Dave Van Verdegem is a co-founder of the Ghent game studio Pajama Llama. Flotsam, the game they worked on for more than five years, has just been released. How did they come out with their game in the run-up to the release? In this video Dave talks about the power of community building and the communication approach of Pajama Llama.
Watch the video here:
Dave Van Verdegem
“We started with Flotsam in our free time, as a couple of friends. But we needed money to rent an office and give ourselves an income. We were able to apply for support from the VAF as a company, which led to the creation of Pajama Llama. In the meantime, we have grown into a company with five permanent people."
"For us, community building is literally our growing community. It starts with family and friends and ends with fans and ambassadors for your game. Involving your community is always interesting. In the beginning our community consisted of three people, but with a community of a few hundred people you can already do more thinking than the three of us."
“We communicated regularly with our community from the start of the Flotsam development. For example, we shared a post on Twitter and Facebook every week about what we were doing, about which new elements we had added to the game. That built up a kind of suspense. We noted that fans came up with ideas that we had already devised or planned to realize, but had not yet announced. That way we knew we were on the right track."
“We also ensure that there is a line in our communication style. One of the features in our posts is the use of puns, word jokes. That also helps, in building your community or with regard to the press: they also try to make those jokes because they find that it belongs to us. It makes it a little more fun and it also sets the tone for our product.”
“Your community is also important for investors. It is a good lever if you want to enter into discussions or negotiations with investors. We had mainly shown many visual things, but few substantive elements. Nevertheless, we already had a substantial community, which ultimately helped convince investors.”
“One of the fairs where you can get in touch with your community is Gamescom. The entire industry comes together, but also consumers. It can be expensive to participate, but luckily there are organizations such as Flanders DC that help with a Belgian Game Booth, so that you as a developer can be present for a reasonable price and can make contacts with publishers and the press without breaking the bank. have to go."
This video has been produced by De Machine.
