Status update - June 9th 2011 - 09/06/11 05:29 PM
Once again, this status update comes later than I had hoped for but as Joram surmised in another thread, yes, it’s been busy. We’re going to be announcing one of our new games, project D, at GamesCom in Cologone, this August, and so the pressure right now is to make sure that we have something to show, as well as figuring out how we’re going to show it. Turns out we have very little experience with the latter as in the past these things were always done by a publisher. But now that we’re self-funding all of our games, we have to take care of that part too, and it clearly requires a different set of skills, skills we don’t necessarily have in-house, though we’re working on that.
Our main task at GameCom will be that for the next games we don’t want any more WOW, how come thi game doesn't get more attention? threads, even if we are flattered by all the things you all write in there. I spent quite some time speaking to people “in-the-know” over the past couple of months about how to profile ourselves and our games better, and in the process had to take quite some flak about how we’ve been presenting ourselves to our audiences in the past, but I guess they do have a point. Summarized it boils down to “your website is a mess, you’re not using the social thing like you should, your messaging is a wreck and what the #### is up with your logo ? It looks like washing powder. Oh, and btw, do you call that a presentation ? My Italian designer label toilet paper looks better than that !”
Many were the times during these conversations that I had to resist taking one of the swords and daggers I received from people back when was still called Divinity: The Sword of Lies, and I often had to say to myself “Shut up and listen. You have ‘Wow, how come this game doesn’t get more attention’ threads on your forum, this despite your meta-critic being in the top for RPGs in 2010”. So I listen and learn, and in the process curse silently and envision exactly how I’m going to have my new mentors “integrated” in one of our next games.
This helps a bit, but not too much as I then realize that I won’t be able to do exactly the thing I envisioned because I’ll get in all kinds of trouble with the rating boards. After which I imagine what I’m going to do with the rating boards and … well cough. <rant> Has anybody actually ever wondered how much money goes into the rating boards and where all that money goes ? How many games are there being rated ? Now multiply that with what’s being charged and wonder how come that that’s a pretty big number for organizations with few employees. Where does all that money go ? And yeah, I know, it’s better like this with self-control from the industry being preferred over state control yadidadidee, but seriously, I need to remove the option to <censored> or risk being banned from certain stores ? Seen a 12 year old recently that doesn’t know Happy Tree Friends ?<end rant>
So we’re wondering about what we’ll do with our stand at GamesCom (which is in the business hall, so it’s not publicly accessible), we’re wondering what press releases we’ll send out to the world, what screenshots/movies we’ll show, what beer we’ll serve to tired journalists & biz devs (Dragon Beer obviously), which particular gorgeously attractive model we want to be at the entrance to our booth, which of our rooms we’ll forcibly have to share with that model as all hotels are fully booked, how we’ll present the game, what parts of the game we’ll have to fake because the real system won’t be ready, if we’re going to run the footage on the fastest PC money can buy and pretend it’s running from a GameCube, how we’re going to make sure journalists notice us amidst the PR/Marketing blitz the big boys are going to throw at them, and how eventually we can become one of the big boys, only to realize rapidly after that that we don’t really want to become one of the big boys, because the big boys, well, they act so much like big boys, not much fun in that. Some of my former game development heroes talk so funny nowadays that it’s not funny anymore and the worst part is that I find myself trying to talk like them whenever I notice that it’s what the audience is expecting from me, not that I really want to be one of the big boys
I just did an interview with a financial magazine, just because I occasionally have to do one of these, and the first question I got was “What’s your strategy ?”. Figuring she didn’t want to hear about a zerg-rush, I proceeded with babbling about narrowing the gap between our studio and the consumer via optimal utilization of the opportunities presented to us from etc… etc.. etc…Next thing I know I get a call from a financial TV channel that wants me to do the same thing again on TV because they thought the article was quite interesting., and they wanted to hear more about my new strategy. Then, I’m sitting at a kind of roundtable where our government is telling me about how creative industries are important to them, and what they’re planning on doing for us so we can pay more taxes. I’m surrounded by plenty of I-guarantee-you-more-creative-people-than-me who’ve done wonderful things in the past, and I notice that they’re all babbling like me during that roundtable, just because they know that’s the language that needs to be spoken, whereas actually, all of us just want to say – dude, we want to do cool stuff, without having to worry about the cash. Instead they say how they’re optimizing their business processes and work flow so that yadadadiyadadiyadadi and we definitely aren’t looking for money but we yadadadiyadadiyadadi. Blah.
Back to topic. The GamesCom preparation, which tbh I’ve been trying to postpone as long as possible, an effort prevented by our fantastic & diligent producer Benoit (who literally as I type this just sent me a mail with all kinds of decisions to be taken about furniture), and our not to be mentioned by name publishing mentors, has as much to do with game development as tooth paste has to do with molecular orbital theory (actually… come to think of it, that’s quite a lot ). But it does have one benefit. It forces me to think about publishers we worked with in the past, and how they handled things during affairs like this.
One of the things I mentioned in the interview with the financial journalist was how looking back at everything Larian did in the past, one could clearly observe a tendency to get out of the death-grip of the advance versus royalty model, and how some publishers rationalized this death-grip model not only by whining about all the risk they were taking (in which case they just shouldn’t sign) but also about how much services they were offering.
The services obviously also include things like organizing booths at game shows where they present “your baby”. <rant>I always liked it when they mentioned the “your baby” part and I often thought about it when I saw royalty reports in which those shows were classified as a fully deductible cost, especially when I saw that for the amount of that fully deductible cost you could buy at the very least a few fancy sports cars, which sounds quite expensive for a computer pod with your demo running on it amidst twenty other games and the publisher’s logo the only logo you can spot from more than 50 centimeters away, knowing that on top of that, they got a subsidy from their export offices they didn’t mention in their royalty report, because that’s no business of the developer and did you know btw that such a pod costs about 400 euros if you buy it and 200 euros if you rent it... <end rant>
So figuring that the price we paid in royalties lost for these services gives us the right to copy their processes for these shows, I told myself that it should be an easy thing to organize, but as you can probably guess by now, I came to the realization that I actually have have no clue. None. And this despite me going to these kinds of exhibitions for over 14 years, participating in plenty of them. I just never paid attention to what was going on around me. Somebody just told me – stand there and you have interviews/presentations at these times, the red bull is there, arrive sober and don’t party too much, and I just executed tlike a robot, except for the last two parts of course (on occasion ).
But this time, as we have to present “our babies” ourselves, and have 48m² to do it in (which doesn’t sound like a lot but when in reality is actually quite large), we need to figure out not only what the presentation will be like, but also what all the stuff around it’s going to be, and all the presumed experience in these matters just isn’t there ! The horror ! And this is going to be the start of the big announcement for Project D ! Panic strikes !
Well, not really of course, but it does have me slightly worried. I’m having visions of a huge empty booth, with the hardware crashed, the furniture stuck somewhere in some strike and nobody interested in what we have to show, which in the particular scenario that there’s no furniture and no hardware would actually be a bonus. But I guess we’ll rise to the occasion, have plenty of people come to taste our wonderful Dragon Beer and walk away in awe as they see the brilliancy of project D, which I’m sure will be visible to all, even if at this very moment it a) still just looks as a collection of flat shaded stub models floating around (admittedly with some already very good looking terrain and a bunch of hot-but-not-yet-integrated assets ), b) is the project in which we’re taking the most risk gameplay-wise.
I need to go so I’ll close with that, but if anybody has some seriously good ideas about how we can announce our next game in such an original way that everybody is going to take note, please let me know. Oh, and while I’m at it, good ideas for the revamp of the Larian site & forums are more than welcome too !
Cheers !
Our main task at GameCom will be that for the next games we don’t want any more WOW, how come thi game doesn't get more attention? threads, even if we are flattered by all the things you all write in there. I spent quite some time speaking to people “in-the-know” over the past couple of months about how to profile ourselves and our games better, and in the process had to take quite some flak about how we’ve been presenting ourselves to our audiences in the past, but I guess they do have a point. Summarized it boils down to “your website is a mess, you’re not using the social thing like you should, your messaging is a wreck and what the #### is up with your logo ? It looks like washing powder. Oh, and btw, do you call that a presentation ? My Italian designer label toilet paper looks better than that !”
Many were the times during these conversations that I had to resist taking one of the swords and daggers I received from people back when was still called Divinity: The Sword of Lies, and I often had to say to myself “Shut up and listen. You have ‘Wow, how come this game doesn’t get more attention’ threads on your forum, this despite your meta-critic being in the top for RPGs in 2010”. So I listen and learn, and in the process curse silently and envision exactly how I’m going to have my new mentors “integrated” in one of our next games.
This helps a bit, but not too much as I then realize that I won’t be able to do exactly the thing I envisioned because I’ll get in all kinds of trouble with the rating boards. After which I imagine what I’m going to do with the rating boards and … well cough. <rant> Has anybody actually ever wondered how much money goes into the rating boards and where all that money goes ? How many games are there being rated ? Now multiply that with what’s being charged and wonder how come that that’s a pretty big number for organizations with few employees. Where does all that money go ? And yeah, I know, it’s better like this with self-control from the industry being preferred over state control yadidadidee, but seriously, I need to remove the option to <censored> or risk being banned from certain stores ? Seen a 12 year old recently that doesn’t know Happy Tree Friends ?<end rant>
So we’re wondering about what we’ll do with our stand at GamesCom (which is in the business hall, so it’s not publicly accessible), we’re wondering what press releases we’ll send out to the world, what screenshots/movies we’ll show, what beer we’ll serve to tired journalists & biz devs (Dragon Beer obviously), which particular gorgeously attractive model we want to be at the entrance to our booth, which of our rooms we’ll forcibly have to share with that model as all hotels are fully booked, how we’ll present the game, what parts of the game we’ll have to fake because the real system won’t be ready, if we’re going to run the footage on the fastest PC money can buy and pretend it’s running from a GameCube, how we’re going to make sure journalists notice us amidst the PR/Marketing blitz the big boys are going to throw at them, and how eventually we can become one of the big boys, only to realize rapidly after that that we don’t really want to become one of the big boys, because the big boys, well, they act so much like big boys, not much fun in that. Some of my former game development heroes talk so funny nowadays that it’s not funny anymore and the worst part is that I find myself trying to talk like them whenever I notice that it’s what the audience is expecting from me, not that I really want to be one of the big boys
I just did an interview with a financial magazine, just because I occasionally have to do one of these, and the first question I got was “What’s your strategy ?”. Figuring she didn’t want to hear about a zerg-rush, I proceeded with babbling about narrowing the gap between our studio and the consumer via optimal utilization of the opportunities presented to us from etc… etc.. etc…Next thing I know I get a call from a financial TV channel that wants me to do the same thing again on TV because they thought the article was quite interesting., and they wanted to hear more about my new strategy. Then, I’m sitting at a kind of roundtable where our government is telling me about how creative industries are important to them, and what they’re planning on doing for us so we can pay more taxes. I’m surrounded by plenty of I-guarantee-you-more-creative-people-than-me who’ve done wonderful things in the past, and I notice that they’re all babbling like me during that roundtable, just because they know that’s the language that needs to be spoken, whereas actually, all of us just want to say – dude, we want to do cool stuff, without having to worry about the cash. Instead they say how they’re optimizing their business processes and work flow so that yadadadiyadadiyadadi and we definitely aren’t looking for money but we yadadadiyadadiyadadi. Blah.
Back to topic. The GamesCom preparation, which tbh I’ve been trying to postpone as long as possible, an effort prevented by our fantastic & diligent producer Benoit (who literally as I type this just sent me a mail with all kinds of decisions to be taken about furniture), and our not to be mentioned by name publishing mentors, has as much to do with game development as tooth paste has to do with molecular orbital theory (actually… come to think of it, that’s quite a lot ). But it does have one benefit. It forces me to think about publishers we worked with in the past, and how they handled things during affairs like this.
One of the things I mentioned in the interview with the financial journalist was how looking back at everything Larian did in the past, one could clearly observe a tendency to get out of the death-grip of the advance versus royalty model, and how some publishers rationalized this death-grip model not only by whining about all the risk they were taking (in which case they just shouldn’t sign) but also about how much services they were offering.
The services obviously also include things like organizing booths at game shows where they present “your baby”. <rant>I always liked it when they mentioned the “your baby” part and I often thought about it when I saw royalty reports in which those shows were classified as a fully deductible cost, especially when I saw that for the amount of that fully deductible cost you could buy at the very least a few fancy sports cars, which sounds quite expensive for a computer pod with your demo running on it amidst twenty other games and the publisher’s logo the only logo you can spot from more than 50 centimeters away, knowing that on top of that, they got a subsidy from their export offices they didn’t mention in their royalty report, because that’s no business of the developer and did you know btw that such a pod costs about 400 euros if you buy it and 200 euros if you rent it... <end rant>
So figuring that the price we paid in royalties lost for these services gives us the right to copy their processes for these shows, I told myself that it should be an easy thing to organize, but as you can probably guess by now, I came to the realization that I actually have have no clue. None. And this despite me going to these kinds of exhibitions for over 14 years, participating in plenty of them. I just never paid attention to what was going on around me. Somebody just told me – stand there and you have interviews/presentations at these times, the red bull is there, arrive sober and don’t party too much, and I just executed tlike a robot, except for the last two parts of course (on occasion ).
But this time, as we have to present “our babies” ourselves, and have 48m² to do it in (which doesn’t sound like a lot but when in reality is actually quite large), we need to figure out not only what the presentation will be like, but also what all the stuff around it’s going to be, and all the presumed experience in these matters just isn’t there ! The horror ! And this is going to be the start of the big announcement for Project D ! Panic strikes !
Well, not really of course, but it does have me slightly worried. I’m having visions of a huge empty booth, with the hardware crashed, the furniture stuck somewhere in some strike and nobody interested in what we have to show, which in the particular scenario that there’s no furniture and no hardware would actually be a bonus. But I guess we’ll rise to the occasion, have plenty of people come to taste our wonderful Dragon Beer and walk away in awe as they see the brilliancy of project D, which I’m sure will be visible to all, even if at this very moment it a) still just looks as a collection of flat shaded stub models floating around (admittedly with some already very good looking terrain and a bunch of hot-but-not-yet-integrated assets ), b) is the project in which we’re taking the most risk gameplay-wise.
I need to go so I’ll close with that, but if anybody has some seriously good ideas about how we can announce our next game in such an original way that everybody is going to take note, please let me know. Oh, and while I’m at it, good ideas for the revamp of the Larian site & forums are more than welcome too !
Cheers !