IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Interview: EA Partners Goes Digital With Hothead and Klei

Posted March 4, 2010 by James Brightman

One of the nice things about digital distribution is it provides indie developers an avenue to bring their titles to market without the need for retail or even a publisher. So playing “devil's advocate,” we asked Moledina and Klei CEO Jamie Cheng why EA Partners is even necessary for publishing on services like XBLA or PSN. 

“We've been doing digital since 2005 and have done the whole self-publishing thing multiple times. And it works really well. In fact, Shank was completely self-funded and digital distribution allowed us to do that. ... But at the same time, I think there still is a limited audience when you're self-publishing and you're a small developer,” noted Cheng. “We actually did have trouble reaching a large audience with a game like Eets... so partnering with someone like EA Partners who recognize what our vision is for the game and allows us to execute on that [is great since they have] a lot of muscle and expertise in reaching a large audience. I think it's the best of both worlds, where we always talk about creating the best games and we're partnering with the best distributors.”

Check out the wonderful art style of Shank

In the press release, Ian Wilkinson, CEO of Hothead Games added, “We are proud of our independence, but are very excited to be working with EA Partners on a title as big as DeathSpank. With EA Partners handling distribution and marketing, Hothead can continue to focus on what we do best, making great games.”

Moledina told us, “EA Partners offers a wide range of services, from marketing to production to QA, and of course funding, which is probably the core reason publishers came into existence. You're correct in saying that the digital distribution models are easier to reach than a Walmart, for example. However, there's also value in being able to multiplatform and manage the discussion at that level and enable launches across a variety of platforms. So we're finding that in creating this program for us to publish indie games on XBLA and PSN, we actually talked to a lot of developers and asked them what they'd like to see in a publisher. ... It's more about what they need than what EA wants to provide. In looking at what's needed that's what we adapted our services to.”

It's definitely interesting to see EA Partners tackling the digital publishing sector now, and it made us wonder if EAP might be tapped to further leverage Facebook, which EA now has a keen focus on, thanks to the Playfish purchase. Developers like Klei or Hothead might be a good fit for EA to publish on Facebook, but Moledina wasn't ready to show his hand on possible future plans. “Those options are very interesting to us,” he admitted, “and our acquisition of Playfish has helped jumpstart our thinking and capability in doing things like that. However, at this time we're just talking about this particular deal and don't have more to say on that topic.”

James Brightman has been covering the games industry since 2003 and has been an avid gamer ever since the days of Atari and Intellivision. He was previously the EIC of GameDaily Biz.