How Fireshine Games backed a winner with Far Far West

UK publisher Fireshine Games has scored a smash hit with the chaotic cyberpunk cowboy romp Far Far West, developed by French studio Evil Raptor. The game shifted 250,000 units in 48 hours after launching in Steam Early Access on April 28, going on to surpass the one million mark over the next two weeks.

“It found that nice balance that people love about indie games of having enough points of familiarity and cultural touch points, whilst also bringing something fresh and different to players,” Fireshine’s chief portfolio officer Jasper Tanner-Barnes tells GamesIndustry.biz.

He points out Far Far West bears similarities to Helldivers and Deep Rock Galactic, while also bringing its own unique spin, leaning into a Westworld, cyberpunk aesthetic. “It’s something different, executed perfectly.”

But predicting how well a game will do on Steam remains something of a dark art. In the past, pre-orders were a vitally important indicator, then wishlists became the metric of choice. Recently, TinyBuild told GamesIndustry.biz that changes to the way games are categorised on Valve’s platform have had a huge impact on sales.

Fireshine prefers to take a broader view when looking for signs of a potential hit. “There’s no single silver bullet” when it comes to data, Tanner-Barnes explains. Instead, the publisher examines a broad range of information to gauge the appeal of a game, “whether that’s follower count, whether that’s looking at the size of Discord communities, whether it’s the number of people that hop into a playtest, or whether it’s active engagement in posts and communications going out from the developer.”

“Momentum is what you have to look for, that’s really key,” he continues. “A game with very few wishlists on Steam might be doing incredible things on TikTok. That is as appealing as a game that has 300,000 wishlists, but no one is in the discussion, and no one is talking about it. You have to look for all these different signs of people showing that interest towards this game.”

There has to be “some creativity and open-mindedness” when it comes to interpreting data, he says, “to build a larger story rather than just relying on having a lot of wishlists to see if a game is good.”

But metrics can only take you so far. “The skill in Jasper’s role is being able to see past the data,” says Fireshine CEO Brian Foote. “There’s an abundance of publishers in the industry who are looking at the same data points and looking for the same promise of success.”

In the end it comes down to trusting your gut.

“You can validate great things with data, but it has to be about the game, and has to be about the gameplay,” Foote says. “Sometimes that means you are signing a title before you get those data points. We try not to be afraid of that. We try to have confidence in the game.”

Cutting through

“Far Far West is not our first great game by any means,” says Tanner-Barnes. “We’ve seen success with a few other titles.”

“We’re probably the oldest overnight success in town,” adds Foote.

Fireshine began as Sold Out back in 2014, before changing its name in 2022. (Although the Sold Out brand name goes back even further, originating as a budget label in 1994.)

Shortly after the 2022 name change, the company saw success with the procedurally generated survival sandbox title Core Keeper from developer Pugstorm. That title sold over 250,000 copies in its first week in Early Access, reaching one million units after four months on sale. The publisher is also behind titles like the first-person horror game AILA and the upcoming 3D platformer Duskfade.

But Foote says he’s not motivated by getting Fireshine into the headlines. “As long as I can keep the business profitable and healthy, and we can keep giving partners the level of quality that they deserve, we will happily sit in the background.”

In terms of what Fireshine is looking for in games, Tanner-Barnes says it’s projects that “cut through.”

“The first sniff test of any game that comes through our funnel is whether we intrinsically care about it. There have been games with high follower counts that we might decide to not move ahead with, just because we don’t believe enough in the core vision, we don’t think the spectacle is there, it’s not something we can get excited about. It absolutely has to stand out.”

The games that have performed well for Fireshine are those that have immediate appeal to a particular group of people, he explains. In other words, it’s about knowing exactly who the audience is.

“Establishing how we communicate with that audience, how we highlight features of interest to that audience, can ebb and flow slightly with the specifics of the game itself,” he adds. “Sometimes it’s gameplay-based, sometimes it’s spectacle, sometimes it’s looking at points of reference. Sometimes they’re never going to believe you, it’s going to be about getting their hands on the game.”

More broadly, Fireshine has aimed to build a varied portfolio, with titles targeted to specific demographics. “If you look at the games that we have had success with, [and] intend to have success with, there is a good range there.”

As Luke Keighran of Silver Lining Interactive also emphasised recently, the key thing is to collaborate closely with developers. Tanner-Barnes says it’s about forging a “shared vision” with partners over development and communication plans. “A great game is one thing; a great game with an incredible dev partner, we believe, will be unstoppable.”

No generative AI

The use of generative AI in game development is something that has been endlessly debated in the industry. Sony recently explained how it is integrating AI tools into its workflows, while Nexon CEO Junghun Lee said last year that “it’s important to assume every game company is using AI.”

Indie publishers and developers, however, tend to be more wary of the tech, at least when it comes to art. Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, for example, has said it won’t work with developers that use generative AI assets – although CEO Tim Bender told GamesIndustry.biz that he thinks AI tools for productivity or coding assistance are going to see “wider adoption.”

Fireshine has marked a similar line in the sand. “We don’t work with partners that are relying on generative AI or generative art, and I think that’s the red line we are very clear on,” Foote says.

“If AI means code completion or means using Copilot in Word, that’s an entirely different set of scenarios. It will be very hard for anybody to say they’re not touching AI in some way, shape or form, but in terms of the core game creation, that is not something that we think players are interested in at this point in time, and not something that we think is healthy for the development community.”

“As it stands, it’s something that we are firm on,” he concludes.

Looking to the future, Foote says Fireshine will “keep doing what we’ve been doing” in terms of finding great games and development partners, and making a hit of those games.

“We’ve had a great result with Far Far West, and the game is fantastic. We have every confidence that we will be successful in the long term. It has only just shipped into Early Access, so there is a long, long way to go on Far Far West in terms of it being everything that the developer wants it to be, and we’ll support that.

“We have Denshattack and Duskfade coming later this year, and we believe those will be really well received by players. Those are titles that show a degree of originality or at least differentiation.”

He thinks that’s the key – games that stand out from the crowd. “There are a handful of genres or subgenres that are maybe getting oversupported from publishers, and we’re keen to do things that are a little bit different and eye-catching and compelling, and that players will be excited by. We’ll keep doing that, and we’ll keep adding to the portfolio.”

“We’ll continue to scale our ambitions as we go. We’re getting a little bit more confident in terms of what games will prove a success.”