Flashbulb Games: the pros and cons of independence –

Few games offer as much freedom as Trailmakers. Whether spaceships, planes, ships or even submarines, you can design and build exactly the kind of vehicles you dream of. And in the game’s vast open world, you can go wherever you want, from outer space to the bottom of the ocean.

For the developer, Denmark-based Flashbulb Games, Trailmakers was a truly liberating project, because their own creative freedom was long overdue – and had a price.

From university to Microsoft

I sat down to talk with Ole Teglbjærg. He is the co-founder of Flashbulb Games and has been part of the journey from the very first time the studio was called Press Play – and even before that.

Originally, Teglbjærg studied journalism at Roskilde University. However, when he learned that he could earn twice as many credits by taking a science course, he decided to take up programming. Through this new path, he met Rune Dittmer and Mikkel Thorsted, and after their graduation, the trio founded Press Play.

Although they were now their own boss, they didn’t exactly feel free. Press Play began as a multimedia agency and, at first, focused mainly on Internet advertising and other contract work. “If it’s like that, I don’t want to be self-employed. I may be my own boss, but it doesn’t make me happy in any way.” Teglbjærg thought at the time.

Later, the studio struck a deal with DR (Denmark’s national public broadcaster) to create games for a children-oriented online platform. This proved to be the catalyst for what would later become Max & the Magic Marker, the studio’s first and most successful game. Like later Trailmakers, the creative platform game focuses on freedom and creativity, as the player uses a magic crayon to draw objects such as platforms and traps that help Max on his journey.

Max and the Magic Marker saw the light of day in 2010 and was followed by a sequel, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood. The latter was a launch title for Microsoft’s Xbox One, and this was no coincidence, as by then Press Play had been acquired by the Seattle-based technology giant.

A tumultuous time at Microsoft

It all started with a meeting during Gamescom. At the time, Microsoft was looking for developers to create games for their peripherals Windows Phones and Kinect. Press Play fit the profile well and provided some payroll work. But the relationship changed in 2011, much to the delight of the Danish studio, which at the time was struggling to make ends meet.

“At that time, things weren’t going so well at Press Play, so we suggested to Microsoft that instead of having to do a new deal for each project, we might do a deal for three or more games. Some time later they came back and said, “Instead of doing three or five games, how about we just buy you? We didn’t have to tell them that twice. Our finances really needed that then”, says Teglbjærg.

The deal was finalized in 2012. Under Microsoft, Press Play published not only Max: The Curse of Brotherhood, but also the co-op-oriented platform game Kalimba, which garnered rave reviews and was even nominated for Best Original Property at the BAFTAs.

Our entire support team has been reassigned to support Minecraft

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s gaming division was in trouble. Xbox One lagged far behind Sony’s PlayStation 4 in the console race and, as is often the case with the Seattle tech giant, they ended up solving their problems by throwing money at another company. In November 2014, Microsoft paid $2.5 billion for Swedish developer Mojang, makers of Minecraft. For Press Play, this led to big changes.

“Our entire support team has been reassigned to support Minecraft,” the company said. Says Teglbjærg. “Fair enough. But it also meant that the people who agreed that we were a good investment were suddenly not around us. We ended up with a boss who was in the UK for a while, then in the US, then back to the UK, then back to the US again. It was fairly chaotic.”

Teglbjærg describes that there was a lot of uncertainty internally in Microsoft’s Xbox department at the time about what strategy to pursue to get back into the console race. Priorities were constantly shifting, and it all ended with Press Play and Lionhead – the studio behind the popular Fable games – being shut down by Microsoft in 2016 as part of a major shift in the company’s strategy.

The price of freedom

When Press Play was discontinued in 2016, the studio was working on the survival game Knoxville. That project was eventually canceled, but two of the studio’s other prototypes were given a second chance. One became Deep Rock Galactic, developed by Ghost Ship Games, while Flashbulb Games, the successor to Press Play, began work on Trailmakers. With some money left over from the sale to Microsoft, they now set out to realize their dream game.

“We’ve always been big fans of Lego. It was the framework for Trailmakers. And then we had seen how Besiege, which was around that time [in 2015] came out, had done very well. We were very fascinated by this open way of making games, where it’s more about systems working together than about a story and a great narrative.” explains Teglbjærg about the inspiration for the game.

But although the studio was now free – both from contract labor and from Microsoft – there were still numerous restrictions. The most pressing were of a technical nature. Flashbulb Games wanted to make a physics-based multiplayer game, and that proved challenging.

“There wasn’t really any technology that could implement physics in the way we wanted. Fortunately, we had a network programmer, Villads [Bønding Einfeldt], who is a bit of a genius and who developed a system on which all our games since then have been based. We work in Unity, and underneath that we have a network layer that is insanely fast. It allows us to make physics-based multiplayer games with relatively many players.”

The other big challenge was something as prosaic as selling the game. There is a lot of competition in the market for creative sandbox games – not least from Minecraft, the best-selling game in history that, through no fault of its own, the studio had already shut down once. To succeed, Flashbulb Games, which self-publishes Trailmakers, decided from the beginning to go for a focused strategy, relying primarily on influencers or, to put it more bluntly, they wanted others to sell the game for them. “Influencers were at the core of everything we did. This also meant that fairly early on we created some systems for working strategically with influencers.” says Teglbjærg.

The initiative seems to be paying off. Trailmakers received a lot of attention during its Early Access launch in 2018. The following year, the game was officially released for PC and Xbox One and is now also available for PlayStation. With more than 5 million players across platforms, the game has been a huge success. However, Flashbulb has also come to the realization that the game’s “isn’t turning into Minecraft after all. As a result, they have also been busy with other projects, including the physics-based board game Rubber Bandits, due for release in late 2021.

The benefits of Creative Control

According to Teglbjærg, one of the advantages of being independent is that it has been possible to build close relationships with influencers and fans. But there are also challenges when trying to sell your game yourself. For example, Teglbjærg admits that initially she was “messed up the price of Rubber Bandits.” Upon release, the game sold for about 17 euros – a high price considering that the experience is best enjoyed with up to three friends, who in turn must also buy a copy. As a result, Rubber Bandits soon received a permanent price cut.

“One of the things we learned at Microsoft is that in many cases they are not significantly better. They just have more money.”

Despite the price problems, Rubber Bandits still got a lot of players, as it was made available on Xbox Game Pass from day one. It seems there are no hard feelings after the breakup with Microsoft, and Teglbjærg says the studio is generally pretty happy with their presence on Microsoft’s subscription service.

“Microsoft pays pretty well to get it on the first day of Game Pass. Of course, that was a good argument as to why it made sense. Then you can always try to guess how much it cannibalizes your sales. Another reason why it made sense to release on Game Pass was that we got a fairly large influx of players filling our servers. This means the wait time is pretty short if you want to play with other people.”

Flashbulb Games is currently owned by Nordisk Games, a subsidiary of the Egmont Group, which also owns studios such as Supermassive Games and Avalanche, the developer of Just Cause, and has minority interests in several other studios. Flashbulb Games, however, has retained full creative control and continues to release its games independently, which, as mentioned, brought both benefits and challenges.

“One of the things we learned at Microsoft is that in many cases they are not significantly better. They just have more money”, Teglbjærg explains with a smile. “When we started Flashbulb again, it was a huge relief not to have to deal with the fact that suddenly there was a marketing guy in Seattle who thought that this or that asset had to be a completely different color in order to sell our game. Now it’s much more about following our hearts and believing in ourselves.”

One of the key differences is that at Microsoft, they no longer have to go through the highly formalized process, where you have to reach various milestones and where creative decisions often have to be approved from the top down before they can be developed further. Instead, the development process – for better or worse – is more fluid, Teglbjærg reveals.

This has allowed Flashbulb to regularly add new content to their games, and after seven years on the market, the wheels are turning faster than ever for Trailmakers. On March 6, the biggest update yet was added to the game. Among other things, the free expansion, called Trailmakers – Pioneers, adds a full 10-hour campaign with missions in which players must gather resources, create new blocks and fight an evil corporation.

The expansion – with its focus on crafting, mining and survival – reminds us at least a little of Minecraft. Perhaps a fitting irony for a developer that has seen its share of twists and turns in its nearly two decades of existence.