A few steps from a soaking White City tube station stands the Wood Lane Generating Station. Old, aging brickwork, once one part of the buzzing backbone which powered the world around it. London has few uses for the place now, a giant multi-story mall shadows it from all sides. Though these days, maybe that mall is a little too big. A little too expensive.
After all, some still see value in smaller things. It was here the London Games Festival hosted its New Game Plus event, the old power station acting as temporary shelter for indie developers to hide away from the brutal realities of the industry outside. Some looked for publishers, others gathered first impressions on early builds, others took in some sorely needed socialisation.
An inescapable presence was Devolver Digital. With the biggest booth in the building, if this were an E3 or similar, it was an EA or Bethesda equivalent among its peers here – a comparison its founders may laugh at. Mascots from Cult of the Lamb and Hotline Miami wandered between demo stations, whimsically swinging a baseball bat at the heads of attendees. The two games it had at the show – Dark Scrolls and Heave Ho 2 – held a permanent crowd. I walked to a closed-off upper area with Devolver’s senior business development manager Bridie Roman and communications director Robbie Pattison, who I asked: Is the future indie, as so many people are keen to say.
“I’ve heard that before, many many years ago when Devolver was a young pup,” said Pattison referencing the initial rise of Steam’s PC storefront. “But we were also told within 5-6 years the indie bubble was about to burst, so I wouldn’t put much stock into those opinions.”
“Then people said streaming was the future, then no one wants to stream games anymore. Subscriptions are the future, VR is the future. They’re all viable, but the best thing we can do as publishers is stick to what we know. The reason we’ve stayed around as long as we have is doing what we set out to do from the beginning. Things get bigger, there are more games, but as long as you stick to that philosophy. I don’t see the sense in chasing a trend because that’s what’s popular right now.”
“I’m really wary of people making sweeping decisions around an industry that’s still relatively new,” Rome added. “It’s only a few decades old. So people saying something is the future is one thing. Or, you could forge your own path, make something you’re having fun making and people will enjoy playing. Hopefully it’ll find its audience. Obviously there’s a financial aspect – bigger games struggle to make the money back and turn a profit, but also bigger games come along that completely defy that. So don’t listen to people saying things on your social media platform of choice. Follow your heart!”
Many smaller teams have been doing this, to much success. Slay the Spire 2 had a scorching launch, as did Hollow Knight: Silksong. Smaller projects like Peak also did astronomically well, as did Content Warning who rose among the ‘friend slop’ tide.
Though with an ever-growing number of games releases on Steam daily, and more money once spent on gaming going towards gambling and other mediums, these big wins remain a sharp minority. Many developers on the show floor expressed a certain unease at the state of things; a rising number of high-quality releases making a successful release less certain than ever before. Sentiments around people wanting smaller games made with sensible budgets are genuine, but whether people put their money where their mouths are is another question.
Pattison describes this as the “neverending conundrum” of video game publishing, while Rome said: “You need a crystal ball really to predict any of this stuff.” As we broached the subject, a sweaty bloke huffed the decapitated body of a Cult of the Lamb mascot to a secluded corner of the room.
“Unfortunately it’s unpredictable,” continued Pattison. “There may have been times where you could make a decent bet that a third person action game on the Xbox 360 could sell a couple thousand copies because those games were so popular at the time. These days there’s so much variety. Trying to bank on something blowing up and making money is a fallacy really.
“Focusing on what you think is good and giving it a chance to make some money is the best you can do. For gamers turning up or not… It’s tricky. There’s a direction you could go with all of this. You could talk about pricing. How does pricing affect what you do? How much does that have an impact on if a game is successful? You don’t know! We may think a game is worth $20 – we know what’s in it, the effort that’s gone in, the quality level. But then, do we launch with a discount? Does that entice more people? So you’re automatically talking the price down.”
Even a relatively big entity in the indie space like Devolver is not safe from this uncertainty. One game in Devolver’s 2025 line-up acts as a clear example for Pattison.
“It’s true, not all of our games are successful. It sucks, but it happens. There’s actually a game that came out recently that didn’t do very well: Forestrike. It has an interesting concept, an interesting look. Unfortunately, it didn’t connect in the way we hoped. We tried updating our marketing, we had demos we updated, we took it to shows. For whatever reason, it didn’t land. So I wouldn’t say I give any developers advice now really, but if there’s one piece of advice to take with you anywhere you go, it’s to do what you believe in. It’s schmultzy, but y’know.”
So given this hostile, uncertain market, what does Devolver look for? The two games it had at the show – Heave Ho 2 and Dark Scrolls – couldn’t be a clearer antithesis of each other. Heave Ho 2, played by groups of four strangers sat on beanbags, is a collaborative game where players control flatulent rotund freakazoids to solve puzzles, clumsily grappling objects or each other to build giant burgers or steer spaceships, a gaseous Mount your Friends.
At the other side of the booth, Dark Scrolls 2 was present on a small CRTV, with SNES controllers. This is a brutally hard fantastical side scroller paying homage to retro greats. Tiny minutia was all there for the genre expert to pore over. My partner, who I shan’t name, would die and return a ghost who would, on more than one occasion, block me in with danger.
Pattison, describing the Devolver approach to publishing as “personality-driven”, was keen to speak about the longevity of its partnerships with the creators of both Dark Scrolls and Heave Ho 2, having published their previous works over the past decade.
Rome, on the other hand, echoed a saying from Devolver founder Nigel Lowrie: “It’s games that make us piss our pants with excitement, a know-it-when-you-see-it kind of vibe. It’s hard to put a definitive sentence to what is a Devolver game. It’s obviously something that’ll make money most of the time, largely because we want devs to make money. It’s games we want to play day-in-day out, doing something new, exciting, and doing it well.”
“We’ve been very lucky in that we hit the ground running 15 years ago, with some games that have become timeless. That affords you a certain level of [prestige],” Pattison added. “We’ve taken that and been able to roll with it for a number of years, and gone on to do bigger and better years. We launched Fall Guys, that’s a big thing right? But that doesn’t define us. Variety is what defines us, we want people to see Devolver on any number of things, to see Devolver on a game and think it’s something worth checking out.”
While real fears of financial woes were palpable at London Games Fest, as they have been at any physical games industry event over the past few years, a real sense of hunkering down and getting on with the work remains steadfast. Shrugged shoulders, and occasional sighs, taking a backseat behind stalwart perseverance. If nothing is for certain, and there is no crystal ball at companies big or small, what does that mean for the industry itself?
To this, Pattison gave an incredibly Devolver answer: “Oh god knows. It’s the most unpredictable thing going. It’s the reason we’re all struggling. There are some things we’re able to do now courtesy of the reputation we’ve built, but trying not to rely too much on the whims of whatever algorithm pushes whatever content on whatever channel. Whether it’s a storefront, a phone, or social media, you’ll drive yourself mad trying to game the algorithm.
“One of the reasons we’ve been able to stand out is because we took a very personality-driven approach to marketing. We wanted to fuck about because no one could tell us not to. Back in the day it was a bit like the wild west, so we’ve tried to keep that alive.”
Rome wrapped up her thoughts in silver lining: “The reason the industry is struggling – I don’t know if it really is – is because games have been doing so well that more people want to make more games. Back in the day it was small, but now there’s so much competition. It’s actually a great thing – there are so many games and devs. They may not work with us for their first game, but maybe their next one.”
