PMPG Polskie Media : Promotion at RedDeer.Games. Interview with the new board member

RedDeer.Games, a publisher and developer of independent games, announces the promotion of Bartłomiej Kossakowski to a member of the company's board. He joins Michał M. Lisiecki, the co-founder of the studio. Simultaneously, he will continue his current duties as Chief Operating Officer.

- "Bartłomiej Kossakowski, with 25 years of experience in the video game industry, brings his extensive knowledge and passion to the board, making him one of the leading gaming experts in Poland. We are proud to have Bartłomiej join the board, as his promotion is a natural progression of his significant contributions to the company's growth. At RedDeer.Games, we strongly invest in people, believing that they are the key to success and innovation," comments Michał M. Lisiecki.

Kossakowski began his career in 1999 as a journalist for gaming magazines and websites such as Secret Service and GRY-OnLine.pl. He later continued his work in mainstream media, including "Życie Warszawy" and "Dziennik Gazeta Prawna." As Editor-in-Chief at Ringier Axel Springer, he introduced hundreds of indie games to the Polish market at attractive prices and was a regular commentator on Hyper Plus gaming television and a judge for many industry awards.

In his role as Director of Consumer Media at IDG Poland, he managed PCWorld, the Polish edition of the world's most popular technology medium. He also led the technology area at Blomedia and was the publisher of INNPoland.pl, Poland's largest startup and innovation news website.

Since 2020, Bartłomiej Kossakowski has been a key member of the RedDeer.Games team, where he fulfills the mission of bringing indie games to a broad audience.

We invite you to read an interview with Bartłomiej Kossakowski, the newly appointed board member of RedDeer.Games. The new board member shares his experiences, vision for the studio's future, and thoughts on the dynamically evolving gaming market. What challenges and goals lie ahead in his new role, and what plans does RedDeer.Games have for the coming years? The interview is published below.

Congratulations on promotion. How do Your previous professional experiences help You in new role?

- Thank you. I've been involved with the gaming industry for 25 years, and I've had the opportunity to look at it from various perspectives. As a journalist who has reviewed over 1000 titles, I've learned to take an analytical look at games. But during that time, I also wrote reports from major game development studios and had the opportunity to talk to several industry legends. For example, Greg Zeschuk, the man behind BioWare, responsible for iconic series like Baldur's Gate, or Tim Schafer, co-author of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Psychonauts, and the first parts of the Monkey Island series. Getting to know these geniuses was very inspiring and also helped me better understand the game production process.

Later on, I learned about the ups and downs of the publishing business. At Ringier Axel Springer, in addition to magazines, we released games on CDs included with magazines or as part of collections available at newsstands. For me, this meant hundreds of licensing negotiations and a tough fight for the profitability of each project.

I also co-created content marketing campaigns for brands like PlayStation, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and CD Projekt. This meant entering the fascinating world of game promotion and the first attempts to understand the incredibly demanding gamer community.

But my experiences outside the gaming industry are also proving very useful today. While co-creating the largest Polish startup and innovation website, INNPoland.pl, I met many entrepreneurial individuals. I looked at dozens of companies, talked to their founders and managers, analyzed stories of failures and successes. I'm also very glad that I had the opportunity to work in both powerful, procedure-laden corporations and passionate startups. One of my important goals is for us at RedDeer.Games to find a golden mean: to operate in a systematic and orderly manner without losing the dynamics in decision-making and the creativity and innovation so important for gamedev.

What are the plans for RedDeer.Games, and at what stage are the works on one of the studio's most ambitious productions, "Zły - The Evil One"?

- Our teams are currently working on several titles - smaller and medium-sized ones. Following the success of Tell Me Your Story, its creators (yes, it's a team consisting solely of women) have started working on an interesting spin-off - we'll reveal details about it soon. We also have visual novels, farming games, puzzle games in production... In the second half of the year, expect many announcements.

As for the "Evil" license, we are currently working full steam ahead on the game "Stories from the Warcity," which received a grant under the Video Game Support Program, organized by the Center for the Development of Creative Industries. The larger game, The Evil One, is still in the pre-production phase.

Games specializes as a developer and publisher of games and applications for Nintendo platforms, but what about other platforms?

- It's true; for many development studios, we're the first choice partner for porting and publishing their games on Nintendo Switch. Over the years, we've not only learned a lot about console users but also developed a close relationship with Nintendo itself, which has been supporting us since the release of our first game, Cyber Protocol. This is an extremely advantageous situation for us, especially with the highly anticipated release of the next Switch. In 2025, all eyes will be on Nintendo's new hardware, and since we feel like fish in water in their ecosystem, we stand to gain a lot.

However, we're not closing ourselves off to other platforms. We're already present on PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and iOS. And our Business Development department, led by a very experienced manager and a true gamer, Grzegorz Drabik, is increasingly negotiating with partners to release games simultaneously on all these platforms if we see the sales potential of a given title.

What will 2024 be like for the gaming market?

- We can already see that it's tough for many large companies in our segment, i.e., those creating and publishing premium games for consoles and computers. Many of the potential hit games announced are not meeting expectations, experiencing lower-than-expected sales and poor reviews. And every week brings news of mass layoffs in more industry firms.

All the more reason I'm glad that at RedDeer.Games, we're going against the grain: in May alone, two of our releases made it to the list of best-selling games on Nintendo Switch in the USA. And instead of downsizing, we're hiring to continue developing our proven, hit game series.

When we launched a promotional campaign in spring 2023, introducing a new game for sale every week, every Friday, like a new episode of a series on a streaming platform, many of my industry colleagues rubbed their eyes in disbelief. Today, we see that our business model of having many smaller game premieres was a bullseye and helped minimize risk.

Some analysts also predict that in 2024, the trend for large and expensive game-as-a-service will end, and there will be a return to the premium model. It's evident that the market is saturated. I also expect another wave of retro games towards the end of the year, although not every company will succeed in this area.

It will be interesting to see how the implementation of AI in game production will affect the shape of products. We've been using selected tools since 2022, and we see a very positive impact on optimizing processes in production and marketing.

Thank You for the conversation.