Null Games' Michael Ailshie discusses the perilous landscape of indie game publishing

Game development is in a precarious place. While mainstream publishers and developers manage to get games out there, the unreasonable bar of success more often than not leads to unrealistic expectations, massive layoffs, and studio closures. Now imagine how much pressure is on the indie gaming sector, which often has much less to invest with and much more to lose. Even with these increasingly grim prospects, there are publishers out there willing to take a chance on a person or a small team with a dream. One of them is Null Games, a San Francisco-based publisher that has been working to bring indie projects to life since 2022.

Null Games' goals have only grown since its inception and to learn more about the publisher's mission, Shacknews recently traveled out to this year's D.I.C.E. to speak with Michael Ailshie. Ailshie has helped bring numerous indie projects along, including Hades, Rocket League, and others. In September, Ailshie was named General Manager of Null Games. He spoke to me about his new position, what it means to work with the indie gaming world, and some of the exciting projects that players should be on the lookout for in the future.

(The following interview took place on the week of February 13, prior to the D.I.C.E. Awards.)

Shacknews: I'll start off by saying it's a few months late, but congratulations on your position as general manager of Null Games. What are some of your goals for your time with the company?

Michael Ailshie, General Manager at Null Games: I am very, very excited to be working with independent developers again. On a high level, I just want to make sure that Null is able to contribute to a very healthy and active independent game development scene. That's the one thing that really inspires me, and it's how I got started in this industry at Supergiant: I was working with a creative and innovative independent game company, and I just want to take a lot of what I've learned there and support indie developers in navigating a very challenging landscape in the industry.

Shacknews: Null Games is among the leading indie gaming publishers. What are some of the inherent risks that are involved with publishing indie titles?

Ailshie: I think the biggest risk that is on everybody's mind is that last year 19,000 games launched on Steam. One of the biggest challenges is making sure that we're able to support indie developers in getting exposure, finding an audience, and making sure they reach people and that people play their games.

Luckily, we're in a position where we have a lot of in-house expertise. We have a lot of the resources to help support those developers in finding those audiences and bringing a lot of our own creative backgrounds and helping them inform the best way to make a good and exciting game. So, hopefully, we can face those headwinds on and overcome them.

Shacknews: The gaming sector is so financially perilous right now. What puts your company in a unique position to survive this economic landscape?

Ailshie: I think we're very fortunate to have the backing of our founder. Chris Wanstrath, former co-founder of GitHub, is financing this company completely and solely, so we're we're in a very good position where we are well capitalized, so to speak. But, we're also not beholden to any outside investment beyond that, so we can maintain our vision and maintain our ethical outlook and approach to publishing games without risking that or imperiling that by taking on any outside financial influence, which is really exciting for us.

Shacknews: Null Games offers some big incentives for indie gaming developers, like total IP ownership and Day 1 revenue. What else helps you stand out from some of the other indie gaming publishers out there? And why is it important to have these incentives out there for these indie developers?

Ailshie: We want to make sure people are able to continue making video games. I think one of the big risks of having to agree to borderline predatory publishing practices is that it beats the creativity out of a lot of developers. It hinders their inspiration. It makes them hesitant to want to try it again. So, we want to show them that the publishing industry doesn't have to be a place to fear. There doesn't need to be anxiety about it. Hopefully things do well and their game hits, but even if it doesn't, they feel like they've been supported and taken care of and they're not afraid to try again. I think there are so many creative people who are burned by one poor scenario or poor partnership. We want to do what we can to kind of prevent that from happening and save those developers, who would otherwise just exit the industry due to that one bad experience.

Aside from the things you mentioned, we're also making sure developers do own their IP. We're not taking any percentage ownership in that. All of our publishing agreements have a term expiration, so we're not holding them to any lifetime obligation. We're not holding them to any obligation to pitch their sequel to us or any right of first refusal. If they like working with us, hopefully they want to do it again. If they don't, cool, go enjoy and break out on your own or go self-publish your next thing. I think those are the things that really set us apart and hopefully are giving developers that kind of experience where it makes them want to make more games.

Shacknews: Your company prides itself on its relationship with its clients. Who have been some of your favorite developers to work with and have they taught you anything about the creative process of gaming that you might not have known about before?

Ailshie: It's hard to choose a favorite. Of the [games] that I can talk about, I think that I'm really inspired by people like Adam Hunt, who's making Streetdog BMX, a Freestyle BMX game, because this is a game that is born out of his passion, both for making games, but also for Freestyle BMX. You can see that this is something he lives, and breathes, and cares deeply about, and wants to make sure he's doing the best version of this game that he can. That's the kind of creative pedigree that I come from that really inspires me, so, yeah, I think Adam is great. I really look forward to that game getting shared with many people who have been yearning for the spiritual successor to Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX and games like that. I think there's an appetite for that kind of fun sports game and he's filling that void.

And then, you know, I am excited to talk about some of the other developers we're working with, who are making projects that we haven't talked about publicly yet, because they're inspiring me every day with their creativity and the things they're imagining up. I'm really excited to be able to talk about that stuff soon.

As far as what I may have learned that I didn't already know, that's a good question. I think if you're not learning something new every day, you're doing video games wrong. I think ultimately, we pretty firmly believe, I personally believe, and I think we believe this as a team that there's no playbook. We're trying to learn, and iterate, and learn again, and relearn, and take what we've learned, and see what works and what doesn't, and what's relevant today, and what's not relevant today, and try to iterate and improve on that. Again, if we're not always learning, we're not going to succeed as a publisher and we're not going to be able to serve our developers.

Shacknews: I realize that there's a lot that you're keeping close to the chest, but are there any games under the Null umbrella that you can talk about that you're excited for players to learn more about in the future?

Ailshie: Right now, players can go check out Demon Spore. We have a new demo up where people can play co-op and it's Steam Remote Play Together-enabled, so people can go check that out, play with up to three other friends, and try to escape this really horrific, terrifying creature that is taking over an experimental laboratory. It's a lot of fun. I'm really excited for players to get their hands on it. And I think what we've seen at live events is when groups of people get together and get their hands on this game, they have so much fun and they don't want to stop. We literally have to put a timer up so that they stop playing, so that other people get a chance to. That's one that's coming up, planning to launch in 2025. Streetdog BMX, as I mentioned, is launching this year as well. And then I think ExeKiller is also coming out in the future. No release date yet, but it's an incredible cyberpunk western made by a Polish dev team that's really doing something truly phenomenal and very creatively interesting.

Shacknews: Last question from me, what advice can you offer to new developers that may be seeking a publishing deal, especially as we head into this year's Game Developers Conference in March?

Ailshie: Be sincere, be authentic, wear your passion on your sleeve, show why you are making the game you're making and what has inspired you to do it. Try not to position yourself relative to other games. I know it's very enticing and easy to do that, but the more you can differentiate yourself in clear terms, and the best way to do that is by being authentic and sincere about what inspired you to make the game, the better. I think publishers will see that and respond to it. I know I will.

Null Games and its clients will be among those at GDC in March. Keep it on Shacknews and we'll look to cover the various titles and developers on-hand at this year's event.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?