Courtesy of 5am Games
IN A NUTSHELL
Name: 5am Games
Founders: Selina Capol, Martina Hotz, Aleksandra Iakusheva
Number of people involved: 3
Website: 5am-games.com
Important links: Letters, The Game
Course of ZHdK studies:
Bachelor Game Design
Graduation: 2018
Z-Kubator connection:
What’s Next_Project participants 2020
Indie game studio 5am Games
As an independent studio in game design, you basically have to know how to deal with uncertainty. It’s a highly competitive market, with hundreds of new games being released every day and battling with commercial giants like Nintendo, Ubisoft or EA for the favour of the gaming community. This requires a conscious use of one’s own resources, something the three founders of 5am Games, Selina Capol, Martina Hotz and Aleksandra Iakusheva, were aware of from the start. For their small game design studio, they are always keeping an eye on the cash runway in order to keep the funding situation on their radar and to know how much solvent time they have left.
5am Games came into being after the three of them completed their bachelor’s degree in game design in 2018 and then transferred their thesis into a permanent practice in the Z-Kubator’s incubator programme What’s next_Project. Since then, the three of them have been focusing on meaningful interactions in the game field – Martina and Aleksandra explain what that means:
Trailer for the release of “Letters – a written adventure” from 2022, via YouTube.
HOW DID THE THREE OF YOU START YOUR COLLABORATION?
Aleksandra: We fit well together, both personally and professionally. We had worked together before and developed a project in the summer before our final semester, which received funding from Pro Helvetia. This project became our final thesis – the first time that a Bachelor’s thesis in game design was done by a team of three.
THE TRANSITION FROM A STUDENT PROJECT TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE REQUIRES ADJUSTMENTS. HOW HAVE YOU DIVIDED THE TASKS AMONG YOURSELVES IN THE MEANTIME?
Martina: Aleksandra is the project manager and programmer who keeps an eye on organisational matters. Selina takes care of the visual side, 2D and 3D art, UI, character design and I am responsible for writing, game and sound design. But since we all studied together and know the areas, we have an understanding of each other’s tasks, which helps a lot in communicating with each other.
I READ THAT 5AM GAMES FOCUSES ON MEANINGFUL INTERACTIONS. CAN YOU GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF THIS?
Aleksandra: The power of words, which is the focus of our game «Letters», uses language in a different way than is usually found in video games. Usually it’s about dialogue or marking things in the game, but we took it as a starting point. It creates a wow effect when people first get to know the mechanics of the game.
Martina: The characters in «Letters» often reflect people in the life of Sarah, the main character. She has trouble speaking up and using her words, so we task players with finding the right ones and using them on the NPCs [Non-Playable Character] to create a conversation. Sometimes these conversations are difficult and it’s hard to find the right words, other times it’s playful and easy. Meaningful interactions happen when story and mechanics go hand in hand. For example, an overbearing friend preventing your character from moving forward by pulling them back or sometimes words that don’t work at all on people who won’t listen to Sarah.
Screenshot from the game “Letters” by 5am Games.
WHAT ROLE DOES UNCERTAINTY PLAY IN YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE?
Aleksandra: The game industry is generally an uncertain industry, especially in the indie sector. Even big projects, despite a lot of resources for research or marketing, run the risk of just being unlucky and flopping. 95% of the games that are developed don’t make a significant profit.
Martina: A number of challenges come together: The attention economy rules out projects without a big marketing budget, you can’t plan viral posts. Every day there are games coming out on the different platforms and you don’t know if you will end up at the top or at the bottom of the ranking. You can be unlucky when a big game comes out on your release day, nobody pays attention to the others. You sell the most copies in the first week, after that there might only be a sale that drives the numbers up. The tail is extremely difficult to estimate. Developing a game takes several years, which means that funding depends on the moment of release. With other products, the distribution seems more stable to me.
WHAT WAS THE RISKIEST MOMENT YOU HAD TO FACE AS A STUDIO?
Aleksandra: The 2019 Kickstarter campaign was exciting, it was really about the survival of the project. We sort of pre-sold the game before we developed it and as usual in crowd funding we only got the money at 100% of the funding goal. In the last week of the campaign, it wasn’t clear if we would make it. In the end we reached 121%, but it was very dramatic.
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH UNCERTAINTY?
Martina: We try to gather as much information as possible and look at other similar games, analyse design, marketing, sales, pricing, content. From this we deduce what works and what doesn’t. But many platforms don’t offer statistics. With computer games it’s still possible, but you have no idea about Nintendo or mobile games.
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO BEGINNERS REGARDING UNCERTAINTY?
Martina: In our case, it was good that we didn’t put everything on the studio and have other jobs on the side. That takes a lot of pressure off, that you know that the basic costs are covered and that gives you security.
Aleksandra: I am married to someone outside the game design industry, which helps a lot.