to imagine that that gave you kind of like a second wave of users who may not have discovered it on steam or someplace like that. Absolutely. And that's in fact, that's the beauty of this I should have mentioned with regard to business model and so forth. So it's a try before you buy experience. So you can install the game and play the first number of levels and kind of do the loop of fighting in the pit and clearing a level, being a boss, then going to the base and starting to get into that really sort of sticky progression loop that you guys seem to already be familiar with . And so in terms of the opportunity to get that many more people to see the game and try it for the first time without necessarily having to pay money upfront is an opportunity to get so many more hands on to the tune of hundreds of thousands of new customers customers who might or potential customers who might not have seen it on PC or decided to buy it there. Right. What are some of the lessons that you learned at Devolver when it comes to the different audiences that you have on PC stame versus going to mobile, like going to an app store . I have to imagine that there are there's some overlap obviously. Like I have a gaming PC a steam deck and whatnot. We own bomb it on multiple platforms already . But there's also maybe the kind of person who has an iPhone, has an iPad , they don't have a gaming console. And so how do you navigate that ? Well, as I was saying earlier , PC tends to be where we need to see that commercial success validated first, right? Because it's quite challenging for us to consider signing a new IP specifically for mobile and have it debut there , because we're a premium indie publisher, right? Our games for pretty much in all cases are pay upontfr except for try before you buy games that we do on the mobile side . And in order to be able to really sort of make inroads, at least in our view these days and have a shot at business success and mobile, you almost have to be free to play with , you know, significant sort of resources competency around kind of performance marketing and you know so,ft launching and AB testing and all sorts of choralate product validation and gates you kind of need to cross before you should really kind of invest heavily in a mobile title. And that certainly has worked and work ed incredibly well for lots of players in the mobile space . It's not the sort of tried and tested path that we've taken as a consequence of us typically being PC console by nature, you know, historically. That's interesting because I feel like when people hear indie game , right , they think, oh made by a single person somewhere , found success . They made lots of money, lots of players. Now it's this huge title . But maybe they think, oh, the publisher is just, you know, the business folks just launching a game and taking care of, I don't know, taxes and administrative stuff. But no, there's Arry, obviously you do that , but there's also like what you mentioned, like marketing, AB testing, like all of those things that maybe as players, right? If I think of myself as a player, I don't think about all of that. But that is an essential part of what you do . Yeah, it's a key piece. I mean , the definition of Indie can be pretty broad, but if we're going to try to get some sort of parentheses around what that means, it typically means relatively small, relatively budget constrained Right And so when you think about working with a publisher , in the majority of cases, people are looking for some kind of project, investment, right? We need money to make the thing. Right . And it's easy to sort of then conclude, well, the major value add for the publisher is just to add money. But that's and especially in our case, that's really just where it starts. And it isn't always the case that money is the primary motivator. It's more this thought that like as an indie team , there are certain things that you're really good at doing. And then there are other things that distract you from what you're really good at doing or require to like wear many hats at the same time where in working with us, you can kind of get the benefit of bringing online a whole sort of team in different departments of people who are also very passionate about games and apply that passion with the kind of developer first mentality from the time that we invest in a project , to the production support that we provide for it, to the bespoke marketing plan that we'll make for that game , how we're going to take that marketing and then collide it with what we are always doing, sort of reinvesting in devolver the label, which people have kind of come to know as somewhat of a taste maker, I suppose, to some degree. We've shipped one hundred and thirty games in seventeen years. We have an average metacritic of eighty across the board. That's that we're very proud of. So part of that is being very lucky to work haveed with a lot of very talented people. Part of it is working with folks who know a lot about games and how to ship them well. The highest level of quality, with culturalized, localized, chewed properly and intended for a global release and not just a specific market . And then it goes beyond that and more into some of the things that you were describing before, maybe more back office. Like certainly there's everything that's release management, business development , legal stuff, trademarks and copyrights. Those things like Indies might not know a whole ton about, but we can help them we can help guide them. And so it's a really sort of like I don't like to use the term turnkey because it's a little bit trite , but it can be a huge benefit to a team when they are inspired to create this awesome thing that we're also passionate about and then be able to remove distractions so they can focus on that thing and do it. And we can like jointly as partners bring it to the widest audience. Is it hard sometimes to reconcile the taste part with the business , like what if you really like game , right? And it's, you know, this artistic thing and you really like it, but maybe the financials or the market conditions don't really make sense for it . That's an excellent question. And it's actually an ongoing debate that we have all the time because no one has a crystal ball. And a huge amount of the decisions that we make are vibes driven . And it is sort of like go with your gut . And so we try to ask ourselves some very honest questions . Have they found the fun ? Do we love it? Do we think we can do a great job and bring the same kind of passion to this project as the developer has for it themselves . Can we do a good job selling this game? Can we be a great partner to these people ? Now , of course, there is a certain amount of validation and we'll go through and we do forecasting and we do like analyze competition and so on and so forth. But at the end of the day, publishing is a lot like in a way sort of venture capitalism, right? The game is in a sense its own startup. If we believe in the dream, we want to fund that dream. We want to help bring it to reality . And so there's always some element of risk in making those decisions , but that's why we spend a lot of time talking and approach those choices as a team and try to kind of lead with our values rather than necessarily prioritizing what we see as the business opportunity. We feel like if the product is great and we can do a great job making people helping people understand that, then the business part of it will sort of come naturally. Right, right, makes sense, makes sense. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure talking to you Ball Pit, one of my all time favorite games. I mean, I've sunk a lot of hours into yep. I'm going to continue. So that's all it was so much fun to say . Yeah, I know it's going to be great to talk to you. Thanks. And likewise, thank you. And congratulations too on becoming a fan. Just appreciated. And yeah, all credit to Kenny, son, and friends . We're very, very grateful to get a chance to work with such talented people. Excellent, excellent. Thank you. You bet. Thank you. All right, everybody, that's it for today's episod e. I want to thank our three sponsors again. That's Agenda, Sofa, and Drop Zone five. Thank you again to our guests who we interviewed today. It was a real pleasure to speak to both the finalists and the winners and thanks to Apple for having us here at Apple Park. We'll talk to you in about a week