Interview Mike Yum PM Studios on Lvl Up Expo 2025

You may not have heard of PM studies yet, but you have definitely heard of the games that had a hand in their creation. At LVL UP Expo in Las Vegas last weekend, the publisher and developer hosted a massive playground with demonstrations for many of her new and upcoming partner studios, including Yooka-Adlaylee, Dragon is dead, pipistrelo and curse Yoyo, table simulator and black Wukong myth.

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During the EXPO, I sat down with the founder and CEO of PM Studios Mike Yum to talk about my history in the development and distribution of games, upcoming projects and many success with physical issues on the digital market.

Thegamer: Can you give us a small historical PM study lesson?

Mike Yum: Sure, so I founded this company almost 20 years ago. As a developer, I created a game called Djmax. I couldn't publish the game, so I published it myself. The game took off. He was the best PSP dealer in South Korea next to Monster Hunter, and then the company took off and we started working for rent. We did several Barbie games, but I wasn't really happy.

Finally, when Vita came, Sony asked if we could restart Djmax Pro vita, I did, and then it took off. I had a lot of friends who couldn't publish their games, so I started helping them. Then they told their friends and led to racing games and RPGs and action games; We did things differently. We come from the retail background, so I had the ability to distribute retail for other publishers and developers. For many companies and many games we do a lot of publication and distribution.

The dragon is dead

TG: Okay, so there are something like three different weapons of society. There is development and publishing and then a partner of publishing and distribution. Have you always done all three?

Yum: We've been doing all three for some time. A lot of why you don't see our name there is because we do a lot of services of white labels, so I don't put our brand in front of the package. I emphasize the developers and we are guys behind the scenes. Many people from the industry know what we are doing, so I think there was a word of mouth, and I think the black myth: Wukong was probably one of the big ones where everyone realized who we were, but we've been doing it for a long time.

TG: It's such an eclectic group of games. Everything I had to play this weekend had very different experiences. Do you feel that there is a PM brand?

Yum: Unfortunately, probably not. I think our biggest problem is that you know when you're thinking about fighting games, you think about Capcom. RPG, you think of the Atlas. Sports games, many people think of EA. So we just love games, maybe a little too much. There is no strict focus on what genre, so I think that because you see all our titles, you see family games, cooperative games, action RPG, action games, first person shooters; It is a lot of independent games and we are trying to look at every game and see if we think we can help this group. See if this is something we feel like we could take and develop a good partnership and try to help everyone.

TG: Are there games that are uniquely developed internally that are not partnership with any other studios?

Yum: Yeah, we're still developing our own games. Right now we have a game called Dragon is dead from the internal team. There were many of us with rhythmic game developers with this game, but we loved Diablo 2 and we didn't have the ability to do 3D Action-RPG from top to bottom. So we said: Hey, we are good in 2D elves, let's try to make 2D Diablo. And that's the game.

I met developers. He edited this game called Roshpit Champions for Dota and I convinced him that we should make a separate game. Now we are doing Roshpit Champions 2 in-house. Evolutist is another game I have met with developers long ago. They tried to do Kickstarter and asked me to be a project producer, so I took it. And we've been developing this thing for almost five years. It takes a long time because our goal was to draw everything.

Yooka-replaylee pm studios

TG: Looks like you have a really good eye to choose projects. What is the process?

Yum: I'm a really big player. I play a lot of video games, I competed. I am finished, so I still get 100 percent of success in many games. I have over 300 platinum trophies on PlayStation. I play a lot of games. I know what I think could work or something new I have never seen in a long time. Like our converter simulator, we have seen the arcade game long ago when you overturn the table. Actually, you literally overturn the table on the arcade. We thought, hey, we should create something like this for this new audience. We try all kinds of unique things.

TG: Do you feel that when you see something you like, do you have a fully shaped idea of ​​what you can do with it?

Yum: Yeah, I do. And maybe I won't like it, but another team member really likes. We have a process where we allow them to really fight for the game. So it is almost like a developer who will stand up to us, but in fact one of our own guys is to us why they think this game will work. I don't want to be the only guy who chooses games, so I let everyone say. These days I want to be less of a guy of green light. It should be on all the collective group. But in cases where I meet boys like Playtonic Games, and I have a chance to work with former rare boys who worked on Banjo-zazooi, it was like a given. I really wanted to be part of it.

TG: But I imagine that many of your publishing houses reflect your taste.

Yum: Yeah, but again, more than half of the things you see, it's really me. As a black myth: I knew Wuong about it and of course I loved it. But they were many team members who really pushed and pushed and pushed and fought for this project.

TG: Physical distribution seems to be something more demanding. Now that digital distribution has become mostly market, how did things change for you?

Yum: Four years ago it began to change a lot, but I would say about a year and a half to two years ago, it moved the opposite. You can think of it as a mobile market where anyone can publish anything and put it on the digital market. The video game market is completely flooded. We have thousands of games at once, so they are all almost dead. Everyone says they released games on Steam last year and did not do well. And now everyone is going off.

But if you look at the retail, not everyone can put it there. Not everyone can release on the console. You will publish some expertise and resources to issue something, so it's a bit curative. It is a smaller market that is a bit harder to get, so we really did better because we don't have so much competition. You go to Target or Best Buy and see 30 PlayStation games, 40 switches. It is much easier to attract customers in the store, while when we are on an e -shop or in the PlayStation network, you can't find the game if you don't look for it.

Black_myth_wukong_goty_emaki

TG: That's interesting. When you go to Gamesop or Target, each box has the same size. Everyone is on the walls, but it's not so on Steam and Nintendo, some games are bigger than others and you really don't.

Yum: Yeah, if you are not a big publisher, you will not get any visibility. Our relationship with retail gives us opportunities. I am able to put trailers in stores and hang posters.

TG: So is it like a transition to more like a collector and audience who cares about the physicals?

Yum: There are more markets. You have a lot of hardcore players who refuse to buy digital. You have a lot of moms and daddy's shopping [physical]. And then occasional walks looking for a game when they buy a system.

TG: I feel like I'm starting to take more care of physical things for games I really like.

Yum: I think it's important because it's a different experience. Could you have your friend borrow it, do you know? I met my best friend by letting him borrow a game at school, and then let me borrowed the game. So now you have a type of relationship with a physical copy. You could still replace it and get another game. Later you might want to play it again, but if you don't have an Internet connection or the PlayStation network will drop, whatever happens, which prevents you from playing. I think physical games are still important.

The destined Loong faces in black myth: Wukong.

TG: Is that something you want to make sure you keep you?

Yum: I try my best. Any company trying to cooperate with us or asking for help is really trying to make sure we can support them. I think you will probably see a lot of news from us, especially after the black myth.

TG: I imagine for physics that did very well.

Yum: Yeah, I wish I could reveal the number, but the boys are very privacy and I respect it. But it turned out to me, and all distributors and partners and retailers are there that it's still very healthy. I got a lot of calls as at Christmas and after New Year's thank me and said it saved their business. There are a lot of territories. It was a huge hit in some countries like Spain and Italy, and I didn't know why. In places where they still do not have advanced Internet technology, they will not download 100 gigabytes because they pay for data. In places similar, where the bandwidth is low or slower, they waited for a physical copy of the game.

See our view of some PM Studios, which were listed at this year's LVL UP EXPO.

PM-Studios-Logo.jpg

PM

Founded date

2008

Ceo

Michael Yum

Headquarters

Los Angeles, Ca.

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