At the end of the Develop:Brighton talk ‘Product/Market Fit – What Does it Mean and How Do We Achieve it?’, there was a question from the audience for speaker Martin Wein from GameFlex Consultants.

They asked whether he could describe a time when a development team had veered away from the design vision, and whether market or player research had helped to bring the team back on track.

“I can actually give you an example where myself and the product team caused about an eight-year product delay,” replied Wein.

Back in 2014, Wein was head of communications for Deep Silver, the publisher behind series like Saints Row, Dead Island and Metro. Techland, the original developer of Dead Island, had moved over to work on Dying Light at Warner Bros., so Deep Silver had brought in Yager (the developer behind Spec Ops: The Line) to work on a sequel.

At E3 2014, Deep Silver released the eye-catching and beautifully produced ‘Jogger’ trailer for Dead Island 2, a game that was due to be released the following year.

“I was working on that with the creative team, and we were mightily proud of that [trailer],” recalled Wein. “But then, about 3 to 4 weeks later, we had a major milestone with the development studio that was in charge at that time. And boy, that game sucked.”

“It had nothing to do with what [made] the original Dead Island […] really fun,” he explained. “So we commissioned a play test and got horrific feedback. And we sat down with the development team and said, ‘Okay, what’s the course of action?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, leave it with us’.”

But two or three months later, at the next milestone, the game was the same, said Wein. “And we clearly had player feedback that said, ‘this is not fun, this is not engaging, this does not feel like the Dead Island that I played’. So at the end of the day, we had to take the game away from that external developer, find a new studio, and that put the game on a journey of… well, it was supposed to launch in 2015. When did it come out? 2023?”

“It might have made some money, but it would have killed the franchise”

Martin Wein, GameFlex Consultants

Initially development was taken over by Sumo Digital, but in 2019 development duties switched again to Deep Silver’s internal team, Dambuster Studios. Dead Island 2 was finally released in April 2023, and by May 2024 it had sold over 3 million copies.

“Sometimes you have to make hard decisions,” said Wein. “Because we could have, at that point, put out a shit game. It might have made some money, but it would have killed the franchise.”

“I think at that point Deep Silver did the right thing, and Dead Island 2 was a commercial success in the end,” he concludes. “Because they took that step, and they said that we need to make a game that fits for the player.”

When GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Wein after the talk, he elaborated a little about what happened following the launch of that Dead Island 2 trailer.

“After the announcement and some internal discussions, we (internal Deep Silver production and marketing teams) conducted several closed and public playtests, did some in-depth community sentiment analysis, and saw a clear divide between player expectation and motivation and the direction that game development had taken,” he said over email.

“I cannot really speak to the conversation between the production team and the development partner as I was not part of those, but as the developer wanted to pursue their vision rather than follow player feedback, the ultimate decision was made to part ways.”

Back in 2015, Yager managing director Timo Ullmann said that “Yager and Deep Silver’s respective visions of the project fell out of alignment”, which Wein confirms.

“The visions did not align,” said Wein. “The Deep Silver vision was influenced by the player and therefore I applaud the leadership back then to approve and support the decision to reset the project.”

Wein’s talk provided some fascinating insights into the concept of product/market fit – something he says that has been a key part of luxury goods and fashion since the fifties and sixties, but that has only recently been applied to games. “The games industry is always a little bit slower,” he said.

In a nutshell, product/market fit is about looking for categories that your game might fit into, then researching the size of the potential audience, which in turn will dictate size of the budget and development scope. If the potential market size doesn’t fit with the potential development cost of the product, then the project needs to be rethought early on.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “if your total addressable market is £5 million and you’re investing £10 million pounds in development, don’t start.”

“You have to know relevant and recent data”

Martin Wein, GameFlex Consultants

It sounds simple enough, but Wein listed many ways in which it can go wrong. One of the chief reasons was animosity between the marketing and developing departments, who end up “working against each other rather than with each other,” he said. Echoing Sam Lake’s call for unity in his Develop Star Award speech, Wein insisted that the process should be about “collaborating and trusting and respecting each other”.

“You have to know relevant and recent data as well,” he continued. “So experience is great, gut feeling is great, but you need the relevant and recent data.” Wein emphasised the importance of doing thorough audience and market analysis, suggesting that 10% of the marketing budget should be reserved for research using services such as Video Game Insights.

A key takeaway was that this research should continue right throughout the development of the game, and that the product should be tailored according to changes in the market over the many years between initial concept and release.

“We lose track of the market realities when development cycles get longer and longer and longer,” he said, giving the example of projects that might have started during the COVID pandemic that are now launching into a very different market.

There’s also the fact that the game needs to be good. “You could argue that, for example, MindsEye, on paper, probably has decent product market fit, but the execution in that case, probably just didn’t work out 100%,” said Wein.

One example he gave of excellent execution and product/market fit was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which he noted found an unmet market need for turn-based RPGs, and which had a laser-focused marketing campaign that honed in on an older target audience and fans of classic JRPGs. “It was such a beautiful thing,” he said.

In conclusion, Wein emphasised that the most important element of achieving product/market fit was keeping all parts of the business aligned on the same vision. “We often don’t speak the same language internally,” he said. “Development has one vision, marketing has another vision, and usually […] the leadership team has a completely different vision.”

“Development is a team effort. Everybody needs to work together in this process to really make it work.”