Game On: An exclusive talk with WayForward’s Adam Tierney

Says company ‘very positive’ on subscription services

For this bonus edition of "Game On," The Fly spoke with WayForward Technologies director of business development and publishing Adam Tierney in an exclusive interview. During the talk, Tierney discussed the independent development studio’s approach to choosing new projects, how it’s able to produce so many games each year, and his thoughts on subscription services and cloud gaming. Since 1990, WayForward has developed and published dozens of games across many platforms, with some recent notable works including the "Shantae" series, "River City Girls," and "Advance Wars 1+2: Re-Boot Camp," which was published by Nintendo (NTDOY) and released last month. Interview responses have been edited for clarity.

DECIDING ON PROJECTS: Over the past three decades, WayForward has worked on a number of titles from major media IP, including "SpongeBob Squarepants," "Contra," "Batman: The Brave and the Bold," "Silent Hill," "The Mummy," and "Bloodrayne." “I started at the company almost 20 years ago, and at the time, it really was a standard process with licensed games: you would have a game coming out on consoles, and you would have a handheld version, and you would have a movie or TV show coming out, and you would need an adaptation," Tierney said. "A lot of [that construct] worked naturally for us, since many of these companies needed a game and needed it in a year. So it was very much just publishers predominantly reaching out to developers, like WayForward, who were available for work-for-hire.”

“That lasted until the late 2000s, when there was the recession, and then the model completely flipped," he added. "Nowadays, at least where WayForward is involved, we have to hunt for our own projects. That is a little more challenging because we’re not being fed licensed game opportunities, but on the other hand it’s great because more of the publishers and IP holders seem to be focused on licensing their content, and are open to new deals. That allows us to be able to go after anything.”

Tierney added that, since the company "hunts" for its own projects, staff can think of "dream" games to work on, or even original ideas.

DEVELOPMENT CYCLES: As advancements in gaming hardware allow for more broad and complex software, video game development cycles tend to become longer. Still, WayForward manages to release several games every single year, with two already released in 2023 following four releases in 2022. When asked how the company manages to release and develop so many titles each year, Tierney said that company has become "agile" due to its experience developing many small titles in in the 2000s. “I think we’re very agile, and we’re very fast because we spent so much time focused on licensed products," he told The Fly. "In the 90s, [WayForward] worked on PC edutainment titles, and then in the 2000s we did a lot of licensed handheld games on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. And a lot of those had development times well under a year, sometimes as short as 6-8 months each.”

“Because of that speed, we’ve become very quick and able to realize our visions and get games produced," Tierney continued. "Our productions are thankfully extending, and I think that makes for better games. Historically, we might have had 12 months or less for games. Now they’re more commonly going into the 18-24 month range. That’s still relatively quick, compared to the industry at large, because we are still doing very ambitious games, with dense narratives and multiplayer.”

“Our DNA is used to those sprinting, small production schedules," he added. "As far as how we’re able to put out so many games a year: we’re very director-driven. We usually have one person on the team who’s the director and often also the designer and writer as well. It’s usually led by their vision, very similar to a film director. And we have about a half dozen of those individuals. Because we’ve got that many different people leading different visions of games and helping to realize them, that allows us to put out so many games.”

FUTURE PROJECTS: In terms of working with even more publishers in the future, Tierney said that the company’s more regular trips to Tokyo Game Show each year have allowed the studio to develop relationships with a number of big game makers. "A few years ago we started going to Tokyo Game Show, and started dealing with Japanese publishers directly," he said. "Historically, up until that point, we had always dealt with the American branch of Capcom (CCOEY), Sega (SGAMY), or Konami, but once TGS became part of our annual trade shows we attend, we started to connect with the home offices of these places. It’s been really great, because not only does it give us more access to their brands, but it allows us to connect to a lot of these awesome Japanese publishers that we’ve loved for a long time.”

“We’re huge fans of Treasure (creator of Gunstar Heroes), it would be great to partner with them at some point," Tierney added. "We love publishers like NIS and Spike Chunsoft. For a lot of these studios, we’ve chatted with them at some point but haven’t actually released a game. We’d love to have something out with them at some point.”

SUBSCRIPTIONS: WayForward has made some of their titles available on subscription services in the past, such as Xbox Game Pass (MSFT) and Apple Arcade (AAPL). When asked about whether he believes such services are good for developers, Tierney said he shares the same view as the company’s CEO, in that they both like subscriptions. "Getting our games into as many peoples’ hands as possible is always kind of a net positive," he told The Fly. "Some people worry about if a game is on Game Pass, is it going to cannibalize sales? Most of the time, we find that it’s generally all positive. In the past when we got ‘Shantae’ or ‘River City Girls’ on to Game Pass, it really helped broaden the number of people that were aware of those. I think it helped overall sales. We were participants early on with Google’s (GOOGL) Stadia program, and had really good success there. We even had some of our highest sales and player counts on the Stadia platform. It definitely changes the way you think about marketing and publishing.”

“In general, we’re big fans of it," he added. "Plus, it seems to be where [the industry] is going. I own a Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 (SONY), and I love playing classic games on [Nintendo Switch Online] and I’m a huge fan of PS Plus Premium titles. So as a consumer, I think we’re in the best time to be a gamer. I like paying a flat fee and getting a wealth of new games every month. From a developer/publisher side, we like being a part of that as well.”

CLOUD: When asked about his opinions on cloud gaming, Tierney replied, "As a company, our CEO is a huge advocate and proponent of [cloud gaming], and it’s one of the reasons why we were really interested in Stadia. We’ve definitely been very excited when there is an opportunity we can be a part of related to streaming or cloud gaming. Because we work so multi-platform, most of the games we develop are on PC and all consoles. We also do a lot of mobile work…the idea that eventually things might move towards there just being one or two versions of a game that you stream, that’s something we’re really excited to explore. It’s something we’re very positive about.”

"Game On" is The Fly’s weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.

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