Mitch: 0:05 Welcome to Layer’s Licensing In Games Podcast. Pleased to be joined again today by Rachit. And my name is Mitch. Hello Rachit!
Rachit: 0:15 Hey [unclear 0:17] Mitch?
Mitch: 0:18 Good. Little bit rusty after a few days off, but pleased to be here and up and about. So today very pleased to be joined by Hubert Marczak. Hopefully I pronounced that right. I am getting better at pronouncing I guess, our guest’s surnames. From Techland, the developer and now the publisher of the Action RPG survival horror series, Dying Light. First released in 2015. First version of Dying Light, which was played by over 20 million fans all over the world. Since then, Dying Light has released many DLCs and collaborated with several well-known IPs, including The Walking Dead. And even gaming IPs like, Payday. So welcome Hubert. I [unclear 1:05] with you.
Hubert: 1:07 Hello, guys. Hello, everyone. It’s really nice to be here.
Mitch: 1:12 Thanks. Thanks for joining us. So first of all, could you just tell us a bit about Techland and Dying Light? And what’s your role over there at Techland?
Hubert: 1:23 Yeah. So, when it comes to me, I am a Techland for over seven years, though, right now. The whole time I have been taking care of different stuff in business development team. Firstly, I was specializing sales. Currently, I am more focusing on partnerships, licensing cooperations, but also technological partnerships and things like that. As Techland, we are thirty years old company now. I think even first one, I guess if I am wrong. Yes, starting it all humble in Polish market, as every company, there’s always this cool story behind that with selling some “Not so legal” software. But back then it was, you know, in the Polish environment, there was no law or audit. So in all good, when companies started everyone was doing that [unclear 2:21] for CD Project. Although eventually growing and growing, from creating also educational software for learning English, [unclear 2:31] and stuff like that. Going through first video games, eventually developing a publishing Dying Light too. So, now we are here.
Mitch: 2:44 Awesome. So famous pirate Hubert Marczak should have been the…
Hubert: 2:52 I have hear would be really, really awful to say I been there, I have been at the start. But to be honest, I was playing with toys. I thought it was still very, very small.
Mitch: 3:05 It’s crazy. I can’t believe Techland’s thirty-one years old. I guess it was like, just in various iterations of a game developer right? Just doing things with software, maybe not so legal things. But that’s cool. That’s crazy to hear. So Dying Light, like the first Dying Light released all the way back in 2015, which feels like a long time ago now. But when you started to do collaborations with other IPs, whether it was like The Walking Dead or Payday, when did you make that decision that you wanted to start doing these collaborations? And what was the catalyst?
Hubert: 3:46 Yeah! So, we actually started with Dying Light-1. So we did a few collaborations with titles like, left for that. We did something with Rust from French Facepunch Studio. We did something with [unclear 4:02]. We had quite a few of them. They were like a smaller collaboration. The idea from them, I guess it came from us being gamers and being excited, passionate about games. And you know, we all play different stuff. And while we work, we talk about ideas, what we can do. We say, Hey! It would be cool to have something from these guys in our game. Just, kind of a tribute to that game that we really like. And one thing led from another. And then I believe we started with our first collaboration, which I believe was left for that. But I might be wrong here. And then we just realized, Okay! Our fans are really enjoying it. It keeps them enjoying the game. It keeps them coming back to the game. They keep looking for new content. So we quickly realize, this is the way to keep our game content fresh and interesting for a lot of players. And Let’s not lie to ourselves. People do like crossovers and collaborations like that. We can see that in every genre of media and entertainment and movies, music, video games are a lot different. So we like to do it.
Mitch: 5:21 That was quite an organic way to get started, right? Like, just doing it because you love it and you think your fans will love it as well. That’s really cool.
Rachit: 5:30 While we are here, before we jump into like the specifics around I went to just for our listeners, can we get a quick recap on Dying Light-I versus II? Is it a sequel? Is it a new game? Like, tell us about Dying Light-II and also when did it come out?
Hubert: 5:45 So Dying Light-Il came out almost two years ago. So we will have our second anniversary this February. February 4th, exactly. And we of course, prepared bounce of surprises and some additional comes up because of that occasion. So for our fans out there, stay tuned. So the Dying Light-II is a sequel to Dying Light-I. It is not a direct sequel. It doesn’t pick up where like light one and it is happening twenty years after what was going on in Dying Light-I. So as we can remember in the Dying Light-I, this is like the origin story of the Harran virus. How it all started and where all the infected came from. Dying Light-II hoppers twenty years later. So the virus is much more developed. The cities themselves are much more overgrown with trees, grass everywhere, because you can see it in aesthetics of second game that the [unclear 6:54] has been there for a while. People had to move out from the streets. They moved to the higher positions in a city. So, they do live on the rooftops or in special areas where they use UV light to stay protected. And yeah, we tell a story of our different protagonist. So in first one we have Kyle Crane and his story. And second one, it’s Aiden, separate story, a bit different one. But of course, there are some nods and blinks to the files of the first one. You can feel this playing Dying Light, Okay! This is the say world. There are below locked. There are things that remind you of what happened in Dying Light-I. There mentions. People that used to be there. You can meet some of them. You can talk to them. So I think there is a bunch of really nice [unclear 7:52] eggs for files of Dying Light-I in Dying Light-II.
Mitch: 7:57 Yeah, cool. And you did your first collaboration... Was it the first collaboration in Dying Light-II earlier this year with The Walking Dead?
Hubert: 8:08 Yes. So The Walking Dead was our first with Dying Light-II.
Mitch: 8:11 Yeah! So, you could get the Rick Grimes, like Sheriff outfit and some distinct weapons and a few other things. Obviously, it makes sense. It’s kind of the zombie thematic overlap. But how did that come about? How did you think that you wanted to collaborate with The Walking Dead?
Hubert: 8:33 Yeah. So we actually spent a bit of time you know, finding off. If we want to kick out this crossovers started happening, we really would like to start with something really big, really nice. And The Walking Dead was our very natural first choice. And we were really all excited about, “Hey! Let’s try to reach those guys. Let’s try to make it happen.” Of course, at the phase of the idea, we have no idea if they gotta be interested. Maybe they will just tell us, “Go away. We are not interested.” Then we will probably have to figure about other plans. But yeah, to be honest, we were really focusing. We really wanted to bring it on board. So being having such a big zombie franchise, zombie [unclear 9:24] franchise as The Walking Dead. In our world it’s nothing but [unclear 9:29] for us. And you know, we have tons of files of COVID books and serious in companies. So it was a very nice project for everyone to work on. So yeah, we are really happy with it.
Mitch: 9:43 So it’s more about like, Yes. It fits into the universe and the theme of the game. But also about finding like a really big IP that you knew would resonate with all of your players. Like, that was the reason that you went for The Walking Dead?
Hubert: 9:59 Yeah, exactly. But we want to have interest in the collaboration, not only from our players, but only internally from people that will work on the collaboration. Because then we know that they can bring something of value. If they are excited to work on it, you can be sure they will deliver the highest quality installer and whatever you want. So apart from only the cosmetic DLCs, we decided to also make in-game event for that. So we did this really cool thing, where we took seven original “The Walking Dead” comic book covers. The one that you can actually buy The Walking Dead. We took them. We hired the famous Polish comic book artists. And she re-withdrawal the covers with our characters in it. So we did this collectibles, The Walking Dead/ Dying Light-II comic book series, which was a really nice, cool thing. We all had a lot of fun working on.
Mitch: 11:12 Yeah. And that’s probably like, it’s something that I have actually heard from a few studios that are doing collaborations where, like, Yes, it’s good to make sure there’s an overlap with your audience and what your players want. But if you can’t, internally get really excited about the IP, then there’s no way that you will make something valuable. So The Walking Dead has heaps of IP in circulation, right? Like comics, TV series, collaborations in games? Was that a big part that of how you are able to find a way to have a fresh take on the IP, making sure that your team internally was really excited about it?
Hubert: 11:58 Correct. Yes. So again, if you have people excited about idea, the outcome itself gonna be much better than if you force something upon them. Let’s say we take the random “X” IP, that maybe is famous out there and it’s very huge IP. But people are not really passionate. It doesn’t feed our game. We can do it but no one will really… You will didn’t see a heart put into this as opposed to The Walking dead collaboration, that others we did and others that plan. So I am not saying... Yep? Yeah?
Rachit: 12:40 Other than that pitching process work, although on the creative side? Was it you just talk it to the team and you said, “Hey! We have an opportunity to work with The Walking Dead. What ideas do you have?” How did you... I guess, there’s so much you can do, right? And so, how do you start with coming up with the right ideas? And then did you just pitch them back to The Walking Dead team?
Hubert: 12:59 So basically what we do regularly, we sit down with people from different departments, with our franchise, the director, and some designers. We just drove ideas. We have an Excel Sheet, we just put the names, we put IPs. And say, “Hey! That would be called. Figure about this. Blah, blah, blah. This idea having that, that and that. Okay, we like it.” So, if we see that, that it resonates, it makes to top of lists. At some point, we have a list that, Okay! Those are the IPs we want to work with. So then it’s my job. I need to get in contact with the IP holders. Make them interested, ideally to get them on the first call. If I managed to do that. For this first call, we prepare one or two pager with very general outline of, “Hey! This is our idea. That’s how we believe it will look cool. It will be fun for both our files and your files.” That’s how we would like to present. “Are you on board? What we can do to make it happen?” And then eventually though, if we get this initial interest from the partner, that’s when we start talking more on the business side. And we start also working on the proper design document, corporate with partner. Because, whatever we cooperating with IPs, it’s also very important for us that the IP itself is being treated with the respect. So, we need to be sure with partner that they are okay that whatever we do is respectful towards the IP. We don’t do some goofy stuff, “You don’t know.” So yeah.
Rachit: 14:47 Cool. We would love to go from that one, I guess. Like, that process around picking an IP and what resonated both in the team and in the audience. Could you tell us about how you chose Payday-II? And if I am right, that was just before the Payday-III launches. Is that right? And how did you make the leap to sit out like, this makes sense for our gamer, our audience? Or was it for the fact that they will also in a release process as well? What were the considerations?
Hubert: 15:17 Yeah. So for Payday, as mentioned before, if we like something and people inside like it. We pitch it to do internally. And we say, “Hey! That’s right. That’s a good fit.” For Payday, we believe that it’s a good fit because Dying Light both first and second, they are very fun called not only single player experience. But we will call that’s where you can have hundreds of hours with your bodies and laugh, have fun. Payday’s strictly called for game. And we actually were playing internally with some of the guys and we felt, “Hey! There’s a lot in common.” Of course, those are two different kind of games. But the level of cooperation between players, what you can do together to achieve some goals, was high. That’s something that actually fits. We decided, why not? So we reached out to our friends from Starbreeze. And actually, they liked the idea. So yeah, we decided to do it. And we are really happy.
Rachit: 15:31 It’s really nice. It was like very organic. Like, if you are genuinely playing that game as a team internally and then it’s caught up, you can take that mechanic or that playstyle and run with it. I guess the follow up question is, do you believe that Cymatics, it doesn’t always have to be the thing that you look for? Like, you can kind of expand out of that. And your players are happy to suspend the belief around your narrative and be like, “Well, it’s fun if that comes out.” And people know that this is an environment where you can test the limits a bit more. I think even in the classic fortnight case, there’s just so much happening in there where the world is kind of, whatever you want it to be. Do you think that’s the way for developers to think about that audiences know?
Hubert: 17:11 So in general, I would say, years ago, we were very [unclear 17:21]. Everything needs to fit the mold, fit the infected [unclear 17:26]. The world does not like that. So even for collaborations, at the beginning it was like, of course, The Walking Dead is a perfect fit by the law. What about the Payday? Or what about Vampire: The Masquerade, that we just did? And for all our viewers that is coming out next week is like, you know. But eventually what we decided is, what counts most for our files is to have fun in the game. So, for the single player experience for the story that our game offers, we are all about, being involved in it, being grasped by the story. Everything should be you know, gets you in the mode of this infected world. What those collaborations are more aimed for, like an end gain, whilst you are [unclear 18:15] with the main story. We have a huge city that you can play with, and you can run around and have fun, kill zombies, do some quests and stuff like that. So those crossovers are aimed mainly at those players that are having [unclear 18:36]. They play with cops. So they will to have... You know, wild friend can play as regrind, second one can play as a Banu Haqim from Vampire: The Masquerade. The [unclear 18:48] from the four other. And we actually believe we can... Of course, we won’t be able to explain lore-wise. Why the four other characters are here?
Rachit: 19:02 Sure.
Hubert: 19:04 But we decided that in all four, this M-game part of game when it’s a three-year-old. It’s an opera war activity. Is it really that important? Is it really that important to tie [unclear 19:15] with a story or just give people the opportunity to have [unclear 19:22] on their own? Of course, we try to do something, with four other coming up next week actually from this recording. There is something that we brought from the Ubisoft game, that brings those warriors in our world. Obviously, there won’t be a very elaborate explanation, “Oh! The virus did something that brought them here.” Now it starts, we don’t want to be a very drastic cut. But at the same time, we are not sweating to make it as believable as possible. But there will always be like that. It’s something to have fun.
Mitch: 20:01 Yeah, right. It sounds like a very simple but very logical way to evaluate the type of IP that you want to work with. It’s like, will our players have fun with this? So, in an open world setting as well, like you said, where there’s not a narrative. It’s probably a lot easier to just integrate different types of IPs as well that your play is familiar with. And they may want to play with. That kind of answers the next question I was going to have around. Like, you don’t really feel limited by the different types of IPs that you can collaborate with? How does your team... What’s the process for creatively thinking how you can weave these IPs into the world then? Because, even if it is just about having fun, sometimes you can’t necessarily just dump the IP even into an open world setting. So how do you go about that?
Hubert: 21:03 Yeah. So as I said, usually, it’s a bunch of people brainstorming initial ideas. But then, while something is more solid, it’s actual game designers. The people that really know what they are doing. They know our game limitations. They know our aging limitations. Because, sometimes we can have this best idea in the world. But you know it’s crazy difficult from technical point of view to pull off. For example: I don’t know, we don’t have cars in our game. “Well, let’s do further collaboration between cars. Oh! Yeah! Great idea. Let’s rewrite whole code for the game. Let’s make it happen.” That’s not something that’s happening. So yeah, there are ideas that designers are working. Eventually, all that goes to our franchisee director, Tylon. He’s the final voice saying, “Okay, I like it. Okay, change something here.” Or, “I don’t like it at all.” There are some examples of IPs that we initially thought, “Okay, that could really work.” Let’s do some ideas. But when we got to the drawing board, [unclear 22:20] out that it doesn’t really fit. Like the stuff that we initially thought that could work, they don’t resonate anymore. So we have to drop them. So you know, it’s not that we want to put out whatever we can just put it in the game, put it in the game. No. In a way, it has to make sense. Like, okay, maybe Dying Light, Summarize and Vikings doesn’t make sense to the world. But the melee fight, the brutality, that makes sense. That’s something that works with our game. So there’s always this connecting points that we are looking for.
Rachit: 22:58 Yeah, [unclear 22:59] to it after. Like it’s, can we have fun? Or can players have fun here? We need to be able to make sure that this fits with our game in our playstyle that we can actually make something compelling here. Not just integrate stuff because we want to. How do you think about the value of the APM? Like without giving too much away, do these perform for you? Do you do it more for the reason of attracting new players in? Is it more for the existing? As you said like, players that have had time with the narrative and the campaigns they could have, now engaged in staying around? What are you targeting? What kind of effects are you seeing from actually doing these collab?
Hubert: 23:41 Well, synthesis for us both can get user acquisition is very important for us. Of course, we want to bring as much players as possible to Dying Light-II. And if they see all this kind of collaboration with the IP are titled up, they love about remember try Dying Light. And they say, “Why not? Maybe let’s give it a try.” But a lot less important are the players that we already have, that already bought the game. Because we are really want to keep them engaged, we really want to keep giving content to them that will give them value out of the game they invested in. It is very important for us to support the game to keep bringing new stuff, kind of game as a service approach. Of course, that something comparing to MMOs or something like that. But in a way that, you can keep coming back to this game. You can keep filing new stuff to do every month or so. Similarly, what we did for Dying Light a lot, we released [unclear 24:46] in 2015 [unclear 24:49]. Than we had seven years of support to the game. The game that is primarily a single player experience with call. I think that’s unprecedented and it’s something that we are really proud of. And that’s something that we really want to continue with Dying Light-II as well. So yeah, coming back to your question, user acquisition is very important. But keeping our current players is not listening.
Mitch: 25:19 So I assume it’s working then, given you are investing in a lot of these collaborations at the moment. It sounds like you got a pretty full roadmap. I won’t ask too much about the specifics of how each one is performing but if it’s working, then what advice would you give to other studios who, maybe they don’t have any experience with licensing IP or doing these kinds of short time collaborations? What’s the key pieces of advice that you would give to someone who’s considering working with licensed IP?
Hubert: 26:03 I think the most important part is, look for the things that you believe you will have fun with and your fans will have fun with. And try to play around with the ideas what you can do? Because sometimes the results might be unexpected to you. Something that you might see your IP and say, “It’s not something really that we do. Those things are for foreplay. They are Call of Duty. They can do all the crossovers they weld.” But actually, we believe there is a place for stuff like that in many different titles. So I think the most important part is find IPs that you are passionate about and you will have fun with working on. Then you will see that it comes kind of, naturally. It works out with people that you know both on the business side and on the development side, we work with. Don’t [unclear 26:57] the IPs only because they are either not currently on the number one trending table somewhere. Just because it’s popular. It might be not that great fit for you. And it might not fun to work with. So I would rather say focus on something that you believe you can have fun. And most importantly, your players have fun with.
Mitch: 27:19 Well, yeah. And I think it’s an interesting point as well. Because some of the IPs like obviously The Walking Dead is huge. But Vampire: The Masquerade is not like a huge mainstream IP, right? It seems as though there’s a way to work with smaller IPs that your players might really love or that you really love, that you can create a really good experience out of? That can still be successful, right? That’s to give your players valuable content. It doesn’t always have to be these triple A crossover, the way that Fortnight or Call of Duty do, right?
Hubert: 28:00 Absolutely, absolutely. I will say there is space for every kind of IP. Vampire: The Masquerade as a big table top genre, I would say it’s not really that popular pop culturally similar to The Walking Dead. But it has a really huge fan base of people that are really passionate. And sometimes it’s better to have a hundred times less but very passionate people and fans [unclear 28:34] millions and millions of them that are really low quality. They just could [unclear 28:40] that by the way, they saw it on TV, they know the brand but they are not really into it. So yeah, I think there is definitely space for a smaller IPs for the passionate communities and stuff like that. And we will keep bringing those. So we already have plans for until almost the end of the next year for nice collaboration. So yeah, excited.
Mitch: 29:04 Passionate people stand money. So, good. And they engage with things more completely, more fully. Like it’s not just a surface level engagement, right?
Rachit: 29:20 Yeah. Is there a way that you figure out, like let me see if we love that as a team? We think it works for the game. Like there’s an audience, they are like whether it’s smaller and more engaged, larger but slightly less engaged. Is there something that you do just figure out whether that audience is a good fit? Like, is there a science there or are there certain numbers that you look for whether that’s just like Instagram channels and forum posts? How do you go for that reasoning?
Hubert: 29:51 There’s some number magic behind every collaboration we do. So there are some analytics that our business analytic guys are doing. And we figure out, “Okay! So those are fans of RPGs. This is the age group. This is the gender This is the countries they are in.” Of course, everything fits someone else on a different level. We do that. But this is not our primary deciding factor. So, this is something that we support ourselves in those decisions, what kind of IP we will work with. But it’s not something that, “Oh! It’s number one. This is PNL. That’s why we need to do it because of this PNL. And those numbers…” We don’t believe that will work.
Rachit: 30:44 Yeah.
Hubert: 30:44 We believe that again, doing fun stuff works and pays off in the long run.
Rachit: 30:52 I think it’s almost like you can flip it, right? It’s like, if you found the stuff that you like, you can matter on the numbers. Just to check and to back up our hypothesis. Like yeah, there is actually an audience here and they would like our game style. And you can further strengthen your reasoning. But I think starting on the other end around the collaboration [unclear 31:12], making a fun experience makes a lot of sense. You just mentioned that you are looking at integrations more, next year I think. And I think publicly Techland have committed to supporting Dying Light-II for credit, five years or more as part of post launch. Is that live ops so that content piece core to that? Is that like the player expectation that there will be more collaborations, for however long that game is being supported? Or, is that [unclear 31:42] from just like a support and keeping servers running that type of support?
Hubert: 31:52 I don’t know how exactly to answer, to use the correct phrasing here. But we want to do it similarly to Dying Light-I but better. So we actually want to bring more staff. With Dying Light-II, we already released polls of changes to the game, polls of events. And we still have a lot in our bag plan for together of DLCs and the adult. Another really, really huge things. Crossovers are part of like, trying to keep our game as engaging as possible. Again, I will come back to the things I think I said before. If you come back to the game after a month or two, we want you to find the new stuff. We want there be new things for you to do. We want it to be trusted for you, for you to have a reason to come back and keep playing Dying Light-II. Not treated as a game about. Okay! If I finish the campaign, it goes to the forgotten oil or whatever. Now, whenever you open a steam there should be an identification. Dying Light-II has been updated. There is need for some new cool stuff. Come and check it out. So yeah, I think it ties in, in our plan of keeping the game supported at the level of game as a service game. While it’s not likes, by definition games as the service.
Rachit: 33:16 Yeah, totally. Adds up much more player value to, right? I think I am thinking about when I used to play bigger games. Like you would just have the experience that it would be like, sit in a drawer and you might play it for nostalgic purposes later. But I think this move to games being, forever games, like actually being able to tap back into. Like, what’s changed since last month? And it’s episodic content always, right? Similar to how we consume other media. Like really being able to stay engaged with that community and that gameplay. And see, what are they really since and what are they added to the story is really fascinating. So that’s really cool to hear.
Mitch: 33:16 So just to wrap up then, what’s next for Dying Light-II? What’s coming up over the next year or two?
Hubert: 34:09 And this is the tough part for me. And we have really huge plans that I am aware of...
Mitch: 34:17 ...“But I can’t talk about” Yeah, yeah.
Hubert: 34:20 I would be, the PR’s SWAT team will be here in no time. A while that I can reveal that we have really some nice plans. We keep hearing our fans. We keep hearing our players. We release the guilt game but we are aware that there are things that our players wanted us to change, to fix that maybe are not our strongest sides. We shared that. We are working on that and we are committed to change it. And to [unclear 34:55] Dying Light to the ultimate zombie experience and stay tuned.
Rachit: 35:01 So, we found that your big fans are clearly approaching the space. So really excited to see…
Hubert: 35:01 Obviously. More new crossovers coming next year. Some of them, I would say, at first that was unexpected. But trust me, I will be able to give a reasoning for each of them.
Rachit: 35:21 Maybe we will have to do another episode and recap those next years.
Mitch: 35:25 Yeah.
Hubert: 35:25 Exactly. Yeah. It would be cool to look at the past and what actually happened. And then just…
Mitch: 35:33 Look forward to recapping the Barbie collaboration next year.
Hubert: 35:40 All right. Made [unclear 35:40] We talked before podcast. It is not supposed to say.
Mitch: 35:47 Awesome.
Hubert: 35:48 I would lie. If I told you within that consider.
Mitch: 35:52 I think everyone would have considered [unclear 35:55] earlier this year. Right? Maybe Oppenheimer would have been the cool attire, right? The nuclear [unclear 36:04] and maybe could have been something you…
Hubert: 36:07 I don’t know anything. I am not answering anything without...
Mitch: 36:12 Okay. I don’t know if you can plead the fifth in Poland. But yeah. We will do that. Okay, cool. Well, thanks for coming on Hubert. Really appreciated. For really interesting insights. And thanks for your time.
Hubert: 36:25 Thanks for having me guys. Much appreciated. Thank you. Bye.
