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Justin Roiland on Why High on Life Came to Game Pass (and How That Will Help Make Future Games)

Anime-Vix

Anime-Vix

Member
In a recent episode of the Xbox Podcast, High on Life creator Justin Roiland joined Larry Hryb, Xbox's Major Nelson, and explained why he chose to join the Game Pass line-up after having done "a lot of research" on the service.
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Roiland's research helped him conclude that Game Pass is, "a powerful tool to get a lot of reach. If you really do believe you made something worthwhile, it's a pretty powerful tool. And that's what I gathered in doing my due diligence on it on my own. A lot of folks told me that non-Game Pass games that they ship versus Game Pass games, [they get] 7x sales."

Most excitingly for fans of Roiland and his studio, Squanch, is that Game Pass won't just help them make High on Life, but future games, too:

"We are an indie studio. We're small. And we do want a war chest to make a bunch more fun crazy games. And that was of consideration for us. It's like, 'OK, we really want this game to get out there. We want it to do. We want sales to do well.' And I think that, yeah, I mean, from what I gathered in my little poking around and asking different folks, Game Pass was a huge value-add in that respect."
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Topher

Topher

Gold Member
"And I ultimately came to the conclusion based off of what I had heard that it is– it’s a value-add. Because essentially, there’s a lot of people that would otherwise not have picked up the game and played it."

I wouldn't have. Not at $60, certainly not. Games like these are one of the reasons why I churn out the Rewards points every day to stay subscribed to Game Pass year round.
 
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John Marston

John Marston

GAF's very own treasure goblin
Topher said:
I wouldn't have. Not at $60, certainly not. Games like these are one of the reasons why I churn out the Rewards points every day to stay subscribed to Game Pass year round.
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I paid 80$ (Canadian) and change because it's my way of supporting the devs.
I don't have Gamepass because I have a ridiculous backlog and plenty of disposable income.
A true win/win no matter what 🙂
 
adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Topher said:
"And I ultimately came to the conclusion based off of what I had heard that it is– it’s a value-add. Because essentially, there’s a lot of people that would otherwise not have picked up the game and played it."

I wouldn't have. Not at $60, certainly not. Games like these are one of the reasons why I churn out the Rewards points every day to stay subscribed to Game Pass year round.
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Yep. (aside from churning the reward part :p)

If this was released just as a $60 retail release, it would have likely disappeared into obscurity.

I hope they got a real good deal, including residuals for high activity, for making arguably the biggest sleeper hit of the year.
 
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SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Is there any kind of profit sharing or bonus structure for games that do well on Game Pass or is it just a flat purchase price?

They're surely cannibalizing a lot of the potential sales of the game, but I imagine the reach is somewhat bankable for a new studio. I am looking forward to whatever they do next.
 
O

Ozriel

M$FT
SF Kosmo said:
Is there any kind of profit sharing or bonus structure for games that do well on Game Pass or is it just a flat purchase price?
Click to expand...

Probably not. A deal is a deal. But they’re certainly going to reap the future rewards of MS being way more likely to fund some of their future projects.
If Phil has any sense, he’s gotta be cutting deals with them.


SF Kosmo said:
They're surely cannibalizing a lot of the potential sales of the game, but I imagine the reach is somewhat bankable for a new studio. I am looking forward to whatever they do next.
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I don’t know about ‘cannibalizing’. This seems to be one game for sure that GP exposure would have increased sales. Especially in light of the critic review consensus.
 
SenjutsuSage

SenjutsuSage

Banned
SF Kosmo said:
Is there any kind of profit sharing or bonus structure for games that do well on Game Pass or is it just a flat purchase price?

They're surely cannibalizing a lot of the potential sales of the game, but I imagine the reach is somewhat bankable for a new studio. I am looking forward to whatever they do next.
Click to expand...

It runs the entire gamut of options. Some deals are usage-based, some have the entire production cost of the game covered, and some are given a flat fee or acceptable floor of success for the game that the developers are okay with. Your game going on Game Pass literally = sales before a single traditional sale has been made.

Here is where phil says it. https://www.theverge.com/21611412/m...nterview-xbox-series-x-launch-decoder-podcast

How do you pay out developers? I’m a developer, I make a game, I say I’m going to put it in Game Pass, a customer pays [you] $14.99 a month. How do you decide how much to pay me, the developer?

Our deals are, I’ll say, all over the place. That sounds unmanaged, but it’s really based on the developer’s need. One of the things that’s been cool to see is a developer, usually a smaller to mid-sized developer, might be starting a game and say, “hey, we’re willing to put this in Game Pass on our launch day if you guys will give us X dollars now.” What we can go do is, we’ll create a floor for them in terms of the success of their game. They know they’re going to get this return.

[In] certain cases, we’ll pay for the full production cost of the game. Then they get all the retail opportunity on top of Game Pass. They can go sell it on PlayStation, on Steam, and on Xbox, and on Switch. For them, they’ve protected themselves from any downside risk. The game is going to get made. Then they have all the retail upside, we have the opportunity for day and date. That would be a flat fee payment to a developer. Sometimes the developer’s more done with the game and it’s more just a transaction of, “Hey, we’ll put it in Game Pass if you’ll pay us this amount of money.”

Others want [agreements] more based on usage and monetization in whether it’s a store monetization that gets created through transactions, or usage. We’re open [to] experimenting with many different partners, because we don’t think we have it figured out. When we started, we had a model that was all based on usage. Most of the partners said, “Yeah, yeah, we understand that, but we don’t believe it, so just give us the money upfront.”
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oldergamer

oldergamer

Member
SF Kosmo said:
Is there any kind of profit sharing or bonus structure for games that do well on Game Pass or is it just a flat purchase price?

They're surely cannibalizing a lot of the potential sales of the game, but I imagine the reach is somewhat bankable for a new studio. I am looking forward to whatever they do next.
Click to expand...
There are multiple ways you can get paid on gamepass. You can even be paid by the minute people play your game.

Gamepass doesn't harm regular sales which still occur, and it gets your games in more players hands. It allows you to make money or take risks that may not pan out with the old method of selling games.
 
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feynoob

feynoob

Banned
FunkMiller said:
It'll be some kind of irony if the GamePass format is the thing that keeps AA gaming alive, considering how all we've heard is about how it's the death knell of supposedly less than AAA companies.
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Sony and MS would benefit massively from these type of games, if they make it day1 to their services.

Cheap, and doesn't cost them alot of money. Very good pick for Sub services.
 
Punished Miku

Punished Miku

Gold Member
FunkMiller said:
It'll be some kind of irony if the GamePass format is the thing that keeps AA gaming alive, considering how all we've heard is about how it's the death knell of supposedly less than AAA companies.
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I've literally been saying this the whole time. Instead of killing gaming, it's literally allowing for more genre diversity and is a lifeline for AA games or games being more niche and creative because they're not bound to sales only. It might literally help improve gaming massively. So far we've seen that a few times with Pentiment, High on Life, and many more success stories.
 
FunkMiller

FunkMiller

Gold Member
Punished Miku said:
I've literally been saying this the whole time. Instead of killing gaming, it's literally allowing for more genre diversity and is a lifeline for AA games or games being more niche and creative because they're not bound to sales only. It might literally help improve gaming massively. So far we've seen that a few times with Pentiment, High on Life, and many more success stories.
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Games like High On Life and Pentiment are clearly leagues better than the drizzling shits most AAA companies have put out recently. If GamePass gives me a High On Life sequel, and kills off any more Saint's Row games, then it'll be doing god's work.
 
ChorizoPicozo

ChorizoPicozo

Member
"We are an indie studio. We're small"

That is the point of GP. (small projects)

The issue arises when taking about AAA Day one Games.

Now we shall see how High on Life sells on xboxs.
 
SF Kosmo

SF Kosmo

Al Jazeera Special Reporter
Ozriel said:
I don’t know about ‘cannibalizing’. This seems to be one game for sure that GP exposure would have increased sales. Especially in light of the critic review consensus.
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It's doing well on Steam and that's probably driven in part by strong word of mouth, but that's really the only SKU where they're gonna see significant sales, since it's console exclusive.

I heard Roiland saying something like "I hope it does well so we can make more," which makes it seem like whatever they paid for it they are hoping for it to sell a lot on top of that and I wonder if just Steam will be enough for that. Do people actually buy games like this on Xbox when they are in Game Pass Day One?
 
adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
SF Kosmo said:
It's doing well on Steam and that's probably driven in part by strong word of mouth, but that's really the only SKU where they're gonna see significant sales, since it's console exclusive.

I heard Roiland saying something like "I hope it does well so we can make more," which makes it seem like whatever they paid for it they are hoping for it to sell a lot on top of that and I wonder if just Steam will be enough for that. Do people actually buy games like this on Xbox when they are in Game Pass Day One?
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It was in the top 10 paid games on Xbox yesterday (in the UK).

Not every Xbox owner has game pass and I can easily see the ones that don't buying this from word-of-mouth ala Steam users. Or hell, lots of people buy stuff even if its on GP to support the developers.

Fkiu2fAWIAcZ-RS
 
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