«Giving visibility to games is the sexiest thing we do»

The Fun & Serious Game Festival begins with a round table aimed at indie developers and the role of distributors to publish their games

   "Being 'publisher' was a negative thing before, the dark and evil part, and it's true that the distributors have done terrible things, but things have changed, the walls have been demolished and now there is dialogue and transparency." With these words, Martín DeFries has intoned a peculiar 'mea culpa' on behalf of a sector, that of video game distributors, which has always been viewed with some misgivings, not only among players but also among developers.

  The president of Rising Star Games, a company that has already published more than 120 games, has attended the opening day of the Fun & Serious Game Festival in Bilbao this morning to participate in a round table in which the work of the distributors and the keys that a developer needs to work with them. "I think the most sexy thing we do now is try to give the games visibility so they stand out to the public, but we also do everything that the developer does not want to do: reports, boxes, tests ...", he commented.

Andrew Parsons, head of Devolver Digital, one of the most important publishers of indie games in the sector, provides more details on the work of the distributors. "It's about applying the experience to a work that is very creative and emotional for the developers, you may be very good but you organize yourself very badly and that is where Devolver Digital must be, to be a support network and to respond to all the questions of the developers. "

Now, how is the relationship between developer and distributor forged? Parsons says that the input channel can be anyone. "We receive prototypes of games in any form: a tweet, a video, an email, but I think there should always be a playable piece and then you should ask yourself if you would play that for more than an hour."

Analyze the needs

For its part, Darryl Still, responsible for Kiss, a distributor of only six employees who has already published more than 140 games, believes that when choosing games to distribute is very important to analyze well the relationship that is going to have with the developer "In our case, we are very few people and if the developer needs full support in each phase of game creation, we are not the ideal distributor," he reflects. Therefore, he says, "in an industry like this where we are all friends, intuition is very important."

In this sense, Parsons sees crucial that the game developers analyze their needs because they may not even need a 'publisher' and, above all, to talk with developers of other projects that can give them clues as to how a certain distributor behaves. . In this regard, says DeFries, from Rising Star Games only works "with the people we like, as long as they offer us a robust design and a time horizon, it's the good thing about being an indie distributor".

Finally, the responsible Digital Devolver gives three keys: "From the relationship with the developer we expect honesty, respect both towards our service and for our part towards their talent, creativity and ability to do things that we can not do, and communication