Why Great Games still Fail | Mario R. Kroll, Video PR & Marketing expert

Today I'm speaking with Mario R. Kroll, founder of UberStrategist. Mario has over 30 years of industry experience in PR and marketing within video games.

This was a fun and candid conversation about what it takes not only to get a game noticed in a crowded marketplace, but also how to get yourself noticed. I value open, honest, and engaging conversations, and that’s exactly what I got from Mario. We covered everything from what it takes to get a game noticed today through to how to cope with imposter syndrome.

Mario entered the video game industry over 30 years ago by teaching himself web development to build and run Wargamer.com, a fan-made matchmaking and community site for strategy gamers that grew into a full-time operation and led to his first professional opportunities. This eventually led to him moving into publishing, PR, and marketing before founding UberStrategist, where he now helps game studios launch and position their games.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

So many more games now that even you as a consumer, how do you even pick which one you should pay attention to, right? Which one is worth downloading and so forth? But it's really, really sad when they never even know that your game existed, you know, years later go, oh my god, I would have loved that game. I would have loved to play it if only I hadn't known about it, right? And that's uh that to me, a lot of times is probably the saddest part. The you know, if you build it, they will come model that died a long time ago, right? That only thing only works in Field of Dreams. Small studios, you know, type budgets, they just try to do it in their own and they just don't know what they don't know.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Hi there, my name is Stephen Lake, and welcome to the Examined Game. Today we're talking with Mario R. Kroll from Uber Strategist. I mean, Mario has a very long and very career in the industry. He basically anything covering video games or tabletop in relation to PR marketing partnerships uh within those two areas. This is the guy who's on top of all of that. I love the idea of talking with someone within this space, specifically now in the industry. Just what it takes to kind of give a game a chance and all of the forethought that needs to go into helping that happen. We also had a great conversation a little bit about vulnerability and imposter syndrome and the self-doubt that can kind of creep in, and the importance of surrounding yourself with people that like that you trust and you see that they trust you, uh, that we don't have to do this on our own. But the importance of maybe not listening too much to that little inner voice that says, Oh, I don't think you can do this, you're not gonna be able to put it off. And what I loved about my conversation with Mario is it seemed like he was always up for just like trying the next thing and seeing what's gonna work, learning from the past and building on that. And I think it's it's explains why he's had the success that he's had. As per usual, it is a great conversation. This is the examined game. Please do subscribe. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

One of the things that I reflect back, I've been in the industry for about 30 years now. I had to do the math the other day and go, God, it doesn't seem like it was that long, but it definitely was. Um early days, um, I actually got a start in the game industry by starting a fan website called wargamer.com. It's still around. I sold it a few years later, ran it for I think about eight years. But that was my only like real-world connection to gaming. Otherwise, I was just a fan and a gamer and so forth. And so when I first got into the industry, you know, we would kind of like sheepishly ask, hey, can we get like a copy of this game to review it and whatever? And it was very similar to like going to trade shows and you're like super happy if you got invited to a party that like everybody else was trying to get into. Um, and then looking fast forwarding now, I so rarely ask for stuff anymore because I'm like, okay, you know what, I can afford my own stuff. I don't want to be that panhandler and so forth. But uh, and it's the same thing now, like I don't care so much about the party invites. It's good for networking and stuff, but I would rather take friends and clients and partners and have a lovely dinner than work with all the challenges of like everybody being at the same place in a party, not being able to talk because you can't hear and things like that. So it's just the way the priorities and the perspective have changed over you know 30 years has definitely been uh been kind of interesting that I spend more time thinking about now as I'm getting older.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

It's funny you talk about the I mean we'll wind back and and pin up from the beginning, but just to pick up what you said there, you know, I feel like you know, being in the in the film industry, I don't know if people ever said this or I just built up my head, but we always think that our chance is gonna come from at like 11 p.m. at a busy party at some festival, and that's gonna be our shot.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

And it's like it it's it's not where firstly I think in some movies they portray it that way, but I don't really think that's uh and in fact I've got a good anecdote uh because um uh I um uh there was about a three-year period where I didn't drink any alcohol at all. And I remember when I first kind of decided to quit, I um because there's a lot of parties where alcohol's involved, and I went to my first party, I think it was at like a PAX East or somewhere, or maybe E3. And I was a little nervous because I was like, this has been my social lube, like this is what everybody does. And I actually went, stayed sober. I think there was one other guy in the whole bar that also wasn't drinking. So we bonded and became friends. The waitresses like made a special cocktail with like a little rubber ducky that was like cranberry and club soda. But what was really interesting was that you know, you'd have these conversations with people as the night went on and everybody started drinking a little bit more, and like people almost falling off of tables that they're trying to lean on, slurring the words. And of course, it wasn't affecting me. And then the best part was when I got done, probably about midnight or so, I left. I went back to my hotel room and I sent everybody that I'd met that night, um, uh, that I had gotten a business card from a quick short email, just how lovely it was to meet him, sharing some part that they had shared with me in conversation. Um, so I think if you do it that way, it definitely works. But I've also seen it go the other way where it's like, you know, after after 9 p.m., nobody remembers what happened at the party.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

You're better off catching the uh the person at 9 30 a.m.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Absolutely, exactly. Have a breakfast when nobody else is up yet or nobody else wants to do it. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

That's the people I always try and keep an eye on. Who's the early birds, you know?

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Um that's one of the advantages of going like to um, like we're getting ready to go to Dice in Las Vegas and I'm on the East Coast, and so I don't have that, it's like the reverse jet lag. Like, you know, for me, you know, six in the morning seems like nine a.m. I'm usually up by then, so I can have an early meeting without stressing me out. If I go the other way to like the Gamescom, I'm in Germany, I'm like, oh God, really, do we have to go to this mixer at 8 p.m. or do we have to schedule dinner that late?

SPEAKER_00 5:51

You know, so it's funny how time zones make a big difference for capability. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for for chatting with me. You know, I'm really glad that that we sort of got to pick up this conversation. I had a great chat with Larry, by the way. That was absolutely awesome, he's great. He's wonderful. He's sort of full of life, and it was um it was a pleasure just to talk more about night dive, you know. It's awesome, yeah, and what they're pulling off. But I think, you know, as I sort of sort of proposed in um my email. I mean, actually, firstly, again, I'd love to go back to what you were talking about. I'm just always interested about what it is that draws people to video games at its sort of most basic level. Absolutely. What's kind of kept them in with video games as well, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:36

Absolutely, yeah. Because it, you know, it well, I'll I'll I'll I'll kind of start at the beginning a little bit and then you use what actually makes sense for you. Uh when I was pretty young, probably a preteen, maybe early teenager, the Atari 2600 came out. And I had a really good friend of mine who uh was raised by his grandparents and they spoiled them rotten, so like he had every gaming system, every game, and I would like go to his house and like, oh, I really want to play this. And um, so I kind of got hooked on the Atari 2600 back in the day and in television, you know, when that first came up, but just as a gamer, and then um uh I moved to the US actually at a uh fairly young age at about 11. And um uh my dad was working at Texas Instruments at the time, and um so I remember he brought home this PC, if you will, that um there weren't a lot of games for the TI994A. So it was like I kind of it was a way for me I had to learn how to code like in basic to start making some basic games. I think that's probably where in the back of my mind I realized I was never gonna be a game designer, like that was not my skill set. Um, but but it kept me interested in and it was always kind of a fun excursion. Um, I then didn't have a lot of time for it. Um, and in 1995, I had just gotten out of the US Army. Um, I was actually, we were stationed in Germany, and I was really into war and strategy games on the computer, Panzer General, Steel Panthers, those kind of early games, and V for Victory was another big one. Um, and in the US at the time, AOL was huge, and you could find other opponents there online. And so it was like, and this was back in the days of play by email, right? Where multiplayer was let me send you my email file. And if you had somebody good, you might get multiple turns in in a day. If you had somebody that you know had family or obligations, you might do one turn every two weeks. So it wasn't quite the pacing that we have now. Um, but when I moved to Germany, there was no AOL, so I had to kind of embrace a thing called the World Wide Web that was fairly fresh at that point, and um looked online to see if there anybody doing like this matchmaking thing where I can find other people to play with, right? And for tabletop board games, traditional war games, yes. But nobody had done this from you know computerized games. And I was like, well, let me just teach myself some HTML. I did some, did a very simple thing, which was basically like some HTML table-based, you know, send me your name, your email address, what game you want to play, and self-rate yourself on, you know, your abilities in the game, kind of right. And that took on a life on its own, and it was literally became like almost like a full-time job just updating the table. So I was like, okay, I need to learn how to program so I can automate all of that stuff. So that's actually how I got started. Um, and I didn't think about it too much more. I was I was uh running wargamer.com kind of part-time. I had a real job in technology and technology consulting and thing, and I was always like, gosh, I really love gaming, but I just I don't know how I'm gonna get over to gaming a lot of the jobs, you know, especially if you start entry level and gaming, pay less than what you might make in IT or technology. And so it was just always that barrier where it's like I'm never ever gonna have that uh that job. And um I sold Wargamer uh just because it became too much and my real job became too much. It was like working 80 hours a week and it's not sustainable. Um, and so I was going to what I thought was my last E3, and um, I think it was around 2004 maybe. And um uh my buyout or part of my earnout was uh that I would focus on try and sell advertising for wargamer.com for the new owners. I was like, okay, I can do this. Um, you know, the funny thing is like before I had been terrible at it because I was juggling so many different things. Like, I think I would people could pay me like$25 a month to run a banner ad and something ridiculous, right? I never increased a rate over like five years. I was just terrible businessman. Um, and I went to E3 with just to focus on that, and I actually landed Activision for a small campaign, and it was the best year I'd ever had in ad selling. But the best part was I connected with a publisher that was based here in North Carolina that um uh I guess liked the way I tried to sell them and they had a need. So then the conversation started hey, would you be interested in coming either to do initially was do you want to do sales for us? Um, and um that morphed into would you be interested in I'll call it PR loosely, but really what it entailed was um they were owned by a German publisher and they had just done a uh World War II RTS, which I was, you know, RTS was kind of my genre that I used to enjoy in military games. I was like, I play these, I can talk about this, how hard it means. We want you for like three months to travel anywhere in the US and Canada and talk to anybody that will talk to you, whether it's a blogger, whether it's you know, a major magazine, and showcase our game because in Europe it's doing well, in North America it really isn't. And so I did that, and that really was my first foray into you know getting paid for video games properly. And um also I think my first taste of I mean, when you're in a journalism side, um, you do get some PR exposure as well, mostly on the receiving end and things like that. But um, moving over and now trying to convince journalists and editors and bloggers to make time to see with you to actually write up a game and stuff like that. Um, that was the other side. And I I kind of fell in love with that. That was uh it was it was fun. It was, you know.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

I love hearing that. There's always an interesting story behind it, like always, right? Because again, it's it's the springboard that's gonna then have someone stick with something for however many decades. I just want to come back. So you're talking about this sort of like setting up this kind of matchmaking system, right? I mean, I'm just interested because for me it's it's always about like what kind of itch is that scratching, you know. Like I'm I'm kind of like, why why will I mean I don't necessarily have the answer for myself? It's like why was I so drawn to like you know, yeah, the the PC games.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

I think it was a combination of a lot of different things. I mean, I think you know, the love for military and strategy games just uh and I like more the tactical games where you had smaller units than these huge global, that was a little too much for me. Uh, but it was manageable and I enjoyed that quite a bit. And um, at the time I was uh I'd gotten out of the army and I needed to finish my bachelor's degree, and one of the only ones that I realized I could actually finish while being stationed where my wife at the time was was to do a computer science degree. And I'd previously done some programming and dabbled in always of like tech and gaming. So I was like, okay. Uh um sorry, I lost my train of thought there completely on um uh the how I got into why it scratched that itch. Um so I think it was the nexus out of necessity, but it was also the nexus of I got to play and pursue my hobby, which was strategy gaming. But then I always enjoyed like logic classes and things. That's why I like I think I like programming. It was simple, it's like this way, that way, that path, whatever. And um, so it just it just intrigued me. I I wish I could say I was like this early visionary futurist that could say, oh, this worldwide web thing is gonna be huge, right? That wasn't me. I was like, okay, this is another thing, and and uh uh so forth. But um I I just created it. It was pretty easy to learn, uh, pretty intuitive. And uh, you know, the next step was sort of programming. I actually parlayed that work I'd done as a hobby into a proper corporate IT web development job that actually paid for the bill. So it was kind of like it just it just kind of merged together and then uh you know, doing this, you know, part-time to keep you know immersed in the hobby and go to certain shows and stuff. Um, that was sort of the reward or the payoff for me, I guess. You know, I I spent many years not thinking about like, oh, I should just jump into this full-time or how do I get into gaming. At the time, it was like I talked to um folks that that uh I'd met that had been in the industry longer, like how do you get in? And and all of it was like, well, become a QA tester. It's like it doesn't pay terrible, and but it's a good way to get your foot in the door. It's like that doesn't sound like that's something for me. So I just never did it until I happened to stumble into that other opportunity that was like, oh yeah, I get to talk to people, yeah. This is get to show them a game, get it, show my excitement when I'm playing the game, show them what I think is cool about it. Um, I that was just uh that that that was very, very exciting. And I got to travel too. Like I went to Budapest, I went to Moscow a couple times, we went to Poland, Germany obviously pretty regularly, and all over the US and Canada. And I was like, okay, that was that was a lot of fun. Now I'm kind of like, I still like to travel. Well, I don't like to travel. I like to get where I when I get there, I usually always enjoy it, but the ordeal of getting there is always like, oh gosh, let me send somebody else, or maybe maybe somebody else from the team is better qualified to go to this particular, you know, trade show or event or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Yeah, it's like the same old sandwich shop at 5 a.m. at the airport and and all those things.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Exactly. You had a couple flight delays and you know, who knows what, and uncomfortable seats, and you know, and and uh uh I think the older I get, I've gotten more set in my ways too, right? Like you know, when you spend more time on airplanes, like you want a particular seat and you want you know certain food and drink options, and it just makes you a little ornery when you don't get that. It's I mean totally rotten, spoiled first world problem, but it's uh it's definitely a reality.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

So from what from that sort of kicking off to what you're sort of like how how you describe what you do now. I mean, I guess that would be my question to you. Like, what are you sort of, you know, what do you feel what is it that you're sort of offering clients, you know, and it's sort of like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

Yeah, so so I was working for a couple publishers, kind of back to back. I did a little stint working for a developer in between, and um uh ended up finding myself on the I I ended up running the US office, the North American office for a um uh publisher that's still going called Calypso Media, and was there for about four years and really rebuilt their US office from the ground up. Uh so at first it was just me, and then I kind of hired gently, you know, additional people. I think we grew to like maybe eight staff in the US. Um, and then I found myself on the end of a receiving end of a layoff, and I was like, it was right before the holidays, of course, because that's of course when it's the you know most common that you get the uh don't come back January 1st kind of a thing. And I was like, all right, this kind of sucks. But I was also kind of relieved because I hadn't really enjoyed my work for a while. And um I was interviewing, I had been interviewing with a bunch of like bigger companies, made multiple rounds of interviews, just never had quite found the right fit. And then there was uh Unity who uh was branching off into publishing, and they had a director of marketing role open. And so I was talking with the recruiter, and we had a really good rapport, but I'd always been more of a generalist, like you know, uh, you know, kind of expert in in a few things, but able to do a lot of different ones. And um so she came back to me and said, Listen, you've interviewed really well, you're a really prime candidate for this. However, because it's a specifically marketing role and less about PR, can you just redo your resume resume and kind of pivot yourself a little bit, you know, on emphasizing your marketing stuff and kind of losing the PR stuff? And I said, sure, I can do that. This was again was over the holidays. And um, I just couldn't get myself to do it. I was just like, I don't, I don't want to update my resume. I don't want to um, you know, work for another corporation, you know, where I don't have control over my destiny. And so I never started Uber Strategist with the intent of it going, I think we're in year 12 now. Um, that was never the plan. It was literally like this will give me something to do for a little while. You know, I can figure out what my skill set is, what people will actually pay me for, what problems I can solve. And then once I'm kind of tired of that, then I'll get back, you know, get my win back and get back into the job market and try to find a traditional job. Um, and it just never happened. I got some really cool clients early on. I slowly started hiring a team, and then it just took on a little bit of a life of itself. But what Uber Strategist does, so we currently have, I think we're now up to 22 or 23 people in six countries. Um and what we primarily do is public relations, um, we do event support, um, and then we also do influencer work, and then we also sometimes help with either organic or paid showcase placement. So, like if you know, the game awards, you know, we interface with Jeff Keeley, for example, and try to get our client an organic slot if we can, and if not, negotiate, you know, what it's gonna cost and do the logistics for it. So that in a nutshell is kind of what we uh what we do as a team. So we're uh you know, we started out just doing PR uh for many years, and you know, as people would ask for additional complimentary services, it was I I'd been a senior marketing VP and director, so I'd kind of overseen different areas of the marketing mix. And so clients would ask us, hey, do you know anybody that can do that, or is this something you guys can do? And we would always kind of assess and say, is this something we can be really good at? If not, we find a partner, we refer. If not, or if we think we can be really good at it, why don't we build that? Always with a little bit of humility. Hey, you're our test case, this is the first time. Like, we're not promising this is gonna be amazing. But if you take the trip with us, the journey, like we can both, you know, benefit from that. And um, that was pretty well received. And so we just started adding on these additional services. I think the other big pivot that I loved, um, and I can't even quite I'm trying to remember how it worked, but um one of the other things I really enjoyed when I was a teenager, and maybe in my early 20s, and then it got difficult with being in the army and raising a family and all this other stuff, was tabletop role-playing games. Like I used to love playing Dungeons and Dragons, Recon, Twilight 2000, uh uh, you know, all kinds of different uh uh tabletop games. And um we got into conversations through some friendly contacts with uh World of Darkness and Vampire the Masquerade. And they actually hired us to help them with their, I think it was the last major update, V5, of the Vampire the Masquerade book, which we're like, oh my god, we're fanboys and everything else. Um that book was published by Modifius, who does a whole bunch of tabletop games based on a lot of the like Bethesda IP, Star Trek, and different things. So we got a chance. So we won them as a client, we work with them uh. And um that kind of morphed into this blending, bringing it back together of tabletop role-playing. Like we have clients like Alcat, for example, that um specializes in making really um kind of hardcore role-playing games, but use it based on tabletop systems like Pathfinder, like um Warhammer 40K, and so forth. But then we've also gone the other way. For example, we work with one claim called Arcane Wonders, uh, that is a board game company basically, card games and board games and things like that. Well, they got a license to make a Call of Duty board game. And so we actually worked on that because it was sort of the perfect fit for us because we we had really strong chops in the video game world, but we also were knowledgeable in the tabletop. And so now we're doing more of that. And that uh um before I started working with with um Free League, I Kickstarter backed like their new limited edition Twilight 2000 in a steel case. I've never opened it, I've never played it. Like I have all these tabletop games now. I never have time or really people to do it. Um, I'm actually to come full circle, signed up at DICE this year to participate both in the Magic the Gathering tournaments to learn that finally. And there's also a DD play networking event play session. So I'm gonna just dive in and do both of those and uh you know try to remember this is this is mostly about it should be fun, right? You know, a lot of people take this extremely serious to an unhealthy degree, and then every once in a while we have to just calibrate a little bit and look back and go, but if this is not fun, if we're not enjoying this, we're in the wrong line of business. Like this is this is what it should be about.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

When you when you sort of onboard a client, and it's obviously like you're gonna you're gonna do whatever you can do, right? To do the absolute best best job possible. But I guess I'm just curious about what it is that they're gonna bring to the table that's gonna make I don't want to say your job easier, but I'm guessing that that there's decision making that's gonna be happening on their part that's gonna really help sway the sort of success of the outcomes of of what the game that they're trying to put put out there in the world. Yeah, I mean I guess what those traits are.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yeah, I think I think it's it's probably similar across the industry, but also probably a little bit unique to each agency. Our particular superpowers collaboration, like we bring a lot of ideas to the table, but we also realize we don't know everything. They're making the game, like they know what their vision was, what their intent is. And then we kind of both bring ideas to the table and let the best ideas win. So that's that's one of the things a client that you know has I don't want to say strong opinions, but has clear opinions about where they want their brand and IP to go, but is not so rigid that they can't take feedback or constructive criticism or be like some we've had some clients where like, we want this press release to go out on this date and time, no ands or buts. Uh, and we're like, that's a really bad idea. This isn't gonna resonate, or like, you know, can we do this instead or whatever? And they're like, no, we want it this way, and then they would be upset, you know, when um it executed as we were basically forced to. So I think uh we look for clients that are collaborative. Um we look for clients that plan a little bit at least. Um and um we also think about like can we be successful with this particular product or service or game, right? Does it stand out in some way? Uh, one of the things I learned early on in my career was the positioning of a game, like how you describe it or compare it to other existing games, or what is really the core thing is such an important part of getting a journalist to cover a game and engage with it. I remember just on a little anecdote there, I was working on a game that I'll call a little bit of a SimCity knockoff, where you know, in SimCity back in the day, some natural disaster would happen, some problem would happen, and you could pretty much just throw money at the problem, right? Sometimes you like re-jigger the uh public transportation and the traffic and stuff, but at the end of the day, it was mostly about like money fixing problems. And um, this was from a French studio, and they had made a game and um had a lot of similarities, but they had like six different cultural classes in it. So not every minion was the same or wanted the same thing. So, for example, like the blue-collar guys, and this is vastly stereotyping, but the blue collar uh customer might um uh you know might appreciate the corner, you know, dive bar, whereas, you know, a super wealthy elite, that's gonna be an eyesore for them, right? So it was kind of a unique thing. Well, when I first pitched it, I very much leaned into more like the SimCity-esque similarities. Um, and I remember very distinctly I was at one with one journalist, and it was just like, I don't want to say his eyes glazed over, but I could just tell he was not at all excited or engaged, right? And I was like, that's the worst thing as a PR profession. Like, oh God, how do I pivot? Like, how do I get this guy back, right? And I thought about it, and I told him at the time that, hey, listen, what's different about this game is that you have these different culture classes. You know, think of a hospital. You you put a hospital in place, you know, the surgeons might be from one clasp, the nurses might be from another one, the maintenance workers from another one. Um, but you need all of them, right? So you have to kind of find this balance of how do you build those jobs close enough to you know the various uh um uh regions where people were living without making it an eyesore or a negative for one and the other. And finding that balance I thought was a really added a lot of depth. And actually was an after that I used that pitch pretty much for, and I did it much better like 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Um, but uh I used that with all my remaining appointments, and the results and the reception was so completely different because I was like, oh, Eureka, I finally found what makes a difference. So I think I think you know, to your original point, people that um, you know, like having fun, creative, they're making a good quality game, they're passionate. Normally I would say like that, you know, that's why I was a little hesitant on the pre-planning or the amount of planning that goes into it. Um one of the things that I've been saying, like a broken record, I think, for the last few years, anytime I'm on a podcast or interview or in a meeting with somebody, is why do you wait till the last minute? You've put your blood, sweat, and tears into building this game, and then like one to three months afterwards, if that I've had people come to me and say, hey, we just launched our game, it's not doing very well. Can you help us? And I'm like, a little tough right now, right? We can't, we're we're pretty much magicians, but we cannot roll back time. And um, so that's that's something I'm always when we have a client that's like talking to us three months, six months, a year in advance, we love that. I wish I could say that was the majority of the clients we work with. It definitely isn't. Like there's a lot, even very big companies that just come to us sometimes, maybe a month before launch or three weeks before launch. And it's always a little frustrating because it's self-defeating, right? We're still gonna, to your earlier point, we're gonna work really hard and do our very best. But we're working with other market forces, we're competing against extra titles. Like if we don't have that time element that we can leverage and say, okay, maybe you're too busy this week, but what about next week or two weeks from now? If that doesn't exist because the the client isn't a milestone plan, it gets it it gets significantly more difficult. And more importantly, the client's not gonna be as happy because the results, unless we get really lucky, are just not gonna be as good as if if they had just started the conversation and the thought about I made the game, now how do I sell it? Um much sooner. The other part to that is you know, if a studio has somebody in-house that has that skill set and that bandwidth, um then there's nothing wrong with that, right? As long as somebody is thinking about it, uh, but the problem happens when people are not thinking about it and go, oh crap. And then they realize, oh, we don't really know how to do this either. That's a double whammy, right? Because then you're like, now I gotta find somebody really fast, and um I'm just shortchanging myself.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

It makes me think, and I'm just curious if examples, you know, it's like if you're sort of building a paper aeroplane, and if you sort of take the time and do it right, you can just do the gentlest of throws, and it just kind of like goes further. It doesn't mean there's not a ton of work involved, but you've just been smart about it. And I'm I'm interested in examples of either games that you've worked on or things that you've just witnessed observing it, where it just it just seems like something is just like just flown. And I think when it's done, like the problem is when you do your job right, I think it's almost like people won't know that you've done anything at all. That's a yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

I mean, a really good example, and I I I didn't have anything to do with it. Uh, I cursed at the game multiple times over uh time I was playing it. I had a uh a friend of mine, industry friend, that actually ended up doing PR for them was for Bellatro, right, which is hugely popular now. But when it first started, right, they really had a lot because you know it's not like glitzy, super crazy visuals or anything like that. And just to kind of have followed their journey a little bit of just doing really great PR community and persistent work, believing in their own vision for the game and knowing what's unique and special about it, and not letting other people say, yeah, sorry, that's not um, you know, that's never gonna go. Um I think that's just absolutely phenomenal. And that's that's just you know, like those are the kind of projects that then like you know, people can can you know sustain themselves on for years and years because it's just like wow, that was a really big win. Um as far as projects that we've worked on, um you know, some of the fun ones where the client really needed uh help and needed us to really step in and give them ideas and so forth. Um, other other times we just needed to kind of inject a new burst of energy into it. For example, when I I talked to Atari probably about 10 or 11 years ago, and they uh you know, we I had some uh mutuals that introduced us and stuff like that, and they were looking for PR. And um, I had just started Uber Strategist, and so they we ended up doing a proposal for Atari, which if I look back now at like the quality proposal, like I'd be aghast. It's like, oh my god, at the time I thought it was like the cat's meow. Um but uh we um you know delivered the proposal and then it was kind of crickets for I think almost a whole year, and then they came back to me and said, Hey Mario, are you still doing that PR thing? I said, Yeah, I am. I've got more people now, we're bigger and stuff. We'd love to work with you. And we started building a you know, roughly 10-year relationship working with Atari, and also we actually worked with Night Dive since you interviewed Larry as well. Uh Larry and I were actually doing a working for another consulting agency um for a short time when both of us found us at layoffs at about the same time. And then, you know, so initially we kind of did that, thought we could work for somebody else, and then we both kind of decided we'll go in different directions. But so I was working with nightdive because I had a prior relationship with Larry, and he was enthrred with the agency he was with and wanted to get a little more hands-on attention. So I was like, you get that here. And I don't even know how many years we worked with them. It's been five or six years, I think, that we worked with nightdive, which predated when Atari actually bought nightdive, and it was always, you know, very, very cool, one of our favorites because we loved the retro games. We all grew up on boomer shooters, and so seeing what they're doing there was was really cool. And then, you know, even you know, working in Dark Forces with, you know, Disney and LucasArts working on uh, you know, one of my uh senior has he just got promoted to VP. Uh his name is CJ, he was my first hire 11 years ago. Um, he worked, he led the Night Dive account, and so he was working on the thing, and he's a huge horror fanatic as well. So it was like the perfect merging of that. Well, he even reached out to John Carpenter, who had directed the original The Thing movie, to see what kind of opportunities there were talked together. So those are the kind of things that that you know kind of fire us up and where uh, you know, again, I don't know that it was like super deep or a whole lot of stuff got brought to the table, but the games were just good and they're fun, and we instantly could get this is why it's cool. And they also do a good job of community building over time, right? Where they have a fan base built in. And that fan base doesn't just have to be end consumers, it can be influencers. You know, if a certain influencer knows that you're always doing this kind of game and that's their jam, it's much easier to get them to look at subsequent stuff that you have. It's the same thing on the PR side with journalists, right? If you know not just the outlets, but you know the actual individual journalists and and what their preferences are, what they're really excited about, what they hate playing is also very helpful. Um you can also target it that way and build those relationships and kind of say, hey, listen, I'm bringing you this particular thing. This is right up your alley, and they're almost like a super fan, you're gonna have much better results than you know when you go the other guy and have a guy that you know hates playing shooters and you make them review a shooter, you're you're not shockingly going to get a bad review.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

I think nightdive is a really interesting case study where you know I've been playing, I've been playing their games for for quite a while, but you know, and I'm a I'm a fan, I want to know, I want to know the studios that are making the games that I enjoy. What's interesting with them is because it's remasters and remakes. I've kind of almost ignorantly so I never really thought about the people that were actually sweating blood and tears to to to bring these games back to life, right? Um I I wasn't like associating these games with their identity or brand because I was associating them with the the original game itself or the the original makers, right? And I think I feel like it was only and I I said this to Larry, it's like it's just been the last maybe like year or so where suddenly like night dive is like night dive, and I'm like keeping an eye on specifically what games they're bringing to the table as opposed to just waiting to hear what the next remaster is that I might be interested in.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

I mean, listen, there was a lot, and I'm sure Larry expounded on this, and I you know, I'm I'm only you know reporting this by hearsay, but you know, there was a lot of you know, not only legal but business and then also technology hurdles that they had to navigate early on to get that traction right around System Shock, and they're certainly not the first ones that tried. Um and I think that doing such a great job, and uh like like Stephen uh Cake, their CEO, uh I guess now he's like managing director of Night Dive instead since he got acquired. But like he's an artist at heart, right? That's his passion. Like he that that's what he wants to do. That's why he started the studio. And it's just a delight to work with people that care so deeply about that, respect, you know, the earlier games. Like they don't want to take anything away, don't want to make a sequel necessarily, but just to reintroduce some of these classic games to current audiences, right? You know, both to to uh re-uh elicit uh uh nostalgia and also to find a new audience and really say, hey, this is where you're you know, if you jumped into gaming at, I don't know, you know, Black Ops 3 or something like that, you missed, you know, a few decades of really cool computer video games that you should be aware of. And um that also, you know, maybe it's an age function, I don't know, but like I I love to see that things that I enjoyed as a teenager and in my early 20s and definitely in my 30s are getting second life, right? Like, you know, you know, Fallout when they, you know, the remaster got dropped. I went through and played Fallout again in Fallout 4 uh because it was just there and I'd seen the TV series and I was kind of in the mood for it and all the backstory. Um, so many other Skyrim, you know, got updated, you know, other games get shadow dropped as like these master um you know, rematching. And the cool thing is most of them still hold up today, like right. It's not like you're playing them going, oh my gosh, this is like so I it can't happen. We got a um uh arcade uh one year for Christmas. I got one for us, and then uh our uh uh two daughters and their families each got them one. And so we're going through, and we've got like, you know, it comes with like thousands of classic arcade and early like NES games and everything else. And I just remember like I'm playing through those, and you know, if we were like Galaga or Galaxian, still a lot of fun. A lot of the other games, like uh was it Paper Out, I think was an early one. Like I tried to play it on there, and I'm like, it just didn't hold up for me. Like I had no interest in playing those particular ones, so it was kind of like uh, okay, I got this, it's almost like having like a cable subscription or satellites, so then I have 500 channels and there's never anything to watch. It was kind of one of those kind of experiences where I was like, okay, I would rather have 20 really good games that then you know thousands to pick from where none of them really scratched that itch. But then you get a different one and going, oh yeah, this this held up, this is really cool. When we worked with Atari on um um uh some of their reloaded titles for the old uh uh um uh you know, some of their old original IP, that was kind of that was very cool because um like they did a really nice job, and I think that also transformed Atari a little bit. Because when we chart when we started working with Atari um 10 plus years ago, um they were really primarily a licensing company at that point, right? They had kind of gone through a bankruptcy. Their former, I think, corporate counsel had actually purchased the rights to Atari, and they were sort of licensing everything. Anything they could slap an Atari brand on was sort of fair game. And so you can imagine working with them at that point was very, very different from working with them, you know, in the more recent times where they really have gone back to their core gaming, you know, the acquisition of night dive, where they're you know, they're seeing the value in that, they're becoming and staying part of the conversation about um uh you know game discoverability and game restoration and preservation of games. Like that's that's kind of cool because the narrative kind of changes in the arc, and you can do a lot more, you can talk to a lot more people that will be interested in that story.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

And so then, you know, coming sort of really present tense, you know, and I think I put, you know, in the email just talking about a couple of I know that I've sort of found a quote you talking about AI and answer engines, prioritised trustworthy earned media, making human-driven PR more valuable than ever. And I guess I was interested, what are the sort of um what are the kind of tried and tested approaches and and strategies that are just at least for the foreseeable, never going to change in terms of of how you're approaching? And then what are the things where like you find that people like yourselves and also especially your clients, where if they're not gonna pivot now, there's a sort of a risk of being left behind in terms of the way that you need to approach getting games out there into the world?

SPEAKER_02 41:39

Yeah, uh well, that's a big topic. Where do I start with that? Um, you know, uh the game industry, especially PR landscape, has changed a lot. Um, I think if I remember the math right, on a recent interview, I said that you know, when we first started, I had a list of 10 or 11,000 journalists that covered gaming, right? And over the years, we've just seen that attrition, you especially the last couple years. I mean, we've lost now my in-house list is maybe 6,500 people or something like that. And we're always constantly scraping and finding new people, building new relationships. And then when a single magazine shudders everybody, right? You just lost, you know, one more really high-value, you know, group of people to work with, and it's just really sad to see. So, you know, AI certainly has had a big impact on that and disrupting how so many of these outlets were monetizing themselves based on you know Google Ads and different things like that. Um but it's also the ones that can sustain it and can stay through and adapt their own business model. Um I think they're really well positioned to succeed in the longer term because they're not just depending on that. And and then, you know, with the benefit of the you know, the the kind of optimizations of the LLMs to really prefer non-promotional, non-sales material over, you know, organic uh earned uh media, um, it gives those outlets that are left um a much an outsize to punch up above their weight kind of uh impact because that's you know, when you're I I do it now, right? I uh when it first came out with AI, I was always like, oh, I don't want to do AI search and maybe I'll play with ChatGPT a little bit or something like that. Now a lot of times I'm like, okay, like the other day, I can't remember when I was, I was trying to compare a couple, I think I was trying to buy a new backpack, and so I was like trying to figure out what's the you know best pack, here's my use case, and all of that kind of stuff. And even just type it in your your Google browser now and go in AI mode and have a whole conversation. So the the search dynamics are are um very, very different. But most of the time when I do those searches, and I was I wrote down a um a statistic here, I think Muckrak in a July 2025 uh study had said that about 96%. Of the link recommendations presented by AI engines at that time are driven primarily based on PR, corporate communications, you know, more of the organic content. And it makes sense because people don't want to go like what's the point? You can already find all the ads you want, all the promotional stuff or anything else. Like, how do you cut through that noise? You don't want more of that and say, oh, these guys marketed better. So we're gonna we're gonna give you more of that. So I think that's a that's a a blessing in disguise. I still don't know what the you know net net sum will be of the impact of AI. You know, there's a a lot of people have lost their job because of it. Um and you asked about like how do we keep how how do we stay ahead of it? How do our clients stay ahead of it? We're having just regular conversations to say, how are we, you know, how do we still add value? You know, how we one of the questions you asked is like, why do I even have to have that conversation and saying PR is still relevant and valuable? Because that has been a perception, right? It used to be like we, if we had a client whose stakeholders were much more used to performance marketing and sales, and they're like, okay, if I spend this much money, how many units will I sell? And I get it, but it it oversimplifies the world. PR doesn't work that way. PR is about brand building, about a sustained effort. And um, so so when we got those scenarios, it was already at that time a little challenging to um uh, you know, to convince people that, you know, if you don't get it, you don't get it. You're not gonna get, I can't guarantee you anything. I can only guarantee you we'll do an amazing job and the best of our ability. But until we hit send on this press release or media alert, we have no idea what we might have some ideas, but we've been proven wrong as many times as we've been like positively going, wow, this went way better than we thought and took so little effort. So um, yeah, so I think now more and more people are looking at that. And I think the fallacy, and I think it's a bit of a dangerous one, um, is that with AI tools, for example, um you can achieve the same results. And uh, you know, just have AI write you a press release, send it out. Can you get some results? Absolutely, I'm sure you can. Um, I invested in a company called Press Engine um that's doing quite well based out of the UK, and they're basically a distribution service for um for press releases and media outreach, right? And yes, there are companies and people that can just do it themselves, pay a fairly low subscription amount, and it can kind of self-service DIY PR. But the the benefit of having a strategic partner that has the relationships, that knows how to best position your product, that's missing when you try to do it yourself, right? And so whether you hire somebody in-house, whether you work with a freelancer that fits your budget, or you work with you know a mid-size or larger agency, that's a different conversation, right? But it it some people will always jump to, well, I'm happy with good enough, right? If I can do it cheap and it gives me decent results, why would I pay somebody more, you know, for maybe getting slightly better results? And so that's that's kind of the conversation that we have to have somewhere. Um, and listen, I'm not gonna say that the PR work has gotten a lot harder. It takes longer to get coverage uh in most cases. There's so many more games now. The barrier to entry to make a game is pretty much non-existent. The problem is there's a lot of games that aren't very good, aren't even really maybe games, but they're still plogging, you know, the network, so to speak. And so the the titles that fall sort of in the middle or even sometimes toward the top, um, have a really, really hard time even getting in front of an audience, right? You know, if you go to Steam Next Fest and there's thousands of demos, like even you as a consumer, how do you even pick which one you should pay attention to, right? Which one is worth downloading and so forth. And so that's made it a lot more difficult. Um, but I think that's also conversely why it's so much more important or as important as it's ever been, that you need that help, you need that megaphone to give you a fighting chance to stand out and and and and you know, at least people be aware of it. Then the consumers can vote with their dollars and decide this is not a game for me. It is. But it's really, really sad when they never even know that your game existed, you know, years later go, oh my God, I would have loved that game. I would have loved to play it if only I hadn't known about it, right? And that's uh that to me, a lot of times is probably the saddest part when somebody, you know, entirely. And there's lots of great companies that DIY it really well, but sometimes small studios, you know, type budgets, they just try to do it in their own and they just don't know what they don't know.

SPEAKER_00 48:43

It is that is uh when I when I stumble across something that's clearly like right up my alley, and I and it was sort of like years passing, you know, and I'll I I'll usually pick it up, but you're right, it's sort of a shame when it sort of feels like something.

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Yeah, yeah. Especially when you like maybe read that, you know, they weren't commercially successful, the studio either, you know, downsized or maybe even went out of business, right? And you're like, oh, I wish they were still around and make like a sequel. This was so so awesome. Why didn't you know, why didn't enough people buy it? And um that's always something I think that I I try to be mindful of and think about to go, you know, we can't control the outcomes, we can't control what fan reception will be to a game or whatever, but we can at least give the developers a voice and get it out there and give it a fighting chance, right? That's um that's something I think that and the team, I often ask my team like what motivates you, like what do you like what put you know, what really rewards you? What makes this job? Why are you here doing this still, right? And and even though it's hard and difficult, and sometimes you get unreasonable clients that yell at you and stuff like that. And pretty much to a person, they all take so much pride and get so much joy when they have a successful outreach, you know, when they place a big tier one story or some exclusive thing, it just makes them light up. It again, it sustains them, you know, at least for days, if not, you know, anything else. And so um, just that process it also works conversely sometimes. You know, you put something out that you think should go go pretty well and it's crickets, that's like the worst nightmare of a PR person. It's like, oh God, you know, is it is it gonna come? Do I need a pivot? Like, are we like, you know, when's the client gonna call me and go, why haven't I, you know, gotten the New York Times yet? It's been 12 hours. And we've actually had clients like that, they're like, well, it's not exactly how it works, but uh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Do you think I mean I'd be curious what advice you would give to a studio, you know, or developers that say they're 12 months out from being ready to launch, you know, and what would be a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

I think even if you're not ready. Yeah, um, I think uh, you know, sometimes you can go even a little bit earlier. There's a couple different, I'm gonna plug a couple partners of ours that um I really respect their work. Um, so I work with we work with a company called Min Max uh Consulting. Their ex-journalist, actually, the one journalist I was telling you about where I try to present that SimCity game was actually to him. And we've stayed friends and uh uh you know acquaintances. They built a studio uh or they built a company that basically does like mock reviews of games. So like, you know, it can be as simple as if this game shipped now, what kind of review score can you do? But they can also dive deeper into like messaging, positioning, you know, what things could you do to the game that would move it from uh let's say it's a 70% review as is, how do you move that to 75 or 80%? So uh uh, you know, talking to somebody like that early on to kind of valid in some way validating that there is consumer demand, right? Putting the game up on Steam and seeing if your wish lists start start growing and doing things to start collecting a mailing list because the one thing you again, PR doesn't work on a dime, but it actually works slightly more with the short term than community building. Community building takes a long, long time. It's like in the early days of social media, right? You'd have your Facebook account and you had a 300% growth, but yeah, you started with three people, right? So getting from three to nine is pretty easy, but then getting to a sizable audience takes a lot of time and effort and so forth. Um, and so I think thinking about how do we reach our community, how do we engage them, how do we make them passionate, how do we build that fandom? I think that's a very, very important, even if you don't know how to do it, like at least thinking about it, having a go-to-market plan, developing a go-to-market plan, saying, okay, we're gonna hire experts or we're gonna work with other people to refine this, but at least here's a general roadmap. Like I get studios sometimes, uh, especially Canadian ones, that'll reach out to me and go, hey, we're we're submitting to the Canada Media Fund, uh, which is a you know an institution that that supports uh interactive entertainment. And um we want to do this proposal, and part of what we have to answer is like our marketing budget. We don't have the first idea of like what it costs, what's good or not. And so we'll sometimes just put a quick marketing plan together in a rough ballpark budget that they can then go with and hopefully win the grant, and then you know, maybe they come back and work with us once they got their funding, but it's mostly about like, you know, rising tide, lifting all ships. Um, and so um thinking about these parts, whether it's a conversation with us or somebody else, um, is the most important part, right? It's it's it's it's realizing that marketing and selling the game is pretty much as important, almost as important, I would say, as actually making a great game itself, right? Because if you make the greatest game, the you know, if you build it, they will come model. That died a long time ago, right? That only thing only works in Field of Dreams. So uh, you know.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

Did you write about that? Or did I read that somewhere else?

SPEAKER_02 53:50

Someone sort of trying to I might have also have to be completely honest with you, right? Uh a lot of the blog content I don't create, I look at it. I have really, really talented people from across the team that write some of that. So sometimes things that are out there either in a social media post or blog, unless they're directly attributed to me, probably aren't even something I wish I was that smart, but uh I think I have much smarter team members that uh uh really are quite brilliant and will look at that. But I might have used that quote before.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

Yeah, I'm just I feel like maybe even Larry said something, but yeah, it's just that realizing like field of dreams kind of like a lot of people sort of have sort of probably gone bankrupt waiting for that system to work and it only works with ghosts, you know. It's yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:34

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

And then, you know, this idea, I mean we the the people that you're sort of hoping are gonna hook into to you know the the the games and that there are you know magazines and things are kind of dropping off and there's these kind of Goliath platforms, but then do you do you think that and I think it's the same the same as like film, we've got however many streaming services, and within that we've got however many shows, and there's basically a bubble for each uh person, you know, it's almost like say there's 24 different personalities with 24 different like uh sections of each streaming service that's gonna cater pretty much just to you. And I guess I'm wondering in terms of video game journalism um and influencers, um, although there's just these these few big heads at the absolute top of it, are we getting more and more kind of smaller bubbles and factions that you're sort of targeting to say, okay, well, we're just gonna work with these people.

SPEAKER_02 55:33

Absolutely. Like uh on the tabletop side, we we uh work with Letting Alyssa, who leads our client service, she was at Twitch for five years, you know, she she often says that too. That you know, one of the biggest regrets she has, and she posted that on social media even recently, is that a lot of times, you know, brands are not looking beyond gaming, right? It's it's almost like uh a game just wanting to work just with gaming journalism. Any halfway decent video game PR agency can achieve that. Um, what I think is always cool and more of a challenge is to go outside the core market. Can you get mainstream? Can you get fandom? Can you find what that niche audience is that this is the perfect game for, right? You don't need a lot of those people because they love what you're doing, they're gonna talk about it and you're gonna build momentum. And I think that's like nightdive was a great example of that. You know, people have kind of gotten used to it. They always do a good job and they pick great IP to work with. And um, you know, they you can almost predict that the next nightdive title, if you enjoyed the first couple that they remastered, you're gonna like whatever else they're doing too, because it's always gonna be good, it's always gonna be polished, and it's gonna be better than the original, just from you know, being able to play it in contemporary settings and contemporary hardware and that kind of stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:50

I'm just interested as well, and this is um, and again, maybe it wasn't you that said it, but but it it stood out to me this something you said about many startups try to solve their own problems, often they extend outside their expertise.

SPEAKER_02 57:03

Yeah, that was like I think an article I wrote like 15 years ago, if that's possible. We were like, I was trying to figure out where that quote came. I was like, oh my god, I had to actually reread it because I'd forgotten I'd written that. Um, but um I you know, I think it's a bit of a and I think that was from a piece I was I was um uh working on uh that kind of involved a you know quote from Mark Cuban who had given entrepreneurial advice, right, about like who do you hire, what do you do in-house. And I I think it can just be kind of simplified to um the first mistake is not thinking about marketing in PR, right? When you're making a game. That's the first one. If you don't come to that crossing in the road sooner than later, you're gonna be behind. Um the second mistake, and I see it less often, but I do see it, especially for you know, less experienced studios and so forth, is you know, that you think you can do everything. I made the same mistake with Uber Strategist, right? When I first started, I had my finger in everything. Now I'm like, no, I just do this, I do this, and I have other really competent people do these other things. And so sometimes with a studio, there can be the, oh, how hard can this be? I'll just do it myself or whatever. If you actually have somebody with expertise and chops or is just naturally talented at figuring out the PR, the marketing, the performance advertising, the events, whatever, by all means go execute that. That's fine. I think the problem comes when somebody goes, well, out of necessity, because maybe we don't have enough budget or we don't think we can do this. Me as super introverted coding CEO of the small studio is also going to do PR and marketing without any kind of guardrails, without any kind of advice and so forth. Um, and that usually doesn't go very well either. I mean, the people that are that do that, they learn some pretty valuable lessons and probably retain those, but it's not necessarily the way I would recommend going about it. So being cognizant of what are your strengths, what do you actually have time for? Um, I always tell team members or when we're talking with clients, especially smaller ones, I say, you know, first and foremost, I want you to just focus on making an awesome game, right? That's your strength, that's what you've been working on. If we have a great product, it's easier for us to market. And then, you know, work with us, hire somebody in-house. Like for community management, I always say, listen, like we can do community management consulting, we can help you get a Discord set up, we can run your community for a few months, but we're always doing it with an eye toward um how do we get somebody that actually works day to day with a development team ideally in-house, can be a part-time person, doesn't have to be full-time for everybody. How do we set it up training wheel style so that they can then take over the community, manage and be self-sufficient? We can kind of, you know, hang out and you know, save them if they get themselves in trouble or if they're not sure how to deal with something. Um, but but but but that that thought process of okay, who do I have? You know, who can solve this problem? You know, do I have, you know, just just like if you're making a game, right? And I'm not I've not made games other than you know my TI 99 uh 4A um um uh forays a long time ago, you know, you need a producer, you need creative. If you're gonna make a trailer, you need somebody that has video skills. You know, if you need localization, you either need to do it yourself or you need to be able to vet and work with a company that does that professionally. And it's the same thing on the marketing side, right? I think most teams have some inherent abilities, but having it doing an assessment, a self-assessment of like, do we have these strengths? And is my time better spent doing this over here, marketing the game? Or is it there's not not a clear-cut answer, right? Sometimes a very naturally talented CEO or producer can do a great job both with influencers and with PR, and and they don't need an agency, but that's because they have those skills and they have maybe even some relevant experience or just a natural talent for it. Um, but if you see you have gaps in that, then um you're you're better off working with somebody that you you know trust and can partner with that does that all day long and can do it in their sleep. Why struggle when you don't have to, really?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:22

Just that note you said about you know, people, you know, we make mistakes and then hopefully learn from them. I guess I'm just interested with your in your experience, like how good are you at learning from your own mistakes?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:35

Uh I'm okay. I had to I had to do a CEO self-review uh a couple weeks ago, which was very painful, and I pretty much came to the conclusion that I need to fire myself and find a competent replacement. Um, but I started all this, right? So I have imposter syndrome to this day, and you know, it's like I remember, for example, when Bungie first came to us and I was like, Bungie, and I was like, my first thought literally was like, can we do this? Like, have we grown enough? And we've done an amazing job. We were working with them, I think, for three years now, and it's really gone well. But if it had just been me, I probably would have chickened out and said, Oh, I don't know if we're ready, or I would have self-sabotage. So it's kind of, you know, uh, yeah, you have now I have a very confident team and I can just leverage them at times to go, you have no shame. Like, you, you know, go up here and you know, do have the sales call and do that kind of stuff. Me personally, some of I've always been quite stubborn, especially when I was younger. I always thought I had all the answers. I remember like my dad would tell me things that I like. I always have that analogy of like, I had to be that kid that would have to hit their head on the brick wall a few times, even though everybody's saying don't do that, it's gonna hurt for me to internalize that, right? Not everybody's like that. And so the the toughest lessons, the one that I most take to heart, often have a direct correlation with being the most painful one, right? You know, going losing a business, you know, doing, you know, losing a key employee that really, you know, uh hurts you because maybe you didn't create a place for them where they could feel like they could advance. All of those kinds of things, you know, as a as a really entrepreneur in any kind of business, when you have a team, uh, you're you're you're learning, right? The I think the myth of the CEO that knows everything is is a myth. And so it's just a matter of knowing and again doing that same self-assessment and saying, what do I know? What am I good at, and what are my weak spots? And then uh, for example, I'm not the most organized person in the world, but I've surrounded myself with super process-driven, organized people. And you know, they like I had I had my assistant earlier today research the one article that you were asking her because, like, I don't remember this, where is this coming from? She's like, Yeah, I don't know if this is the right one, but this is like a 15-year-old thing you did on Smart Hustle. I was like, oh wow, it's like blast from the past. It was kind of fun that it's still around and exists, and they and I'm also impressed that you actually unearthed it. So um that's that's pretty cool. But but it would have taken me quite a while to find that and even think about it. Whereas, you know, she got it to me within like five minutes, and I was like, thank you, make my job so much easier.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:12

I'm just interested. Yeah, so you were saying about that kind of like you said, the kind of imposter syndrome or the insecurities we have that might make it possible for us to like not kind of step up to something that we're we're almost always capable of doing, but it it's irrelevant, right? If we we have that self-doubt. And you sort of said about you surround yourself with a team that kind of like it's not that you've necessarily eradicated that from yourself, it's just you're smart enough to know, hey, I'm gonna sort of trust these other people, and it's almost like believe in the version of them that believes in you, yes, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:44

Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's funny. I mean, when I first started, and then I I touched on this earlier, you know, I had my hands in everything, right? And so like my identity was really, really wrapped up, you know, when a client, you know, would fire us or something like that, you know, early days. That was like a that was a deep, that was like a personal failure to me, right? Like I felt like I and then I kind of understood over time, no, that's part of the natural like agency life cycle. And so I've gotten much better about it. Um, but I was never really good at being that person. It seems like an oxymoron being in PR and showing people games. But like if I didn't feel like I had something of value to share, I would be super, super shy and nervous about uh, you know, giving because I was just like, I'm gonna bore people. Like everybody knows this. And it's only really been the last couple of years. If I've done more speaking things, doing things like this, like two years ago, I would not have done this, I would have been terrified. And uh um, but when I get feedback from other people, you're gonna like, oh wow, I learned a lot. And I was like, I'm always like internally, like, really, you did? Like, did I say anything brilliant, helpful, or insightful? Right? I always feel like this like, doesn't everybody know that? And then I realize I have I have learned something. Things over 30 years. So, you know, that's that's that's how my uh imposter syndrome manifests itself. Um, but I have a couple like our sales guy, he's fearless. Like he I bring him to an event, I send him to an event by himself, and he will be best friends with everybody at the event, you know, know their personal story, know what game they're working on, all of that stuff. It's like I I like to socialize and network, but I'm not at that level, right? I'm like, oh, this is a big shot, and you know, I don't want to say anything stupid, so maybe that's just not approach him, right? And and have other team members that are like, I'm fearless, I'm a fan, or I, you know, I really like what doing. I've done my research and I can talk intelligently to them, and they just go out and have those conversations, right? And then once they're once they're in the boat, it's a little bit easier. I can help with the you know, navigating the sails and stuff, but I don't have to break the ice initially, right? So it goes back to playing to your strength, right, and your comfort. But I will also say one of the biggest things that you you uh touched on is, you know, we're all afraid of change, right? We're all afraid of embarrassing ourselves, of failure or whatever. And those times where I've said, screw it, I'm just gonna figure it out, have been some of the most rewarding and helpful things. And the other nice thing about that is if you continually, this is a little bit like uh ice plunging, uh, you know, whereas when you first started, it's like the most god-awful, miserable experience. Your body is just like shutting down once they get out of there. But as you do it over time, you realize you've built up some resilience. And and you know, you're not as afraid the next time when something is outside your comfort zone because you know there's that risk of reward, right? If you actually pull it off, it's it's pretty exciting and pretty rewarding. Um, and so I think that's a that's a big factor too, is just to kind of like uh, you know, unlock yourself and unlock people that work for you, right? To go, hey, this might not be something that you feel like you can do, but trust me, I faked it till I made it a lot in the early days when it was just me or me and one other person, right? Now we have a whole team. We actually have these capabilities, like we can actually deliver. We have enough proof in our case studies and looking back over history and client feedback that we know we really are very good at what we do. And that also helps give you that mojo, right? Because you can kind of validate that it's not just you thinking your stuff is amazing, you know, other people are telling you, wow, this was a really great experience or whatever. And uh yeah, so you know, don't lose the humility, but still um also push yourself a little bit beyond what what's comfortable. Otherwise, how are you gonna learn anything? Like, why even live?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:37

That that's uh and it's something it makes you think about even the outreach I've been doing about this project because it was like you know, that was kind of a uh what felt like a brave step for me, and you know, without like oversharing, but it's kind of like doing an outreach asking you know such an uh impertinent question of someone, you know, to give give them your time. Like I came off the back of sending sending like the outreach to you or whoever, like feeling like like bad was the way I felt, as if like I put myself at risk of of of you know being pushed back on, or like yeah, the literal, you know, the and and the response has just been like the worst possible response is just like I don't hear anything, and that and that and that's it, right? And that's not that's fine. But for some reason my head tells me it's like, oh, I'm gonna get, you know, I'm gonna they're gonna tell me off.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:23

Listen, that's the hardest part like about any kind of sales, you know, and this that is, you know, in a in a way a sales conversation, right? Is just to get over that initial rejection and not take it personally, and and you know, bundling that with, you know, you have your you know, your previous work, your previous experience, you know what you're capable of. Um, and and so I think it's a great thing to position that. I know when you reached out to me, um I don't know if you'd reached out to a couple other people on the team too, but um we definitely had an internal discussion or conversation about you know which of our clients might be a good fit in a, you know, might want to, you know, for hire documentary done or something like that, right? We've worked on uh we worked on one documentary a few years ago um that was all about like the Mortal Kombat series and how that was founded and also the early days of of Midway games and uh um uh and that was a really, really cool project to work on. We'd never done a film before, but because it touched on video games, video game history, nostalgia, and other forms of entertainment, it was something we actually figured out and were able to do really well with it. So it's uh I think I think that's cool. And and I certainly will also think a little bit more about like, you know, who else might be a good contact. Larry was just uh like automatic for me. I'm like, yeah, Larry can talk to anybody and sell them, you know, sell the sell, you know, uh uh swampland in Florida. And um, but um there are other people too that you know have really deep, long-standing experience that I think you might enjoy talking to, and that um uh just one I'll mention here real quick, uh, and I'll send you the I'll connect you guys if you're interested. Her name is Alyssa Wallace. She used to be uh on the board of advisors for Atari. She runs the IGDA foundation, different from like a sister org to the IGDA. And she now works, and I the name escapes me, but she now actually is a but she was a CEO at Midwest Games for a while. Now she's then in a brand new publisher and uh also in an operations role. She's just very knowledgeable and very down-to-earth. Um, she's also done some acting, so she's uh um she's she's quite good with the camera and doesn't get nervous.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:37

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would absolutely love to love to speak with her and again anyone else that's right. I mean, I just adore these conversations. And I think it's it's why I was interested in that. Well, I have a 15-year-old quote, because I think for me I've made a decision not to make too much about me, but it around I'm just gonna really refine.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:55

You know, some people played safe their whole time, whole life, right? You know, I have a few friends of mine that, you know, are really, really good at what they do, um, and talk to me about like starting their own business, but then they never quite do it, right? They just move on to another corporate job and maybe move up the ladder or whatever. And I'm like, I I can't help but feel like you know, they don't have some modicum of record regret in the back of their mind that they never went out and took control of their own destiny. And um, that that's what excites me is that it's scary. Is it scary? Absolutely, right? Doing something new is scary, putting all your eggs in one basket, you know, being being dependent entirely on your success and whether you say the right things or the wrong things. Um, that's very, very scary. But it's also like if if if you can do it, it's so exciting and so rewarding, right? Beats beats working for somebody else and being up there wins and mercies. So that's yeah. So applaud you for going out and doing something new and different.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:55

Yeah, we can end on that on a nice sort of bolster for me, just like it's always nice, got a little bit of positive affirmation other than from my work. Absolutely. Um, you know, and actually just an old and you know, because you said my I'm married to a CEO as well, and so she um you know, I get to see her like kicking ass on the stage, and then I see her in her pajamas with a cup of tea in bed, like completely like, did I say the right thing? You know, and it's uh it's it's it's you get to see all the shades of um of of someone.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:25

Right, yeah, you get that inside perspective that most people don't ever get to see, right? So it's uh yeah, it's it's uh uh and and and and uh my uh my wife actually works in our company as well. She's our CEO and CMO. And so um that's always an interesting, like sometimes it's super easy and great, other times it's like so difficult, right? Because uh uh so um you know anybody I think who either can work with their spouse in that kind of situation or even just you know observe and process and internalize that. And I imagine her kind of being able to overcome, you know, her her little worry about is she gonna say the right things or whatever, probably gave you a little bit of ammo and feel. One, if she's successful, like there's slightly less rest because you know you can diversify the risk. But yes, if she can do it, so can you, right? Even if it's a different thing, right? You know, you just just flex outside your comfort zone a little bit. But uh, the other offer I wanted to make to you was if you um would like go through my LinkedIn network. And if there's anybody there that I have a first, I might have to look them up because some people I was like, I met so long ago, I gotta see where were they at the time. But if there are some people that uh you would like an introduction to, I will definitely do that and do that very easily for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:46

That'll be I would definitely absolutely take you up on that also.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:50

Perfect, perfect. And it's perfect timing because I think I got a lawn care guy who just showed up, and my dogs are going crazy now. Really appreciate it.