In a special edition of "Game On" this week, The Fly spoke with No More Robots director Mike Rose in an exclusive interview. In the conversation, Rose discussed the publisher's latest game "Let's Build a Zoo," the fall of Google Stadia, Xbox Game Pass, and more. No More Robots is a U.K.-based company that has published indie titles such as "Descenders," "Hypnospace Outlaw," and "Yes, Your Grace." The following interview has been edited for clarity.
'ZOO': No More Robots' zoo simulation game "Let's Build a Zoo," which launched on PC in 2021 to mostly positive reviews, recently came to consoles, including Xbox (MSFT), PlayStation 4 (SONY) and 5, and Nintendo Switch (NTDOY) and even launched on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft's game subscription service, in its first day of availability on Xbox. When asked about how the company feels about the game's critical and financial performance, Rose said the title has already done "a lot better" than he expected.
"We put the game out a year ago on PC. Part of the reason we put it on PC first is because the game is built on a custom engine, and it was a bit of a nightmare to get the console versions going," Rose told The Fly. "So we’ve had nearly a year since the PC launch, which went pretty well, so we were pretty confident going into this console launch. Knowing we had the Game Pass deal with Xbox in place for it, I was pretty dang confident about it. It’s actually ended up doing a lot better than I even hoped for. [The success] has led us to have a lot of conversations over the last few days about where to take it next! Might as well strike while the iron’s hot.”
“‘Let’s Build a Zoo’ has secured a future for itself now," he added. "It’s now a question of how far are we going to run with the ball. The success of launching the game on Game Pass, and it’s still having the [sales] success it has [on other platforms], and then looking at the fact that we have half a dozen more games coming to Game Pass in the next 12 months, it’s giving us a nice view of what the next 12 months could be for us, really.”
SIM GAMES: The so-called "lifestyle simulation" genre has become especially prevalent in the video game space in recent years, from successful indies like "Stardew Valley" and "No Man's Sky" to big-budget titles like Disney's (DIS) "Disney Dreamlight Valley" and Nintendo's (NTDOY) "Animal Crossing: New Horizons." When asked how a game like "Let's Build a Zoo" manages to stand out in such a competitive environment, the No More Robots founder said that the game being a very specific type of simulation worked out in its favor. "There are a lot of games being announced that are about farming, and there are already a lot of those out there, so it can be quite hard to stand out there," he said. "But this game being a zoo simulator…there’s a few of them out there, but there aren’t that many. The ones that are out are mostly big, AAA titles with millions of dollars put into them. There’s not really another small-scale zoo simulator, so that really helped.”
GAME PASS: Several of No More Robots' games are already available on Xbox Game Pass, with many more of the publishers titles set to launch day-and-date on the service, including upcoming role-playing game "Soccer Story." Rose said that, for a company like No More Robots, choosing this strategy of releasing its games on Game Pass is a "no brainer," though he noted that such a strategy works best if the games you make cost less than what these companies are offering.
“It’s a tricky one, because whether subscription services work or not for your studio really depends on the scale of your games," he explained. "For us, all of the games we have been publishing and the sorts of deals we can get with Game Pass and other subscriptions like PS Plus, Google Stadia (GOOG) before it closed down, Apple Arcade (AAPL), if the games you are making cost less to make than the deals that these companies are shelling out, then it means on day one you are immediately making profit, and your game is immediately creating cash that can go into furthering the game along. That’s been the case for us in every situation so far, and it will be for at least the next 12 months for us. Bottom line, it’s a numbers thing.”
“I know there are studios in a more difficult situation where they’re investing more money in their games and trying to ‘go big,’ and now the deals that they could potentially get wouldn’t cover the whole development costs," Rose continued. "So they will have to do a deal which is paying for a decent portion of development costs, but they have to really focus on selling the game as well. Whereas for us, it’s great that ‘Zoo’ has been selling, but if everything had gone badly and it didn’t sell well, we’d still be happy because of the deal with Xbox. So for us, it’s a no-brainer. If we get a Game Pass deal for a game, it’s immediately profitable.”
STADIA: In the aftermath of Google Stadia's imminent closure, The Fly asked Mike Rose about No More Robots' stance on the future of cloud-based gaming. “We’re not really planning to make anything specifically for cloud platforms," he replied. "My thoughts are that cloud gaming is going to be a gigantic part of gaming in the coming years. When I say that, I mean in situations where cloud gaming is just built into a system that’s already there rather than a company trying to offer [cloud gaming] as the sole thing.”
“Silently, the place where cloud gaming has been going really well is on Game Pass," Rose told The Fly. "We get so many people telling us that they play our Game Pass games on their phones. Using cloud gaming on devices that aren’t an Xbox is becoming more prevalent.”
“[Microsoft is] surely over the next few years going to start slapping Xbox Game Pass into as many TVs as they can, because if you can make certain that every new LG or Samsung TV had the Game Pass on it that was using cloud gaming…Microsoft wouldn’t need to worry about selling Xboxes anymore," he added.
SWITCH: While most indie studios tend to release their games on Nintendo Switch and see improved sales numbers compared to other consoles, newer games on the platform are starting to experience more technical performance issues as the Switch lags PlayStation and Xbox in the technology department. Rose told The Fly that this isn't too much of a surprise, noting that developing games for the platform hasbecome increasingly challenging since its 2017 release.
“The Switch at this point is nearly six years old," he said. "Usually, once a device has been out for that amount of time, you start to see [the console maker] hinting at a new generation. Once nearly a decade has gone by, those consoles can’t keep up anymore. When the Switch came out, it was already not as powerful as the other consoles out there. The PS4 and Xbox One were far more powerful at the time. So it’s not a huge surprise to anybody that nearly six years later, games are struggling to run well [on the Switch].”
“You don’t really notice it that much, but there are a bunch of games that straight up don’t come to Switch anymore because the studios very likely try to boot their game on the Switch, see it running at five frames per second, and then realizing it’s not going to happen," he added. "The reason you see indie stuff running badly on Switch nowadays is because indies need the Switch because indies sell well there. They can’t just say, ‘nope, I’ll ignore this console for now,’ because indie stuff can sell well on the Switch. So most projects at this point are porting games to Switch, finding it runs at like ten frames per second and having to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get it running on the device. They might get it there, but even if they don’t, they have to launch it in a [worse] state, because they’ve already invested time and money.”
When asked if No More Robots has encountered a number of issues with Switch development, he said, "Of course! All of our games have been a struggle [on Switch]. Our game ‘Descenders,’ which is our best-selling game by far and runs well on almost every platform, the Switch game was an issue. It took us 18 months just to get it running at 25-30 frames on Switch. Whereas when we ported it to Xbox Series X, it took us two weeks of work and we had it done! But we had to put ‘Descenders’ on Switch, because we knew people would buy it on Switch. We got a lot of complaints about how it ran on the platform, and our response was always, ‘Believe us, we did the best job that we could!’ We put so much into the Switch version, and that was the best we could muster. If we wanted to make a better version on the Switch, we would need the Switch to be better hardware.”
"Game On" is The Fly's weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.
GameStop
+1.32 (+5.33%)
Ubisoft
-0.06 (-1.17%)
Tencent
-0.455 (-1.45%)
Take-Two
+1.32 (+1.12%)
Electronic Arts
+1.38 (+1.15%)
acquired by MSFT
+0.56 (+0.78%)
Apple
+3.42 (+2.47%)
Alphabet
+3.61 (+3.74%)
Alphabet
+3.85 (+3.96%)
Sony
+2.06 (+3.21%)
Nintendo
-0.0703 (-0.68%)
Microsoft
+8.14 (+3.56%)