Final Boss: Snow Rui, President and CFO at Hooded Horse

Every month an industry leader wraps up MCV/DEVELOP with their unique insight. This month, we speak to Snow Rui, President and CFO at Hooded Horse.

It has been a difficult 12 months for the industry. What’s your take on things?

2023 was a perfect storm between valuation corrections by investors and fierce competition for consumer attention, with studios unfortunately caught in the middle. Money has been noticeably tighter compared to prior years, with investors/publishers slowing and even pausing funding of projects, whether on the basis of more sober forecasts or financial difficulties. The layoffs have been a particularly tragic aspect, with many wonderful people losing their jobs and several amazing studios being forced to close as well.

While our own company is largely insulated from these macroeconomic influences, it’s impossible not to feel the weight of the immense human toll this year has taken. 2023 demonstrated how damaging the growth-for-growthʼs-sake mindset can be. My hope is that, if nothing else, sustainability and resilience will become firmly rooted values for more companies in the industry.

What needs to be addressed to ensure 2023 remains an anomaly?

I think a committed focus on ensuring that costs are kept in line with reliable sales expectations is key. A project that is more likely than not to fail but gives a 10x return if it succeeds might be attractive for investors, but it isnʼt the road to sustainability in our industry. Companies should also move away from acquisitions and growth strategies based on anticipated stock market reactions rather than business realities.

What gives you reason to be hopeful for the year ahead?

There is and continues to be, amazing potential for small teams to create wonderful and innovative games that players love and want to support. Even in 2023, which everyone agrees has been an incredibly tough year, there are plenty of examples of small teams achieving relatively big things. This includes our own titles Against the Storm, which launched from EA into v1.0 at the start of December 2023, and Xenonauts 2, which went into Early Access in July 2023. There are plenty of other examples too from across the industry, ranging from niche gems like Slay the Princess to indie blockbusters like Dredge. This is the time for smaller teams to shine.

It looks like triple-A will be doubling down on core titles and established IP for a while. Which is a boon for indie publishers, no?

We don’t worry too much about AAA specifically to be honest. We are less in competition with the next Marvel game than we are generally in competition with everything that players can spend their time and money on – even media other than video games. The latest hit science fiction TV show is just as likely, if not more likely, to impact us than a big AAA title because our games tend to be time-intensive. When it comes down to it, we haven’t had much of a negative impact from huge game releases – Baldurʼs Gate 3 being the one exception.

That game definitely had an effect on our sales as it grabbed the attention of more or less the full range of gamers interested in the titles we publish, and has continued to hold them with its huge range of content and incredible detail. Even I am no exception – that game is incredible!

Against the Storm releasing in December and joining Game Pass was a great end to the year. How will you be topping that in 2024?

Against the Storm is a one-of-a-kind game that we are incredibly lucky to have the chance to work on, and we look forward to supporting the teamʼs post-1.0 vision as well. We have lots of great titles for 2024: Manor Lords, the second most wishlisted game on Steam, will release in April, and we also have other exciting games such as Breachway, Sons of Valhalla, and Nova Roma on the horizon. We are very excited for the year ahead.