Making money, doing good: The new genre of ‘world games’ like Never Alone (interview)

After launching Never Alone about an Alaska Native folk tale in December, E-Line Media and the native group that sponsored Never Alone believe they have a big opportunity to create a new genre of “world games,” or tales that record the stories of indigenous cultures around the globe.

These “world games” could chronicle the history of native cultures — and make a lot of money because they appeal to a broader demographic of people who wouldn’t ordinarily play video games, said Gloria O’Neill, the president and chief executive of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council. She gave a talk along with E-Line’s Alan Gershenfeld at the DICE Summit, the elite game industry event in Las Vegas.

O’Neill and Gershenfeld had to learn mutual respect to bridge the culture of the tribe and the way that video games are made. After several years of work, they managed to launch Never Alone as a downloadable game on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam on the PC. The title is expected to be profitable, and it is part of an increasing number of games with “meaningful play” that are becoming commercial successes as well. The Never Alone crew hope that they’ve inspired something more than just a single game.

I caught up with O’Neill, E-Line Media CEO Michael Angst, and Cook Inlet Tribal Council member Pat Marrs. Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation.

Above: Never Alone leaders Michael Angst of E-Line, Gloria O’Neill and Patt Marrs of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: Can you talk about the speech you plan to deliver?

Gloria O’Neill: We’re going to share our story of our partnership, how we came together, and how it’s inspired our long-term investment, the stake that we’re taking with our partners in E-Line Media. It’s inspired this whole new thesis of World Games and a new way of helping build our company to its full potential.

Michael Angst: Doing this first game as an attempt to explore a culture, I think we feel validated, both by the player interest and the potential for a financial return. We’ll be doing a series of games that explore and extend culture under our World Games brand.

GamesBeat: Is the whole series going to be focused on the Inupiat?

Angst: Our intention is to do both breadth and depth. From a breadth perspective, we’re in conversations with a number of cultural groups and native peoples, to explore other stories and other cultures. We’re also looking at ways to delve a little deeper into the Alaskan native culture and look at other genres of gameplay that we think are organic to the work we’ve done so far.

GamesBeat: It seems like it was one of the biggest efforts in this sort of “meaningful play” category. It’s a rich area to explore.

O’Neill: That’s what we’ve heard throughout the process, especially as we worked up to launch this past November, and post-launch as well. This is connecting with people across the world. The whole idea of using video games to share and extend culture—It allows people to not only immerse themselves and have a fun experience in gameplay and learn about another culture, but they’re starting to talk about their own stories and where they come from. We’ve talked to many people, many different members of the press. There’s a real power in this exchange.

Angst: Besides our own effort in the last two years, there have been other companies that have tried to do challenging themes or explore something diverse from a cultural perspective. This year you have This War of Mine. You have Valiant Hearts. That’s one from a triple-A publisher and one from a relatively new entrant from Poland. Last year you had Gone Home and Papers Please. Those not only established a nice voice, but also – at least from what we were able to understand – were able to succeed financially. We think it’s a relatively new space, but there’s an opportunity to do themes that are much more diverse.

Above: Gloria O’Neill and Alan Gershenfeld

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

GamesBeat: How well have you guys done? Have you found that it’s paying off?

O’Neill: I recently asked a veteran of the industry – “Does it always feel this way when you go to launch, and then you hit post-launch, and you get the kind of reviews we’ve had?” We’ve had hundreds of reviews. What we’re finding is that it’s not only seeping into the consciousness of serious video game players, but it’s also crossing the boundary into the mass media and the population at large. So yes, it’s paid off. It’ll continue to pay off. It’ll have a long tail. We’re very happy with the success we’ve seen. We’ve learned a lot. If you launch a game, it’s an emotional roller coaster, but this veteran told me that’s just the way it is.

Angst: We’ll see a return on our capital. Probably a multiple of our budget back. The pleasant surprise is that we went off of a three platform launch. We did the two new consoles and we did PC. But it looks like we’ll be able to get on some other platforms, both the old generation of consoles—We haven’t announced exact dates, but we think we’ll end up on seven or eight different platforms. Some of that is risk-taking on our side, but we’ve also had folks step forward who are pretty optimistic about its performance on other platforms. They might be able to help us accelerate that. That was a nice outcome. It helps us widen the risk we can take when we look at more games, knowing we might be able to get to that many platforms.

O’Neill: We’re pleased with the potential as it relates to the financial return. We’re very pleased with the feedback we’re getting from the community. But as it relates to cultural impact, there’s no way to even try to look at what kind of impact we’ve made. It’s been unbelievable. I know that our community in Alaska is very proud of the product and how well it’s doing in the market. Especially for the Inupiat people, the people of the Arctic northwest, we can’t even put a number on what we’ve been able to do through the launch of Never Alone.

When we first looked at what investment to make, before we settled on making an investment in the video game industry – which, as you know, is pretty risky, especially since we knew nothing about the video game industry back then – and looked for the right partners, our number one priority was to make money for the CITC mission. It provides critical services to our people, so that they can connect to their lifelong potential. But number two was to make an investment that made a social impact in addition to making money. It’s amazing what we’ve been able to do through this investment.

GamesBeat: Is mobile a possibility?

Angst: From an audience perspective, we think there’s very diverse audience taste on mobile. For us, as an atmospheric platform, we have to look at the control scheme and make sure we can find a way to either port the game or re-imagine the game a little bit, so that it’s a solid experience on a tablet. The other thing we debate is that we get a very solid response to the local co-op aspect of the game, which would obviously be challenging to do on a tablet. But we’re looking hard at it. We’ll certainly do the work to play it on a tablet and see how we think it feels before we commit to announcing it.

Above: Green spirits can abduct Nuna and take her away.

Image Credit: E-Line Media