The publishing company behind Wolf Among Us 2 and Avatar Legends talks popular IPs and keeping physical media alive at a difficult time.
PM Studios has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, from huge projects like Avatar Legends to smaller endeavors like Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo. We sat down with the company CEO, Michael Yum, at Gamescom to find out just what it's like to work with established IPs v indies, and how he feels about the difficult environment physical media finds itself in.
"[With] indies it's awesome because they have great ideas, and we just want to do stuff together, and everybody's all for it." Yum appreciates the speed of indie development, with very few barriers to change. Established IPs, however, take a little longer: "We have an amazing idea, but again, it's going to take a long time for us to get it approved. So it is a bit of a struggle."
Ultimately, though, Yum thinks there is a lot of satisfaction to be found in working with an established universe, with Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game being an "amazing experience" to work on because of the multi-marketing push for that brand. "There's a movie and new show on Netflix; everything's coming out. It's cool that Paramount got to sync everything up and market it that way, and while our team is focused on the fighting game community, we affect it with different angles."
When asked about physical distribution and the issues that form of ownership has been going through recently, Yum remarked that "it's really sad and unfortunate, but I've been meeting with a ton of distributors and retail partners, and I don't think it's going to die out completely." Without giving too much away, Yum says that PM Studios is "exploring new ways to make sure we keep it alive."
While the big boys like Avatar almost market themselves, Yum has found some issues with discoverability when working with something new, saying that "it is difficult for indie teams to get visibility." He finds that smaller games working together, instead of competing with one another, is "what makes indie games really special."
Additional reporting by Tom Hopkins for PCGamesN at Gamescom.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.pcgamesn.com/gamescom/pm-studios-interview
