During the GamesCom we interviewed Remco Westermann the CEO of Gamigo, a publisher known for their range of free to play games.

We found out a little bit more about what they do over there, about some old titles that have been dropped, and what we can expect to see next!

What’s Gamigo?

Remco: Gamigo is a distributor, publisher of online games, especially roleplaying games and strategy games and always multiplayer games online.

With so many titles, how do you decide which ones get a mention at expos like Gamescom?

Remco: We try to first get a good selection and feel the games we feature are good games and even with a bigger portfolio there’s so many online tools that we have, so many newsletters that we send around so every game will get fair attention there.

What’s going on with Otherland?

Remco: Otherland is a nice example of an online game which takes a bit longer than originally scheduled, like many of them actually. We still believe in Otherland, we still think It’s going to be see commercial, but there is some trouble with the development of it, some of the financers have backed out so some issues there. They’re discussing at the moment which studio will continue and as far as I’m aware things have a green light and will go forward, I really hope we’ll see it in 2014 but it’s difficult to say yet. Still it’s going to be a good title.

How is the UFO Online Open Beta going?

Remco: Not as good as we hoped or expected, it’s still open beta and should have been commercial, but we also have a rule that, coming back to a previous question, we only launch games where we’re really convinced that they are really good and will attract enough users. At this stage UFO unluckily is not yet so far, so we’re still working on it together with the developer.

What are the main issues people are having with the Beta?

Remco: We have a lot of high level of dropouts after a few levels, so the game is good in the beginning but they’re not long enough in the game, and that needs to be fixed of course because we don’t want to get people in which back off after a while because that doesn’t work.

What’s the reason behind the cancellation of Grimlands?

Remco: Gamigo has in their history done a lot of developing or financing development, and developing and publishing are two totally different stories, the risk profile is different and there are plenty of titles around at the moment so we said we don’t necessarily need to take the risk of developing titles and would rather specialise in distribution and put our money into getting better marketing, more customers and building the company on that side.

What else is happening both with Gamigo and its other titles?

Remco: Gamigo has from October last year changed strategy, no development anymore, opening up the company for bigger games distribution, so we’re doing a lot of channelling deals amongst other things. We have Dragon Nest on the platform which is a great game, which was very successful in Asia already, we will distribute it in Europe. We also relaunched Loong for example which is also looking very well, and we have a great pipeline of all kinds of new games that are coming. But we shouldn’t forget the old ones, Fiesta, Last Chaos, five year old games and getting content updates all the time and being very successful as well.

What do you look for in a game?

Remco: Most of all that it’s a high quality game that has a long time lifespan so people once coming into the game like the community part, I mean the multiplayer part is very import. People like to go into a nice community, to be together and also the gameplay itself must be good and exciting.

Have you actually played any of your games?

Remco: Yes of course, I play Fiesta, Last Chaos and I’m starting playing Loong, but not as much as  I would like to because I’m also doing a lot of other stuff of course, especially sourcing new games, looking at a lot of new titles and managing the team.

What can we expect to see happening in the future?

Remco: Gamigo will further expand internationally, we’re building a strong base in North America, in Europe were making sure that we get better traction in more countries and also going into the smaller countries and of course extending the games portfolio; getting more exciting cool titles, role playing games, strategy games and mobile games.

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