An interview video with Pathea Games’ deputy CEO Deng Yongjin has been uploaded on Bilibili.com recently. In the video, Deng told the stories behind the Pathea Games and how did they make a profit from their games.
Pathea Games is a developer team of indie video games like My Time at Portia and Super Buckyball. It started in 2010 with 1.2 million CNY, collected by the founders. They tried to make 2 games with the initial funds. The first one would be a quick one with fewer funds. They were prepared for it to become a failure and the team could learn from it and make a much better second one. Deng described it as “the golden rule used by many indie developers”.
The plan was not perfect. They tried to hire developers with lower salaries at first but as a result, it cost them more time to finish the first game. And after the first two games, they made some mistakes on scale expansion. In 2017, one year before My Time at Portia was released, they were almost running out of funds, it was the friends’ help and the Kickstarter help them make it through.
My Time at Portia made a turnover of around 20 million USD and Pathea Game got about 10 million from that.
At the end of the video, Deng also mentioned that Pathea Games only employ people who were game players themselves and loved video games. “There is a question in our interview quiz that ask you to name out at least 50 video game titles, if you are applying for a game designer, then the number will rise to 100.”