M64 Focus | Ryan T. Brown (Marketing Director at Lost in Cult) -

Ryan T. Brown: (Marketing Director at Lost in Cult)

Name/Known Alias: Ryan T. Brown / @Toadsanime

Occupation: Currently I’m the Marketing Director at Lost in Cult, very recently joined back in late last year. I’m also setting up and running a new indie games publishing label here, which I’ll be able to talk more about in the very near future, hopefully.

Best Known for/Notable Works: I suppose I’m still known for having worked at Super Rare Games, where we release physical games, primarily on the Switch, and for working on games like The Gecko Gods and Grapple Dog. I did some PR work for Berserk Boy recently here at Lost in Cult, and I’m known for my Super Rare Mixtape project back at my previous job, which was a collection of 30 small grassroots indie games on one physical combination. I’d like to think I’m best known for being nice and cool, and wearing big loud pink outfits, and supporting other people in the industry, primarily indie devs and people working in indie games, which is the biggest passion of mine.

Fun Fact: Gotta go with a pink thing. Gotta go with, I wear ridiculously loud outfits at events, despite being in a senior professional position, which I think is a great thing about being in this industry, that allows for that, and I don’t have to walk around in a boring stuffy suit. I think video games are inanely supposed to be a fun, entertaining, passion-filled medium, and I like to think that as a result, I don’t have to wear ridiculously corporate clothes.

You may see me around at events wearing pink tracksuits, or other such loud outfits, which makes it easy for me to be spot at events. I do genuinely wear those stuff in real life, but it happens to be a good marketing bit as well, so it makes it very easy for me to be seen at events.

How did you make your break into the industry: I have been working in video games in some fashion or another for about 12 to 13 years now, so I will preface this answer by saying that what happens to me is not necessarily applicable to people trying to get into the industry nowadays, however, do poke me if you need advice on that.

I started off as a video games journalist when I was like 17 or 18. I wrote for a very small website at the time called Final Boss Fight, which at the time was run by Dan Sullivan, who is now editor-in-chief at Pocket Gamer.com, and then I went off to create my own video game site. Back in those days, having a game site in the late 2000s or early 2010s, or whenever it was, that prioritized SEO and trying to get views from that was not necessarily a given like it is nowadays, and so building my own site, which at the time was called Coin Arcade, I managed to feed in nicely into that SEO algorithm and have several million views a month.

In spite of that, no one will know that site or remember it because it just wasn’t that kind of site, but it did help me get a leg up and eventually led me to get a full-time job working at The Mirror, which is a UK national newspaper where I was covering video games for a couple of years, and then from there went into PR and marketing at Numskull at the time, which is best known for its quarter arcades, arcade cabinet machines, and its Tubbz, little duck video game figurines, and its own publishing label, Numskull Games, and then moved into Super Rare and now Lost in Cult. So yeah, I’ve gone from, I’ve taken the whole journey from journalism to PR and marketing to biz dev and now publishing.

Favourite Projects to have Worked on: I’ve got to go with my Super Rare mixtape. That’s my baby. It’s my passion project. I have probably shouted about that to the ends of the earth and back. I absolutely, absolutely adore that. I aim to see it come back one day. Basically, this was a project which was made to honour and preserve small indie games.

We’re talking jam games, student games, itch.io games, the sort of stuff you’d see as freeware little games around the internet that simply do not get the recognition they deserve for the creativity that they provide, and they’re certainly not getting preserved. They’re actually becoming completely lost to time often. And that project was a little USB that comes in a box with a booklet, page on each game, usually 30 games and six to 10 demos of upcoming games.

And then when you plug that USB into your PC, it has a custom game launcher where you can play each of those games, but also in each section, there’s a trailer of each game or the soundtrack you listen to for each game, a developer audio diary, concept art galleries, and produced five of those while I was at Super Rare, four standard volumes and one Halloween special. Very, very, very proud of that project and all the nice comments I’ve received about it. That was really a project literally not made for money.

It made no money. I did not myself make a penny for it, but we did pay the developers. That project means a lot to me, and I aim to continue in some form or another in the future.

Hardest Projects to have Worked on: Just generally publishing original digital games. There is a lot that goes into publishing those games. There’s a lot of, there’s the weight of responsibility on having any amount of say in someone’s work.

You know, indie games, most people, whether it’s solo made or a small team or even a big team, have been working on these games for several years. Most of the games I’ve worked on just so happen to have been most people’s first commercial video games. And I think that’s and I am always working to work for the benefit of that developer.

It is never not aware to me that this is someone’s life, their livelihood, and their passion, and that they’re going to want to have it go as well as they can and to have it go as they want it to go. I’m always hyper aware of that and I always will be. I’m always going to be respectful of that and just help in any way I can.

There are of course things that devs know need to be done by publishers and things they don’t know that need to be done. In an ideal world, an indie dev can just sit and focus on making a great game and not have to worry about all the marketing and publishing and all those bits. But it is hard.

There’s a lot that goes into it and yeah, it’s tricky.

Currently Working on: Lots of amazing books at Lost in Cult and some other secret publishing projects that we hope to reveal in the near future. But on the book front, we’re working on How a Game Lives, which is an annotated collection of essays by the YouTuber Jacob Geller.

We have our Immortality Design Works book still on sale at the moment. Lots more amazing books, vinyls, and great high-class merch from Lost in Cult in the near future.

Currently Playing: I’ve actually just finished MediEvil remake on the PS4 and I’m currently between playing Melatonin on the PS4, which is a wholesome, very pink, vibrant-y rhythm game, and Dadish 3D on the Switch, which is a low-poly retro 3D platformer collectathon. I’ve been very into the Dadish games, which before this entry were like 2D platformers. Very underrated, very cute, very funny, great music.

Just really solid platformers, actually, really solid. Very short, sort of thing you can knock out in one sitting or two. Tends to be reflective in the price as well. Really great games, actually. I highly recommend them. And then I’ll be hitting up some more indie games, I’m sure, and I have lots of games on my backlog, like Stellar Blade and the FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH.

Currently Watching: A lot of anime and then a lot of random YouTube nonsense. I actually watch a lot of video games content on YouTube. When I’m getting ready for work, in the shower, when I’m working out, it’s usually video games-related content on YouTube.

I think the last thing I just watched was… Was it any good video on Medieval, which I believe is by Josh Strife Plays. Whenever I finish a game, I like to go and watch a lot of content about it. After finishing a game, I’ll read reviews, I’ll watch reviews, I’ll watch analysis and speedruns.

I just like to really dive myself into the world of that game. And then in non-gaming-related content, I’m re-watching the first series of Digimon at the moment, which I love. And also an anime called Wonder Egg Priority.

Defining Career Moment: I have far too many examples of pure pinch me moments. Despite working around games for so long now, I still have to remind myself that I’m fortunate enough to do so, and that I really do work in video games! Interviewing Testuya Nomura on a Square Enix US press trip when I was at The Mirror was a big one for me; Kingdom Hearts was my favourite game as a teen, I had quotes from it stuck on my bedroom walls and it’s how I met and bonded wth a lot of my close friends. I’d barely left the country at that point, so I’m not ashamed to say I had a little cry when I got to the hotel in California! I was professional during the interview, of course, but that was a big moment for me. Another would be winning the Debug Indie Game Awards unsung hero award, or being a BAFTA judge for 4 years running and becoming a member, or of course my lovely Mixtape project.

In general, I’m a people pleaser, sometimes to the point of unhealthiness. It’s genuinely what fuels me, having folk like me and being pleased with my contribution to whatever they’re doing or making. Which I think can be not so great for my head sometimes, but on the plus side, is a much more sincere motive than simply wanting to horde money and become a horrible, rich, capitalist executive. Any moment where I’ve worked with an indie dev and I’ve heard they had nice things to say about me afterwards to other devs, those are legitimately my definining career moments.

Throughout your career, of the many things you have since learned, is there anything you wish you knew at the beginning:

I wish I had some level of direction at the beginning, and that I would have known I’d be lucky enough to make a living in video games. I’m quite open about the fact that I come from a background of extreme poverty. There were no real expectations for me in terms of career. I sort of went to college and dropped out of college, never went to uni. So I never really expected to make anything in my life, and it was never really expected of me.

And so, to actually break that mould, and to not only get a good job, but be working in an industry that I deeply, deeply, deeply love, is mind-blowing to me. And if I was able to tell my teenage self that, I think it’d be mind-blowing. But perhaps I wouldn’t have got where I am now.

I think just, in general, throughout my career, just being aware of where other people are at, being empathetic towards them, and understanding their positions, and even negative traits. Like, I’m often able to look at people, you know, what you’d call a negative trait, and be able to go, okay, that’s probably due to some sort of anxiety. And I think just not holding grudges, not being spiteful, not being mean, turning the other cheek, and just being friends with everyone is a good thing to learn.

Also, maybe don’t take Twitter as the be-end-all of what real life is like, because there’s probably a good portion of people who, on that platform, I would argue with and dislike. Whereas if I had met them in person, I’d probably like them.

If you had the opportunity to work with any IP, what would it be: The answer is many. Cave Story is one. It is a deeply, deeply important game to me.

I was interested in indie games in the pre-commercial indie game boom. In the early 2000s, that game was one of my favorite games of all time. It still is.

It’s hugely influential to me, and has pushed me toward indie games. So I’d love to do, I don’t know what, but do something with Cave Story at some point. I’d also love to work on Nier, N-I-E-R.

It’s probably my all-time favorite non-indie franchise. Again, very, very important to me, very dear to my heart. I’d love to do something around that at some point.

But in general, if I’m being honest, I largely aspire to just work on original indie IP. I’m not overly interested in working on existing IP. I want to help people build things.

Is there anyone you haven’t worked with yet, but would like to: Yoko Taro, the mind behind Nier. I’d love to just, I don’t know what we’d do together, but I’d love to wrap my head around him.

And then typically speaking, I’d say again, no one that comes directly to mind. I think Jack King-Spooner is a dev that I’ve followed for a long time, and I really want to work with him. He makes really great claymation video game. Really cool.

I just want to work with really cool, artsy, very original indie devs that are making really cool and unique things that typically struggle to get funding for their really cool ideas. Because in an idea world, we’d have all of that variety and diversity of work.

And yeah, I’d love to work with all those kinds of people.

For fans of your work, who’d like to get in touch and stay up to date with all the latest news, what are the best places for them to reach you on: For now, until Musk blows it into oblivion, Twitter (X) is still the best place to reach me, @toadsanime.

If there are any work-related queries, you can still DM me there, or you can email me at ryan@lostincult.co.uk. And those are kind of the only two places really, unless you want to pop to a video games event and look out for the pink blur running around.