Kingdom Come: Deliverance Devs on Finding a Publisher
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Despite deciding to unveil the game properly yesterday, the folks at Warhorse haven't yet found a publisher for their title, as they note in this recent blog post. However, it looks like there's still hope, as one small publisher is showing interest in the title:
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!
