Hooded Horse -- Indie publisher of strategy games

[Martok]

Given all the 4x and "4x adjacent" titles Hooded Horse has in their current stable of games, it seemed appropriate to post this here.  (Note:  They also announced a couple new games they're publishing; I suspect at least a few folks around here might be interested...) 


https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/HoodedHorse/

[Undercovergeek]

Jeebus - what an absolutely stunning portfolio of games

The trailer for falling frontier raised the hairs on my arms - it looks amazing

Have been following terra invicta for ages and can’t wait

Fragile existence also looks stunning

And espiocracy looks very interesting - all wish listed

Thankyou martok!!

[Martok]

Not sure how I missed this before, but you're welcome! 


Yeah, Final Frontier is looking increasingly like a "must-buy" for me.  And Fragile Existence has surprised me with how well it appears to be coming along. 

Terra Invicta still appears to not quite be my cup of tea, but I'm glad to see them attempting something a bit different in the realm of sci-fi 4x/grand-strategy. 

[Martok]

Most of the same games -- plus a few more -- but at PAX West this time: 

[Undercovergeek]

Still looking forward to Terra invicta very much

[Gusington]

CAPITAL COMMAND.

That is all.

[Undercovergeek]

You tried the demo?

[Gusington]

I can't find the demo - when I click on the panel in Steam it just takes me to the regular store page :/

[Martok]

I just stumbled across this article from a couple months ago.  Some pretty cool & interesting perspectives from Tim & Snow on their business model, and how they operate: 


https://mcvuk.com/business-news/harnessing-hooded-horse-power-tim-bender-and-snow-rui-on-their-indie-publisher/

“We have tried to focus on one particular niche of indie games for a couple of reasons. One is our own expertise and what we’re qualified to market, to understand, to work with.” Bender explains that he has a particular interest in strategy games that have RPG elements and vice versa. Everyone else at the company is also a fan of strategy games of one flavour or another, and that is where their combined expertise intersects. “If we were to broaden beyond the strategy-simulation-RPG and instead publish things like first-person shooters, that would go so far outside of our expertise that we would end up becoming far less effective. By going to an area that we all broadly understand and every game we’re publishing is one that I can play, we end up getting a pretty good grip on this area of games, how to market them and understand them.

Fundamental to the rising-tides-lifts-all-boats strategy that Hooded Horse is committed to is the idea of allowing developers a share of the revenue that’s not tied to publishing costs. “There’s some objectively odd things about the way the publisher development work relationship has grown up in indie publishing,” says Bender, citing the prevalence of recoup terms, where a publisher will insist on hoarding all the sales revenues until it’s recovered its investment. “I honestly have no idea why that has become the norm in indie publishing.” It doesn’t make sense, because, says Bender, a publisher will have some games that do well and others that don’t, but it’s spreading its bets to offset risk. “Developers on the other hand, have a very limited ability to absorb risk because they often have one game.” If a developer is hampered by unfavourable recoup terms, even a successful game might not save it from having to lay off staff or even shut down entirely.

“Also in many cases it’s bad for consumers and even the publishers, because where there should be support and expansion for the things that will cause that game to sell more in the long term, many games are abandoned by developers and players blame them, but they had no choice financially. The only choice they had was to move on because they needed to go to the next publishing deal. It’s just run from one game to the next because they’re trapped in the cycle of these recoups. If you look at all of our games, every single one of them is releasing tons of post release support and expansion. That’s true of all five release games, and that’s part of why they’re successful. That’s what drives the sales. You can actually be better off taking less, because the whole pie gets bigger when you make sure developers are taken care of and have what they want.”