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Tale of Tales “8” VAF Mile Stone Plan |
REPORT
Step 5: "Presentation" (Jul 16 - Aug 15)
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Introduction
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This milestone was meant to be about presenting our work to publishers.
Perhaps due to our lack of experience when we drew up this mile stone plan or perhaps because of a plain oversight, we forgot to schedule for producing presentation materials, contacting publishers and communicating prior to meetings and finding good opportunities for presenting and pitching. So these are the things we have done during this milestone, instead of the ambitious but naive "trips to publishers" metioned in the plan.
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Producing presentation materials
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One of the most important things that we have been doing, and that we totally underestimated for the previous step, is debugging the gameplay demo. Despite the fact that there are still a million small things we would like to fix, we now have a demo that is at least stable enough to send out to third parties.
We have updated our website with new screenshots and more information. Again the adventure games sites were quick to pick up the news (though we did not contact any personally nor issue a press release; they just found out through our forum, news letter and each other). This time the response on the public fora was much more positive. Many people have complimented us on how much the game has improved since the last demo (The Formal Dining Room in October 2003, before this mile stone plan). The response from journalists is positive.
These are some of the websites that mentioned “8” recently:
Next to the website and the demo, we are also producing printed materials to send away together with the demo and to hand out to people that we meet. A business card, of course. And a walkthrough of the demo with screenshots. Documents illustrating the game's features and in-depth explanations of the game's design. And last but not least information about the business aspects of the production (scheduling, budget, target audience, marketing, etc). It takes a lot more time than expected to put all these materials together.
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Contacting Publishers
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We have sent out email messages to all the addresses of game publishers that accept unsollicited submissions. You can find details about whom we contacted when in our development wiki.
Only a few have responded to this message as yet. We are going to follow up on this with another email message, a postal package containing the demo and telephone calls.
Thanks to the aid of a journalist of The Inventory, we received the only offer for publication so far. It came from Got Game Entertainment and it would only cover North America. We are discussing the terms of an agreement as we speak. But we fear that this publisher may be too small for our ambitions.
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Opportunities
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Next to these attempts to directly contact publishers, we are going to attend a few public events where we hope we can make contacts with potential partners. First up is the
European Game Developers conference from 1 to 3 September in London, which coincides with the
ECTS games trade fair.
In December there is a more specialized event in Lyon: the
Game Connection. It is designed specifically with the purpose of offering developers an opportunity to pitch their game to several publishers. It is quite expensive but it may be worth it.
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Costs
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Estimates of the costs of this milestone in Euros (excluding Auriea & Michaël's fees):
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GDCE registration | 1200 | |
London travel & stay | 600 | |
Printing | 800 | |
Duplication & sending | 100 | |
Game connection | 2500 | |
Lyon travel & stay | 600 | |
Clothing | 600 | |
Collaborators | 1000
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Rescheduling?
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Given all of the above, it is very unlikely that we will have a publishing contract by the end of the next mile stone.
We feel it would be unfair to the project to stick to a plan that says that we abandon our ambitions of trying to get “8” published through the traditional game publishing channels if we fail to find a publisher by then. We think we should give this process more time, at least until the end of the year. In this period we would, however, also explore alternative ways of publication (step 7 of the plan). The reason for this is that we have discovered that not all game publishers are the same and that the line between a traditional game publishing deal and an alternative one may be vague. We might as well try and contact everyone in one big go.
We are still deliberating how we want to proceed with the mile stone plan and the rest of the VAF budget.
Especially considering the possible failure of finding a publisher and our desire to produce at least something that can be made public.
There are two plans, a pessimistic one and an optimistic one.
- Put the VAF mile stone plan on hold while we continue to contact publishers at our own expense. Nothing will be added to the game during this period because we will have to dedicate our time to generating an income for ourselves. If we fail to find a publisher, we will proceed to the final step of the mile stone plan in January* and produce some kind of wrap-up of the project.
- We adapt the content of the mile stone plan so that we in fact start working on the "alternative production" of the final step in September. During this period we will continue to communicate with publishers and present the material as it keeps improving. This way, we would have the means to make a much bigger impression during the Game Connection in Lyon in December (possibly our best shot at finding a publisher). By January 2005* we should have finished and alternative version of the product ready for non-commercial self-distribution.
In both cases the chance of finding a publisher exists. Since the presentation material will keep improving, this chance may increase during case 2.
Whether the "alternative production" will be better in one or the other case remains to be seen. While continuing the project keeps us focussed, there may be a lot to say for taking a break, as it were, and starting with a fresh head in January.
The first case is better in case of failure because it prepares us for a post-"8" life. The second case prepares us better for the actual production of the game.
In any case, we would like to continue with the production and fine-tuning of our presentation materials and contacting publishers and investors throughout the next mile stone. As of 15 September, we will be much better equiped to discuss this inevitable rescheduling with the VAF.
* Note that this date of January may also change as we gain more knowledge.
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Conclusion
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With respect to the three goals of the mile stone plan, we can conclude the following.
Debugging and fine-tuning the game engine for the demo is very useful. It makes playing the game a far more pleasant experience and working on it much more fluent. Apart from a few minor tweaks here and there, no new assets have been added to the game.
Our first round of emails to game publishers has been sent. We will soon follow this up by a second and by sending out presentation packages by mail. We have also registered to attend the game developers conference in the beginning of September. Adventure game journalists seem very interested, the players very curiouos but only a few publishers have gotten back to us. One publisher from the USA has offered to publish the game in North America. We're negotiating.
As foreseen, the team for this phase of the project has been limited to Auriea and Michaël. With the exception of Alex who is continuing work on the Wicked Branches system and Ronald who is helping us debug the demo. Lina and Gorik are making illustrations of the main character to include in our presentation package.
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