Monday 07.31.2023

Null Newsletter Vol. 3

By Matthew Rorie

Hello, and welcome to the July edition of the Null Newsletter! It’s been an exciting month behind the scenes here at Null, so strap in and read all about it!

Karim Chaoui Sits Down For A Lengthy Q&A

I had a wonderful time sitting down with our new Head of Marketing, Karim Chaoui, for an extensive look into his background and what brought him to Null! Here’s an excerpt:

Matthew: If you assumed somebody doesn't know what a marketer or a video game marketer does, what would you tell them? How would you describe your day to day tasks or your overall goals of what you do?

Karim: Good question; this is what I tell my family and my friends, because a lot of them have no direct experience with what it is to be a marketer or being involved in game development. The pitch phrase that I tell them is: “Hey, I work with developers of all sizes; it could be a team of one or two people, or it could also be development teams of well over 500 people. They can be located anywhere in the world and my job is to help promote their games by leading the marketing campaigns. So, I do things like talking to retailers, making assets, figuring out the pricing, creating store pages, utilizing social media. So it's literally everything that comes to mind when it comes to promoting an actual product.”

Matthew: What do you think people commonly misunderstand when it comes to marketing games?

Karim: I would say that only a lot of people overlook indie games because they don't really get exposed to it. For me, I’m really into the indie scene because that's where some of the most creative ideas come from, at least in my opinion. So one of the biggest misconceptions is that people think that only big games can succeed. And the second misconception is that there’s only one type of gamer out there.

Of course, there's many different games for many different audiences. And there are many different types of gamers out there. Male, female, adults, kids, and you also have people who are a little bit older. Each of these groups need different messaging, different assets, and just a different way of how you talk to them and how you market your product towards them.

Check out the full interview here!

Tape To Tape Has A Brand New Website

The Tape to Tape team is still heads down on polishing the Tape to Tape experience and adding new features, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t time for some good old-fashioned webdev. You can find the new website here, complete with a new presskit, new screenshots, and, of course, a link to get into the Early Access release on Steam.

Null Has Hired A Head of Business Operations

After a long search, Null has hired a head of Business Operations to help Null Games grow our business (and our operations). We look forward to introducing them to you all in early August…perhaps with another Q&A on the website? Stay tuned!

August Is Shaping Up To Be A Big Month At Null

As thrilling and exciting as this newsletter is thus far, I can promise that the August edition will be even bigger and better. Here are some of the things that we’ve been working on that are hoping to talk about in the coming weeks:

• New Website: A brand-new Null website will let you more easily access information on all of our upcoming titles.
• Null Merch: As part of the new website you’ll be able to purchase fantastic Null gear. We’re working towards merch for our many wonderful games, as well!
• More Games: We’ve been busy little bees here at Null and have signed more games to publish in 2024 and 2025. Some of these may not be revealed in August, but we’re excited to talk about them as soon as we can!

July Gaming In Review

You may be familiar with the lines “things fall apart, the center cannot hold,” either from the original Yeats or the Chinua Achebe novel which used the first phrase as its title. I have recently been thinking of this poem as it relates to my peculiar experience with a gaming PC.

Unfortunately during a recent attempt to wring another couple of years of life out of my tower desktop, I bought a higher-end AMD processor that still fits in my motherboard slot. I attempted to install it only to realize that the heatsink was installed backwards. My attempt to gently remove the heatsink was foiled by the fact that I had just applied new thermal paste to it. For some reason I decided to pull instead of twist, and, well, that motherboard went up to the great beyond. I am hoping that I did not damage the CPU itself and that this setup posts when I get everything sorted. If not, maybe it’s time to explore the world of prebuilt gaming PCs?

I am working (and gaming) on my work laptop for the moment, which is fine! Diablo IV spins up fans like no other game in recent memory, which is a bit exciting when you’re playing it on a laptop that might melt if it gets too hot. Anyway, I’ve mostly been sticking with D4 as a gaming outlet this month: Magic The Gathering: Arena is on one of its periodic non-Standard sets and while I’ve enjoyed the Lord of the Rings stuff at my Commander nights, I mostly stick to Standard on Arena, so it’s been nice to take a breather and only play a game or two a day on there. I have an itch to go back and finish off Jedi: Survivor, but since I haven’t gotten too far into it on PC, I might re-buy it on my PS5 and play it on the couch?

Whatever your specific situation is, I hope you’re having a wonderful summer of gaming. We’ll see you in August!