The Daily Populous Monday December 30th, 2024 night edition
Authored by prankster101.com and submitted by YouAreNotMeLiar

Based in Barcelona (Spain), Herobeat Studios is a development studio that is “passionate about creating impactful games that leave a lasting impression on players”. As part of this mission statement, its first game, Endling: Extinction is Forever, has been described as offering “an incredibly powerful story that hits harder than I anticipated for sure“.

I spoke to Javier Ramello (Co-Founder, Studio Head, and CEO of Herobeat Studios) about Endling, and was able to ask him about his game development background, what made him decide to pursue the title as his first studio project, what his company has been up to since the game’s release in 2022, and what he hopes to achieve in the coming years… Enjoy!

Can you please tell me a little bit about yourself as well as your game development career history? How did you become the Studio Head of Herobeat Studios, and what made you decide to pick Endling as your first game?

I’m a programmer. I studied Computer Science in Spain and started working on videogames around 15 years ago. And after working at different indie game studios, I decided to create my own studio. I asked a few former colleagues who I thought might be interested in joining, and Pablo Hernandez, who is my business partner and also the Art Director for Endling, he expressed interest and we got together and started working on the project. I think this was around 2018, and we created the company and started gathering people. We were very lucky because there were some colleagues that decided to join us at the beginning. We didn’t have any investment, so it was just our savings, and that’s how we started. We created a prototype and started promoting it at different events, and managed to attract the attention of Handy Games, who are the indie division of THQ Nordic. They were interested in the project, and they eventually funded the rest of the development, and that allowed us to grow as a studio. We scaled to 24 people, and for the next 3 years, we went full throttle on developing the project, and it was eventually released in 2022.

So the game took 4 years in total to develop, and it was developed by 24 people… What made you decide to pick Endling: Extinction is Forever as your first game in terms of its theme and scope, but also in terms of its required production budget?

I have been working in the videogames industry for a long time. Before creating Endling, I was really tired of working on games that were not meaningful or interesting to me. I wanted to create something that was very emotional and which could deliver some kind of social message. Pablo Hernandez was also interested in this kind of experience, and we wanted to create something that could have a high production value. Not at all like the usual super small indie games that we were already creating for other companies. We wanted to make something really great so we decided to go big on the scope, even if it was for our first title. We knew that we had the skills and we knew the right people that could join us and help us make such a title. And from the very beginning, our references were projects like Inside and This War Of Mine… Games that were very good in terms of aesthetics and visuals. So we basically decided to go big or go home. Like, we heard mixed opinions from our fellow colleagues, where some of them told us that we were aiming too high for our first title and that we should start with something smaller. But that was not our idea. We wanted to make something that could add something to the videogames industry in our home country, Spain.

You mentioned the phrase “go big or or go home”. Ambitious games like Endling require a fair bit of money. And a lot of people were advising you to not put all of your eggs in one basket, and to mitigate the risk by starting small. But given that you didn’t listen to the people around you, and you did decide to go big, how has the game done financially?

We are very happy… We are still alive after 6 years as a company, so we can say that it has been a success for us. We knew that it wouldn’t be a game that would make us rich or anything like that. We were making this game because we felt that it was important for us. We also have the support of the publisher, and I think the reviews speak for themselves. We won a BAFTA game award, and I think that’s because we invested everything that we had into creating the best possible gaming experience.

Endling isn’t a first person shooter, and therefore it’s not part of what can be deemed as being a profitable genre. What sort of support did you receive from the Spanish games industry as well as the Spanish authorities?

Yeah, Spain is an emerging market at the moment. There is a lot of investment that is being put into helping studios. We have seen many studios be created and also disappear in the last 6 years. But I think the situation is improving a little. The government is also doing more to support the studios every year. So I think in a few years we will see more and more games being developed by Spanish developers.

Endling was completed in 2022. What have you been up to since?

We have been working on a new project. It’s not announced yet, but we’ve been speaking with publishers about it.

So you’ve been speaking to publishers… I don’t mean to say this in a cynical way, and I’m certainly not trying to disrespect your work, but what feedback have you received from publishers as a general rule? Because publishers have their own agenda, and whilst it’s the case that a game might have artistic merit, the idea of a publisher funding its development might not necessarily make a whole heap of financial sense… And I say this is as someone who has actually bought Endling.

Well, I guess every publisher is always looking for a project that will recoup its investment, but of course that’s not always possible. Still, Endling was profitable and we are very happy. I guess publishing is a risky business, but they know their job. They put a lot of effort into things like reporting and scouting and doing due diligence on studios that they are going to invest in. So whilst there are many projects that end up not being profitable, that’s something that nobody knows until the game is actually out on the market. Maybe you have a super good game, but you don’t do enough marketing. Or maybe a similar game is released on the same day, and you lose a lot of traction and visibility as a consequence. You just don’t know.

Last question… You’ve been in the industry for 15-odd years. What do you hope to achieve in the next 15-odd years?

Hopefully we will grow as a company. We plan to keep creating these type of games with a social message, but also try to raise the bar and offer games with higher production values. We want to provide something new to the industry, whether it be new mechanics or something else, whilst also leaving an impact on players.