With the emergence of subscription gaming services like Xbox Game Pass, it’s an interesting time to be a gamer and a game developer. With more and more games of all shapes and sizes landing on subscription services, it makes one wonder what benefits developers are seeing that we average players might not.

On this month’s episode of IGN Unfiltered, Oxenfree and Afterparty developer Sean Krankel explains what makes it so tantalizing for indie developers to make the transition to Xbox Game Pass.

“What I was worried about was, 'Is this going to cannibalize other sales early on?' That was the main concern. If this is going to be out on the same platform -- I want people buying it on Xbox still -- but what we found out was not only did it not [cannibalize sales], it increased our sales everywhere else on every platform,” Krankel said.

Check out IGN's gameplay demo of Afterparty:

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You can hear the whole explanation why Game Pass has been what Krankel calls “one of the best things to happen for the game industry” by watching the video at the top of the page, or watching the entire episode of IGN Unfiltered. It's also available as a podcast on all your favorite audio platforms. Host Ryan McCaffrey chats with Krankel about his early days working on soap operas, Disney Animation, and the special hell that is licensed game development. The two also chat about Night School Studio's newest game Afterparty, and how it took inspiration from bar crawls and cemetery walks.

Unfiltered is IGN’s monthly interview series featuring some of the biggest and brightest minds in the games industry. Each month, you can hear guests like Bethesda’s Todd Howard, Remedy’s Sam Lake, or Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot discuss their journeys, the lessons they’ve learned in art and business, and never-before-heard stories from the world of game development.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.