Limited Run Games on Selling Physical Game Copies in the 21st Century - 80 Level Round Table

Physical game sales are still going strong. Together with Limited Run Games Marketing Director Alena Alambeigi we've discussed the need for owning your own copy in the game community and talked about modern ways of game distribution.

Limited Run Games Website: https://limitedrungames.com/  

Alena Alambeigi is the Marketing Director of Limited Run Games
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alena-alambeigi-5a42a378/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thatonegirltv 

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Transcript

0:00

hello guys uh thank you for joining the 80 level round table today and today we have

0:07

a special guest with us alina from limited run games and limited run games is a company that's uh doing the

0:13

physical releases of different video games they work with

0:19

aaa companies as well as with indies and we're going to talk about digital

0:24

distribution how games are being sold and why do people actually still buy

0:30

physical copies greetings and welcome to the 80 level roundtable podcast in each episode host

0:37

corel tokorev invites video game industry leaders to talk about the world of game development

0:44

no topic is off limits as long as it relates to video game development new

0:49

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0:55

podcast high thank you so much for uh

1:00

for doing the call with us today um so

1:06

i have kind of like this introductory question i want to ask you uh

1:11

and i guess this is the kind of thing that everybody is in the game space

1:17

wants to know and the question is um why do we still have

1:24

physical copies of games like haven't we you know moved past that you

1:30

know couple maybe a decade ago or something right why are there still like if you and it's

1:38

not just your company right it's not just limited run games it's just like if you go to best buy or if you go to target

1:46

uh they're gonna be dvds there they're gonna be cds there and they're gonna be

1:51

games and boxes there so why are they still there like what's what does the market look like

1:58

yeah wow that is that is definitely a a big question to tackle but i mean i think you know the

2:04

the main just like really what it boils down to is fans gamers they still want their

2:11

physical media in a lot of cases um i mean it would seem that the industry is

2:17

going towards a digital only future and it probably is but i don't think it's there yet and

2:22

we're not close to being there yet i mean i think limited run is a really good use case

2:29

where of we only print um limited versions of physical games

2:34

but they always do really well um and there is a huge demand for it still

2:40

people love seeing it on their shelf as you can see everyone here at limited run we're all collectors ourselves like we

2:45

love having that physical copy uh and me personally i love being able to you know

2:50

share my games um have it forever if something happens like if you know

2:56

playstation store goes down for the ps3 vita or eshop goes down or ds or whatever it

3:02

is we will still have those physical copies forever and i think that's really important for a lot of collectors who

3:08

grew up with these games and love these games you you mentioned an interesting point

3:13

there that um like when when you are on contemporary platform be that steam or

3:21

playstation store or nintendo eshop you don't technically

3:27

own anything right i mean you sort of do but at the same time you don't really like if if the internet is

3:34

down basically you're you don't have anything right at the same time

3:41

i guess it was like a lot for me to and for other people as well to digest when

3:47

kind of all consoles suddenly became always on and always connected

3:52

right because before that we never had that right the playstation two games they don't really require any internet

3:59

yeah it was it was very subtle how it happened i feel like first it was like oh you can you can play online with

4:06

people and then it was like oh make an account well then we'll track your progress and then from there just kind of snowballed into kind of what it is

4:14

what we have right now yeah and so in this kind of situation where

4:19

you know all those electronic shops are popping off everywhere

4:24

how did kind of limited run games start like what where maybe your first projects or kind of the

4:31

first games that you worked on and how did you guys kind of develop your

4:36

current business strategy and you know approach yeah so it's it's actually a pretty wild

4:44

and also kind of sustainable story in a way um one of our co-founders josh fairhurst

4:50

also founded mighty rabbit studios which is a development company so he

4:55

did with that development company he did a game called um breach and clear and saturday morning rpg

5:01

and basically what happened was he was worried that his development studio was going to fold and that they weren't

5:08

going to be able to make any more games and he also had in his head and also if any of these you know

5:14

stores that my that my game is on goes down i will have nothing to show for all this hard work that i put in for

5:20

these last few years so it really started from he wanted as a developer himself he wanted his own physical game

5:29

that he spent all this time and effort with his whole development team and so basically they they funded with the very

5:35

last money that they had they funded a very small physical run about as small as you can do

5:41

for his game and it sold out instantly just so fast and so that's where the

5:46

idea came like hey maybe there's something here because in addition to people still wanting physical media

5:52

there's also other developers like me like small indie developers that really would love to see their game physical

5:58

and that's really important to them so that's kind of where it started and it's a it's a very sustainable model because

6:04

how limited run works is um in the early days we used to basically order like

6:09

minimum quantities that we could so we're talking we would print games that were um you know a thousand copies 1500

6:17

copies and that's it like we we never reprint nowadays we we kind of do a thing that's

6:22

similar to a kickstarter model and which will pre-order up front and we'll only create um the amount that's been ordered

6:29

so if 3 000 copies get ordered then we'll make you know 3 500 copies or 4

6:35

000 copies for replacements and to sell in the future but we never actually reprint games so

6:40

very sustainable you're never going to see any of our games in the clearance bin and the value usually go goes up so

6:47

yeah when you have this uh limited run

6:52

do you think that it's uh that it improves the value for the client do you

6:58

feel like if it's it's like with the sneakers that the companies are

7:03

pushing out right or like when there's like some kind of scarcity people suddenly

7:09

begin to value it more yeah you know i i think that's that's kind of a side effect that wasn't

7:15

intended but is just kind of happening like from the very beginning it was never let's let's make these games very

7:23

scarce and limited so the value is crazy and they sell out it was never like that it was always like

7:28

from a very sustainable standpoint of not over printing and that's why

7:34

before limited run and before this kind of like limited print bubble started happening

7:39

um you're seeing less and less games being published uh physically like even

7:45

from big big retailers you would see like hey there's these really cool remastered games but they're not going

7:50

to to stores because it is a really huge investment to print all those copies and

7:55

put it in traditional retailers so in addition to you know having to pay those retailers 20 to 30 percent on

8:01

every copy you also have to pay to actually print the copy and everything else that goes along with it so it just

8:09

started going down the path of it just not making sense for a lot of developers and publishers to print physical games so we

8:15

think what we did here was really the the solution the kind of in-between of going full on retail and

8:23

not having anything at all and i do think that a side effect of it being like you know a small run of a game that

8:29

the value does go up it is kind of like the sneaker thing like hey um maybe not many people knew about

8:34

shantae back when we first printed the physical shantae so now the value's way up but that was never the intention for

8:40

us but it is a it is a side effect uh alias can you talk a little bit about

8:47

this um the production process right so with digital games it's pretty

8:53

straightforward like it's it's you upload the you know whatever you have the files and uh then it's

9:00

ready for distribution but with physicals games it's quite different i mean you have to

9:06

print the actual disks uh you need to make the packaging

9:11

there is probably some copyright that has to go on the box there are also a lot of like

9:16

supplementary materials that you can add i mean there are books inside the boxes and there's a bunch of other stuff

9:24

how do you guys work with this like what are kind of the biggest challenges that you've or maybe even like what lessons

9:31

did you learn over your career about printing games because me personally i

9:37

had a couple of [Music] projects that are physical and i know that in the physical world is quite

9:43

different from whatever you do in digital space and it's there are things

9:49

appearing that you never thought you would have a problem with that like even like the distribution itself

9:54

and the delivery logistics that's only like one part of it like what are kind of the main discoveries that you

10:01

made and how are you you know solving these problems yeah i mean um

10:07

the the actual production side of things is a massive undertaking that i feel like many people they just they don't

10:13

know all the moving parts that it goes into and especially with our customer base um

10:20

it does take us typically longer to ship games than your traditional retailer because we don't go into production

10:26

until after um our pre-orders close so every retailer it takes them this

10:32

long to make a game the difference is they've done it in advance because they just order

10:38

a ton of copies we're only doing exactly what gets ordered so

10:43

i mean there's so many things that even if you know the the digital version has it done

10:50

sometimes you have to re-replicate it for the physical version for example um

10:55

anytime you create a physical game you have to get it rated with the ears with the esrb

11:01

even if the digital version is already so that takes a lot of time um if we publish something that hasn't

11:08

been out in in america which we've done a handful of games that were only published in japan like river city girl

11:13

zero then you have to get translators and you have to get localizers to actually

11:19

translate and localize things like a manual or um or images or assets and

11:24

stuff like that and then right now in the supply chain uh there's

11:29

so many crazy things going on um that it's it's been causing delays

11:35

for everyone um so yeah there's just so much that goes on into like printing a physical copy even

11:42

down to like hey we need to print these coins like where do we print them from if it's a if it's a thing that we've

11:48

never printed before we kind of have to see where we can do that um and then for us we actually

11:55

ship all in-house so we ship from raleigh north carolina so some of the stuff gets printed

12:01

domestically some of it gets printed internationally but it all gets shipped here to be put together and

12:07

sent to the customer so tell us a little bit about uh the

12:13

developers that you work with and who are those companies are they like

12:18

big or small and how is this relationship structured like are you do you work as a publisher

12:25

or like a distributor where do you you know how does it work

12:31

yeah so we've worked with everything from indie companies to uh big triple a studios so um through

12:39

the through the course of the limited run lifespan uh we've worked with everyone from

12:45

naughty dog um we've worked with universal with netflix um and recently we started working with

12:52

konami which we just published um castlevania and now we have contra on sale on our website

12:59

right now so we pretty much worked with everyone from like the smallest mom and

13:04

pop like indie game studio you could ever think to you know big guys like that

13:09

we always have a very close close process with the developer with

13:16

the original talent if we can help it um and with the digital publishers in some

13:22

cases as well because we are a game publisher and if a game is already published

13:28

digitally they already have a publisher so we work with not only that developer but that publisher at the same time to

13:34

make something that everyone's super pumped about very happy about we have our in-house art team and they

13:40

actually come up with a lot of the ideas we let a lot of the developers come up with their ideas too

13:47

and it's just a really big collaborative effort but we pretty much design everything

13:53

in-house and then we pass it by them so i would say the biggest difference between working with an indie and a

13:59

triple-a is there's a lot more red tape with the aaa because they've got all these legal departments and there's like all these different

14:06

um places that they have to pass and approve things but

14:11

the end result is always the same as everyone's really happy with with the product

14:17

so i remember we talked at gdc a couple of months ago and

14:25

you mentioned that for a lot of indie companies having a physical copy basically means

14:32

that they can greatly increase their sales numbers i mean if you release a game on steam

14:38

and there is incredible competition and there are you know problems with discoverability

14:43

and we know how many games come up basically every day people just don't have the time to play

14:49

them right and um can you explain to our audience like how does having

14:56

kind of your own physical copy help you and discover ability maybe

15:01

you know increases [Music] word of mouth or something or something like what are the advantages of kind of

15:08

going physical yeah so i mean i definitely think it does give developers an edge if they

15:14

have a physical game i mean one it's really cool it's awesome to have something in your hands physically that

15:20

you've made um and two yeah if if you know a developer

15:26

works with a company like us limited run there's a certain amount of buzz around the products that we publish and that we

15:31

help develop so it does kind of help cut through the noise because it is a very competitive space i mean log into the

15:38

steam store and you'll see every single day every week like that front page is changing there's so much going on and i

15:45

think having a physical copy not only gives a certain amount of like legitimacy to your game

15:51

but it also helps kind of cut through the noise so what about distribution so if you

16:00

could tell us a little bit about how your games are being sold you you talked a little bit about that so there's a

16:05

pre-orders and you're basically selling from your own i guess store

16:12

talk a little bit about that yeah so we are predominantly direct to consumer so

16:18

this allows us to not only cut out sort of the the middleman which is traditional retailers

16:25

but this also allows us to pay developers a lot more than they would typically make

16:31

so if you were to do a full you know retail release and if you sell a hundred copies through

16:39

like a traditional retail release like a target or a walmart and you sell 100 copies through limited run you're gonna

16:44

make a lot more with limited run because we have the ability to pay out more royalties because we don't have physical

16:50

stores we don't have to well we have one physical store now but it's not like a network or a chain where we have to keep

16:55

the lights on so we have to um pad that into the price

17:01

so um typically we just sell through our website

17:06

and we do uh some very small mom-and-pop retailers like we'll

17:13

we'll wholesale like you know tens of copies just so they're kind of like around we don't usually work with bigger

17:19

retailers aside from best buy and our collector's editions are always

17:25

only found on our website recently we just opened a limited run retail store in raleigh north carolina

17:31

the grand opening was phenomenal it was amazing and if there's any like proof that there's demand in physical

17:38

games on our retail day i believe the line got up to like seven hours long

17:43

there were people that waited in line for seven hours to get into the store you should send us some pictures so we

17:48

can put them in a video um so then we can illustrate everything um so it's funny that you mentioned this

17:55

about the kind of the royalties and the shares so i had a conversation um last year with

18:04

one very big publisher like makes one of the most i'm not gonna name names but it like

18:10

makes a very successful game and what they are saying is that um

18:16

having a physical copy for them and distributing physical copies directly for them this is the most

18:24

um kind of revenue heavy way of selling right because

18:30

you don't pay commissions for like steam store or other platforms and those are

18:37

pretty significant there's like 30 right and i think a lot of developers

18:42

don't really think about that when they're publishing a game and where they're going to work with the publisher

18:48

because i heard i heard stories and we did surveys when

18:53

developers are okay with splitting even 50 50.

18:58

although it makes zero sense to me especially considering all the channels that you

19:04

have right now and kind of companies so how do you work on royalties how do you

19:11

make sure that the kind of the share the sharing is um equal and kind of like

19:17

that it's not ripping the developer off yeah so i i can't really get too into

19:23

the weeds about like royalties um mostly because i'm not the one who makes the contracts for the royalties but i do

19:30

know that limited run is extremely extremely favorable for the

19:35

developer i mean there's a reason why so many people have worked with us we've published over a thousand games and um

19:42

we are probably one of the least predatory game publishers you'll ever

19:47

ever talk to and i wholeheartedly believe that because uh one we usually pay out our developers much more in

19:54

royalties than us two we don't sit on the rights to their game at all so in in

20:00

a lot of cases after we publish your game physically you have the rights completely back to you and you can do

20:06

like what you want with them so we we don't sit on people's rights or ips we we pay developers a very fair

20:13

amount um and we basically do everything for them so you know if we do decide to publish a game we're almost like

20:20

pretty close to a turnkey operation we have our own in-house our team our own production team we know where we're

20:25

gonna print so all you have to do is work with us to make sure it's a product that you know you and your fans will

20:31

like and then we'll get it done for you and basically cover all the costs that that that that takes to do

20:38

alina so talk to us about some of your favorite releases or maybe some of the most

20:44

successful releases like what were the games that sold best or were like

20:50

the biggest hits yeah so our best-selling game to date is scott pilgrim vs the world the game

20:58

so uh you know obviously that was like our big white whale like we really really wanted to get that game because

21:05

it was one it was an awesome game and two it was d listed for about 10

21:10

years you couldn't buy it so um once it you know once it was announced that it was coming

21:16

back we were like we have to get this game this means so much to us this is like everything that our company stands

21:22

for right is being able to play this game forever no matter what so um i think that really resonated with

21:28

the fans too because it was our top selling game to date uh and we got to do like some really

21:34

amazing stuff with that game um we got to re-release you know the

21:39

soundtracks and everything with with onomatoguchi which was amazing because our founders are really huge fans of

21:45

that band as well and yeah we we've also worked with you know

21:51

huge awesome companies like naughty dog we did um a lot of the jack and daxter

21:56

games so i think that was a huge success for us as well yeah and then um in you know more more

22:04

recent months castlevania has been doing great for us we did the castlevania anniversary collection and castlevania

22:09

rondo of blood which is one of my personal favorites because i love symphony of the night i mean it's so

22:14

awesome oh yeah so you mentioned you have your own art team and you're doing a lot of

22:20

the kind of ads and box art and

22:25

if you go on any channel anywhere if you go on steam if you go on youtube one of the first things they teach you

22:32

is that the thumbnail is the most important part right so the thumbnail is kind of like

22:38

the introduction into the game and um with some basically is box art right now

22:46

right and box art was kind of like this right now it's sort of like a lost art

22:51

like how do you make the before that like if you go into a little bit of a history like activision ea all

22:58

those big publishers they were super heavily invested in all the figure

23:03

what kind of monster should be on the boxer like should there be a lady you should be a man like what are the

23:08

callers because this is how you sold your title this was like the main advertising um tell us a little bit

23:15

about how this changed and how do you approach kind of creating

23:22

those amazing you know pictures art for your physical copies

23:27

yeah so um for for the majority of most of the stuff we publish

23:34

there's already existing key art for the game so that's pretty simple we just kind of figure out how we're going to place that

23:40

key art but then in some cases like for instance with um with like castlevania

23:45

or something like that we we always try to stay true to you know the original vision of the box

23:53

like like boxer is sacred to us it is and anytime we can get you know the original

23:59

artist back on to like create something new we try to do that so for castlevania for

24:05

instance we we commissioned tom du bois who did a lot of the classic konami uh box arts to actually make a new box

24:12

art for us or recreate the old box art so we did that with a few things we um

24:17

did a reversal a reversible cover for scott pilgrim versus the world the game i wish i had a coffee back over here i

24:24

could open for you but we worked with brian lee o'malley who you know created the series uh to make that that

24:32

reversible art for us so it like anytime we can bring back the like original creators

24:38

illustrators or whoever first worked on that game will bring them back in to make something new

24:44

and cool if you can um but usually there's key art there that we'll

24:50

be able to work with but yeah it is it's a very sacred practice box art

24:56

alina except for the disc and kind of the box itself uh i know you

25:03

guys are doing a lot of um a lot of extra work so there there is a lot of stuff that you can put in the

25:10

like a collector's edition or like a limited edition tell us a little bit about that because um

25:16

i think there is already a generation of people who don't really understand that because uh you buy it like a digital

25:23

deluxe edition of good of war on playstation and you get this uh

25:28

very weird thing like a digital art book you know and there's like soundtrack that you can't really listen anywhere

25:35

except for like on playstation so yeah um how does that work with you like tell

25:41

us a bit about the extra little bits that you can put into with the game

25:46

yeah so there are just tons of different things that you can put in a collector's edition there are some restraints right

25:53

so you have to think about one cost and two size

25:58

so you know fans love having really cool wild crazy things in their collectors edition but depending on what it is that

26:05

cost can go up and then there's a threshold to where it's too much for a fan to want to pay right

26:11

so for instance if we have something like streets of rage where we have like a big statue that's going to be a more

26:18

pricier collector's edition but the statue is awesome so people are going to want it right

26:23

um and then there's other things that we have to think about like the actual box size like how much stuff can we fit in

26:28

this box like how much is humanly possible but yeah there's everything from you know coins art books cds uh let

26:36

me see if i can open one over here for you and kind of show you a cool what's a good one

26:45

let's do panzer paladin your our our podcast is now a a unboxing

26:53

video those are super popular so i'm happy

26:59

yeah so i will open this up and kind of like show you

27:06

sort of what can be done with a really cool cd yeah so this is probably a bigger box

27:12

bigger box size um

27:19

yeah so literally everything down to like how are we gonna package and fit everything in here that's all stuff that

27:24

has to be figured out and worked out

27:31

yeah so we have the game which comes in this big case why does it come in this big case

27:38

well presentation means a lot too right posters you can have and i believe for

27:45

this game we did um some

27:50

metal figures so we have multiple of these metal

27:55

figures in the ce so like even down to stuff like this like not only does this stuff have to be it goes through a

28:01

rigorous approval process with the developers because they want to make sure that their characters are you know

28:06

portrayed correctly like is she the right height is she the right proportion and then you go into the production

28:12

these have to be um basically molded and then once it's

28:18

once it's made something like metals you have to get this stuff tested to make sure it's not toxic and like there's just a huge process that goes with all

28:25

of this that people just i feel like they don't really think about or appreciate like how much really goes into doing

28:31

something like this but it's it's a lot of work but we do think that it is worth it

28:36

um let's see we have another huge heavy

28:43

man this thing is awesome yeah like you can't really feel it but it's it's it's extremely

28:49

heavy yeah so all of our ce's

28:55

soundtrack here double-sided all of our ces we really try to think

29:02

about like what does the fan want like what does the developer think would be really cool

29:07

and if you know if you can think of it we can usually make it happen like no matter what it is we'll do our best to

29:13

make it happen so thank you for the unboxing it was

29:19

incredible and uh big kudos to you for doing the metal figurines because i

29:24

did oh my god like i had this little project where i had to 3d print like a

29:30

character and oh my god that's like the most challenging thing ever because

29:35

not only do you have first to prepare the actual model which is a challenge

29:41

by itself but then you need to find write the right vendor and figure out that the

29:47

colors are right and then they choose the materials and then there is the price

29:52

the quantity because it's you know it depends on whatever you choose uh if it

29:59

what kind of resin you're doing and it's just insane and you're doing this in metal so i guess this is even more

30:05

challenging yeah exactly yeah there's there's uh so much that that goes into

30:11

it and yeah sometimes there's times where um a developer goes

30:16

that's not the right color it's just not and then we do another color it's like well now i don't like the eyes so we

30:22

have to do like you know seven or eight different iterations of something but um

30:28

we do it to get it right and then we know everyone's happy with it i feel like this is very important to

30:35

have all this kind of good around

30:41

the franchise right so you don't really have the game but you have like the figurines

30:46

cds posters anything um

30:52

like from your perspective who's doing like the best job at kind of

30:57

utilizing their franchises and uh kind of creating more

31:03

goods around them like uh in my opinion probably when you think about companies like it's probably

31:09

square enix where they're doing this like every time you go like gamescom or you go to gtc or

31:17

like e3 probably where you go to their booth and it's not really about whatever they're releasing it's mostly about

31:25

hundred dollar figurines everywhere and there are lines of people ready to buy them and they

31:31

have these huge bags carrying them and there are posters and all the other stuff but like from your professional

31:37

experience like whom who do you look after like um who do you like who does

31:44

the best job kind of like in this field yeah i mean it's it's it's kind of hard

31:50

to just like pick one or two companies you know like obviously square enix does a great job

31:56

um any company that has their ip and license it out to other companies and

32:02

like allows them to do more things i think that's like a great way to get more products out there because

32:08

realistically you know if if you have this ip and you don't really have the time to do

32:15

all these little cool things like like we don't have the time to make figures or vinyls or shirts or or whatever and

32:21

if you license it out to you know trusted companies that can um i think that's that's kind of like

32:26

the right way to do it i don't know that i could give any good examples off the top of my head but i

32:32

think he gave a really good one there with uh with the square enix yeah so let's jump to

32:39

like the last question i had um oh star wars star wars yeah obviously disney probably

32:46

also does a very good job because they're like that's their whole business um

32:54

my question is like uh we've seen kind of physical distribution of games

33:01

kind of die out now it's kind of like this little renaissance going on

33:06

uh what does the future hold like what's gonna happen like in you know five ten

33:12

years are we still gonna have uh physical copies because i'm afraid that we're gonna come to uh there's gonna be a time

33:19

when there's just not gonna be a slot on the platform like i don't have a cd-rom

33:24

like on my or like a dvd on my computer now yeah it is

33:30

you know i think that's inevitable for most companies right i mean i watched

33:35

over the years as you know like apple computers apple phones they slim down

33:41

more and more every single year now you don't have a disk drive now you don't have a headphone jack and then everyone else in the industry kind of follows

33:47

them right and i know that inevitably that will probably happen with you know microsoft

33:53

and sony i have an inkling this is my own personal opinion but i think nintendo will not only be the last one

34:00

to like hold on to this physical aspect but they may never get rid of it i mean they've they've

34:06

always historically just kind of like gone with the with the with the beat of their own drum

34:11

and i think that they still do value physical media over there too i don't think it was ever a question for them

34:17

but i mean as we saw with the playstation like there's a model without a cd slot you know that's a big thing

34:24

so i think in the future eventually there there may come a time um

34:32

i know for for a limited run we do have a cool thing that i think will be you

34:38

know 20 years from now probably like the future of our company which is our carbon engine

34:44

uh which helps us basically preserve retro games it's it's an engine that helps

34:51

developers and us port classic retro games from nes game boy

34:58

sega the list just goes on and on um you can read more about it on our website

35:03

limitrongames.com there's a carbon engine page but uh it helps us port those games to modern platforms like

35:10

nintendo switch um playstation so you can play them and it's kind of preserved because there's just this huge library

35:16

of retro games that people just can't play if they don't have the hardware they they're not well versed enough in

35:23

emulation so the only way the majority of casual gamers are going to play these games is if they get released on a

35:30

modern platform so yeah yeah and it seems like

35:35

having a physical copy as you mentioned a couple of times during this interview it just means so much both for

35:43

developer and uh for the gamer right and it seems like

35:48

even if we won't have any slots or like the distribution is going to be all digital you'll still have something you

35:53

will buy maybe a figurine maybe like a cd uh they're still gonna be because i

35:59

mean let's face it we buy those cds we never actually play them with they're just like lying around or something

36:05

right um but they're still there so it's kind of like this i guess cultural thing like for people

36:12

who like and enjoy uh video games yeah no no totally and

36:18

knowing limited run you know far far in the future if there's no disc slots like we're going to be putting out collectors

36:23

editions with codes if we have to if that's the only way to get this awesome you know merch and these collectors items in front of

36:30

people then we'll do what we have to do but i think um you know our business model and many

36:37

other companies that are kind of popping up and trying to do something similar um there's definitely a demand like gamers

36:43

want our physical stuff we love this like it means something to us it's it's nostalgic like we have emotional

36:49

connections to it so i don't think it's it's gonna go away as fast as people assume that it is

36:55

got it okay so on this optimistic note uh i want to say goodbye thank you so much for joining us today and

37:02

we'll leave the links in the description so people can check out your website learn more learn more about carbon

37:09

engine and kind of figure out what your company does thank you so much cool thank you so much for having us

37:16

thanks for enjoying another episode of the 80 level roundtable podcast check out upcoming episodes on

37:23

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37:29

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