Developers, artists, press and influencers descended upon Los Angeles last week for Summer Game Fest (SGF), the latest in a tradition of annual events announcing the next year’s slate of video games.
But amid the firehose of trailers and interviews hyping up the latest in blockbuster franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed, it can feel increasingly difficult for smaller teams to stand out.
Benjamin Rivers, Toronto-based co-founder of the indie team Bancy Co., said he and his co-workers thought long and hard about showing at this year’s SGF, but ultimately decided against it. The timing wasn’t right for their as-yet unannounced game, he said, plus the costs to attend the show were quite high.
“We didn’t know the exact figures. But we knew from other sources that it was extremely expensive. And therefore our expectations for getting something in at a show like that were very low,” he said.
A report last week from Esquire, citing industry insiders, said running a trailer at the SGF main showcase — which is hosted by SGF head and Canadian presenter Geoff Keighley at the YouTube Theater in front of a live audience — costs between $250,000 and $550,000 US, depending on the video length.
A later report by gaming site Kotaku said some smaller studios and publishers were given space on the main showcase for free. CBC reached out to Keighley for confirmation but did not receive a response by publication time.
Montreal’s Paper Cult was one such studio to be featured, debuting its latest game, a Scottish fantasy hack-and-slash game called Tears of Metal at the SGF showcase — immediately following one of the splashier trailers announcing new content for Street Fighter 6.
“What a gift to be in the first hour of the first show,” said Paper Cult co-founder Raphaël Toulouse. “We’re super, super lucky to have all these eyes on us.”
Toulouse says Paper Cult didn’t have to pay the reported six figures to appear on the show. He said if it had to pay the reported $350,000 US (about $480,000 Cdn) for the 90-second trailer, that would equal “a big chunk of the whole project right there, if we could have paid that,” he said.
The archive of the SGF showcase has more than seven million views on YouTube alone, and doesn’t include people watching on other platforms like Twitch. That’s a lot of eyeballs and potential customers for any game featured on it.
Other live-streams by partner organizations or companies run over the course of the weekend, like the non-profit group Day of the Devs, for example, which spotlighted smaller games. Major platform holders Sony and Nintendo often hold live-stream events online around the same time of year, but are not currently partnered with SGF.
‘A Hunger Games scenario’
The number of studios vying for attention on that stage far outnumbers the amount of time allowed on it.
“If you have a fantastic game, I believe your chances drastically go up in terms of getting noticed,” said Antonio Miceli, a Toronto-based developer at his one-person studio Megapower games.
“But if there are hundreds of other fantastic games being created and released in the same time period, then I believe it really boils down to luck and timing.”
Even if your game is well-liked by high-level executives who’ve seen early versions of it, Rivers of Bancy said it still might not fit the themes or intended audience the runners of a showcase are aiming for.
“So it is a bit of a Hunger Games scenario; the situation changes quite frequently.”
Tanya X. Short of Montreal-based studio Kitfox says it’s not unusual for larger companies to pay big bucks to get to the front (or near the front) of the line when promoting their games during the summer marketing blitz.
In fact, it’s often a sign of a healthy industry, as the major players’ contributions allow event organizers to invite indie studios at lower costs.
Kitfox’s upcoming game Streets of Fortuna debuted at SGF’s PC Gaming Show, along with dozens of others in an hours-long live-stream. But Short said her team is still focused on their own marketing to reach players directly, including on TikTok.
Finding new audiences
Like Kitfox, developers told CBC even a big showing at an SGF showcase is only the beginning to getting games into players’ hands — and minds.
Toronto-based Capy Games impressed viewers and media with Battle Vision Network, a fast-playing multiplayer puzzle game, more geared toward younger players interested in quick matches like in Fortnite than longer narrative-driven role-playing games.
“Hopefully, by making it sort of brief and snappy and sticky, we’ll find a foothold in there,” said Capy’s creative director Dan Vader.
Vader says Capy is also hoping to capture more people’s attention with an entirely new platform: Netflix.
The streaming giant ventured into the games space last year. In addition to announcing games based on some of its popular TV shows, it’s also partnered with the makers of games on mobile.
Vader says being on Netflix should open up Battle Vision Network to a new audience of players, some of whom might find the console and PC gaming ecosystem too complicated to navigate.
Hands-on demos, Canadian setting
Montreal-based Lazlo Bonin says his relaxed painting and narrative game, Été, benefited last year by letting people actually play it before its full release later this July.
It was part of Steam Next Fest, an annual follow-up to SGF that allows PC gamers to download time-limited demos — a short, playable preview of the game ahead of its full release.
That hands-on experience can really sell a game more than any video trailer, Bonin said, especially if its mechanics are unfamiliar or novel.
“Part of the appeal of the game, people will only get once they actually start playing — when they have the controller in their hands and are like, ‘Oh, I get it,'” he said.
While dozens of Canadian studios showed off games at SGF, though, Bonin’s has one unique selling point: It’s perhaps the only one set entirely in a Canadian setting — Montreal, his hometown.
“I wanted to translate [my] love for the city in a video game, to really share that with other people,” he said.
