Devolver launches Big Fan Games, a publishing label dedicated to movie, TV and comic book adaptations

Devolver Digital has formed a new games publishing label devoted to indie games that are based on movie, TV, comic book and other entertainment IP.

The new label is made up of the Good Shepherd team, which Devolver acquired back in 2021. Good Shepherd had already published indie games based on other brands, namely 2019's John Wick Hex (by Bithell Games) and 2023's Hellboy Web of the Wyrd (by Upstream Games), and this will now be the team's focus going forward.

Big Fan Games will be led by general manager Lincoln Hershberger, who is a video game veteran of 27 years, with senior roles at Westwood Studios, EA and Twitch, before joining the team last year.

He's joined by head of business development Amanda Kruse. Kruse had been part of the Good Shepherd team since 2019, and comes from the world of TV and movies, having worked on the likes of Hunger Games, Twilight and LaLa Land. She's best known in the video games space for forming and running Lionsgate's games division.

"I love adaptation," Kruse told GamesIndustry.biz. "So when we were trying to figure out what we specialise in... we are part of Devolver now, but we don't want to be Devolver 2. Nobody can be. They're so cool and original. How can we separate ourselves? So I was excited to pitch 'let's do adaptations.' Because that is what is exciting for us and most of our team."

Hershberger added: "Nigel [Lowrie, Devolver co-founder] was interested in fan-favourite IP like Monkey Island [Devolver published Return to Monkey Island in 2022], and that gave him the excitement that this could be a separate label. It doesn't fully fit with Devolver, which as you know is a curator of great, original indie games. So with Amanda on-board, and with Nigel's interest, it was a case of 'let's make something out of this'. Then I joined the team. I have a background at Electronic Arts, and I started at Westwood Studios, and have worked on things like Dune, Blade Runner, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. So collectively, we have a lot of experience in this area to try and figure something out that works for indie developers."

"The dream is that we're synonymous with quality adaptations in games one day. But [Devolver] does afford us to just focus on the games and developers"

Amanda Kruse, Big Fan Games

Big Fan Games offers all the services you'd expect from a publisherL: finance, PR, marketing, community, platform relations, and so on. And it will make use of its parent company, too, where it makes sense.

"I like to think of us as a SWAT team," Kruse explains. "We are all specialists at what we do. We don't have duplicate people. If Devolver is talking to PlayStation... we are all on that call together. But in terms of frontline employees, we have everything. We've got marketing, and social, and producers and business development."

She adds: "The dream is that we're synonymous with quality adaptations in games one day. But [Devolver] does afford us to just focus on the games and developers, and worry less about our own personal brand building."

The adaptation element is what makes Big Fan different. Yet as Big Fan doesn't own the IPs, how does the process work? Hershberger gives us an example.

"Amanda and I were at Gamescom last year," he begins. "One of our Devolver producers said that there is a team in Barcelona, and they're really interested in finding out if they could work on an IP that they are fans of. It would be a labour of love if they could do it, but they don't know how to get started. So Amanda and I went to meet them, found out what the IP was, and then we went and talked to the owners of that... and we're now close to signing that deal.

"That is the ideal situation. Where you have a developer who is passionate and part of the fan community of a specific IP, rather than the other way around where you've got an IP owner that wants to build something. Which we can do, too. It can work both ways. But the ideal situation is where you have an indie developer that is particularly passionate about an IP, and we can help make that a reality."

Kruse says the model where an IP owner goes to a developer and requests a pitch doesn't always lead to the best results.

"Because you get people looking at it, from the jump, as an assignment," she says. "And that doesn't set you up for a tonne of success for it to be a great game. It is way more exciting when the people who are going to make the game come to you."

Big Fan is not just about connecting indie devs with IP holders. As Kruse says: "Anyone can go on LinkedIn, find someone and call a movie studio". But there are other things that Big Fan is experienced with navigating that other publishers might not be familiar with.

"There is an art to adaptation," Kruse adds. "If you haven't done a lot of it, there are all these little pieces that you can do that you might not have realised would be possible. Even this morning we had a huge call about licensing clips, and there are associated union things that go into that. Not everybody knows that we do all that stuff. Some of it is relationships, but some of it is about being able to block and tackle for the developers, and take as much as the stress of the process off of them as possible."

"With indies, you can explore different areas of an IP that have not been previously explored. You can take risks that you can't take when you have $60 million, $70 million, $100 million production budgets"

Lincoln Hershberger, Big Fan Games

Big Fan will work with all sorts of brands, and it isn't opposed to movie tie-ins. But the firm believes the most effective partnerships will involve IP that doesn't have active TV shows or movies in development.

"There is just more flexibility with those," Kruse says. "You're not going to break the rules, it is still a brand, but they are more open to bending things in the service of a good game. As opposed to 'nope, this is a big franchise, we have a movie out in ten minutes, and it has to be exactly like this whether it is good for the game or not'.

"With the IP we're working on with that team we met at Gamescom... it doesn't have an upcoming movie or show. And in a lot of ways, the licensor of that is going 'oh you want this? That's cool'. And now we're the big beat with what's going on with that IP in the near term. And that brings a really cool energy to it. That doesn't mean we will exclusively do back catalogue or nostalgia plays, but it's a hell of a lot of fun."

Kruse and Lincoln's passion for game adaptations was clear throughout our conversation. Twice we deviate from the interview, first to discuss Blumhouse's recent move into games ("I am so excited for what Zack Wood is building over there," Kruse says. "I was watching all of those trailers at Summer Games Fest with baited breath."), and then to chat about Disney's games strategy. In fact, Disney's approach to working with indies, via the firm's VP of business development John Drake, is something that is starting to happen with other movie houses, Hershberger says.

"Disney and John are the perfect examples of the good mindset in that space," he tells us. "They are going to have their big Star Wars and Marvel AAA production budget games. But as John will say, indie brings a level of prestige. And even though there isn't the same level of production attached to it, you can explore different areas of an IP that have not been previously explored. You can take risks that you can't take when you have $60 million, $70 million, $100 million production budgets. That kind of mindset is interesting and it is percolating in other places. And that's exciting for us because it opens more doors for indie developers to work on things they've always been passionate about."

Big Fan currently has six active projects in development, which translates to about three game launches a year, and the aim is to get to "four or five games" a year.

And it all speaks to a changing perception within games towards adaptations. For a long time, games based on films or TV shows were seen more like merchandise, and were often rushed and lacking in quality. Games like 1997's GoldenEye were seen as exceptions to the rule.

Those days have long since passed. Games based on Star Wars, Lego, Harry Potter, Warhammer and Spider-Man are not just commercial hits, but are critically acclaimed, too. Yet still the bulk of the games industry eschews adaptations, which comes in stark contrast to the movie and TV side, where the bulk of big (and small) shows and movies are based on something, whether that's Barbie, Dune, Marvel comics, Super Mario or things far more obscure.

But attitudes within games are changing.

"I feel there is a lot of baggage with licensed games," Kruse concludes. "I come from an adaptation background. In film and TV, everything is adaptation. I don't know the exact statistic, but last time I looked, something like 95% of films are based on something else. Where I come from [adaptation] wasn't a dirty word. Most people in games are receptive to it, but you do run into people who go 'oh, those licensed games…' Having everyone on our team come from a place of 'let's do this, it's really cool, I'd love to live in the world of Judge Dredd, I'd love to live in the world of John Wick' and people wanting to make a story out of those, it's really exciting."