Manny Hachey – Womenize! – Inspiring Stories
Womenize! – Inspiring Stories is our weekly series featuring inspirational individuals from games and tech. For this edition we talked to Manny Hachey, Accelerator Program Director at xsolla, Co-Founder of Positive Impact Games. She speaks about designing accelerator programs that help indie game studios build sustainable businesses through long-term strategy, investor pitching education, early networking, and honest mentorship to avoid wasted effort. Read more about Manny here:
Hi Manny! In your role as Accelerator Program Director at Xsolla, how do you design a program that not only addresses the immediate needs of studios but also equips them with the skills and knowledge to thrive long-term in such a competitive industry? What challenges have you faced in bridging the gap between investors and game developers, and how do you overcome them?
The Xsolla Accelerator is focused on business first, which also means our program aims to support the long term vision of game studios, rather than a single game release. Indie studios are startups, unfortunately many indie Founders focus only on the creative (fun) side of the business, and not on the finance (boring) side. And that doesn’t often end well.
For the Xsolla Accelerator, we’ve structured the program to provide hands-on guidance in key areas like pitching, market positioning, and publishing strategies while ensuring founders understand the long-term financial and operational decisions required to scale.
We also have an extensive Course on investment, something which is picking up more and more in the games industry. So instead of only pitching to Publishers, game studios have opportunities to pitch to VCs, Angel Investors and special Project Investors nowadays. But there are important differences between pitching to a publisher and pitching to an investor, and our program focuses on educating Founders on how to do it right.
One of the biggest challenges in bridging the gap between investors and game developers is the difference in expectations: developers are passionate about their creative vision, whereas investors are looking for viable returns and risk mitigation. We focus on educating studios on how to frame their games not just as creative projects but as businesses. This means refining their pitches, helping them build realistic financial projections, and positioning their studios as long-term ventures rather than one-off projects.
Something else that is near and dear to my heart is network building—many developers go “dark” for too long working on their games alone without any network to bounce ideas with or reach out to for business opportunities when the time is right. It’s important to understand that networking should start long before any business opportunities are on the table and that relationships with key industry stakeholders can be made without any sales pitch.
We are also seeing a shift in our industry for indie developers where building a paper pitch and getting financed is almost impossible. It’s important to make sure games industry Founders understand that their Plan A should be self-publish, with focus on community building and traction. If you can prove that players are interested in your game, publishers will be too.
With Positive Impact Games focusing on creating socially aware, wholesome, and cozy experiences, how do you ensure that contemporary topics are addressed authentically while still delivering engaging gameplay that resonates with your audience?
For The Regreening, our inspiration is real life restoration projects which are ongoing worldwide. But we all agreed from the start that: fun comes first. It’s pointless to try and bring awareness to a topic if no one wants to play your game.
This means taking the original real world concepts, breaking them down to their smallest parts, and them picking and choosing what we think is most representative AND fun. And then a whole lot of prototyping and testing.
It’s important not to be married to any idea either, and question everything as you starting adding more features. Something might sound good on paper, but when testing it just falls flat and just needs to be cut. We always celebrate when a feature gets cut, because we see it as progress and refining of the core game loop.
In the end, we want players to enjoy playing this lovely cozy game which helps them relax, and if they learn about how cool dandelions are as a pioneer species while they’re at it, great!
Your career spans roles in game development, business mentorship, and investment. How has your journey shaped your approach to guiding and mentoring others, and what do you find most rewarding about it?
I’m known as the brutally honest one. Having gone through two studio closures, and some pretty dysfunctional teams in my past, I think I have a good grasp on what NOT to do. I can’t really tell you what the recipe of success is, I’m still hoping someone tells me that some day, but I can spot the seeds of disaster pretty early on by now.
What I’ve also noticed is that everyone tip toes around giving honest feedback to newcomers, I guess they don’t want to break their spirits. Which, fair enough, I understand where they are coming from – but too many indie devs are going through bankruptcy and failed game launch for us to remain nice and cordial.
The games industry is only getting more crowded, and it’s important to kill bad ideas and bad behaviours in the bud. I’ve lost count on how many teams are left to work on terrible concepts for years, while everyone chats behind their backs about how terrible the art or game mechanic actually is – but no one bothers telling the teams.
And I’m not playing that game. Working on a project for years which no one actually wants to play is horrible. By being honest with these new teams, you potentially save them years of waste time and effort.