Lab Zero Games made a name for itself following the release of a fighting game Skullgirls in 2012. The game was originally developed by Reverge Labs, but when its then publisher Autumn Games was hit with a series of unrelated lawsuits, funding for further development was cut, its development team was laid off and the game was ultimately removed from Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Store.
The original team went on reform as Lab Zero Games, which continued work on content for the PC version, and took part in a charity donation drive during the 2013 Evolution Championship Series (EVO) tournament. That was what helped inspire the company to look to crowdsourcing to help fund development for Skullgirls DLC content. The campaign reached its goal and then some, raising almost $830,000 of its $150,000 goal.
In 2015, Lab Zero announced development of a new game called Indivisible during the Skullgirls panel at the Anime Expo in Los Angeles. Indivisible was presented as an action role-playing game featuring a female protagonist named Ajna, who teams together with multiple characters to battle their way to a warlord to exact revenge.
The game was put on Indiegogo that October with the goal of $1.5 million, and publisher 505 Games promised to fill in the remaining budget if the campaign met or exceeded the goal. A playable prototype was released at the launch of the campaign, and although it took a long time, the game eventually met its funding goal.
A playable version of Indivisible, featuring some of the latest updates, was shown at E3 and Anime Expo this year to help grow the game’s fan base as it continues toward its 2018 release for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
Peter Bartholow, CEO at Lab Zero Games, spoke with AListDaily about using crowdfunding as a means of building a fan base, engaging with them and working with a publisher to help grow the audience.
What are the challenges in continuing to promote a game after a successful Indiegogo campaign?
We really like showing our work, so crowdfunding is actually a great fit for our studio. We think it’s incredibly important to keep our backers abreast of the game’s latest developments, show them how we’re spending their money and try to update them with something new every two weeks or so. Hopefully, they’ll also show their friends and get them interested in the game, too. If there’s any particularly challenge with promoting Indivisible over Skullgirls, it’s that there’s so much we can’t show that we want to, otherwise we’d risk spoiling the game.
What led Lab Zero to develop an all new IP instead of spinning off from Skullgirls?
After working on Skullgirls for more than five years, the team was ready to try something different. While we all love fighting games, most of Lab Zero’s staff doesn’t actively play them, so we wanted to try our hand at something that better represented the team’s interests. Indivisible was originally pitched to another publisher, who requested something “like Child of Light.” While that publisher turned it down, we were so happy with the pitch and its potential that we kept shopping it around until 505 Games signed it.
How has Lab Zero worked with 505 Games to promote Indivisible, and how have crowdfunding backers been taking to game projects that include publisher involvement?
I work very closely with 505 Games to promote the game, and we try to make sure they’re aware of what we’re working on should any interesting promotional opportunities arise. The game is more than a year out, so right now most of the promotion is driven by Lab Zero’s social media efforts and campaign updates, but every once in a while something comes up that warrants more attention. For example, we signed anime studio Trigger to produce our animated opening, so we made sure to get 505’s PR involved in promoting that in the anime community. Also, 505 Games didn’t initially plan on having us at E3, but the backer preview build was getting close, so we figured we may as well show it. I’m glad we did, because we ended up winning a few awards. As for other crowdfunded games with publisher involvement, I’m not sure how well I can speak to that, because I believe our situation was unique in that we named 505 in our campaign from the outset. Some campaigns hide the fact that there is publisher involvement only to address it later, but we felt it was important to be honest and direct about 505’s involvement.
Lab Zero has used crowdfunding to develop DLC for Skullgirls. What did you learn from that experience when crowdfunding Indivisible, and do you see it as a kind of way to build and engage with an early fan base?
Crowdfunding is almost entirely about trust. When it comes to trust, I think a lot of crowdfunding campaigns start off on the wrong foot because they’re afraid to treat their backers like adults and try to protect them from the realities of game development. Especially on the financial side of things. While the level of honesty and transparency we strive for can make things more difficult in the short term, we think maintaining that trust is worth it. Especially if you intend to crowdfund again, as we did.
What is your approach toward keeping Indivisible at the top of mind as we get closer to the 2018 release?
We frequently update our backers with progress, showing them new art and animation whenever we can. We do this through streaming, campaign updates and the occasional trailer when there’s a bigger announcement. Soon we’re going to take the next step and give players a build to play with so they can start directly providing feedback on the game. This will be an enhanced version of the build we featured at E3 and Anime Expo. Once it’s out there, it’ll serve as a lasting test bed so we can try out new gameplay changes and get feedback. Eventually we intend to test out new characters and levels. Finally—in what I believe to be a first—the build will not only be delivered on PC, but also the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. We’re extremely grateful to Sony and Microsoft for letting us do this.
Have you discussed plans for growing the Indivisible audience beyond the initial backers?
A lot of that ultimately falls on 505’s marketing team, but of course we’ll be working closely with them on that. The game is far enough out now that we’re still planning a lot of that marketing, but because of how often we update our backers, the website will have a huge backlog of behind-the-scenes content to look through and see just how much work went into making Indivisible. I think the Backer Preview should get a fair amount of attention once it’s released, especially as we continue to refine the gameplay with player feedback. The prototype generated a lot of videos back when the game was mere hypothetical, so hopefully the same happens again now that it’s becoming a reality.
