Compulsion Games boss tells Brazilian devs to bake discoverability into the bedrock of their games

Compulsion Games founder Guillaume Provost says Brazil is a frontrunner among the emerging markets in the game industry, but feels developers in the region must focus on discoverability in order to continue building momentum.

Provost has overseen We Happy Few and South of Midnight developer Compulsion since it started out as an indie studio in 2009. A lot has changed since then, with the Montreal-based studio joining the Xbox Game Studios roster in 2018 after being acquired by Microsoft.

The industry veteran—who also had a stint as an advisor at global content fund Kowloon Nights—has plenty of experience in charting the high seas of the video game industry, and speaking to Game Developer at Gamescom Latam had some wise words for his peers in Brazil.

Provost said Brazil reminds him of Montreal two decades ago because there’s a litany of independent studios that are learning from each other and collaborating to push the entire region forward. He also claimed the country is still “yearning” for an anchor in the form of a large employer that can help spread expertise through the area.

The challenges facing devs in the region, however, are slightly different from the ones encountered by Provost when he was kickstarting Compulsion in Canada.

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“When I started in 2009 the biggest problem was getting on shelves in Walmart. Steam was not a thing. Today, the largest issue we have in the independent and smaller market is discoverability on all the storefronts,” he says. “The biggest feedback I’d have for anyone who is in the sub $10 million budget with a team of fewer than 40 employees is really honing in on what makes your game stand apart and how it’s going to punch through the noise barrier.”

He said companies of that scale generally have the means to attend events like PAX and Gamescom, where they might cross paths with journalists, but feels those meetings generally aren’t enough to “garner sufficient attention unless you have a story you can tell that’s easily digested.”

As for how smaller studios in Brazil can become more visible, Provost explained it’s crucial to understand the kind of audience you want to attract and cater to them from the outset.

“We concentrate internally on creating really great assets,” he added, explaining how Compulsion tackles that challenge. “We build all of our trailers internally, for example. We make that part of our pre-production pipeline. Understanding when we start a project what’s going to make the game special, how we’re going to build it, why do we think it’s different, and how we’re going to sell it [is vital].”

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“To give you a concrete example, for some of our [South of Midnight] trailers we built the narrative of a cutscene knowing it was going to be a part of the trailer as a result of our understanding of how we were going to market the game as we were building it. We weren’t trying to figure it out at the end.”

By answering the ‘audience’ question during pre-production, Compulsion is able to embed marketing into the very fabric of the game. How other devs approach the same task will vary, but the point remains: understand your audience and be intentional from the outset about how you’re going to find them.

Game Developer was invited to Gamescom Latam by event partner Abragames, which covered flights and accommodation.