Gearbox Publishing Blog 2: Electric Boogaloo

Hey everyone,

Last month, we launched our very first Publishing blog with the goal of discovering whether our fans were interested in hearing a little more about the inner-workings of our team. The responses we got were really positive, so here we are!

Here’s some stuff that some people said this month:

  Steve – Head of Publishing

October has been really exciting. We got to announce another new partnership. This time, we’re working with the fine folks at tinyBuild to put Hello Neighbor on store shelves around the world.

While we work with tinyBuild, we’re also working with a few more developers as we look towards publishing more games in 2018, 2019, and even 2020.

Communications

  Jeff – Brand Manager

Here’s a message from Jeff:

This month, I took off on a sales road trip with our Sales Manager, Brad, to talk to retailers about Hello Neighbor. I’m super excited to help tinyBuild and Dynamic Pixels get Hello Neighbor on store shelves, and because of the short turnaround, we had to act fast in order to make sure it’s available as many place possible this December!

The Comms team is also doing our part to bring back an old hit craze: Hacky Sack. The kicker: none of us have ever hacky’d before. We’ve started taking fifteen minutes a day to work on our sack skills. Right now, our current high-combo is 7. Tune in next month to see if we’ve made any improvements.

  Meredith – Community Coordinator

Hey everyone!

This month’s social content has been all about sunshine and rainbows! Just kidding, it’s been about scary stuff.

Compulsion Games’ Community Manager Naila and I have been working with the Publishing art team to create fun and creepy assets for our We Happy Few channels. We’ve come up with some awesome stuff, like this spooky asset showcasing some local Wellington Wells folklore:

The most exciting thing we did was partner with cosplayer DeAnna Davis, who graciously made a video tutorial detailing how to make a Bobby mask from scratch! We’re really thrilled with how it turned out, and it was super awesome working with DeAnna!

Naila and I are currently planning some cool stuff for the month of November, so keep an eye on the We Happy Few and Gearbox social channels!

PS: As Jeff mentioned, we started our own Hacky Sack league. We’re still coming up with a name, but we’ve got a couple ideas. Which one do you think works best?

  • We ❤️ Sack
  • We Hacky Few
  • Hack the Planet

  Elisa – New Media Manager

Hi, everyone! Hope you had a lovely and spooky October!

This month, I had a fun time assisting Meredith with the above video for We Happy Few, making tweaks and adding background music to DeAnna’s great work. I’m a musician, so when I’m editing a video, I take great joy in picking out tunes to highlight the action in the video—thanks to Compulsion for having such cool music to work with!

I’m also still recovering from TwitchCon, a huge gathering of Twitch streamers, fans, and devs/publishers. It was my first one, and I had a blast meeting with streamers and companies that focus on helping streamers achieve their dreams.

Another highlight? Being on a panel on a “How to Build a Streaming PC” panel on Sunday with a few amazing women! You can catch the VOD here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/184255799

(Panel kicks off at the 30-minute mark).

 

I have to be honest—I was terrified. You see, I had only built my first PC on Tuesday, when I received a practice build for the panel. After being walked through the process and putting everything together myself, however, it was way less scary than I thought! If you’re interested in getting started with building a PC, I highly recommend checking out the panel and giving your own build a shot. It’s a lot easier to put a good PC together nowadays, and there are lots of great online resources to guide you. If I can do it and get the thing to turn on, you can, too!

Are you a streamer? I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to hit me up on Twitter (@elisarockdoc), and I’ll see you next month!

  Austin – PR Manager

Hey!

This month involved a good amount of planning and prepping for various Publishing projects. Of course, after typing that out, I realized that sounds like an excuse to convince Steve that I wasn’t just sitting around playing Divinity: Original Sin 2…

BUT in all actuality, I built out an overall timeline to understand how each of our games’ marketing plans will overlap each other throughout next year. On top of that, the team and I created an event brief for We Happy Few. This helps us, Compulsion Games, and our agency partners be on the same page when picking locations, layout and décor for press tours and convention spaces.

On a completely different note, I revealed to the team that I’ve been featured in several McDonald’s tweets.  Stay tuned for more, with an increasing level of embarrassment.

 

Production

  Michael – Submissions Specialist

Hello all,

Thanks for taking the time to revisit our Publishing Blog! This month, I’ve been working on lots of interesting things. The number one thing on my to-do list has been documentation. There are a lot of processes that we as publishers must follow to get games into your hands. While the first parties we submit to (Microsoft, Sony, Steam, etc.) are very responsive when helping us get items and requirements organized, we like to document the processes so we can find more efficient ways of completing the required tasks.

As a result, this month, I have been documenting some of the more complicated items that I’ve had to research or ask questions about in the past. This includes recording details on the items we provide to first parties, different portals we use to manage different items, and local documentation to help keep those I work closely with up to date.

As we get closer to the end of the year we are entering the final stages of the We Happy Few game release. There are a lot of processes and tasks that have to be completed before the game launches. For myself, this means I’m going to start assigning tasks to the QA and Cert teams to gather information that will be required for our submissions to first parties for certification – a required step to ensure we can provide a great experience on each platform! Speaking of which… I should get started on that!

Anyway, here’s a photo of me with a whale:

Thanks for reading!

Marketing

  Kat – Project Manager 

Hey guys!

I’ve been working hard on the production of the Time Capsule (what we used to call the Collector’s Box), and currently have a prototype of the mask replica sitting on my desk! Caffeinated lifeblood in a can for scale:

I also helped with a motion capture shoot for an upcoming trailer with Alex from Compulsion Games, which was awesome to see. I’ve never been part of something like that before and I learned a lot! I look forward to being able to share more with all of you in the future!

Thanks for tuning in!

  Sean – Web Designer, Chief Bro 

Up, Up, Down, Something, Something…A?
  Nicole – Marketing Artist

Happy Spoops and Spiders month! Hope your Halloween is sufficiently scary!

Most of what I did this month was work on Hello Neighbor packaging, We Happy Few social assets and many other various artsy things around the studio. Specifically, I made some creepy Bobby pumpkin stencils as well as a cosplay guide.  So many spoops, so little time.

User Research 

Hail, and well-met!

We are the Gearbox Publishing User Research Team. Our jobs involve conducting user tests and analyzing data from customers for nearly every project at both Gearbox Publishing and Gearbox Software. We work primarily out of our User Research Facility, a dedicated testing lab in Frisco, TX. We recruit participants from the Dallas/Fort Worth area to come to our labs and playtest content for us. Prior to moving over to Gearbox Publishing, the team operated under Gearbox Software since 2008.

Before we discuss what we’ve been up to this month, the team will briefly introduce ourselves:

  Michelle  – User Research Analyst

Hi! I’m Michelle, and I am a User Research Analyst and the team’s resident crazy dog lady. I spend most of time recruiting participants, helping run playtest sessions, and writing reports. I’ve been at Gearbox for about three years now.

  Kyle –  Senior User Research Analyst

Hello! I am Kyle, and I am a User Research Analyst. I spend a majority of my time helping run playtest sessions, writing reports, looking at telemetry data and editing videos of people playing the games. I’ve been at Gearbox almost 8 years.

  Jon – User Research Manager

Hi! I’m Jon, and I am the User Research Manager on the team. I have been with the group for nearly five years. My background is in cognitive science and experimental psychology, and I like to approach each of our user tests as mini-experiments. In addition to working with Michelle and Kyle on the team, I also run a series of tabletop games and events around the studio, including our Monthly Board Game Nights.

This month the team has been focused on a large multi-day user test for We Happy Few; this is the kind of test where our participants come back to the lab for a second day of content and feedback, and we can really focus in on critical areas for analysis. While we can’t divulge the details of the test or the data we collected, we can say that the test itself went very well. Our partners at Compulsion and our Publishing QA groups were fantastic allies throughout the preparation and execution of the test, and all parties were pleased with the report that was delivered. We are looking forward to the next round of testing, and we will be planning that out in the next couple of weeks.

Until next time!