Ustwo Games CEO Maria Sayans says lowering development costs and recruiting more contractors will be fundamental to ensuring the Monument Valley developer can thrive as a PC-first studio.
Speaking to Game Developer at London Games Fest a few months after the company said it would be pivoting away from mobile because the platform no longer offers a ‘solid base to build a long-term business around,” Sayans explains that call was made following a strategic review shortly before Netflix ditched Monument Valley 3.
It was a decision that forced Ustwo to bring the title to other platforms without publishing support from the streamer, and Sayans says it was already becoming clear that a lot of the deals that had allowed the studio to launch titles on mobile with backing from major companies like Netflix and Apple before targeting other platforms were no longer materializing.
As a result, Sayans explains Ustwo has now decided to really lean into what makes it unique by crafting “meaningful single player experiences” for PC and consoles. The company has already ported a number of its releases—such as Monument Valley, Alba; A Wildlife Adventure, and Assemble with Care— to platforms including Steam and Nintendo Switch.
According to Sayans, those ports didn’t do “crazy numbers” but still managed to shift hundreds of thousands of units. It’s a return she describes as a “decent.”
Part of the problem is that producing those titles was not inexpensive. It’s something Sayans explains must be addressed if Ustwo is going to become sustainable as it moves into the future.
“[With the ports], we learned this audience does exist on PC ands console. We also looked at the Monument Valley IP and explored ‘okay, could this IP come to PC and console? What would that look like?,” continues Sayans.
“[…] We saw a lot of potential for the Monument Valley IP to be maybe reset and reinvented for PC and consoles, but what became clear was that our development budgets were too high for us to achieve a safer break even if we were aiming for PC and console.”
When asked what sort of budgets Ustwo had previously been dealing with, Sayans reveals the studio has been making titles that cost between £7 million to £10 million with production cycles of between three to four years.
“We need to lower that,” adds Sayans, who acknowledges that an established franchise like Monument Valley is probably capable of carrying more financial risk compared to something more experimental or unproven.
“For example, if we did something like Alba or Assemble With Care, we would have to do that for a lot less money,” she adds. “There are people doing really, really well in those spaces on PC for much smaller budgets, that we will never be able to achieve because we’re based in London and have employees with pensions and so on.”
“Going forward, we’ll see that we’ve got a core team and any growth will come through contractors”
Right now, Sayans explains Ustwo employs just under 30 people. At the peak of Monument Valley 3’s development, the studio had around 40 workers. Rather candidly, she claims the studio has perhaps been a touch gung-ho when it comes to hiring full-timers.
“We’ve been a little bit too romantic about the idea that we should have employees and give people long-term job security. I think that got us into a place where, reaching the heights of Monument Valley 3 [production], contractors were always a relatively low percentage of our employee base. I think that’s something we’re looking to change going forward,” she continues.
“I think going forward, we’ll see that we’ve got a core team and any growth will come through contractors, which is something I hate about the industry. I’ve been in the industry for 20 years, and those of us who joined in the early 2000s, we had it very good. You want to be able to give that kind of stability […] but I think that’s a shift in how we want to work with people going forward.”
Sayans believes that ramping up by employing the services of contractors and co-development teams will provide more flexibility while keeping budgets and cash reserves stable. In short, it’s a trade-off in pursuit of sustainability.
Another factor in ensuring the studio remains sustainable on PC and console is pricing.
Sayans notes that Ustwo titles are traditionally quite cheap despite costing a lot of money to make. Therein lies the balancing act.
“Pricing [a game] too low is playing with the sustainability of the team, right? So, if in doubt, price it a little bit higher because you can always discount later,” she says.
“This is not going to be a very popular thing with players, but the truth is you have a cohort of people—your day one players—who are most likely to be your core fans for whom the difference between £5 and £10 [is going to be negligible].”
Sayans says discounting doesn’t have a huge impact on mobile platforms, but believes that pricing for launch and future discounts (that will likely be even deeper) on platforms like Steam is absolutely paramount if you want to attract a broad audience.
“So much of the algorithm of Steam and visibility within the whole ecosystem is geared towards this,” she adds.