The developer has a cadence of having a major update every one to two months. So yeah, they all know what they intend to do before 1.0 and they’re making steady progress towards it.”


LITTLE NIGHT-MARES So, to recap, sticking to a proven niche, agreeing reasonable terms with developers, and providing a sustainable and supportive publishing environment are why Hooded Horse seems to be breaking ahead of the indie pack. At those common sense ideals we imagine there are a fair few developers reading this and planning a roguelike city builder for their next game. But what are the top-hatted business brains thinking as they tweak their pencil-thin handlebar moustaches? There has to be a downside to this utopian nonsense, surely? “We delay games like no-one else,” laughs Bender.


STALLION HEARTS When asked to define what success means, Bender pitches a low bar: So long as the Hooded Horse team gets paid, jobs are secure and the developers have all the support they need to make the games they all want, he considers the business to be doing well. “We’re not really chasing the big viral hit that’s


going to become the biggest thing in the world. We may have stumbled upon that anyway with Manor Lords, so maybe that happens by accident, but it’s not what we measure success by. Success is just consistent performance for every developer. Consistent as in we’ve got enough funding, no one feels financially insecure and everyone goes on to create more games. “As far as how we’ve been able to do it… There’s no


answer to that that’s honest that doesn’t say that Paradox paved the way. There’s a lot of great strategy game publishing developers – Firaxis, SEGA – but it’s hard to imagine games like Terra Invicta existing and finding its market without Paradox creating gamers who expect to see this complicated map that is going to scare almost everyone away. So we owe a ton to Paradox and what they’ve done, and we owe a ton to Firaxis and Civ and Sid Meier because they paved the way for those broader things, and we owe a ton to the great wave of indie city builders have been created and that helped lay the market for Against the Storm.” “Our devs are resources to each other,” adds Rui.


“Because they are all working the strategy space, they often tackle similar issues, like how to efficiently do pathfinding. They talk freely with each other, which is really rare for any publisher and has proven to be incredibly valuable.” “The other thing that’s helped,” adds Bender, “to be perfectly frank, is not being greedy.”


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“The conversation around a release is never ‘We’re planning to release, make the deadline!’ The conversation is always ‘Hey, how do you feel? Do you feel like the game is getting ready?’ And then, even if the developer says yes, we probe further and say ‘How would a little bit more time help you? How would that change things?’ And the end result is that we delay games. In an environment where developers know that we’ve got their backs, that is a cost of doing business.” That Hooded Horse can afford to be on the side


of its developers, it helps, that the company has no outside investors – none that exist far beyond the Venn diagram of fans, friends and family at any rate. It begs the question, then, if it was necessary for the company to survive that it take on investment that would change how Hooded Horse operates… “We’d do it,” says Bender before the question is


complete. “Yeah, and it’ll change you. There’s no way to avoid it. But the truth is, if it’s between that or not being able to fund games that need funding in terms of support and jobs, we would accept the money and then we would have to pay a price.” Let’s hope Hooded Horse stays ahead of the game so that particular night-mare scenario doesn’t come to pass.


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