signed many games which we haven’t yet announced which are independently developed. Penko Park, for instance, which came out before Secret Mode even existed, we revisited with the developer and added things like Chinese localization, some additional additional content, and we’ve increased that product visibility and sales by doing that. Wobbledogs was in development way before Secret Mode was a speck in anybody’s mind and we’ve been able to bring that through. So there’s a number of games as well as the Sumo developed ones. What you’re seeing from our catalogue that’s active today
are kind of the things that we have been working on and picked up. What you’re not seeing is the unannounced titles, the strategic titles, the pillars that we’re busily creating and working on. We’ve got titles planned right the way through to 2025 that we’re very, very passionate about that we just can’t wait to announce
But what is Secret Mode’s level of independence or integration within the group? We are a sister organisation to Sumo Digital and we can publish games that are independent. Sumo Digital and its studios may come to us, but there’s no hard or fast requirement for us to do any games that come through Sumo. Just the same as Sumo needs to publish its own titles. It’s very much an independent organisation that sits under the Sumo Group umbrella.
Have you had any awkward moments where you’ve had to turn down a Sumo Group project? We have had conversations where we’ve not progressed with games that have come through from internal ideas. But, you know, one thing Sumo isn’t is a desert of no ideas. There are a lot of super cool things that come through. What I will say on the whole ideas front, is out of all of the things we’ve seen both external and internal, 99 per cent of the games that we’ve seen are incredible ideas. It’s the percentage of them that are viable; from a dev-funding point of view, from a market analysis point of view, and from a quality point of view. That’s where there’s the big filtration.
Obviously it wouldn’t really be classed as an indie publisher, but do you treat Secret Mode as an indie publisher? Yeah, definitely. It’s treated as a startup. We’re just evolving through that initial year of the startup phase. We’ve learned an incredible amount in that period of time and we’re now transitioning into this new phase of becoming a bit of a
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grown-up publisher, but we’re still operating very much like an indie outfit.
Why does having an independent state of mind matter? I adore this industry. There are wonderful, creative, artistic games. Yes, there are games that are made for children.
But there are also games which are really important and tell a message and we love those games too. If we can get an emotion from our players (as long as it’s not boredom); a melancholy or a delight, or a happiness or shock or surprise, that’s really important for us to have. And that’s kind of what the Secret Mode secret source is for when we’re looking at games. It’s ‘how is this going to make us feel?’. It can be a dark narrative mature journey, it can also be a wonderful, delightful, silly game about wobbly dogs. The two are compatible, because we don’t just watch sad movies. We don’t just watch sci fi movies. And we don’t just watch superhero movies. If you love movies, you love movies, right? And it’s the same thing that we have within Secret Mode is this diverse group of people. And we’ve really, really broken through some of the challenges within the games industry to characterise this diverse group of people. Because that diverse opinion and viewpoint is so important. You know, having games signed and delivered by all of the people from the same kind of backgrounds, you’re going to be left with certain types of games all the time. By doing what we’re doing, we’re challenging ourselves and we’re working on some amazingly creative games that we just can’t wait to talk about.
It sounds almost as if it was a blank slate that attracted you to Secret Mode. Was it a case of Sumo wanting to get into publishing without necessarily having a plan? You’ve absolutely summed up the conversation that happened with the folks at Sumo: ‘We’d love to get into publishing. What does it take?’ And a couple of scribbles on the back of a napkin, and a few spreadsheets later we kind of came up with a plan. And, you know, we’ve not deviated too much from the plan. Production was a little bit more resource heavy than we’d anticipated, but in terms of the freedom of projects we’ve been fully supported by Sumo. They have been phenomenal in the backing and support of Secret Mode. They’re hard on us and they’re pushing us to be better and to be more successful, but Sumo is an incredibly supportive team. I would say the hardest thing about the role is it being so
addictive. It’s very important for me to switch off, because I need to show the team that they also don’t need to work until 10, 11 o’clock at night, right? That’s really difficult. I’m having
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