PM Studios was founded back in 2008 and has since worked with tons of developers, supporting indie games likeMy Time at Sandrockandmega-hits likeBlack Myth: Wukong. PM Studios does a little bit of everything from developing its own games likeDragon is Deadto co-publishing, typically working with retail in the era of digital distribution.
Game Rant recently attended LvL Up Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, where we spoke with PM Studios' CEO and founder Michael Yum. We spoke with him about his history, about working with LvL Up Expo, and more.The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
PM Studios Has a Long History
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about PM Studios?
A:We started off as a developer, almost 20 years ago, making a smallgame called DJ Max. I couldn’t find a publisher for the game, so I started to self-publish it. It was a game that really took off after that. I went through lots of ups and downs with the industry after that, and I found my way doing work-for-hire stuff, helping other developers out, and then starting to publish their games.
Now we develop games, we publish games, and we co-publish and distribute games. We have a lot of things going on.
Q: With that 20 years' experience, what do you think has changed the most in the industry?
A:I’d say, I think the reason why we’re kind of striving a little bit better than a lot of companies today is because I came from a time when we didn’t have digital. I was kind of a distributor for games, right? We had to put games into retail, and right now, the marketplace is a little bit flooded, withso many digital games coming out. Again, when we release games physically into like a retail market, it’s a whole new revenue stream that people haven’t seen or don’t know how to tap into. It’s a difficult process to get games in there. It has a lot more risk, but because there aren’t as many games out in retail, you have a better chance at visibility and selling games.
Yeah, and we’ve kind of put a good place in helping other publishers and developers put games out into retail as a co-publisher.
Q: When you’re looking at games for publishing, what are you looking for? What stands out?
A:We don’t just choose a specific type of game, like an action game orracing game. We just attempt to help everyone out. If we’re able to put it into retail because the retailers like it and are willing to carry it, then we’ll do anything we can to help them get there. I can’t do every single game, so they do have to go through a slight review process.
Like, when is it going to come out? How long is it going to take? Do we think these guys are going to finish the game on time or not? Really just a lot of those things first, right? After that, if it fits into a pipeline where we think we can publish this game, then we test it out.
The team votes on whether they liked it or they didn’t. If everyone didn’t like it but one person did, then we let them stand up for the game. Internally, we’re fighting for these games too, right? And convincing each other.
Once we do like the game, then we have to convince the developer and publisher to give us a chance as opposed to all these other companies. If they like us and like what we do, then hopefully it works out. That’s how we choose, and yeah, there isn’t a specific genre we try to do.
Q: When you look at the upcoming games that you have, what drew you to each of those?
A:A lot of us like Nintendo stuff, right? Surprisingly, we have guys who are big Xbox fanatics that are against all the Nintendo stuff. We picked up this game,Pipistrello and the Cursed Yo-Yo, because we love the gameplay.
We really love Zelda and especiallyold school Zelda, so when we played this game, we were like, ‘Oh, these guys really knew what made that game special and fun and kind of brought it into this new era, right?’ I don’t know a single person that didn’t like it, even the Xbox guys, right? So we picked up this one and reached out to them.
Then, there aregames like Black Myth. Everybody wants that game, right? That was one where we had to present ourselves and see if they liked us and our model. Are we a responsible group of people to work with? And all that. Yeah, we got lucky to prove ourselves.
However, I wouldn’t say that we get them all the same way. Every one has been a unique case in how we got the game. We’re very lucky we’ve gotten to do so many, for sure.
Q: I think the game that stood out to me most, personally, after playing it was Dragon is Dead. Could you talk a little bit about that one?
A:Funny enough, that is developed by an internal team. A bunch of us are Diablo 2 fans, but the style of our team was sprite-based. We didn’t have the resources to do a Diablo-style top-down full-on RPG, so we were like, ‘what if we do it in our style?’ The goal was to make a2D Diablo, and that’s this game.
It’s taken a while, but that’s how it came about.
Q: We’re here at LvL Up Expo. What stands out to you the most about the convention?
A:I’ve known the owner of LvL Up for a while now, and he had a lot of anime,eSports, cosplay, toys, you know. A lot of types of pop culture, but not really game publishers and game studios coming, right? We’ve talked about it for years, and we really wanted to attempt to bring gaming culture and combine it all together.
The best way to do it was I committed to presenting ourselves here. Us being here wouldn’t be enough, right? I reached out to all our partners, everybody we work with, and everybody that we co-publish with and asked if they could come out and present themselves too. One by one, we were able to bring a bunch of gaming companies here and have a nice big, dedicated video game section.
Q: LvL Up Expo is pretty new, right? Compared to other conventions.
A:It’s pretty new. But if you look at this year’s layout, they havestuff like Pokemon, Netflix, Crunchyroll, and all these big guys. They still have all their original booth vendors here, and now they have a big arcade section and a lot of gaming companies. I think, over time, hopefully everybody sees it and helps grow it.
We just want to do whatever we can to help promote video games, right? I think it was a great opportunity to help this group.
Q: Earlier you had mentioned gaming culture and bringing it here. How would you define gaming culture?
A:Gaming culture, for me, is we just love playing video games. It doesn’t have to be just Fortnite or eSports. They have a big eSports footprint here, but it should be about like everything, right? Anime games, racing games, indie games, AAA games, right? Just anything that people enjoy playing that’s digital and interactive.
Q: I want to go back to the 20 years of experience. We talked about what changed, but what are you most proud of over the past 20 years?
A:it’s funny because, at this event, they have the game that we made 20 years ago. I was playing it, and what came to mind is I was able to survive all the different trends. The game that’s here, that’s 20 years old, isan arcade game. For me to experience going from arcade to consoles to mobile to free-to-play to now like PC, right? All these new platforms. And going again from manufacturing big arcade machines to printing game discs to digital distribution. Yeah, I’m just really proud that I survived so long, and I was able to adapt.
All the original arcade guys that I know, none of them adapted really, and they’re kind of all gone. Yeah, I’m really proud of that.
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