Today, Funcom will go live with your first publishing title, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden. What do you think of the finished product and what are your sales expectations for the title?
– We’re very happy with the game and think it will have a unique space in the tactical adventure game genre. It’s a good looking and fun to play indie game which has had a very good reception so far, so we hope it will sell well.
Mutant is developed by The Bearded Ladies, a small studio in Sweden consisting of 10-15 people. Considering the small team size, is there room for bigger updates and DLC’s in the future?
– We have some ideas but no concrete plans until after we see how the game is received by players
How has Funcom been providing value as a publisher during the development phase of the game? How was it working together with The Bearded Ladies?
– Funcom has been helping the development team by providing creative, gameplay input, arranging for localization into all the languages, setting up and managing the various stores and platforms, doing the port of the game to consoles, organizing internal focus tests with all Funcom employees, executing PR and marketing campaigns and a lot of other small aspects. We’ve worked quite closely with the team and tried to support them and their vision, while keeping the commercial and marketing aspects in mind.
Recently, we saw a “Funcom partner program” being released with Mutant. Can you explain the logic behind this program and how it fits into your general marketing plan for the game?
– This is a marketing program designed to increase the engagement of streamers and a common practice, it’s one of many initiatives the PR & marketing takes to spread the word on the game.
Mutant is just the first of several publishing projects for Funcom. Can you give us any information on other upcoming titles? Any goodies?
– Lots of goodies, with more to come! A soon to be revealed Conan game with Petroglyph will come out in Q2 2019, another game for Halloween 2019, and lots of ongoing work on other exciting opportunities 😊
How important is publishing to your overall strategy?
Publishing third party developed games is an important part of boosting our growth and getting more frequent launches. The 2-3 published games we aim to launch annually on top of an internal game will help us get a lot of significant revenue events while quickly increasing stable cash flow from live games, all with a limited impact on fixed cost. By limiting publishing to pc, console and games and genres that match our DNA we really feel we get to leverage the strengths of the company.
During the weekend, Steam communicated a cut in their fee structure. What is your opinion on the change? How will it affect Funcom going forward? The new fee structure from Steam clearly benefits the larger and more successful games, which fits especially well with our internally developed bigger productions.
All details on the game can be found here: https://www.mutantyearzero.com
When published, both @Pokertrader1 and TaleSpin own shares in Funcom.
