WellPlayed: How has life been treating Frogwares since going self-publishing after the launch of The Sinking City?

Sergey Oganesyan: It’s been pretty good, not going to lie. We released The Sinking City on the Nintendo Switch – it was our first self-published title, so yay! Our team got Sherlock Holmes Crimes and Punishments back online on the PS4 and Xbox One – it took a decent chunk of time and effort that could have gone elsewhere, but, oh well. We just released The Sinking City on the recently available Hong Kong eShop, and this is just the beginning.

Our back catalogue of around 15 games is still selling pretty well, which is a huge deal considering that we are planning to fund our future games ourselves. We are making certain internal changes to ease us into the whole self-publishing thing, got ourselves a dedicated team that will be handling new releases and, apparently, certain re-releases, haha.

WP: Despite being a veteran studio, The Sinking City was your first new IP in some time. What did you learn from its development?

SO: It was a huge deal. We learned a ton about game production on this scale – meaning, action-adventures as opposed to just adventures that were our previous Sherlock Holmes games. We probably learned even more after we released the game and received feedback from the players – feedback about open world design, combat philosophy, story structuring etc etc, feedback that will absolutely be the foundation for our next games.

Business-wise, we probably learned even more. We created a marketing team during the early development stages of The Sinking City that has expanded to several specialists nowadays. We are still learning the ropes, but at this stage we are ready to go self-publishing and release all our future games ourselves.

WP: What were the reasons for going self-publishing? What are the benefits?

SO: Aside from the obvious – not having to split revenue – we are free to make our own business decisions: platforms, storefronts, discounts, messaging, all of that is up to us to figure out. This has its pros and cons as we need to be up to the challenge.

WP: Surely there are risks involved when a studio goes into self-publishing?

SO: Now, why would you think that? 😀 The first thing you need to realise when you do that – you are on your own, and all the production and financial risks are now on your shoulders. You got a team to feed, a game to make, a release date to commit to, and if something goes wrong – to find the right words to explain the situation.

Devs usually focus on the thing they know best – game development, that is, and leave everything else to their business partners: marketing, communication, distribution, pre-order strategy, sales etc. But if you are going self-publishing, you must have the people to handle all of that. You are not just developing games, you are also selling them. You need to accommodate both marketing and business activities in your production schedule, and cover the costs. How are you going to handle making a demo for your game? Are you sure it’s been properly planned? Making a demo that will “sell” your game – to journalists, to players, to business partners – is crucial, but it can take a few months, depending on the state of the game. If you don’t have a huge team, this will increase the production timeline, pushing the release date back, impacting your budget and making your life much more complicated. That’s just to name a few.