Five Star Games continues to grow with Jessica Jazic joining as PR & Marketing Coordinator and Julian Chan coming on board as Sales & Trade Marketing Coordinator. MORE

Tuesday marked Xbox Australia's 15th birthday. 3.5 console generations later Xbox has become an integral part of the fabric that binds our industry together. 

From everyone at MCV Pacific, we wish you a very Happy Birthday!

Kellaway was the lone Australian to be recognised in this year's list. MORE

At GDC 2017 we sat down with the German Indie Design Trio that is Osmotic Studios and find out hey they came to work with Australian publisher, Surprise Attack Games.

MCV: How did you come in contact with Surprise Attack Games?

OS: We were introduced to Surprise Attack through an indie game incubator from Groeningen in the Netherlands, called Indietopia. Shan Poon, who is their marketing manager, had previously worked with Lex Suurland, who was the business development manager of Surprise Attack at that time. He was very interested in Orwell, since SAG had previously published Hacknet, which is comparable to Orwell in regards to the large amount of text as well as the task of investigation. We sent a few early builds to SAG and talked to them about our budget and development schedules. After a few months, we were very happy to sign a contract with SAG as a publisher for Orwell.

MCV: What are some of the areas of Orwell's development and distribution that have really benefited from having a publisher?

OS: We especially benefited from being able to concentrate fully on the actual development of Orwell and not having to deal with marketing in particular. Making your game visible to the public is just as important as making a good game, which is why it was great that we could benefit from SAG's press contacts and publishing knowledge. We also didn't have to worry about how to get on Steam, since Surprise Attack already had connections to Valve.

MCV: It's said that having a publisher is like having a whole other team instantly at your side. What has your experience been?

OS: I would agree with that. Surprise Attack did not only take over marketing and PR for Orwell, but also helped us on the producing side. This was very useful, since we were able to iterate through having a constant evaluation pipeline from Surprise Attack. It did help a lot to get in-depth feedback on each episode of the game, since it was very hard to judge whether the player experience was still what we wanted it to be after working on the game for more than two years.

MCV: At what point did you think to yourself, 'They get my game. They really believe in it and understand our vision for it.' Was this a big trust point for you?

OS: This point was definitely reached when we did a communications workshop together with Surprise Attack, in order to get our visions of the game aligned and make sure we were all on the same page. I really loved how each member of the SAG team contributed their thoughts on what Orwell is about and what makes it different from other games. I would definitely say that this increased our trust and made the teams bond more, since it was quite clear that everyone was excited about the game's vision.

MCV: Working with an Australian publisher when you're based in Germany would mean you are both in different time zones. How do you manage this difference? Has the publisher often gone above and beyond by working late into the night to support you?

OS: Working in different time zones is not always easy and it became particularly stressful when we needed quick feedback. But the SAG team were extremely accommodating in this regard, so this worked out great. Our producer Steve Heller was always by our side, particularly during the release phase, which went on for one month due to our episodic launch. He went through many night shifts, which made him very much part of our team as well.

MCV: Helping you finish the dev and launch your game is important, but having a publisher post-launch can be equally important. How have you found this to be true?

OS: Surprise Attack has continued helping us to get Orwell on additional platforms as well as keeping up PR for the game. Therefore, I would completely agree with this and we are continuously happy to have Surprise Attack as a partner.