Interview with Josh DeBonis

Josh DeBonis ran his own small game studio for 10 years, doing contract work and selling his own downloadable games. But when the success of Killer Queen Arcade gave him and co-creator Nik Mikros an inside view into the arcade business, they joined forces to fill an unclaimed niche in the world of gaming. Now, as a founding partner at BumbleBear Games, Josh is bringing the indie spirit into the house of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong.

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Interview with Josh DeBonis, by Josh Raab, 10/5/14

Josh R: Alright, so I guess my first question is sort of general – tell me how you got started in the games industry.

Josh D: I got started around 2004, I’d been playing music and writing software to help pay the bills, but like, business software. And it got me thinking – I sorta just took a job doing that because I knew how to program, because I wanted to program to make games. But just for myself, I never really thought about it as a career.

So I was doing that, and I realized I was kinda programming for the wrong reason, and I just decided that it was important to me that I was making games instead – if I was spending all that time not playing music, I should be making games. And so I started – I mean I’d made a lot of games just for myself before that, or to play with my friends, or just for fun, but nothing professional – nothing of the caliber to release into the wild.

And so I said alright, I’m going to actually release something that could be commercially viable. And so I just kinda did, I just did it on my own, and worked with a friend who did the art for me. And then I realized I loved doing that and eventually just quit the other software development and just started doing games full time. And it was really tough at first, but eventually it started to work out.

R: So did you start off – were you ever at a company or did you just dive into founding SortaSoft?

D: Yeah, I guess I dove right into, with SortaSoft, just doing – you know, as an indie I guess. But quickly I started taking on freelance work with other studios. And probably the lion’s share of that was with Gamelab, Eric [Zimmerman] and Peter Lee’s company. I did a lot of work with them for a while – I was never really an employee there but I felt like part of the family. I did a lot of freelance projects there over a long period of time, and I would usually work in the office and for extended periods of time.

And I enjoyed it and I learned a lot working there, and so to me that was a lot of the early company-style work I did, even though I wasn’t officially there, I was in many ways.

R: So did you hang out in the office even when you weren’t working with them?

D: Yeah, I did. It was the kind of place where – I mean I was friends with everybody that I worked with, and at the time there wasn’t as vibrant of a community around games as there is today – although there was, to some extent, but the people that were interested in the kind of games that I was interested in were working at Gamelab.

So I would hang out with those people, a lot of times I would stay after work and play games with people or playtest games that other people were working on, or work late a lot of times. I mean, as a freelancer I didn’t really have specific hours, so a lot of times if I was there I would just work a really long day.

R: Okay. So is that where you met Nik [Mikros]?

D: Yeah, I actually did meet Nik there. He was actually freelancing on projects at the time. I think I was working on this game called Blind Samurai that was like a Wii game that never got released, and Nik was doing Arcadia Remix. And I dunno exactly how we met but basically we were both there at the same time and just got to know each other from that scene, and got along well, realized we wanted to work on something together, but neither of us really had the time to work on a full-on video game. But we also both wanted to do something for the Come Out and Play Festival, which was also – Gamelab people all started that.

And so we decided let’s collaborate on a project for that, which was sort of a chance to kill two birds with one stone – we got to work together, and we got to make a Come Out and Play game.

R: So then how did you get from there to the new company? I guess via Killer Queen?

D: Yeah, so we did several projects together. I guess we’ve officially done four “finished” games together, I think we started several others in the process. But we did four projects together that – none of them had any chance of making any money, most of them we just spent money on. But Killer Queen Arcade is finally at the point where it’s at least starting to make some money. Also there’s a lot of risk with it – each cabinet we build costs us like 6000 dollars, so there’s much higher stakes. And we’ve put a lot of time into it too.

So there’s a real product there, and we see the potential behind it. We love all of our games, of course, but with that game we see it could potentially make some money, and we don’t know if it will but hopefully it will.

On top of that, I think we’re both really getting a little sick of client work. Both of us do a lot of work for hire, and a lot of times we find ourselves competing against each other, like we’ll both submit a bid or a proposal for the same project, and it just feels like a waste of time, you know. Especially because we know what each other would be bidding and – I dunno, it just doesn’t feel right, you know?

So we want to start doing more work as a team. I should also say, with Killer Queen, the process behind it – it was really important to us that we did everything ourselves. Because we were working with our teams, and we would tell everybody what to do and then write the check for them, and it was so far away from what got us into this.

So with Killer Queen, we said, okay, let’s write every line of code, let’s push every pixel ourselves, and we even built the cabinet ourselves. I mean, we had some help because we didn’t quite have all the skills we needed, and we have had some other help after the initial conception. But we try as much as possible to just do everything ourselves with that game. And we realize that’s not always gonna be the case with this new company, but we want it to be more of the case.

We don’t wanna have a large team, we wanna have some supporting staff to fill in roles that we can’t do or don’t have time to do. We realize we’ll probably have to keep some client work going, work for hire, just to pay the bills. Ideally we wanna have as much of that handled by the staff so that it doesn’t dominate our lives, which is something we’re trying to get away from.

And so we’re slowly, as we take on more work we’re bringing more of it onto this new company. Neither of us are closing our old studios, we’re just kinda slowly merging them. We’re both wrapping up projects, first of all, with our old studios, so even if we wanted to close them we couldn’t. I’m finishing Meriwether, he’s finishing The Hero Trap, and then we each also have some clients, so it just doesn’t really make sense. For one thing I don’t think the clients would react well to it, if all of a sudden it was a different company.

So as we’re taking on new stuff we’re gonna do more and more, we’re kinda crossing our teams, cross-pollinating our teams. It’s kinda nice because my team is very programmer-heavy, his team has a lot of artists, and actually even the programming skills are very different between our teams, so it’s a good mix in that sense.

R: Cool. So the new company is BumbleBear?

D: It’s BumbleBear Games, LLC.

R: So is it just you and Nik, or are you also bringing your teams in?

D: It’s owned by Nik and I, it’s a partnership between the two of us. But everybody on both of our teams is considered part of the family. I mean there’s no – almost everybody that works for us is freelancers or permalancers, so there’s not really any official relationship there with the new company, other than they’ve done some work for it already. But it’s not like they’re employees. And we kind of don’t wanna have employees. We like the freelancer model. Even though many of the guys on our team, we have been working with for a very long time and plan to for the future, it just kind of keeps it simpler to do it project-based and to not have full-time employees.

R: So it’s gonna be like a similar model to what you already have, but just you and Nik running it instead of either one of you running it?

D: Yeah, exactly.

R: Okay, cool. So do you have particular kinds of games you want to make, or like a company philosophy?

D: Yeah, we want to focus on local multiplayer arcade games. That’s not necessarily to say literally games in an arcade. We do want to do that, but we’re also into the idea of doing local multiplayer arcade-style games at home. We see that there is this potential with Killer Queen and we wanna do more games like that, mainly because we really enjoy it.

But the way we can kind of justify it from a business perspective is, we don’t see anybody else doing it. I mean obviously there’s a few companies making arcade games, but they’re not doing independent-style games like we’re doing. And we don’t see any other independent developers making a real strong effort to make a commercial arcade version. Like, definitely there’s obviously other independent developers making a cabinet or two for their game, or showing it at festivals in a cabinet, or things like that. But to make a product, we don’t see anybody doing that. And I mean, it’s really hard, so I can understand why people aren’t doing it. But we see that as a small niche that we might be able to fill, and we see that there’s a demand for that.

And we’ve also kind of figured out a lot of these things through Killer Queen, and established a lot of relationships, and we think we can capitalize on that knowledge and those relationships for future projects.

R: So I guess to me it feels like things like TowerFall and Samurai Gunn and Nidhogg are kind of in the same vein. Do you think of what you’re doing as something separate, or are those some examples of people who are doing similar things?

D: Yeah, definitely similar gameplay, but I think different business model in that they’re not trying to make actual cabinets. But I mean the approach to gameplay, yeah, very similar obviously. Especially something like TowerFall – I mean it’s one of the closest games that I’ve seen to Killer Queen. And I love all those games, also. I’m not saying that what we’re doing is necessarily a better idea, like all those games will probably make more money than us. And the other thing is that we’re not really opposed to doing a home version, we just wanna try and make the arcade version happen and see if it’s feasible, and then also do a home version.

And the general wisdom that we’ve collected from other people in the arcades business is that the two only feed off of each other. They don’t hurt each other. Especially because the arcade market is so small. I mean we are considering doing home versions of Killer Queen and future games.

R: So I’ve talked to Nik a few times about having a place like an indie arcade establishment, kinda like a Barcade for indie games. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that’s something people should be doing that aren’t?

D: I think that’s a great concept, but I don’t know if it’s a great business model. I mean I wanna see people do it. We’ve often talked about, we would love to see something that is like a more commercialized version of something like Babycastles. We love what Babycastles is doing, but it’s not what we’re interested in seeing happen. Like, we want to see people making money off of indie arcade games. And it doesn’t necessarily mean taking quarters per play – there’s other ways that people are experimenting, like Grasshopper, and there are some other spaces that are trying to figure out how to make this viable.

And I think people want to see it happen, both players and arcade owners, or whatever we call people that are running these things. People wanna make it happen, nobody’s figured it out yet though. So we’re also trying to help people figure that out. One thing we’ve learned is the arcade business is very, very conservative. The biggest hurdle we’ve had with Killer Queen is just getting people to take a chance on the game. Once they put it in a place, it’s a hit, almost universally so far. But the places that are willing to do it are few and far between.

The biggest success we had was in Chicago, at Logan Hardware, and they only took us because Eugene Jarvis – he owns Raw Thrills, he did Robotron and Defender – he asked them to do it, because he was interested in maybe working with us to distribute the game. And he asked this arcade, hey can you take a chance on these guys? And they did, and it totally paid off. But they probably wouldn’t have if we had approached them.

I mean, Nik and I don’t have that kind of credibility in that side of games. We’ve always done downloadable games, haven’t really done arcade games. So we’re starting to build it and we know how to talk to the arcade owners now, we’re just figuring that out. But it was really tough to figure that out. It’s a totally different side of games than what we’re both used to.

R: So the target establishments that you’re trying to sell Killer Queen and the BumbleBear games too, these are arcades? Or what are the kinds of places?

D: Yeah, I mean, we definitely want to sell them to arcades. Those are the highest visibility places, and we’ve found when it goes in an arcade, all of a sudden we get an influx of inquiries from tech companies especially, offices who want one for their rec room. And so it’s almost like it being out in some place like an arcade is a great advertisement for us, and I wonder if that can be part of our business model, and we’re figuring that out. But most of our sales so far have been to private companies who just want one, and are not using it to make money.

The arcades see it as an investment in how much the cabinet itself can make. But the companies, it’s more like they’re just interested in the game. And I’m sure they see it as a team-building exercise, and just something fun to let off steam. So I’d say those are the two major markets. Along with arcades I guess there’s just arcade operators who might put it in a mall, or a museum or something like that, but that’s all kind of managed by the same types of people.

R: So is the business model for BumbleBear making a game to put in an arcade cabinet, and then taking a small number of orders and filling them?

D: Yeah – well, I mean, it’s so new, I can only say this for Killer Queen. We don’t even know what the next project is that we’re doing. But for Killer Queen, yes, it’s an on-demand basis. When we get an order, we build it for that customer. And we have several that we own and operate that are in various places. And I think we’ll be doing more of that as we build up capital and build up locations to put them.

Like, you can have a revenue stream from each individual cabinet, so it’s sort of a medium-term investment building it, and also building the presence of the game. I mean hopefully if the game can pay for itself through quarters, it’s totally worth it for us because it will also help more more units, because of the visibility.

The other thing I should say is, one of the biggest hurdles for us right now is the size and the cost, especially the size. For arcades, the cost is not really an issue, because if they’re gonna make money off of it, they can spend the money on it. But the size is a real issue – like, at Ground Control in Portland, they had to move out 6 or 7 arcade cabinets to make room for it. And that’s partially because I think the way that they set it up, but it’s just big, at a minimum you’re gonna move 4 or 5.

So we realize that’s a big hurdle. Plus bars – one of the reasons we’re having a challenge in New York is the space too. For bars it’s just way too much space. So to go in a more commercial direction, we are now also working on a smaller 3-on-3 version that would be a single cabinet that is much, much smaller, probably half the price and half the size. So it’s much more viable for most establishments. And of course we still have the flagship game that is kinda the way we sell it, and that’s the really sizzly product.

R: Do you foresee getting help with the construction and focusing more on development in the future, or do you think you’re gonna keep doing the building as well?

D: We are working – the first prototype cabinet we built ourselves, but since then we’ve been working with a company called Fun Company in Wisconsin. They do all of our manufacturing. We’ve done the design and we work with them closely, but they’re doing all the actual labor and they have all the equipment and stuff. They do games for Namco and a lot of big companies, and so they know what they’re doing. We’re a pretty small customer for them but they give us a lot of attention.

Of course, because we’re doing such small runs – we’re doing literally one at a time – we’re paying a much higher margin, I’m sure, than like Namco that does a thousand or more at a time. We would love to get to the point where, if we can be confident we can make like a hundred of, say, the 3-on-3 cabinet, we would love to do something like that. But we’ve also found, one nice thing about how we’re doing it now is it allows us to iterate it in the way that we do with software. Every single cabinet that’s out there has a slight improvement from the previous one.

So we’re working with them, but also we’ve been talking with Raw Thrills – they do Big Buck Hunter, and a lot of more commercial arcade games. We’ve been talking with them about basically licensing the game to them, and they would do the sales and distribution and manufacturing. They might still work with Fun Company to do the manufacturing, but they would be in charge of that.

That is very attractive to us – of course there would be a lower profit margin bonus, but we’re not experts in that. We’re game designers. Also we don’t really wanna be putting our time and attention into that – we would love to be focusing on the next game. So we’re kind of in negotiations with them now. It’s unclear whether either party will be interested, but we’re talking and they’re really cool. I mean they’re helping us out regardless – they want to see something like this happen, they love the game, they just don’t know whether it’s commercially viable, especially for them. But we’re trying to work that out.

R: So that would be like a royalties model?

D: Yeah, exactly. They would pay per cabinet, is how they generally do it. Like, Big Buck Hunter is a different developer. They’re kind of like a publisher, except they’re also manufacturing. It was cool, we went to their factory in Chicago, it was really fun to see how they work. They were doing a lot of games at one time, it was cool.

R: So I guess my last question is what you guys are working on now – is it just Killer Queen, or do you have anything new in the works?

D: We are doing some stuff on Killer Queen, some new content, the 6-player version and just little bug fixes and stuff. But we’re also doing a work-for-hire arcade game, which unfortunately I can’t really say much about, but it’s for a large number of players, it’s kind of in the vein of Killer Queen. So that’s something exciting, it’s something to pay the bills.

We also just did a game jam to kind of kick off the new company. We did a two-day game jam where we mixed our teams and we had everybody work with people they don’t normally work with. And we just spent two days making two games. For being made in two days, they’re pretty good – as games they’re not that good, but we said let’s make 4-player arcade games.

I should say, that’s another thing – we love the fact that Killer Queen is a 10-player game, but for the future we probably are gonna make multiplayer but less players than 10. Probably between 2 and 6 is the sweet spot we’ve identified as far as it being small and cheap but still have that team-based or multiplayer element. So we made two games like that, that was really fun. There’s one that we might keep rolling with.

Also Nik and I, we’re sort of in an experimentation phase where we’re trying to figure out what’s the next project that’s just us. We don’t know what it is, but there are some things we want to try. Like, one thing we definitely want to try is experimenting with other input devices, especially trackballs. We were at California Extreme, this arcade festival, and we were playing a lot of the trackball games, especially these football games where you’re running your guy, especially the – what do they call it, cocktail games, and you’re running your guy using a trackball.

It’s very physical and visceral, and we like that quality. It has some of the same element as the field games we’ve done, and it’s more approachable than a joystick too. It doesn’t feel as much like a video game, yet it still has that retro aesthetic to it, which is something we wanna keep.

R: Alright, I guess that’s it. Thanks for doing this!

D: Of course, anytime!