Bari Silvestre is an award-winning Filipino developer famous for titles like Rubpix and Pretentious Game. Now head of a studio called Ferryman Games, Silvestre is working with his new team on a Metroidvania game for PC (and later, mobile) titled Belial: Art of the Devil. That game was recently presented on the Square Enix Collective for indie game developers.
The Collective is a program by Square Enix that aims to help indie developers with publicity, mentoring, and possibly publishing. Square Enix will not help financially, but it won’t take IP rights either. Developers can work on its existing titles or present their own ideas, and are not bonded to subsequently work with the company. I have seen mostly original titles so far.
A game that gets “greenlit” by the Square Enix community will go on into a crowdfunding project. Square Enix will help the developer at this stage with presentation, and if the crowdfunding succeeds with its help, the company takes a cut of the total funds raised. I think it’s a pretty fair deal for the professional help and reach they are giving. Square Enix also offers publishing rights in return for another percentage of the funds raised, but this is up to the developer to accept.
After doing my homework and looking at my cool project on hand, I decided it was time to submit my pitch.
I received an email from Square Enix a day after my submission. The email said that the pitch looked like it contained all the elements needed to go live, and asked for more in-game screen shots. The Belial project was launched on the Collective as soon as the week after. We are so proud of making it there. A specific Square Enix staff member was put in charge of marketing the Belial project.
Belial was featured on the official Square Enix blog, and this helped get more eyeballs on the pitch. Every week, Belial would get promoted on the Square Enix social media accounts. In the final days of the project, I was not able to monitor the project’s progress but noticed that there was more media attention, more votes, and more comments.
At the end of our time on the Collective we received 251 votes in total after 28 days, with 87 percent of the voters saying yes when asked if they would back the project financially. Square Enix informed us that its next slot for a crowdfunding campaign is in April.
April is a nice target for Ferryman Games as it’s the last week before Easter and that’s a big thing in the Philippines. I plan on doing something controversial like starting our Kickstarter on Good Friday. This also gives Ferryman a quarter of a year to breathe and plan ahead.
If you are interested to join the Collective program, all you have to do is form a pitch of your concepts, demo videos, and images, and submit it here.
See: Bari Silvestre: from Philippine factory worker to world-famous indie developer
This post Bari Silvestre shares his Square Enix Collective experience appeared first on Tech in Asia.
Bari Silvestre shares his Square Enix Collective experience
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