This past week at PAX Australia, not only did get to check out a heap of great looking indies, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Graeme Struthers, one of the co-founders of Devolver Digital.
You’d likely know the publisher from their off-the-wall pressers which have been a staple of June for the last handful of years, however the Devolver Digital journey is one that dates back fifteen years.
After breaking out with Hotline Miami, the publisher has gone on to enjoy great success in the indie scene, particularly with some of our homegrown talent having let loose games like Cult of the Lamb and The Plucky Squire.
Although Devolver has been around for a long time, things really break out with Hotline Miami, a game designed to inflame and provoke with its hyper violent action. Do you think this was the birth of the Devolver “attitude era”?
GS: Maybe externally, yes, that possibly was the thing that got us more noticed than we had been up until that point. Inside, no. It sounds a bit strange to say it like that, to us it was just a cool game we were working on with Dennaton.
Sometimes it’s with hindsight you can look back, even until recently we’d all forgot about the issue here until PlayStation updated the game and put it on PlayStation 5 and it brought things back.
There’s a great sense of humour about Devolver Digital, in fact its core to the company’s identity at this stage, where did the idea come from to be the most unserious publisher there is?
GS: It’s not an idea, it’s who we are I’m afraid to say. We all think we’ve got the best jobs going and we actually get to do the things we love doing so I think that maybe comes through.
I don’t think you can take what we do too seriously. We work hard, and we do what we do.
But games should be a fun art form, right?
GS: They should be. And also, when you come to these events and you meet the people who play the games…
Or people who are getting married at your booth.
GS: People that are getting married at our booth, yes, it’s quite playful.
I do love the showcases year in year out, featuring Nina Struthers, how far in advance do you have to start pulling those crazy productions together?
GS: I’m not making this up, I’ve no clue. I don’t know if people would believe me, but I don’t see them until you see them. I kind of steer away from it, whenever it’s talked about internally.
But I know that Robbie and Nigel will be having ideas now for what they’re going to do next year. But, to some extent, I guess they must be aware of what’s happening in the general industry, as well.
It’s quite topical often, I think.
Obviously it’s been a challenging year for a lot of publishers and studios out there, what is the metric for success at Devolver especially when dealing with often bespoke, indie experiences?
GS: I don’t know, let’s use a good example from this year with Children of the Sun. That’s a game that’s been in development for nearly four years from a solo dev, Rene. And not only was he doing that, he was doing things on the side while working on the game.
So, for us, the fact that the game has come out and it’s making money means that he’s making good money, which means he gets to go again.
That’s the kind of thing I think we get excited about is that developers become independent, and there’s many people we’ve worked with who’ve gone on to do really, really well.
We kind of think we work for the developer rather than the other way around.
Devolver has been tremendous at helping launch new developers to new heights, this includes our own Massive Monster and All Possible Futures—we even see Cult of the Lamb’s presence here today as a feature for the con—how enriching is it to be a part of these team’s journeys?
GS: Where we are now, PAX Australia, I think we started coming here back in 2017. This show’s been really kind to us, in terms of fans, but we’ve also met a number of developers. We’ve already released, I think, four games whose origin is here and have another two in development.
This is a really good event, and we love to come here.
They say you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, but are there any games Devolver passed on way back when that you went on to regret?
GS: Oh yeah, oh yeah. One game, Astroneer, was pitched to us, I dunno, ten years ago. It was one of those ones where we generally thought: “Yeah, this is pretty cool, but we’re not sure we understand this.”
We never had any pretense of knowing the world of live service and we passed on it, partly because we didn’t really have the money, which made us a little bit nervous.
Seven years later, we acquired System Era Softworks. And in between times we’d see them at events and the exchange would be “How’s it going?” “Really well.” “Great.”
There’s three, or four, others that have gone on to be huge. But we talk about this a lot, we don’t know, we only know that we want to be involved and be apart of this game’s journey, but we didn’t know if that’s game’s going to blow up.
Licensed games aren’t what they used to be, what was the driving force behind Big Fan?
GS: When you talk to some of the developers you work with, and we ourselves as game fans, we ask: “If you could work on anything, what would it be?”
And we got into that conversation with a few devs, like what if you could get the He-Man license, those were the conversations we were having a couple of years back, but we didn’t think of that as a business.
Then we had a subsidiary called Good Shepherd, and it was just struggling and it didn’t really have an identity. So we got a new guy in to run it, Lincoln Herschberger, and then suddenly a lot of those conversations started to come back.
We’ve got a load of indie devs, and we really like the idea of working on IP. Creating original content is its own challenge.
We also looked at game IP that we could bring back, like Monkey Island. We came out of that and thought the idea strong enough to create a label. Next week, we announce one of the projects* and we’ve got a few more there we’ll be talking about in the near future.
* This game would go on to be Tron: Catalyst, developed by Mike Bithell, in partnership with Disney.
It feels like Devolver and Big Fan both still occupy largely what is an indie/AA space, is there a reason you felt the need to draw a line between the two?
GS: I think so, I think we see Devolver as a company that can do eight, nine, ten games a year. Push beyond that and I feel it becomes almost too much, like we’re just around all the time.
And Big Fan is its own label, has its own crew, they have their own editorial view on what they want to do, so we’re excited. But then it also allows them to do maybe three, or four, things a year and then over time build that up to six, seven, eight.
What’s one IP you’d love to work with?
GS: Me? So, if I could get anything? Vagrant Story was a game published by Square right at the end of PlayStation One.
I love that game, and I’d love to come back to that universe. And I’ve tried, I actually knocked on the door of Square Enix but I didn’t get an answer.
So Vagrant Story would be mine.
Your DICE Europe bio suggests you’ve put considerable time into unearthing London’s best beer, had a chance to put any effort into our local brands yet?
GS: Oh, yeah, I love it here. I’m a coffee fan so you’ve got that, and the food here is fantastic.
And you’ve got lots of good beer, I’ve just tried Pacific Ale at the moment.
Have you had a chance to wander the show floor and scout for any future Devolver gems?
GS: We’ve seen a few bits and pieces, our head of development is here, one of our senior producers is here. So they’ve been out and about.
We, ourselves, went to Play Now with VicScreen, that was awesome. We’re quite a small industry, as publishers we’re all quite matey, and I think we all saw things there where I wouldn’t be surprised if three, four, five things get picked up.
It’s just a really vibrant scene in the industry.
