Strike up the brand
MWM Interactive takes a modern approach to indie publishing
Earlier this year, Tinybuild CEO Alex Nichiporchik made an assertion: “Indie publishing is dead.” Currently, the Hello Neighbor franchise co-founder pointed out, the videogame market is saturated with mid-size publishers. Those who do find success manage to trade in not just games, but their very identities – think the punk posturing of Devolver Digital, or the arthouse stylings of Annapurna Interactive. “Instead of focusing on one-off publishing deals,” Nichiporchik suggested, “it’s better to build strong and entertaining brands.”
Enter MWM Interactive, a new arm of entertainment company Madison Wells Media, that’s looking to make a name for itself by doing just that. MWM’s film division is notable for producing pictures such as Nicholas Winding Refn’s neon-spiked noir Drive, as well as 21 Bridges, which stars the late Chadwick Boseman. Not so long ago, it began exploring the possibilities of virtual reality for interactive entertainment, which is how MWMi’s executive VP of content Ethan Stearns – who had experience with this in his previous role at Legendary Pictures – came to join the company. “They’d started doing some projects based on Sony Pictures IP – they were producing them and financing them, but they didn’t really know what else to do,” Stearns tells us. “Like, they weren’t sure what their role was in it. So I came in at first mostly as a producer, but then looking forward down the road. ‘Okay, well, what are we building? Why are we doing this long term – other than these projects, which are super cool, what are we? What are we trying to be?’ The company, philosophically, is interested in storytelling, but I think more than just storytelling – finding unique voices, and bringing artistically unique content into the mainstream entertainment world.”
He figured if he was going to build anything at MWM, it should be a publisher – and move beyond the VR space. “They were surprised that I made the argument that VR is games: how they’re distributed, the hardware that they’re using, the consumers who buy the VR content are gamers. So my pitch internally was: ‘Let’s expand out of VR, because having a publisher solely focused on VR at this time doesn’t make sense.’”
Devolver, Double Fine, Raw Fury and of course fellow film studio offshoot Annapurna Interactive were all touchstones when Stearns looked to shape MWMi, and define its identity as a publisher in an era where such a thing is often crucial to success. “In a time where it’s very hard to find games in a congested marketplace,” he says, “the hope is that we can foster a community around the games that we’re making, and around the brand ideals that we have, that help move audiences from game to game.
“When you’re doing more artistically obtuse games, I think it can be hard to earn the trust of the gamer,” he continues. “And so I think having a brand coming from a place of quality is super important in earning that trust.” MWMi’s forthcoming lineup is promising in that regard: both games pictures on the opposite page, Maskmaker, a VR story from the creators of A Fisherman’s Tale, and Mundaun,a hand-drawn 3D horror adventure, are unusual concepts executed with expertise. The future-looking signings are significant, too: Oxenfree developer Night School Studio will release its next game under the MWMi label, as will the amusingly similarly-named Flight School Studio, which previously worked with MWMi on Creature In The Well.
What the lineup doesn’t do just yet is paint an especially distinct picture of what MWMi’s viewpoint as a publisher is. Stearns tells us he believes the way to build a new publisher’s identity is to allow the games it’s making to inform its growth, in a “chicken or the egg”-esque scenario. “We’re reaching out to find the games that are, to us, furthering the evolution of storytelling in games.” He pauses. “We’re so young, so it’s hard for me to say, ‘this is who we are.’ Because it feels like I’m puffing up my chest and saying something that I haven’t proven yet. But looking at those comparable groups out there – I think Annapurna is a super-refined, very high-art company with the stuff that they make. I think that we are a little bit more approachable – I hope.”
Accessibility informs MWMi’s scouting process (a holdover, it seems, from their VR history, a platform that people less familiar with games find fairly natural to use). “That means different things to different people. But what it means to me is, like, Gigi [Pritzker], who’s our CEO, she doesn’t play games,” Stearns says. “If you hand a game controller to somebody, they’re like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this’ – mouse and keyboard is even worse. And that sucks. People can go sit in a movie theatre and like, receive a movie, but Gigi can’t just jump in and play a game. There’s something interesting about games that can be conceptually deep, but on the surface are very approachable. So that’s another thing that we’re looking at – trying to find games that can bring in new audiences.”
“When you’re doing artistically obtuse games, I think it can be hard to earn the trust of the gamer”