The sub-AA/AAA world of games has become increasingly competitive in recent years, and yet Serenity Forge, a diverse 40-50 person publisher based out of Colorado, has found a way to grow, develop, and publish games with very high success rates. How do they do it?

To answer this question, host Aaron Bush is joined by Zhenghua (Z) Yang, the founder and CEO of Serenity Forge. They discuss Z’s inspiring story, how publishing has evolved over the past decade, and how Z goes above and beyond to ensure success. They also dig into the nuances of working with subscription platforms, the underdiscussed benefits of physical sales, building unique distribution, structuring publishing deals, and how AI does (and doesn’t) impact the way they think about supporting games.

If you want a case study of how to win and stand out in a crowded gaming market, make sure to give this episode a listen!

We’d also like to thank AWS for Games for making this episode possible. AWS for Games aligns purpose-built game development capabilities — including AWS services like Amazon GameLift as well as solutions from AWS Partners — to help game developers build, run, and grow their games. For more information, visit https://aws.amazon.com/gametech/

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Aaron: Hi everyone. I'm your host, Aaron Bush, and today we're diving into the world of publishing. This corner of the market has seen all sorts of evolutions in recent years. Like the rising number of games being developed, a changing marketing and media landscape, the emergence of subscription services, and much more.

And to help us figure out what's going on here and what it takes to win as a publisher in today's market, I'm delighted to welcome Z Yang, the founder and CEO of Serenity Forge to the podcast. Today, we'll dig into all things Serenity Forge plus the present and future of publishing. But Z, It's great to have you here. Welcome to the pod.

Zhenghua: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Really glad to be here.

Aaron: Yeah, I'm really excited about this conversation, but I think the best place to start is with your story. Z when I was preparing for this interview, I saw a touching YouTube video that tells the story about how you got into gaming and how that eventually led to the creation of your business, Serenity Forge.

So would you mind sharing that story with our audience today?

Zhenghua: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Z. I mean, I started off as a kind of a first generation immigrant, I suppose, from from China moved to the U. S. When I was 10 years old and really kind of what got me into gaming was being a gamer. You know, I played a ton of video games as a kid.

And as it turns out, maybe played a little too much. What happened was that when I was 18 years old, I was diagnosed with a very serious illness. I was actually told on that day that I only had just a couple of hours left to live, so it was a, it was a very difficult moment. I ended up having to go through a lot of treatment.

Obviously I survived the night, but as a result, I had to drop out of school. I had to kind of be hospitalized for two years, uh, going through chemotherapy and all sorts of experimental treatment, so, you know, as a teenager that was a really difficult moment in my life. And, uh, and also if you think back to your teenage years, it's a very easy way for you to just fall off the face of the planet.

I mean, how many people you can think of in your high school college days is that like, who are they now? Who knows? Right? And, and that's just kind of, I was one of those data points in someone's life. So what happened is that while I was going through a lot of treatment, I kind of had to turn to other ways to kind of stay around and then stay alive and stay okay, so I started playing all sorts of video games again.

I was playing all these single player games, games like Final Fantasy. It made me feel like a hero going out there, saving the world, games, multiplayer games, games like League of Legends or Minecraft. You know, making all these friends online friends from all over the world who like barely spoke English, but they're able to check in with me every day to see whether or not I'm taking my medicine, whether or not I'm getting the proper amount of rest, and eventually I was even able to be connected to some of the world's best hematologists through my friends through some MMOs that I was playing, who kind of worked in their offices, and I was able to fly out to Seattle to visit these hematologists and who gave me critical advice and very important information on how to be okay.

And ultimately, you could certainly say that video games saved my life. About two years into treatment, I was able to kind of get better enough to go back into school. And so I transferred back to CU Boulder in Colorado. But I was thinking to myself in my first year of school, You know, these games, like League of Legends, they're not made to help me, right?

But in the end, they saved my life. Yeah. What if I start designing and creating video games with intention to help other people? What kind of power would that be able to unlock? So that's when I started getting into making games. When I first started, I literally just started sitting into the back of programming classes that I didn't want to pay for.

Started taking notes, borrowed books from the library. Learn how to make my own games and my first year of school, I was able to release my first video game that I made, which was a visual novel, non fictional story based on my personal illness and experience going through it about a month after I released the game just for free online.

It's like a 40 minute story is very short. About a month after I launched the game, I got an email from a kid, in Spain. He was a teenager, and he was emailing me to thank me. He apparently it turned out that he has been struggling with depression his whole life. And he has been actually planning for his own, for taking his own life, and while he was doing research online, he came across my game. He played it, and it inspired him so much. That he decided to put a stop to his plans, enroll into a game design school so that he can start making games to share his own experiences as a freshman in college, I did not make a million dollars overnight, but I thought to myself, maybe I saved someone's life by making a video game.

Maybe I'm on the right track and I should keep doing that. So basically, then throughout the rest of college, I kept on making games. I dragged other friends into working on games together, graduated school in 2014. Kept on doing the same thing. And this year is our 10 year anniversary, making video games, you know, really doing the same thing, but on a much larger scale, obviously.

So that's kind of how all of this started. But yeah, I mean, it's a, it's kind of a interesting way to kind of start a company, but obviously it's very personal and definitely very much fuels. Our current mission and the visions.

Aaron: Well, congrats on 10 years. That's a big milestone. And also, I mean, just a lot of respect towards your ability to go through a hard time yourself and find a way to almost jujitsu, move it, uh, uh, figure out how to turn it into something that also helps other people, it really is inspiring. Could you also maybe just tell the next leg of the story of, you know, you have this business now you've been developing games. How did you go from making your own games to deciding to turn it into a bigger business that now includes publishing. How did all of that come together?

Zhenghua: Yeah, absolutely. This is actually a really cool story. So, so when I was a senior in college, my last year of school, at that point, I was already putting my games onto then the Wii U and Xbox one, and you know, some of these consoles out there, being able to, it was literally just like us taking a call in the basement, pretending we're a real business.

No, trying to get in there. Yep. But we were able to do it and we already started putting our games on there. So one year, so basically that year for packs, we were, we submitted our game for packs for Indie Mega Booth. It was accepted. But then we realized the fees were way too expensive.

We're just, it's just a bunch of college kids living on ramen. There's no way that we could fly out to Seattle, show our games, buy a booth, all of that stuff. So at the time we thought, okay, well, it was cool that we got selected too bad we can't go. But then we randomly received an email from another game developer.

His name is David Bord, and he basically said, Hey, just wanted to let you know, I'm going to pay for your booth because I think you guys are cool. So come on out to Seattle. Let's hang out. Wow. I thought, wow, that was, that was really neat. So basically we, we went out, showed our game for the first time at PAX, and had a great time there ended up really kind of building out the team from that perspective, but also that meant we got connected to David who now goes by Alan.

So Alan and I had dinner and as it turns out that they had a really difficult time working with their publisher for their game at the time, Lifeless Planet. So they said, well, if you are currently already putting games on consoles, why don't you just port our game and put it on consoles and press the launch button for me because I don't want to deal with that myself.

I said, sure, yeah, why not? I love the game, really appreciate you sending us out here. So we ended up working together. We ported and published lifeless planet, which was the first game that we published for another developer. The game ended up generating three, 4 million in sales. I think today ended up, I, I think we reached somewhere around 10 million, downloads at this point across all the platforms, so it ended up doing really well, especially for a college kid.

So that's basically kind of how the publishing got started. We realized that maybe we're onto something there and we should keep on helping our friends, you know, release their games, do the marketing thing and, and get the word out there. The really interesting part of this story is that over the next 10 years, we continue to work with them on all sorts of different games, Lifeless Moon being one of the games that, we released a few years ago.

And actually, we just announced this about a month ago that we have acquired their studio entirely. And Alan is actually now a full time employee working on some titles here at Serenity Forge. So it really kind of came full circle after these 10 years, how all of this stuff got built. That's awesome.

Aaron: Well, let's zoom forward to today. I can talk about all, all of the various history and games you've worked on for this entire hour, but, let's go ahead and zoom forward to, to right now. What all does Serenity Forge currently do? And maybe you can help us better understand the type of games or publishing deals you currently focus on.

Before we recorded, we were struggling to define this exact corner of the market. You know, we don't really like triple I as a definition. Like, it's right below double a, but you know, maybe without even putting a title on it, maybe you can just explain like what you focus on in the range of what you do at Serenity Forge.

Zhenghua: Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think we can talk about sizes. You know, that's always an easy way to start. Serenity Forge is about 40 to 50 people currently. We primarily are located in Boulder, Colorado, but we actually just started a new European branch last year in Budapest, Hungary, and there's just a ton of talent in the Eastern Europe, and we realized that that's just a great way to have a stronger global footprint.

I was a first generation immigrant from China, so I'm fluent in Chinese. So as a result, a lot of the things that we do are actually very global, despite the fact that we are kind of a more, more American to start. So with that said, in terms of games that we do, the Serenity Forge vision statement is that we create meaningful and emotionally impactful experiences that challenge the way you think.

So what that really means is that the, the, anything that we do has to be very meaningful, good for society, pushing the world forward. Making a strong, positive difference for our world. If a certain product is not really designed to make a good movement, I guess, for, for society, then we're generally not interested in engaging with it.

The second most important part here is that we also need a strong emotional impact, you know, like I usually tell people, a dialysis machine is very good for the world, but there's not much emotional impact there. It's not quite entertainment. It's not quite what we do, so whatever it is that we do has to generate strong emotional impact, whether it may be, you know, comical, hilarious, really funny, or it be traumatizing, sad or depressing.

Either way, it has to be something that's strong. So those are really the kind of the main points. Now, when it comes to actual project size, it could be all over the place. You know, honestly, it ranges from 5000 projects all the way to multimillion dollar, almost. You know, eight figures in terms of size. So, so really could range quite a bit because for us, it's not necessarily about funding or whatever.

It's more about the core message of what we're trying to tell. Because even the smallest games out there could reach very large audiences. In fact, the, our most well known title, Doki Doki Literature Club, we just announced yesterday that the game has received, uh, we have reached 30 million players around the world as of, as of when, just a few years after launching the game and we have even more exciting announcement coming pretty soon, which by the, by the it would already be live, which is that we are going to be releasing the game on mobile for the first time.

So we, we were able to reach 30 million players, even without the mobile platform. And we're now going to be pushing it, to even larger audience. So, so over, and this is a game that's basically developed by one person. So, so it goes to show that it doesn't need to be a big budget game for it to have a low, huge reach now.

Lastly, to kind of talk about the pipeline operations, as you can probably see behind me, at least on video, uh, there's a lot of games, toys, merchandise, statues, characters, books, yeah, we have designed and created all of these and distribute them globally. So not only do we make video games from scratch, we release and publish and market games.

To support it. We also do physical publishing distribution and kind of merchandising around the world. One of the main things here is just that because we want to create meaningful games for everyone in the world, we have to first make sure that everyone in the world is able to consume it. So, the people who are grandmas buying games at Walmart for their kids, we want to be able to support. That we want to be able to support, maybe kind of you know, games being a gray imported into China, or maybe, you know, people who are playing games, because they don't have, even though they don't have wireless, internet access to download them, these are all audiences of Serenity Forge.

So, as a result, we also really much, very much focused on kind of mass retail distribution, selling games on the store shelves. So yeah, that's kind of in a nutshell, what Serenity Forge is.

Aaron: That's awesome. And yeah, you guys are cranking out those milestones left and right lately, which is, which is awesome.

We'll dig much more into the specifics of Serenity Forge, how you think about your own business, but I thought it would be smart to, and helpful to just ground our conversation a bit more in your broader views of this publishing landscape right now, and I guess the big picture question to, to kick this off and then we can get into more detail.

It's just when you look back over the past decade, what market shifts have impacted the way that your team develops and publishes games the most? Like what, what in your thinking and way of working has, has changed the most?

Zhenghua: Yeah. I think, I think from anyone's perspective, it's very obvious that the game industry became more, you know, quote unquote, Competitive.

And I think, I think that would be too, too surface level of, of an analysis of what's actually happening, personally coming from the creator perspective, because we're, we are creators, we are game makers at heart. One of the most obvious things I think that is, that is making the careers in the game industry more dangerous is that.

People are just better at making video games. Now, you know, a lot of times you kind of see video games launching on steam. Random indie games, you know, being launched 40 of them per day. And if you look at each of these games and imagine that this game launched 10 years ago, that would be like the game that everyone would be talking about for the next two months and everyone's going to be going crazy about, but now it's just like some small.

Project that no one's going to care about anymore. That's kind of how the game industry is now. And a lot of this, I feel like you can compare it to other industries, you know, early days of, you know, how books were handled in early civilization and then even really kind of post. Dante, I would say, like around the Renaissance era, that's kind of when books became a form of entertainment.

You can kind of see how that eventually became where it is today. More recent example, obviously it would be film, the film industry, how in the beginning it was kind of seen as an art form and has a lot of experimental, you know, ways of distribution and kind of people trying to figure out the details and now it's just like put on Netflix, you know, watch some stranger things and then you move on.

So, so I think the game industry is kind of going through its own version of reckoning. Now the, the difference though, between the game industry and anything else is that a book's technology never changes. A film's technology is always going to be one frame after another one that you're seeing on your screen, but the game technology is always changing.

And so it doesn't really play fair by the rules, like the other mediums. And I think that's the thing the game industry continues to struggle with. How is it that something like League of Legends? Are in the same category of entertainment. The truth is that it's not, but, but gaming, the game industry professionals and marketing professionals have to end up marketing it to the same people.

So then you have some really weird, wacky situations, competing in that same space. So, so I think ultimately that's kind of my answer is that we are lucky in the sense that we're able to use history to kind of discover where we're going to be, but also, I guess, similarly lucky in the sense that history is not really fully written yet for the game industry, because we're in a very special circumstance, special spot.

So, yeah, it's a very exciting place to be, and it's a great place for someone who is looking for unique opportunities to really thrive.

Aaron: Yeah, change is the only constant and the bar is constantly getting raised. But I'm curious from like a publisher standpoint, how do you View operating in that challenge.

Like, like how our teams, maybe yourself, positioning yourself or making decisions in a way that you still feel confident about discoverability and people seeing what you're building when the market is increasingly competitive and better, as you were saying.

Zhenghua: Yeah, I think, I think as Serenity Forge, one of the, one of the things I always obsess about is diversification.

And I know everyone says that, but like the way I think we diversify is a lot more, um, it's a lot bigger it's a lot bigger, a wider view, I suppose. We, we typically, when you talk to a game publisher, their version of diversification is typically, Oh, we're going to sign a MMO, but we're also going to sign a roguelike to make sure we diversify.

I mean, sure, that's, that's great. But ultimately every single game is a different product and your roguelike is probably not going to be dead cells. So, so it's not actually all that easy for you to just say that that version of diversification, diversification actually even matters. I mean, you might just be wrong in selecting the wrong teams or products.

It's not actually making things that much safer. Sure. It's better than putting all your money into one video game, obviously, but it's like, good job you're trying. But I think the way that we approach it is always. Kind of this looking at the medium, looking at the society and seeing what is being demanded out there.

And then we kind of. Focus back onto our company vision of meaningful and emotionally impactful experiences and the thinking about how we can deliver that because ultimately meaningful, emotional and emotionally impactful experiences are timeless, and they're always going to be demanded because we're human.

So as a result, as long as we're able to support those core pillars, then we don't necessarily need to just do one thing. So, for example. We are a developer, game developer and publisher. We're able to make games that's funded by other partners. We're able, and we are actually several, I'm personally directing some of them.

We're able to create games, which then we can self publish. That's also really interesting because we're able to now have the pipeline to fully support something without any partners involvement. Now we have that avenue. We're a publisher. We're able to sign other talent, talented people's games without having to be.

You know, fully invested in the pie, but invest enough so that we have a certain amount of safety and capitalize on something that's ended up being strong. That's really good. But then we also go into being a physical publisher. We're not just selling games to people who have steam accounts. We're selling to grandmas were selling to people in China.

We're selling to everybody around the world, and that is a totally huge market that not a lot of people are really taking advantage of besides maybe some of the larger companies. And then lastly, That's not it. We do merchandise, we sell vinyl records in stores. We, we do art books. We do little figures that people in Japan are collecting.

I mean, there's just so many different things that we're doing. We're designing and creating and selling that makes it so that as a studio, we're so much safer. I'll give you an example of kind of where we're right now. Right? I mean, that's kind of in everyone's minds right now where the game industry is doing poorly.

Everyone is doing layoffs. Studios are shutting down. This year is actually going to be the second best year that we've had as a studio and a lot of it is very Bye. Bye. It came from diversification. You cannot pinpoint one product or one game or one IP that made us have a successful year.

It's really the combination of everything that I just mentioned that kind of made it into a more holistic, more sustainable operation. So yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of how we, how we really treat, treat the game industry now.

Aaron: That's super interesting. I want to dive deeper into your point about physical and merchandise because your take, you know, it sounds contradictory to like the common narrative that I think most people think about with, physical is dying.

All the GameStops are shutting down. You know, uh, the shelf space is being reduced. I'd love for you to just explain a bit more like how do you think about the current state of physical and you can throw merchandise in there too, because I think that's a, like a interesting, fresh vantage point to, to look at this.

And where do you think that's going and how publishers should generally be thinking about it?

Zhenghua: Yeah, absolutely. So I have kind of two answers to that. I'll start with the more pessimistic answer and then I'll talk about what is actually happening in the world. So, so one of the things about this idea of like physicals dying that I always found very interesting is that you have to first ask yourself, dying for who?

Sure, maybe physicals dying for Ubisoft. But is physical really dying for Serenity Forge? Much like how, so, so one of the, one of the reasons why I got into physical a few years ago was actually, I was looking at a very specific event in the game industry, and that is Undertale. Ironically, if you think about Undertale, it is basically a continuation of the Earthbound, Earthbound series mother, a series from Nintendo.

And it's very obvious that Nintendo has. Bigger fish to fry, right? Like they got Zelda and Mario and all these other big IPs that they can capitalize on Pokemon. They don't need to go out there, ramp up a whole new studio, make a mother game, sell it to some indie crowds and then, and then move on.

It's just not really worth it for them. And I get it. They want to do the top five most lucrative things as a business. But that kind of opens up a spot in the market for Toby Fox to come in here and make another undertale or make another earthbound rather, and now suddenly becomes the biggest indie game and for a solo developer or a relatively small team, it becomes a very lucrative financial investment.

 Obviously I'm, I'm removing a lot of the art from this conversation, but purely from a finance perspective, that's kind of what happened. So that actually inspired me to think more about the physical space, because when you think about physical spaces, It is dying. You know, all these big companies are kind of exiting out of the spot, but GameStop is still there and Walmart is still there and target is still there.

These companies are still going to try to make their money on selling physical games somehow. They want to be able to at least stay relevant in the game space. Uh, not necessarily compete, if not necessarily complete. So I thought to myself that, and I started just, you know, working with people to try to get things going.

And lo and behold, there actually is a much larger physical audience out there than people realize, especially for a smaller team. I mean, for a company of 40, 50 people. Selling physical games is extremely lucrative. For something like Ubisoft, maybe it's not quite there because they got, they got bigger money to make.

But for us, that's kind of where our bread, bread and butter ended up being. When we released Doki Doki Literature Club on physical for Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and, and PlayStation, on day one of releasing the physical version, we sold, we shipped 200K units globally. Of that game within one day, right?

And it ended up being the best selling video game on Amazon that summer. Yeah. So as a result, you know, these retailers realized this is actually where the company is at. This is actually where the money is for a lot of these retailers that haven't really been maybe stocking the correct games.

Since then we continue to run that operation and it's just been doing really well for us. I guess the final thing I'll end on is just that people say that physical is dying. But without disclosing any confidential information, what I can say is that on certain major, you know, console platforms, physical still accounts for the majority of game sales, actually, you know, like downloads are only a minority still for a lot of platforms out there.

So, you know, take it with a grain of salt when you hear people claim stuff like that.

Aaron: Cool. Well, I have a couple of other areas that I want to hit on just in terms of how the market has changed. And we talked about discoverability being challenging and how you have to think of it differently about that, but I guess connected to that is everything around marketing and media, which is a core function of being a publisher and over the past several years, we've seen all sorts of different.

Changes and what the media landscape looks like, what all the social apps are like, where people are consuming video content, where they would run across games. Like how has the, the role of being a publisher changed when it comes to, to marketing, like, what are the new realities that everyone is trying to.

Zhenghua: I think I have the stupidest answer for this question because I was actually thinking about this when we've been discussing this quite a lot over the past few months. So, so I think, you know, kind of walking through game history, I think in the beginning of the game industry, it was, it was like, just launch a game and then people will buy it because people are interested in technology and there's not a lot of content.

And then I think we got into a part earlier, maybe earlier, a decade ago, or maybe, you know, five years ago, where we got to a spot where there's Starting to be more games out there. And you kind of need to stand out somehow. So then the marketing conversation became more of a, like, especially these small games, right?

Like it's, it's more of a conversation where, you know, early, early days, you'd run some TV ads, you throw some money at it and you're done. And now you have to like actually use brain cells to figure out how you can sell your games. Oh, I'm going to trick Reddit into like a voting, my thing about how I'm a solo dev, or I'm going to try to make a TikTok video that could go viral.

There's a lot of these things that kind of like. Came over the past few years, so I think I think we're now kind of getting to even late stages of that where that is not quite working anymore, right? This this idea of like, oh, I just get markiplier to play my game. That's how I'm going to sell the game.

That doesn't work anymore. Like markiplier. Unfortunately, doesn't matter as much anymore because there's too many youtubers and their views don't actually translate to sales anymore. Press that has not been relevant for a while and continues to be less relevant. People writing articles doesn't matter anymore.

So, so I think we're, you know, obviously like stuff like showing at E3 or whatever, it's all just now is it's messy. And I think there's really kind of. Two different answers to this. Number one, I think marketing strategies are becoming a lot more complex and nuanced, which means that it's not one thing anymore is usually 100 or hundreds of things that you have to do, like getting markiplier to play the game, like showing the game of packs and all of them somehow Coinciding with each other to kind of create a strategy.

For example, Doki Doki Literature Club. I, sorry, I keep on talking about this game. It's just the easy one to talk about because there's a lot that went through with this IP. Anyway. So earlier this year, we put the game in the PS plus essentials, a deal in October, given away to millions of people.

Right. Um, which is great. We got a big paycheck out of it, but that wasn't the only thing we thought that could happen. So not only do we do that, it was Halloween. So we ended up kind of doing a big Halloween promotion for the game, released a lot of merchandise to go with it. Little cute key chains and a big blanket that we're selling for premium prices.

So now that not only is there a million people getting the game for free, they're now becoming big fans of the game. Now they're looking for more ways to spend money to capitalize on, you know, to become a bigger fan. So stuff like that. That is like a strategy that is very much, there's a lot of synergy between marketing strategies and production strategies to kind of go together to make it more of a comprehensive plan and ultimately, really, I think At the end of the day, now, making a good video game is actually more important than ever.

So if you really think about it, in the past, it's like, you can make a good game, but if you don't sell it, then no one's gonna be able to get it, so then you fail. But now, it's like, no one can sell their games. So, so, in a way, you could almost argue that you're actually playing on a more even level playing field.

Where a solo dev In a way, sometimes has more opportunity than others because you're relying on steam algorithms to be able to, , recognize your game more so than PewDiePie would. So, so then now, I guess the really the biggest trick is that you just got to focus on making a good game. I think I think a lot of games now are on the same playing field and it's easy for your easier for your game to actually be discovered.

As long as your game is actually better than everyone else's. And so that's kind of the way I say it again, like I mentioned, the stupidest answer I can probably give, not a good product, but that's probably matters now more than ever.

Aaron: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense to me. You also mentioned PlayStation plus as part of that answer.

And these subscription services like PS plus like game pass, they're a newer wrinkle and, you know, the game plan of figuring out how to monetize games and I guess are especially important for more indie style, games where it could, you know, make or break, uh, budgets or, or such. You, you have a much clearer insight, into this than I do.

Like, like, how do you view the role of these subscription platforms when it comes to the, the type of games that you work on? And I guess the, the indie ish, landscape more broadly. Is it overrated? Is it underrated?

Zhenghua: Yeah, so, so I think I probably have the most weird answer, which is I'm actually pretty neutral about the whole situation.

Okay. Because I think most people are either really against it or really for it, right? So, so the way I see it is that anytime there is a shift in Technology more specifically in this case, distribution. Yeah, it will change the product, but it doesn't need to fundamentally change the meaning of those products.

Again, I kind of tend to go back to our company mission, which is that we do meaningful, emotionally impactful experiences, those experiences. We'll thrive regardless of how it's distributed, whether if it's in a box or on a game pass platform, and so, so we have worked with these services in the past.

We have also worked, chosen to not work with the services in the past for some products. It really kind of just depends on the situation. Maybe, maybe the real problem here is that people are too rooted. In a product delivery method than an actual purpose for creating the product. I think maybe that's actually the problem where if you are a creator that is only able to be creating products that is distributed in a specific way.

It is very difficult when that specific way disappears for you to pivot into something else, right? And I think for Serenity Forge, we've just never been that. We only do physical because we want it to spread meaningful and emotionally experiences to more people. It's only a tool for us to achieve certain rules, certain goals as opposed to the goal itself.

So I think that's why we're able to operate a lot more flexibly and be open minded about the situation. Now, as a consumer and I guess more educated consumer than some, my personal opinion regarding the, the, the situation is that it was kind of bound to happen. In fact, I was actually surprised. I'm actually currently surprised that game pass isn't, uh, being pushed more.

 Maybe that's, you know, more to come next year, but regarding a lot of, kind of what's out there, game pass is also a really phenomenal tool, even for the, kind of the smaller artists. If you think about it. It's probably a lot of movies and TV shows that you never would have watched if it's not on Netflix, but you're just kind of scrolling by one day and you see something and then it really changed your life and now you know who the person is and kind of, you know, how, what that whole thing is about, um, I think the same thing is really kind of there for the subscription services where it is a major part of discoverability.

I mean, I just mentioned millions of people redeemed a Doki Doki Literature Club on PlayStation that otherwise probably would never spend money on, on the game otherwise. Right. That is now a much larger fan base. We're able to reach our now global fan base because of these services. And we're able to capitalize on that in other ways, on top of just giving them a free game.

So, so I think there's just a lot of nuance here and ultimately, yeah, I have to stay neutral because there's just too many pros and cons on both sides.

Aaron: Yeah, it depends. I, I get it. So it also wouldn't be a podcast in 2024 if I didn't ask about artificial intelligence and in some way, obviously the rising wave of AI improved LLMs and everyone trying to figure out how to make tools for, for different parts of game development.

With them, it seems to be a rising force that everyone is thinking about and everyone's trying to contend with. I'm curious how you think about it for your own business and how you think about it for publishing more in general. Like, does it, is it starting to change the way that you think about how teams are making games or what you'll be looking for in the future?

Like I imagine, like, you know, you'll still be dialed in on your mission. You're still looking for great games, but everything else, AI, like any, Like anything is, is a tool that maybe can help teams create better versions or new, interesting versions of what they're trying to, you know, bring to the world.

But how has it like tangibly affecting things yet, if at all, and where do you see that going?

Zhenghua: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, you hit the nail on the head there, with one of your comments, the way that Serenity Forge looks at. Technology is that it's always going to be a tool. And this is actually as a result of me working at Wells Fargo at one point, that that was very much kind of the founder of Wells Fargo's methodology is that you'd never chase technology only use tools to actually chase what your, what your goals are.

Since we started, that's kind of what we've always seen. I mean, we, we kind of started in the game industry in a really interesting spot where technology technological changes kind of Kept on happening left and right. When we first started free to play, it kind of became a thing. Mobile gaming was kind of on the rise.

Smartphones became a thing. So then the question was, all right, do we chase free to play? Everyone was talking about how free to play is the only way to game going forward. We kind of see where that is now today, but man, for the longest time, that was really the firm belief that everyone had right in the, in the game industry.

And then after, shortly after that, we kind of got into this VR, AR craze where Oculus rift kind of came around and you had a big Kickstarter. Everyone started caring about it and you know, VR is the future. And you know, everyone getting now and start making VR games. We also now kind of see kind of where that is.

We're maybe yet to come, who knows, right? Like that we're early adopting for a few decades at this point. Maybe we'll keep on early adopting. Maybe we'll finally get there. So, a lot of these things kind of come and go, I mean, whether if it's crypto, blockchain, right? NFTs is another thing. There's just so many different things that kind of come and go.

And AI is kind of, I guess, the newest iteration of a lot of this stuff. When Serenity Forge looks at each of these things, things. We think about what is this particular tool bring into our operations to be able to help us achieve the goals. When we look at stuff like VR, we recognize that VR is actually really great.

It's way more immersive to do it. VR experience than you could possibly do, you know, on the flat screen. But also there are challenges regarding distribution because you can't really sell that to everyone. People in, you know, in, in Vietnam probably won't be able to experience our, our VR experiences.

Therefore, we won't be able to share our meaningful messages to those people. So we approach it with caution. We think about the moments where that could be useful and we use it. When we think about moments that we won't be using it and we don't. Same goes with stuff like free to play. We released free to play games.

We released some not free to play games. Crypto, NFT. Key. Technology is great. There's a lot of interesting moments here and here, but maybe the market's a little messy and certainly NFT is not quite, not quite interesting for us in terms of what is able to actually contribute. So we kind of step away from it.

And I think by the time we got to AI, this is, it's weird in the sense that I actually don't think AI is a thing specifically, but more so that it is a concept. Of how tools are built. So, so the way that we approach it is less like we are AI studio or we're not an AI studio. It's more so that we look at what tools are out there actually using this particular thing and whether or not that tool is useful.

Chassis PT is great for me to, you know, brainstorm some stuff and help me, you know, uh, write some stuff that I don't really want to write or at least get a draft started. And then there are certain AI tools where you. And put a prompt and that makes a whole video game for you. I don't know if that's really helpful.

I mean, obviously not for me, right? So, so I think that's really the nuanced answer here of how we engage with this idea of AI currently out there is that we don't look at AI holistically. We look at AI, we look at tools that might utilize AI, but fundamentally still tools that are individually, whether or not they help with what we do.

Aaron: Okay, well, let's go ahead and zoom back out a bit and talk about Serenity Forge and your journey and kind of what you've learned along the way. And I guess one, one question here is I'd love to just learn more about how you. Went about originally bootstrapping this publishing business and, and growing out your team because having 40, 50 people bootstraps is, is impressive.

And obviously it took 10 years to, to get to this point, but I imagine you've learned a lot in your journey. And so I'd just love for you to share maybe some of. What you've learned as an entrepreneur, as a business builder, maybe some lessons you've even learned the hard way, or just be curious to see what, what pops out in your mind as you look back.

Zhenghua: Yeah. I mean, I think, I mean, I'm trying to avoid giving a generic answer or a generalized answer, but I mean, yeah, it took time. It was not easy. There are moments when, man, you really don't know. What you're doing and whether or not you should be doing this, right? There's a lot of highs and lows. I think the, I mean, I think, I think the main thing here is that I'm, I'm very lucky to have met really good people to work with from, from early on finding amazing friends that I can trust.

It's ironic that people always say, don't start a business with your friends because, you know, that's going to get messy. I don't think I have friends outside of my business because I just couldn't, I don't, I don't care about people really outside of work because I'm a workaholic and I only hold relationships that are beneficial for the business.

Right. So a lot of times I think, maybe the main thing for, for me is, is really just. Being able to find something that I'm passionate for. when I was in school, I actually had an opportunity to work very briefly at the federal reserve, uh, doing economic policy and while I was there, there was a super coincidental and very lucky moment where I was able to have lunch with the then chairman of the fed, Dr.Ben Bernanke. And, and during that time, during that lunch, one of the things that I asked him was, Hey, so, you know, what kind of advice do you have for kids like us, you know, like early 20 year olds, like looking at life, thinking about going into the world. What do you, what should we do to be, to be successful?

And this is the story that he told me. I think his story is probably better than what I can say anyway. And this is the story that he told me. He said that a lot of people in the world are actually very unfortunate. If you think about it, people who are in Africa, people who are in rural China, you know, these people are so unfortunate.

They have to walk four hours a day just to get drinking water to feed their families, and it's very unfortunate that they lived the life that they do. He said that if you're one of the few people in the world, the very lucky select individuals who are able to choose what you do in the world rather than be forced into what you have to do to survive, that's how you truly make a difference in the world.

That's actually how you find true happiness. He told us about how when he was working in fast food, he would be spending most of his time doing market analysis or running spreadsheets, you know, just as a hobby, because he just, that's what he's passionate for. You know, he loves it. Right. And eventually channeling that passion, he was able to get to where he was in the world.

So I thought about that and I was like, yup, makes sense. I quit. I'm going to go make video games. And, and, and that's really kind of how I am here. So I guess in a way it's like, you know, you only live once, right? Like YOLO. Uh, you might as well give it a try. Might as well try something big and just don't be afraid to fail and go out there and do it.

And, and you're probably going to fail, like if following stats, you're probably going to fail, but at least you tried it. It's okay, and you learn from the experience and you do something else.

Aaron: There you go. The, we have a mutual friend that connected us and through him, I learned that Serenity Forge has a history of having a very high accuracy rate in terms of the games that you play.

Back succeeding and being profitable. And as we kind of hinted at above, many people think that this corner of the market right now is filled with a lot of randomness and luck because of how competitive and crowded it is. But I would, I would love for you to speak to how you've been able to. To buck that trend, be consistent and have high accuracy.

What's, what's the secret here?

Zhenghua: I mean, the secret is not something that's just like, I just know and other people don't, um, the secret is that I just put in the work to just so that, you know, you're, you're aware I play around 400 to 500 games a year. And, and I judge for a lot of award shows out there and I'd really have my years to the ground.

Like, you know, a lot of times I would just hang out in our public discord channel filled with thousands of fans and jump on a voice chat and start, start chatting with some, you know, random teenagers in Alabama who played our games and giving me feedback about what we're doing. I know it sounds dumb, right?

Cause there are literal like research firms that could provide that information for me. But by doing it this way, I get first, you know, firsthand on filtered experience on exactly what we need to be doing as a studio. It always baffles me how little games. Video game CEOs tend to play and and a lot of times I feel like these executives They're just kind of there because they're trapped into working in games because they've always worked in games And they don't even know how to get out of it anymore because they don't know any other industry, right?

So so I feel like I thought to myself earlier on that You know when we started publishing and we started publishing a lot of games I thought to myself well if I'm gonna put my company's logo on a video game I need to at least beat that game because I don't like, I wouldn't feel comfortable for me to put our brand on something that I don't even know what it is.

Right. So I don't know if this is going to scale, you know, obviously as the company gets bigger, I don't think that's going to be realistic, but I do really do my best to try to try to achieve that so that I know what I'm doing. So ultimately I wouldn't say that I'm just like a genius that's able to identify things way better than others.

And. Quite frankly, we have some big failures too. You know, it's not that we have, we pick everything right a lot of times, even if everything checks out and everything does make sense, something happens outside of everyone's control and then you don't have a choice. So, so I think that's just kind of how it is.

I think when it comes to game production, you just have to embrace a little bit of that chaos and know how to control and tame it, it's less about. You know, it's, it's, it's less about just being completely resistant to the chaos of society, but more so about knowing how to surf in it, I guess. So that's, that's kind of how, how we approach a lot of this.

Aaron: Yeah. I mean, it's a very good answer, but, I guess just to even dig a layer deeper, like what does putting in the work or, you know, playing 400 games a year, like unlock for you, that makes it. Easier to make decisions or how do you, sort of like build a culture with a team that, you know, kind of has a similar mindset where you can kind of work together to make the best decisions here, but we'll just love some more detail on like what exactly that work enables you to do that people who maybe aren't putting in that level of work, like they're just not seeing.

Zhenghua: Yeah, yeah, totally. So, so one of the stories that really inspired me to kind of be who I am in terms of being a tastemaker is, Johnny Depp when he was playing, uh, Pirates of the Caribbean, he chose not to brush his teeth for like a year or like three months or something like that. I did not know that.

Yeah. So, so it's because he wanted to be genuine. But a part of it, it was also called method acting. So basically it's the idea of like, if you want to be in the head of some character, you won't be that character. You literally become that character, right? Like you have a nasty mouth and you think about how that feels like as a pirate.

So that really inspired me. And I realized that in order for me to really do the artwork, I have to first understand the consumer. So a lot of, like, for example, when we started doing physical publishing. The first thing I did was I literally spent like 30, 40, 000, just buying like all these collectors edition things and getting excited about them.

Wow. Look at the statue. The craftsmanship is great. And just really becoming a consumer. I forced, I, I didn't like much own much physical games beforehand, but I forced myself to find passion. And then once I did that kind of snowballed into real passion that I'm able to channel into the work. And now I know, Oh yeah, I remember that one company that did this one thing in this one package, uh, remember that thing that means that we should, you know, do it this way too.

So, so it just makes it so much easier for us to really do things. Obviously. That is a really straightforward one where I just kind of threw some money at it and became a fan. Obviously a lot of people would say that they'd love to do something like that, but playing something like four or 500 games a year, I'll be honest.

I don't think I enjoy more than 10, uh, every year. So most of the games, I mean, once you play so many games, you just kind of hate most of it. And I really do. That experience, but it's just part of the work. I mean, I, I think about how this is probably still more fun than working at McDonald's. So, you know, ultimately who am I to complain?

I'm sitting here being annoyed, playing video games. So really it's about putting that work, really understanding the audience, connecting with a fan base, becoming that method actor to know what these. Well, like, why do people actually like among us? You know, like, why do people like Vampire Survivors?

I think those are some of the bigger games that's easy to get into. But like, why would a game like 1000 times resist when an IGF award? Why? Right. You've got to spend 20 hours playing that really indie game made by three people from, from Canada and really understand what kind of messages and political statements they're trying to make.

And then from that point, I know, okay. That's what the world needs right now. And we can probably try to find more products like it.

Aaron: We got it. What other A big topic of conversation, similar to AI, I suppose, is the idea of distribution advantages, as the market has become more competitive. And I guess venture funding has even pulled back a decent degree.

There's just been like this rising wave and the investor community and the startup community talking about how. Maybe creating a great game isn't, you know, always enough. And sometimes you need to think about like a unique strategy to better say, set your game up for success in terms of how it's distributed.

 I'm curious how, how you think about that? Like when you're looking at games to, to make or to back, like how does the distribution strategy fit into that and how important really is that?

Zhenghua: I think distribution is a loaded term because it could mean a lot of things for us. I think distribution is always kind of selling it to as many people as possible.

Sorry, at least exposing it to as many people as possible. Right? Kind of like what I said earlier. Not only we support digital storefronts, but We support physical storefronts, we support every console, we support every language. You know, we try to translate our games into 10 different languages so that everyone around the world can play it.

We don't just do that blindly. It's not just about selling the game. It's also about selling collector's items. It's about selling them other games that we're going to be releasing. We're really going to capture these people with the games that we do. I think one of the interesting advantages that Serenity Forge has that other people don't, and this is not really by design, but it just kind of came from it is that because our games are so emotionally engaging, they are remember the forever, like people are going to remember this stuff forever.

People are telling their friends all the time. The first thing you look up Doki Doki Literature Club, if you're asking anyone about it, their first answer is going to be just play it. Don't look it up. It's always going to be this type of stuff, talking about our games. As a result, makes it really easy for us to have super dedicated and hardcore fans.

As of today, we have 2. 8 million newsletter subscribers from around the world. And that's, you know, a pretty global number too, about 500k from China, about 400k from America, you know, it's just all over the place around the world, very global fans. So when it comes to distribution, it really is building that large community, large fan base that we're now able to Push more games too.

We can keep on releasing games like Doki Doki. We could release new games and they'll at least take a look at it. But at the very least, the games that are kind of fundamental to our core beliefs, to our core pillars, these people we already know are going to like, and they'll keep on checking it out is not, I don't think it's super different compared to something like, you know, we're just a game company that does shooters or we're a game company that does pixel art games or whatever.

It's just that the way that we identify our audience and our fan base is a little bit more complicated and not, not as. Obvious to the eye. As soon as you see it, it's nice. It's less rooted in a genre. It's less rooted in our art style, but it's more rooted in a fundamental human experience.

Aaron: Got it. Yeah. That's really, really interesting and probably tough to replicate, you know, for, for many, so. So yeah, nice work to you and your team for adding on to that.

Zhenghua: I don't know if it's even real, you know, like a lot of this stuff is, I would still argue even 10 years down the road. It's pretty experimental. I think there's a very good chance that 10 years down the road, I'm sitting there homeless thinking, well, I'd really fucked up, right?

Like what I'm doing does not make sense. So, so I think, I mean, I, you know, there are trusted, advisors and, and. Professional individuals who have told me that this is not real Z. Like, I don't think this is, this is true. And, and I think, you know, they might be right. Who knows, but ultimately I think that's kind of what the company is, right?

Like you have to have a core belief and then you just go with it. You know, Steve jobs felt like music can be downloaded. You don't have to buy CDs and he decided to, you know, run a whole company off of that methodology. And, you know, sometimes we, you know, people just kind of have to do the same thing and stick with it.

Aaron: Yeah. Well, one other. Question I want to ask before we start wrapping up is just around like deal making. We, I guess I would just like to, you know, open the hood of your, your business a little bit. If your game, you don't have to share details about specific examples, but I'm curious, like these days, like, like what does a typical Serenity Forge deal look like, you know, like what are the mechanics at play?

Like, is there anything in your deal making that you try to make, you know, Compared to others or how has that evolved over time as you've become better at serving this market? We just love to learn a bit more about the deal making side of things.

Zhenghua: I mean, once I tell you my answer, you can see why I'm always worried about scalability, but I'll be honest, we don't have a standard deal. So, so Serenity Forge deals are actually a hundred percent bespoke. We don't have templates. In fact, we're, we're struggling right now because one of our business directors is like, can we at least get like some templates so that I have something to work with because it's so annoying every time I'm having to write something new, but we don't, we don't have templates.

I come from a dev background and, and we are now doing all sorts of stuff. The way I describe it to our partners is that as, as a company, we can come up with game ideas, original game ideas, all the way to selling games on the shelves of Walmart and everything in between. So really. We're kind of like a buffet for a lot of people to work with.

If you need a lot of times, if you look at our games, it's very unclear what part of that game we're actually a part of. Some games were, you know, porting the game onto Nintendo switch, but also doing some artwork because there are this quit, and then also we're, you know, manufacturing physical copies.

And there's just like all sorts of random things throughout a whole production process that we're, we're a part of, as a result, it's impossible for us to actually have a standard anything, cause I just never know what people want. But in turn, that's actually kind of why we're so successful is because I can always go to a partner and say, what do you need, tell me, and the answer is always going to be sure we can do it, but give me this to make it work.

And then now we strike a deal because it's always going to be an exact fit to what we're looking at, what they're looking for. So that's probably the easiest way to at least have kind of umbrella look on things. I mean, I think practically, obviously there's like. More common deals than others, you know, obviously a developer coming over here.

They're going to be looking for your typical porting localization stuff as kind of the big blotches of what you need. And we are very much, you know, working with the more indie rates, I guess, from a publishing standpoint, the lowest deal we've signed is that we, we would take something like a 20 percent cut on the game sales or something.

The highest goes all the way up to the 50, 60%. So it ranges quite a bit. Meanwhile, on the dev side. Similar. I mean, honestly, I mean, these numbers are kind of interchangeable. And then we would work with an external publisher or, you know, funding partner, even if it's, you know, major platform or whatever.

So, so there's, you know, it ranges quite a bit, but you know, when I say these numbers, that doesn't really mean anything because, you know, for, for a smaller number, maybe we don't have to put anything in it as 5, 000 game for a bigger number, you know, we're investing a lot and, you know, we're manufacturing stuff and then we're basically making the game with them because it's a source of Wacky.

Right. So, so that's really kind of, I'm trying to give you as much specifics as I can in a generalized way. That's probably the best way to look at it.

Aaron: Okay. Oh yeah. And that's still really interesting to, to learn about, I guess. Uh, last question about Serenity Forge for today is what are you excited about for the future?

Like, like how do you envision your future and what you're building long term here?

Zhenghua: Yeah, absolutely. I think over the past couple of years, Past one year, specifically, like I said, the industry has been struggling a lot for a company that has been doing okay, relatively okay, during this time it actually means a lot to us in terms of opportunities, you know, we're seeing a ton of opportunities right now in signing new games.

In hiring new talent in, you know, acquiring studios, and, and because I started off as a, as a developer, that's something that is actually really passionate for me. So, so as of right now, about half of our staff still focus on development. We're working on some internal projects on real five games on announced.

And some smaller, you know, two, three person team, tiny indie games too. So there's some, there's some cool stuff going on already. I personally am directing a couple of new games, so I'm able to kind of get back to the drawing board and do some more kind of work. So that's a lot of fun. So I think for me, it's really interesting that Serenity Forge is able to.

Kind of continue to shift and pivot and thrive kind of in this weird moment where when publishers are doing well, we're doing well when publishers are not doing well where we're doing well as a dev anyway. So we're able to kind of change around quite a bit. So going to really the next couple of years.

I think there's a couple of really interesting projects that I can't wait to talk more about. We're also going to be focusing a lot more on internal development, working on some new original IPS. That'll be really interesting. Kind of capitalizing our existing fan base. Bring them new, new games that are kind of like, like the next level of what that would be.

And then lastly, I kind of alluded to this earlier, but you know, the ever shifting technology makes us so that there's always opportunity for us out there. I think we touched on stuff like game pass, but you know, what is the next iteration of something like game pass? We taught, you know, we're 2025 is also going to be a new year for new hardware, new console generations, right?

There's a lot already in the works. And we're going to be able to kind of see what that does for society. I think as a long term fan of gaming, everyone knows that Nintendo usually is the company that kind of leads a lot of the innovation and kind of the understanding of what the game industry is ranging from the robotic, you know, Rob, right?

You look bad during the NDS days, all the way to the game boy, to the Wii, right, like to the Nintendo switch, uh, you know, that we know today, there's so many different things that. The world basically changed, the idea of gamer basically disappeared when the Wii was invented. It's really interesting to kind of think about how that would continue to change, you know, with the next console iteration.

So, for us, that's kind of where, for me at least, that's kind of where the excitement is. You know, there's a, there's a really well known quote in Chinese, during the Three Kingdoms era, and that is, Chaos creates heroes. And I'm sure you understand from an investment background that, Volatility is actually how you make the money.

So a lot of times, you know, for, from my perspective, I feel the same way when there's greater volatility, there's actually greater opportunity in the industry and that's kind of what we're excited for.

Aaron: Awesome. Well, we've spent the past hour learning all about Serenity Forge and it's been awesome, but you know, as we wrap up here, what else in the industry right now?

Are you excited about the kind of beyond your own Serenity Forge walls? Anything stand out?

Zhenghua: I mean, I'm excited to kind of, so I'm one of the dice judges, the dice gaming award judges. So I'm, they, the, the submissions just closed. I got my list of games to play, so I'm excited to really dive into it.

There's a lot of fun stuff. Phenomenal games this year, so I'm excited to just give that a try. There's also just, I've been, I got into manga reading for the first time in my life this year, and that's actually really fascinating. It's surprising because it took me so long, but that's really interesting.

So I'm excited to kind of spend the holidays kind of diving more into that community. Again, the method acting really understanding how some of these, some of these communities work. Yeah. And then lastly, just being able to kind of do more creative work, being able to directly work with a lot of creative stuff.

I think that's, that's really interesting. So yeah, I mean, overall, there's, there's cool stuff coming from the company. There's cool stuff happening in this industry. And, you know, cool stuff just all around and, and just overall really, really stoked about everything.

Aaron: Cool. And last question for you.

We have a lot of builders in our audience and, you know, people that might be interested in learning even more about Serenity Forge. If anyone wants to get in touch with you or Serenity Forge in general, where should they go?

Zhenghua: Yeah, I think the easiest way to do it would be some, something public like Twitter, you know, send me a DM,  Zhenghua Yang, just my full name spelled out. I recently made a blue sky account as well, just to make sure I'm, you know, on everything in case, you know, if pops off, zyang.thesky.social or whatever, you can just find me. You can join our discord. I'm actually super active in our discord. Like I said, chatting with our fans, hanging out at night sometimes. So if you join the Serenity Forge discord, you'll find me very easily there. So yeah, I mean, I'm usually very open to answer questions whenever I'm available.

Might not get to every single one that's out there, but you know, I'll definitely do my best.

Aaron: Awesome. Well, let's go ahead and wrap up here. Z, it's been an absolute pleasure to learn from you today, and I wish you and the team all the best, and what you're building at Serenity Forge. And to everyone who tuned into this episode, thank you so much, and we'll catch you next time.

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