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开发者回顾等待游戏发行合作的过程

发布时间:2013-12-24 15:43:41 Tags:,,,,

作者:Daniel Vavra

在结束了宣传旅程后,我们回到了工作中。紧张的团队等着我们。“情况怎样?人们是否想要它?我们是否还要继续下去?我能否抵押贷款?我是否应该找新的工作?”“我们也想知道答案!但亲爱的女士们,先生们,要知道,这可是游戏产业,任何人都有大量的时间!”当然,除了我们。

如果你和我们的同事一样,期待着在我们回来后便会有无数电话打过来,并被数百万美元的承诺环抱着,那么我要说你的期待该落空了。我们接到的第一个电话是在回来后的一周,这是我们的代理商打来的电话,告诉我们谁拒绝了游戏。太让人沮丧了。

我们所面临的最大打击之一便是来自一家非常有前途的国际发行公司的拒绝。尽管这家总部位于美国的公司看起来对我们的项目非常感兴趣,但是其欧洲代表却告诉我们,他们不认为这款游戏将在美国市场取得成功。我们还遭到了其它一些公司的拒绝,但这家公司的拒绝最让我们失望。

The_waiting_game(from starcraftmeandthesea)

The_waiting_game(from starcraftmeandthesea)

巨头的内部流程

我想应该解释下发行商是如何工作的,如此你才能更好地理解接下来的一些复杂事件。在大公司内部做决定是个复杂且漫长的过程!

对于那些我们向其呈现游戏的人,尽管他们位于公司层级的较高位置,但却并不能做出最后的决定。如果他们喜欢我们的游戏,他们还需要准备向更高级别的人进行内部宣传,想办法告诉对方我们项目的优点。这是发生在所谓的“许可会议”上,偶尔才会召开。在会议上,来自市场营销的负责人以及公司主管将着眼于游戏,如果他们对游戏感兴趣,接下来便是进行“严格评估”,即访问公司的制作人和开发工作室。其目标是为了进一步了解开发者,判断他们能否兑现承诺,并谈论一些细节内容。这整个过程需要耗费数个月的时间。

惊喜时刻制造厂

我们决定使用手上的时间去创造材料驱散旅程中所遇到的所有疑惑。首先便是我们的演示版本中缺少“惊喜时刻”。同时我们的英雄看起来就像个懦夫,穿着装土豆的麻布袋在演示版本中四处走动,并不断向所有遇到的人道歉,这样的设置也是个大问题。

这都是我所犯的错误。我认为比起擅于创造有趣的动画并播放它们,人们更愿意看到我们在创造一个带有许多资产和机制的巨大RPG世界的能力。但是你需要做到平衡。事实证明,只有具备功能性的演示版本才是有用的。市场营销人员需要一些丰富且引人注目的材料去向消费者进行宣传—-如城堡爆炸或比萨斜塔倒向一群无辜的农民,而我们便是在这点上做得不够好。

当我们的概念美术师Stephen开始为这样的动画创造故事板时,我为视频创造了一个“曲棍球手版”的故事板(基于少量的努力与少数全新资产),并创造了一款让人震撼的游戏般的巨大效应。我们的方法非常简单——我们有一个抛石机模型,有一个城堡模型,所以创造抛石机向城堡射击的5秒钟动画需要投入多少工作?一天?可以!如此便创造出另外一个轰动的场景!基于同样的方法,我们将能够创造出60多秒有趣的视频,呈现为游戏定制好但却还未执行的出色内容,如果我们能够尽早做好这一步,所有的一切将会出现不同的结果。

这是否会有趣?

Is_it_going_to_be_fun(fromgamasutra)

Is_it_going_to_be_fun(fromgamasutra)

此外,我还致力于新的展示中,即处理可能被问到的一些问题,以帮助说服发行商在“许可会议”上展示我们的作品。这一展示详细概述了我们游戏的大多数功能—-特别是回答了最紧要的问题:“这是否会有趣(没有龙也没有魔法)?”

在经过许多天的辛苦工作与PPT制作,我们最终创造出了90张具有精致图片且传达了有关游戏详细内容的幻灯片动画。可以说这是我们游戏的互动百科全书!我将其发送给Francois(我们ISM的主要合作伙伴,即我们的代理),他告诉我尽管这一幻灯片看起来很棒,但是我最好能够将其压缩到20张,删掉所有的动画并使用一些较容易阅读的字体。

在经过优化后,我们将所有的新材料发送给那些可能有兴趣的人,并希望他们将其带向公司的内部会议上。

调整与重组

距离我的旅程结束已经过去了2个月,但却都未出现有效的反馈。我们开始感到忧虑。并且我们的帐户余额也开始快速减少。换句话说—-我们即将破产了。

怎么会发生这种事?我们最初的计划是早两个月开始进行宣传之旅。但是我们却并未注意到这便意味着要在节礼日(游戏邦注:圣诞节后的第一个工作日)上进行宣传,但因为种种原因,这会是件艰难的工作(多么愚蠢的错误)。我们也未意识到发行商需要好几个月的时间去组织会议,更不用说做出最后的决定。我们假设与投资者协商将在4月份找到发行商。或至少我们将到达协商的先前阶段。但这都未曾发生;如果我们能在夏天快结束的时候到达那一阶段就好了。

我们事先告知了投资者这一延迟,但是投资者却很忙,那时候他们在世界的另一端还有许多更大的协议要谈。在所有的这些整顿与调整间,我们不能保证投资者是否会将注意力再次放到我们身上。

尽管你获得来自投资者身旁的一些人的口头承诺,即至少已经付出的工作将最终获得回报,但是你可能也会撒谎说所有的一切都已妥当。但如果你跟对方坦白了,你将面临投资者选择离开,并且永远都不再回头的风险。

作为正直的人,我们向对方员工解释了当前面临的境况,而因为我们拥有一个出色且具有奉献精神的团队,同时还非常相信我们的项目,所以所有人都并未离开。

在重组的过程中我们迎来了一个新人,Martin,他是负责我们与投资商之间的联络工作。我们必须先向他介绍游戏业务,然后介绍我们的游戏,并写下一些备忘录去解释我们的情况—-我们是如何走到这里以及为什么,我们接下来计划做些什么。

Martin喜欢我们的工作,而下个月的预算也让我们可以继续与发行商进行协商。并在最终也支付了工资——真是大松一口气。

还有足够的时间

当我们在思考最不愿意做的事时,代理给我们打了个电话,告诉我们一家主要发行商的第三方开发部门被关闭了,而一家新的发行商诞生了。这家新公司有巨大的资金,并希望与我们签订一封意向书(游戏邦注:意向书是签订合同的第一步)。我们都开心坏了!

我们提供了公司的细节并努力平复心情。所有的一切都将顺利发展!但是三天后,我们却发现对方改变了想法,最终什么事情都不会发生了!

在接收到如此让人沮丧的消息后一周——这家原先看来铁定会提供给我们报价的日本发行商却什么都不做了。他们的总部决定不再签约任何第三方游戏。“只”留下5个买家,而其中3个就是巨头公司。

当然,我们仍继续工作着,不断挑战计划,创造预算,重新设计,但我们却不是在完整的生产模式下工作。比起原先计划的50名成员,我们现在只有一半的人数,我们将安排不同的时间致力于惊喜时刻视频与其它内容的创造。至于我自己,比起致力于任务创造,我将专注于游戏的展示。

一些发行商考虑过访问我们的工作室(这是个好迹象!),但却突然意识到E3即将到来,所以转念一想觉得在那里见面会更好,当然,这种情境对我们来说较为不利。在展会上的半个小时会面与花一整天时间餐馆我们的工作室是两种完全不同的效果。

继续努力

从整体上看,我们所面临的氛围非常紧张。我尝试着装作若无其事的样子,但显然有些人在偷偷地寻找其它工作,而我却不能责怪他们。不过我们也仍具有一些利益,所以我们面前的机会看起来并没有那么糟糕。

我们问自己,延迟的协商是否是发行商的一种战术,或者只是因为我们的游戏很糟糕。不过我们最终未倒向任何一边,而是继续向前发展。

E3

如果发行商未找向我们,我们就必须前往E3。虽然我们对此并不是很高兴,但至少我们能够直接看到一些新主机的问世。

Martin想要与我们同性,并帮助我们与其他发行商进行交流。这是个很棒的注意,没有什么能比与一些发行商见面更能摸清这个产业的来龙去脉了,除此之外,Martin也能够看清楚对方的反应,并且不需要依赖于我们的报告。

这不是一个好的开始。我们的第一次会面(与其它大公司)非常糟糕。我并不打算在这里进行详细描述,在最后,我们看起来就像是没有能力的笨蛋。我受到了巨大的打击,就像穿着重金属T恤的我好似成为了一名艺术家,但却不能创造出具有艺术效果的作品。

幸运的是第二天的情况好了一些。我们与另外两家充满前景的公司见了面。他们因为之前的延迟向我们道了歉,并传达了仍然对我们的项目感兴趣的医院。一家公司的日本管理部门的人员除夕了其中的一次会面,并且看起来他好像很喜欢我们。

Martin可以证明我们并没有去乞求他——产业中还是有很多人对我们的游戏感兴趣。但这却是一个特殊的产业,就像Martin观察到在会面后,一个之前从未表露过喜欢我们游戏的发行商却对游戏非常感兴趣。所以比起谈论交易的细节,我们再次向他们呈现了预告片。

再次等待?

E3带给了我们新的希望,但是如果在我们回去后你仍期待事情立刻会出现转变的话,恐怕你要再次失望了。从E3回来后,我们不得不恢复到之前的工作中,完成会议记录,评估人们的观点,直到那时可能才会出现一些新的变化。最终我们计划了3个不同的评估访问。不过不是现在,不是明天,也不是下个月。再一次的,我们需要经历漫长的等待。

这也让我们有机会去修改一些之前没时间修改的内容。我们更新了计划并修改了设计,整合了一些新内容(特别是我在过去半年多视角里所创造的几页注释)。我们做出了一些预算调整。有些人离开了工作室,但也迎来了一些新人。

评估访问

在几周的等待后,首批制作人最终前来进行他们的评估访问。由于一些差错,他们早于我们的期待1周到达了我们的办公室,但这也并未让我们手忙脚乱,一切都进展得很顺利。这是我们面向宣传的最小发行商之一,尽管一开始我们并未对其报多大信心,但最终他们却是我们最有望的准买家。虽然对于他们来说我们的游戏有点偏贵了,但他们认为这具有例外值,并能够与一些更大的项目相竞争。他们建议将游戏分成几个章节以减少风险;幸运的是,这不会影响我们的故事结构。世界上,一家更大且更有钱的发行商已经提出了同样的想法—-毕竟每个人都有自己对预算的要求。

之后我们迎来的是一家大型日本发行商的代表。销售游戏的一种有效方法便是选择一家合适的餐厅——你邀请客人一起用餐,之后他们也会回礼邀请你。所以一开始我们选择了一家很棒的法式餐厅,并在隔天与发行商聊了许多有关设计,故事和计划等内容。

说到计划:我们对自己的敏捷方法论和敏捷开发深感自豪。当我在晚餐期间提到这点时,我们的一位制作人立刻提醒我不要在他的同事面前重复,因为对方认为“敏捷开发”是污言秽语。但不管怎样这次的会面非常成功——我们回答了他们提出的所有问题,并对此感觉良好。

而第三个拜访的发行商告诉我们,他们非常忙,必须在科隆国际游戏展结束后才能前来拜访。实际上,我们本来可以在科隆国际游戏展上碰面。但再一次因为时间不够而幻灭。

继续等待

我们创造了一些新资产,将其与早前的一些视频混合在一起,并创造一个非常酷的预告片。但遗憾的是2月份的时候它还未出现。基于评估访客们所提出的问题,我与我们的概念美术师一起创造了有关我们游戏英雄的展示(因为我们正在创造一款RPG,所以我们的英雄没有明确的外观,这对于市场营销中那些尝试着找出如何销售一个空白的帆布的人来说会有点困惑)。我创造了更多展示内容,包括将我们的游戏与竞争游戏进行比较等等。我们缓和了一些内部争吵。然后等待科隆国际游戏展的到来。

Martin_Face_palm(from gamasutra)

Martin_Face_palm(from gamasutra)

科隆国际游戏展

科隆国际游戏展是在8月末举办。这是在我们再次用光所有资金的前2个月。在这里我们遇到两个很有希望的协商,但最终都不了了之。Martin再次与我们一同出席;但这次,他快速摸清楚了游戏产业。

之前参加展会的经历让我们很失望。比起讨论协议或直接拒绝,我都是收到一些含糊的承诺。而其它的会谈也未带来任何可行的结果。

我们见到了一些免费游戏发行商。与我们一样,他们也敢于冒险,这也是我们欣赏他们的地方。但可惜的是我们的游戏并非免费MMO。

回到等待:耐心便是美德

第一个拜访我们的发行商很快便召开了自己的“许可会议”,但因为某些原因我们的游戏并未被列入他们的议程中。接下来一次的会议将在一个月内举行,这一形势的变化是源于进一步的互动不具有价值。另一个大型发行商也将我们的游戏推向了下一次的许可会议,所以我们也并未将其算在内。

反而,较小的发行商开始展示出更多的活动。他们想要更多有关我们的预算,可游戏演示版本等信息,并独自进行焦点小组测试。这看起来非常有望。

如果这也没结果的话,我们就糟了。在这之后我们的唯一选择便是尽力说服投资者回到游戏中(不大可能),或找到联合投资者。我们尝试着联系一些人,但结果都不是很如意。来自伦敦的一家投资银行告诉我们,PC和主机正在衰败,如果我们不是面向iPad创造免费MMO,我们便不可能有机会胜出。

我们相信自己的游戏,但要像发行商推销一个新奇的理念却很困难。所以欢迎来到让人激动的游戏开发世界!

本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The Art of Waiting

by Daniel Vavra

Our pitching tour over, we went back to work. A moderately nervous team was waiting there for us. “How did it go? Does anybody want it? Are we going to carry on? Can I take a mortgage? Should I be looking for a new job?” “You know, we’d like to know that, as well! But this, ladies and gentlemen, is the gaming industry, and that means everybody has plenty of time!” Everybody but us, of course.

If you, like our colleagues, were expecting our phones to start ringing off the hook one day after our return, swarming us with promises of millions of dollars, then you were expecting incorrectly. The first call finally came about a week later, and it was from our agents, letting us know who had already passed on our game. Very disheartening.

One of the biggest blows was being turned down by a very promising, international publishing company. Although the U.S.-based wing of the corporation seemed very excited about the project, their European representative let us know that they didn’t think the game would fly with Americans. We’ve faced rejection from other companies, too, of course, but that one was perhaps the most painful.

Internal processes of a giant mastodon

It may be worthwhile to explain briefly how publishers work, so you can better understand some of the complex events that are about to unfold. Making a decision within a large corporation can be a tricky, lengthy process!

The people we’ve been presenting our game to are, despite their elevated place in the hierarchy, not the ones that have the final word. If they like our game, they must, in turn, prepare an internal pitch to their superiors and persuade them about the merits of our project. This takes place in the so-called ‘greenlight meeting,’ which only occurs from time to time. The people from marketing and the company executives take a look at the game, and, if they’re intrigued, the next step is usually the ‘due diligence,’ a visit from the company’s producers to the developer’s studio. The goal is to take a closer look at the developer, to see if they are able to deliver on their promises, and to talk about controversial details. The whole process can take months.

The Wow Moments Factory

We decided to use the time on our hands to create materials to dispel the doubts we encountered on our tour. First among those was the absence of ‘epic, wow moments’ in our demo. There was also the issue that our hero looked like a wimp, going around in our demo dressed in a potato sack (two hundred years before the first potato appeared in Europe), and kept apologizing to everybody he met.

Both were my mistakes. I thought people were going to be more interested in our ability to create a huge RPG world with lot of assets and mechanics than in our proficiency in capturing cool animations and playing them back. But you need a balance. As it turns out, a functional demo of a large RPG is only so useful. Marketing people need to see something that tells them they’ll have fertile, eye-catching material to pitch to consumers – a castle exploding or the Tower of Pisa crashing down on a crowd of innocent peasants – and we fell short in that regard.

While our concept artist, Stephen, started to create story boards for one such animation, I made a ‘stickman-style’ storyboard for video that would, with a minimum amount of effort and a few new assets, make maximum effect of a mega, epic wow game. Our approach was simple – we have a trebuchet model… we have a castle model… so how much work is it going to take to make a five-second animation of a trebuchet firing at a castle? One day? Fine! Another epic shot! In a similar manner, we’ve been able to create more than 60 seconds of video that look really good, showing terrific stuff that is planned for the game but not implemented yet, and, had we possessed this footage earlier, things might have turned out differently.

Is it going to be fun?

Additionally, I was working on a new presentation that addressed the most frequent questions we were asked to help our champions within publishers prepare for their greenlight meetings. It outlined most of the features of our game in great detail – especially the answer to the most burning issue: “IS IT GOING TO BE FUN (without dragons and magic)?”

Countless days of hard work and PowerPoint drudgery produced ninety slides of animated, visually sophisticated presentation materials that had EVERYTHING. It was an interactive encyclopedia of our game! I sent it over to Francois (our main contact in ISM, our agency), who told me that although it looked great, I should shorten it to twenty slides, drop all the animations and change the font to something plain and readable. Arrgh…

With polishing complete, we sent all of our new materials to everybody who had shown interest, hoping it would strengthen their hand in internal meetings.

Staring down the abyss (part I)

It had been two months since our journey drew to a close, and no proper feedback was forthcoming. We were starting to get nervous. It might have to do with the fact that our accounts balance was rapidly dwindling. In other words – we were going broke.

How could this happen? Our original plan assumed the pitching tour would start two months earlier than it did. We failed to notice that this would mean pitching it on Boxing Day, and, for some reason, this is difficult to do (our stupid mistake). We also didn’t realize it would take months for publishers to organize meetings, much less make a decision. We assumed and arranged with our investor that we were going to have a publisher in April. Or at least we would be in an advanced stage of negotiations. This just didn’t happen; at that point, we’d have been happy if we could get to that stage by the end of summer.

We informed our investor about this delay in advance, of course, but investors are busy people, and by this time several, much larger deals needed to be made on the other end of the world. Among all these reorganizations and restructurings, we couldn’t be sure that we would not be reorganized out of existence once our investor’s attention turned back to us.

And while you have an oral promise from people close to the investor that at least the work already spent will eventually be paid in full, you would be lying if you pretended that everything was OK. But if you tell the unvarnished truth, you run the risk of people just up and leaving – and never coming back.

Nice and fair guys that we are, we explained our situation as it was to the staff, and, because we have a wonderful, dedicated team that believes in our project, everybody stayed on board. If you ever wonder about the color of my hair, I hope I wouldn’t have to explain to you why it is such as it is.

Part of the restructuring that came was a new guy, Martin, who worked as a liaison between us and the investor. We had to introduce him first to the game business, as such, then to our game and then, in the interest of our survival, write a number of memos explaining our situation – how did we get here and why, and what we planned to do about it.

Martin liked our work, and our budget for the next few months was formally approved to allow us to continue negotiations with the publishers. And wages were finally paid – what a relief.

There is still enough time

Just as we were thinking about the last things of company, our agents gave us a call, telling us that a third-party development department of a certain major publisher had been eliminated, and, out of its ashes, a new publisher had been born. This new company had lots of money and wanted to sign a letter of intent with us (a LOI is a first step toward a contract). How happy we were!

We gave them our company details and calmed down. Everything will be all right! Three days later, we learned that they had changed their minds, and nothing was going to happen there.

The week after that brought further gloomy tidings – the Japanese publisher, which had looked almost certain to make us an offer, couldn’t do anything. Their headquarters had made a decision to not sign any more third-party titles. ‘Only’ five buyers remained in the running, three of them big.

Three (!!!) months had passed since our tour, and most of the serious buyers hadn’t even had their greenlight meetings yet. Of course, we kept working, adjusting our plans, creating budgets, revising our design, but we certainly weren’t working in full production mode. Instead of the fifty people we had planned on, we had barely half that number, and we were splitting time working on wow moment videos and what not. As for myself, instead of working on quests, I was constantly working on presentations.

A few publishers were talking about visiting our studio (good sign!), but suddenly realized that with E3 approaching, it would be better to meet there. Of course, this presented a far less favorable situation for us. A half-hour meeting on a trade show and a full-day visit in our studio are two completely different things.

Sunshine and lollipops

On the whole, the atmosphere was tense. I tried to put on a brave face, but it was obvious that a lot of people were checking job offers, and I could hardly blame them. One can’t feed one’s children with words. But we still had some serious interest, so our chances were looking good.

We asked ourselves whether the prolonged negotiations were a tactic on the part of the publishers, par for the course, or whether our game was just crap all along. We didn’t settle on either choice, pushing on instead.

E3

If the mountain won’t come to us then we must come to E3. We were not very happy about it, but at least we were going to see the reveal of the new consoles firsthand.

Martin, our investor’s liaison, wanted to go with us and take part in the meetings. That was a great idea; nothing illustrates the ins-and-outs of our industry as vividly as actually meeting some publishers, and, beyond that, he would be able to see their reactions for himself and wouldn’t have to rely on our reports.

It wasn’t off to a good start. The very first meeting – with the other large corporation, giving us a second chance – went from bad to worse. I won’t go into details here, but in the end, we looked like incompetent chumps. And I probably got the brunt of it, as I came dressed in a heavy metal t-shirt, as becomes an artist, but did not produce much artistry.

The next day was fortunately much better. We had meetings with another two prospective companies. We received apologies for delays and assurances of continued interest. A person from one company’s Japanese management was present at one of the meetings, and it looked as if he liked us.

Martin could see we hadn’t pulled his leg – there was genuine interest for the title in the industry. But our industry is specific, as Martin observed after meeting a publisher that was supposedly very interested in our game, despite the fact that the people at the meeting hadn’t a clue who we were. So instead of talking about the details of the deal, we showed them the trailer again.

Back to waiting?

The E3 meetings gave us new hope, but if you expected things to start moving once we got back, you were wrong again. Upon returning from E3, people have to recuperate, get through their meeting notes, evaluate their options, and only then something new can happen. Despite that, not one, not two, but three different due diligence visits were eventually planned. Not now, not tomorrow. Next month. Again, there was time to wait.

This gave us an opportunity to fix some things we were too busy to fix earlier, though. We updated our plan and revised the design, incorporating new stuff into it (especially many pages of notes I made over the last half a year). We created several budget variants. Some people left the studio, but new people took their place.

La degustation Bohême

After weeks of waiting, the first batch of producers finally arrived for their due diligence visit. By mistake, they appeared in our offices one week earlier than we were expecting them, but that did not throw us off balance, and everything went well. It was one of the smaller publishers we’d been pitching our game to, and, while in the beginning we hadn’t much hope for them, in the end they turned out to be the most reasonable, most serious of our prospective buyers. Our game was a tad too expensive for their taste, but they could see that it offered exceptional value for money and could compete with much larger projects for the fraction of the cost. They suggested dividing the game into several chapters in order to minimize their risk exposure; fortunately, this would not present a major problem with our story structure. In fact, a much larger, wealthier publisher had pitched the same concept – everybody has their own tight budget to worry about, it seems.

The next visit brought the representatives of a large, Japanese publisher. One of the positive things about selling your game is you get to visit great dining places – you take your guests out, then they take you out in return. So we first visited a really nice French restaurant, and then spent the next day talking about our design, story, and plan.

Speaking of planning: we are pretty proud about our agile methodology and scrums. When I mentioned this over dinner, one of the producers immediately warned me not to repeat it again in front of his colleagues, who see ‘scrum’ and ‘agile’ as obscenities. But even here the meeting was quite successful – we were able to answer all of their questions, and we felt good about it.

The third publisher let us know they were busy and wouldn’t be coming before Gamescom. Actually, we could just as well meet at Gamescom. Once again, we had no shortage of time on our hands.

Back to waiting

We created some new assets, mixed them with the older video, and got a really cool, epic trailer. Pity we hadn’t had it with us in February. Based on the questions raised in our due diligence meetings, I created, together with our concept artist, a short presentation about our hero (because we’re making an RPG, our hero has no definite look, which can be a little baffling for people in marketing trying to figure out how to sell a blank canvass). I created a few more presentations, including comparisons of our game to its competition. We smoothed some internal quarrels. And then we waited for Gamescom.

Gamescom

Gamescom took place at the end of August. That was about two months before we were going to run out of money again. Two negotiations looked promising, but simply weren’t there yet. Martin came with us again; by that time, he’d managed to wrap his head around the games industry admirably fast.

The first meeting was a disappointment. Instead of discussing the deal or a straight refusal, we were treated to vague promises and the same questions as a month ago. None of the other meetings brought anything tangible. Arrgh…

We met several free-to-play publishers. Like us, they’re not afraid to take risks, which we liked about them. It’s a shame our game wasn’t a F2P MMO…

Back to waiting: Patience is a virtue

One of the publishers who had been to visit us had their greenlight meeting shortly after, but for some reason our game hadn’t made it to the agenda. The next one would be held in a month, and our takeaway from that turn of events was that further interaction would be unproductive. The other big publisher also postponed their decision about our game to their next greenlight meeting, so we counted them out, too.

The smaller publisher, however, started exhibiting increased activity. They wanted more info about our budget, a playable demo, and to do their own focus group testing. It looks promising.

If this does not work out, though, we have a problem. The only other option would be to try to persuade our investor to back the whole game by himself – not very likely – or to find a co-investor. We tried contacting a few people, but it didn’t look good. One investment banker from London told us in no uncertain terms that PC and consoles are dead, and if we’re not making a free-to-play MMO for iPad, we’ve got no chance. This is, of course, rubbish, but being right is little help to us.

So that’s where we stand. We believe in our game, but selling a novel concept to publishers is difficult. Welcome to the exciting world of game development!

The grand finale of this story will start next month. But before that, we have prepared a kind of Christmas present for all of you: the first official TEASER video, a new teaser website, and the official name for our new RPG – Kingdom Come: Deliverance!

If you really like us and want our game to see the light of day, support us, please! For now, it will be enough if you share this blog, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. We need fans – lots of them! Thank you!(source:gamasutra)


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