A tale of SIX: NDA's, Transparency and Trust

So, I want to talk about SIX. Or, more specifically, I want to talk about what happened to and for TOO DX at SIX. Conversations I had with people that were amazing. Conversations I’d love nothing more than to shout to the rooftops and scream my lungs out for joy.

But I can’t. For a variety of reasons. I’m going to talk about those reasons today, to showcase my thinking, and to talk about subjects that are buzzwords in gaming recently. Accountability and transparency.

 But first…

 The NDA

The NDA is a powerful thing. It is actually a voluntary form of censorship, a way to bind the signer to the draftee’s will; it doesn’t allow the person who signed the document any new freedoms or rights and in fact, takes away many freedoms they might want. This is a cost of doing business – it’s like a lot of other agreements that begin with “non” that plague a variety of industries. There is a fear, a real fear, of copycats and opportunists. Sony might wish to see a Wiit hit the market or an XBO1 – much as Nintendo and Microsoft might enjoy seeing a PZ4. Processes are just as important, as are hardware configurations to these companies (and a host of other things). By sheltering those items from consumers the company gains two advantages. The first is a deeply profound shield against copying (ask a lawyer). The second is the ability to surprise their target audience. This ability to surprise, or tantalize, a market is how brilliant marketing materials and game announcements that are completely off everyone’s radar come into place.

Part of the NDA is the actual legal stuff, but another part isn’t spoken about openly: it’s trust. “We trust you, developers, to not steal our stuff. In exchange, we’ll provide the muscle”. Sometimes that muscle is a tweet. Sometimes it’s a gentle nudge in the right direction. Other times they just watch. But they are trusting you now. Which brings up the next point…

 Trust is a two way street

That statement has two parts in it. First, the developer needs to trust that the person running his game through publication is working on it. Given the level of support and attention to detail that we have experienced with Nintendo, we trust them a lot. But they also expect more trust from us, when they talk about the future. We can’t go blabbing about things.

To give an example (and it is JUST an example, nothing more): perhaps I’m chatting with our rep at Nintendo amongst internal products. We get to chatting and she accidentally lets slip the drop date for the new Smash Brothers. He realizes what she has done and says that he can’t confirm what he said. I’m not technically under NDA about that. I can tell the world.

I won’t though. Because they trust me.

SIX

A lot of amazing things happened at SIX. People loved us and our game. People were cheering as matches were ending and having a great time. That was all background noise to me at that point. It was awesome, but I was trying to focus on enjoying myself and being excited later. I had, in rapid succession, talked to Microsoft, Nintendo, 17-bit and Twitch. All of them had positive things to say about our game. All of them gave me feedback on what we were doing, both with the game and out and about at the events I’d been to and at SIX.

But I can’t tell you what Microsoft and I spoke about. I can’t talk about what Nintendo and I spoke about. I can’t even mention the Twitch things. Because although I could be a “source” of unconfirmed information, I’d lose their trust. Even though it is just speculation and wild thoughts, I still have to show them my trust. It makes us (me) a bit more opaque than we (I) would like to be, but that’s the cost of doing business. It’s the cost of having a point of pride in what we do and how we comport ourselves.

Limitations

We’ve accepted the fact that we are consciously limiting our ability to speak and be heard, our ability to drive certain conversations forward. It’s frustrating at times and it isn’t always NDA related. At the end of the day, we are a small studio. We are hoping the Sportsball brings us the financial security to do what we want in the next few years, but at the moment we can be squashed like a bug if we offend the wrong people. We can be labelled the “bad studio” with no explanation of what bad means and why it is warranted. We are in a position of strength only in that we are small and nimble – but a solid blow will knock us out of the fight, possibly for good. So there are limitations and then there are these… elements of restraint.

(Limited) Transparency

I’m perfectly willing to discuss how much we have spent on things. I’m willing to talk time and effort put into our games. I’m willing to show, if I can, how our games and our desire to make games has evolved beyond what our initial thoughts were. I’m even willing to discuss specific aspects of marketing things we have done publicly, or even a few in house ones done privately. We are both willing to talk about our dreams for TOO DX and where we are going.

Sales data, absolutely. Our gross (net) incomes? Sure, no issue. The costs associated with the studio? No problem. Spill the beans on another studio, or a publisher, or a distributor handling portions of bringing our game to market? Not a chance. Not until they speak first, or we agree to speak together. It’s a cost of doing business our way, the way that we are comfortable with. 

So, yeah. SIX was a blast, good things happened, you’ll learn all about them in the next six months.

And for the record, again, I don’t know when Wii U Smash is dropping ^.^

kuma