tinyBuild CEO on 15 Years of Indie Publishing & Franchise Building
Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of tinyBuild, talked to us about the studio’s 15-year journey, the challenges of evolving franchises, and how the indie game industry has changed.
tinyBuild has reached its 15th anniversary, which is a major milestone for any game company. How would you reflect on the company’s journey from its early days to where it is today?
Alex: The biggest advice I’d give to anyone reading is to never give up. You can’t fail if you continue pushing. There will be tough times, and for us, it was most of the first ten years. Everything is mostly stacked against you, and the question I’d always ask myself is “what else am I going to do” – I’ll still be playing games, understanding them, deeply loving the craft. Most of the journey, it felt like you’re juggling fireballs while trying to swim. Sleepless nights, endless travel, deep anxiety. You suck it up and power through. What inspires me through the years is talking about products, about games. Often, there’s some sort of fire happening, and I just shut it off. There’s always a fire. And instead, I divert energy towards figuring out how to make the best game possible within the resources we have. That’s the biggest reflection. Always thinking about the games and powering through no matter what.
Speaking of, do you still identify as an indie dev or publisher? What does that mean exactly, since “indie” originally meant having no publisher?
The whole “what is indie” discussion feels less relevant now. We do publish and develop smaller and larger-scale games these days. Production is different, publishing remains similar. I believe we had a huge advantage going into publishing, though after spending 2 years in development hell as a developer on our first game. We get what dev teams go through. We’ve been there. We’ll share stories of blood, sweat, and tears. We know it won’t be easy, and we’ll be there to help. The whole publisher vs developer discussion needs to be completely reframed today, as it’s all about partnerships, and finding the right partner to bring your game to market and help you shape it as it’s being developed.
Over the years, tinyBuild has built a diverse portfolio of recognizable IP. What do you think defines a “tinyBuild game” today, if anything?
A tinyBuild game is typically something that has the “ooh, I am going to check this out” factor. Something that grabs your attention, and that can grow into a bigger franchise years later. It’s typically replayable because the more time people spend in it, the more chances it has to succeed. I don’t like to get landlocked into very specific genres, as the industry constantly changes and evolves.
As you begin revisiting and expanding existing franchises, what are the biggest challenges in building new entries that respect longtime fans while still feeling fresh?
The biggest challenge with doing a sequel, spin-off, etc., is the expectations. You know you have a built-in audience already and that’s great, it makes investments more justifiable. At the same time, you have a lot of expectations set because the original game may have been massive and developed in a different time during the dev teams’ lives. It’s all about balance and thinking about how to reach a new, bigger audience while keeping the core fans happy. It’s not easy.
From a production standpoint, how does working on an established franchise differ from launching a brand-new game?
With a brand new IP, you have a lot more flexibility. To my previous point and also how we approached the development of HOZY and The King is Watching, you can adapt and react in real time to what players resonate with; this gives you freedom. With an existing franchise, you can get locked into certain tropes that players expect and can get upset if you don’t deliver. The flip side is the built-in audience. You know that a good sequel will satisfy fans and also expand your reach.
How do you balance creative risk with audience expectations when evolving a known IP?
You have to separate hard data and fan feedback. It’s great when fan feedback is positive (and very informative when it’s negative). You need to back both up with hard data. Is the sentiment really positive on social media and Discord? What does your build stat say? How much time are players who aren’t fans of the franchise spending in it? What is the NPS score for fans vs non fans? It’s dangerous to get locked into an echo chamber of positive responses (or negative ones, for that matter) without verifying with data.
There’s also a huge issue with botting. We see it in highly engaged communities often, not just in our own games: there will be fans either super excited or super upset, and for one reason or another, we see waves of bots astroturfing the opinions. And then whenever a fan sees an opinion with a lot of attention, it is tempting to post support for that opinion. Suddenly, you get thousands of likes and feel good about it. And it reinforces. This is a can of worms I can talk about for days, as the dead internet theory is too real today.
Many of your games have very distinct identities, both visually and mechanically. How do you ensure consistency across sequels, especially when working with different development teams?
You don’t. You need to take creative stabs at it. Something slightly different. Or even a brave new direction. You will often have style guides and specific tropes a franchise needs to follow, and it’s important to do so. At the same time, I love it when creatives put original spins on something pre-established. Look at the evolution of Mr Peterson across the Hello Neighbor series. No two versions are the same.
What tools, workflows, or production frameworks have proven most important when managing a portfolio of games at different stages of development?
The tools are different per team, per franchise. I think the key is communication and playtesting. We highly encourage our teams to have weekly or bi-weekly builds. We use those builds as a guideline for meetings and spitball ideas in real time on what can be achieved. The worst situations arise when builds just don’t get delivered often. You get stuck in mountains of documents that are difficult to digest and muddle up the vision of what the final game should be - and often it’s a flexible vision. Kind of a rough destination idea, not a concrete map. So whatever the workflow is, playtesting is key.
The indie landscape has changed significantly over the past 15 years. What are the biggest shifts you’ve seen in how games are developed, published, and discovered?
The whole gaming landscape shifted into short-form content for the most part. We used to have highly curated digital storefronts, and now it’s all based on algorithms. A game that goes viral on short-form content platforms likely will catch the attention of players on Steam as well.
At the same time, there was a big shift in players wanting to check the actual playables of the games early. Steam Next Fest is a prime example. Players no longer want a highly polished CGI trailer; they want to feel the game itself.
How has community feedback shaped the direction of your franchises over time, especially when deciding how to evolve them?
Most definitely. Whenever you do something within a franchise, it’s important to see what the community thinks about it and verify. We’ve had an instance in the Animated Series of Hello Neighbor where we redesigned the characters. We wanted to age them up a little bit. And the community hated it. We had a very vocal group of people torching us up.
However, we had data from research suggesting it was the right move, and that the overall fanbase would like it. When we launched Season 1, the community universally praised it as the best decision and material in the franchise. That was a very scary call to make, and you sometimes have to. And the inverse of that: you can announce a game or an expansion, and fans love it. You test it, and the data doesn’t match, even though everyone who is vocal tells you it’s great.
Looking ahead, how do you see tinyBuild’s role evolving within the industry, particularly as you balance legacy IP with new ideas?
We recently announced SpeedRunners 2, which was a dormant IP for a decade. I think it’s about the people you work with. You have someone passionate who wants to pick up an existing IP and do something with it – go. Just go. We don’t have a committee that sits around and decides what is done and when. It’s a very horizontal approach. You want to try something? As long as you drive it and follow through - go do it.
It’s also important to focus on deal structures that facilitate longevity. When you have a new IP that becomes a hit, it’s vital to continue expanding it. There’s a theory that getting to your first $1m in sales is the hardest step. Then going from $1m to $10m is actually easier. It’s counterintuitive, and it’s true. When you have a hit, you need to follow up and expand. It’s easy to think that everyone who would’ve been interested in your game already knows about it. That’s not true. Your potential target audience of fans is hundreds, if not thousands, of times bigger than you imagine.
So, a differentiator for us and something that catches many potential development partners by surprise is looking at everything long-term. What happens if we make a hit? How do we keep up the momentum? What if the development team wants to move on? How do we continue working on the title (which is one of the reasons to have an internal studio)? It’s an optimistic outlook for sure, yet we’ve seen titles not live up to their potential because there was no clear path forward.
At the same time, we also have the inverse happen in terms of developers pitching ideas and projects based on our IP, which is a very interesting situation to be in. The dev team behind SpeedRunners 2 is fans of the original game, and can easily kick my ass within it.
tinyBuild’s role in the industry is a partner that knows how to bring titles to market. The whole goal from day one after launching our first game was to never spend another couple of years developing a game and hoping it hits. It was to have a steady stream of releases, with each one adapting to ever-changing market conditions. A strategy that worked 2 years ago likely won’t work today. This is why I share all of our marketing initiatives so openly. Doing the same trick twice likely won’t work.
Alex Nichiporchik, CEO of tinyBuild
Interview conducted by David Jagneaux
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