Dragon Commander - Status Update
 

Lar has posted a lengthy status update again, talking about his difficulty getting major publishers interested in Dragon Commander at Gamescom:
More information.

This is really sad and demonstrate how hard it is make the games you want. If it's this hard for well know and successful developer to make game what chance does small Indi people have?

I was talking to a developer at my company (we are in the financial industry) recently and he told me that he was games developer for about 15 years before he joined us. He owned small game company employing about 13 people. They made some reasonably successful games but in the end got screwed over by the publisher who refused to pay them. I asked him why he didn't sue, but he said he had to put up his house as collateral and that was risk too far. Sad story really.

Another snippet from this Status Update :

Actually it reflects my view of major publishers and 'marketing' in general. We ask our selves why games are so expensive. It is because major publishers spend millions on 'marketing'. I generally have a very low view based on my first hand experience with marketing folks and over the years my view on CEO who pamper them have been taking a similar route. Alas there is a lack of space for me to present the details of why my perception has hit rock bottom on this class of corporate culture. Anyways it would be interesting to know which publishers he had the pleasure of chatting; and luckily i'm willing to buy on steam and he's willing to publish on steam (which I believe is a better deal for studio than traditional publishers).

Well, I think this needs to be seen in perspective. Lar and his studio are making it really hard for publishers with this particular (type of) game. Dragons with jet packs? Control dragon armies (instead of slaughtering them)? Mixing fantasy with fancy tech stuff?

Let's be realistic here. This game is screaming "niche" from the top of its lungs so I'm not sure why anyone (especially Lar) is the least bit surprised that major publishers are not exactly in a hurry to outbid each other.

I'd understand if he'd be disappointed in a lack of interest if he'd be trying to sell Divinity 3 (as a Diablo clone with a story and a purpose) to people but Dragon Commander is like fly-fishing minus the fly :biggrin: . I mean there's zero bait or reason to bite for a major publisher since this game is simply not going to appeal to a large audience.

Moriendor mentions the whole "dragons as enemies" thing that publishers like… Yet a quick look through amazon shows a whole section of fantasy novels about dragons and the like as romantic/desireable/heroic. Then look at all the sales of dragon sculptures etc that you see at pratically mall. There's clearly a demand for dragon stuff, and you'd think that alone would be enough to net some interest.

However, the combination of steam-punk with the dragons is certainly a bit difficult to pitch without sounding crazy. You have to have played one of Lars' previous games to realise that Larian can pull that stuff off. Most publishers don't actually play the games, so it is no surprise they don't see how things could work…

I agree with Moriendor. They wish to remain independent and this poses problems when you need to find publishers. I recall I had to wait almost a entire year just to play there last game even though it was completed. No publishers were interested in NA.

This is why I think digital releases are the future. Gets rid of the publisher and lets the developer get more money and I'm not thinking of steam. They still take a cut just to put your games on there delivery system.

Moriendor is right. This is clearly a niche title, hence the top-tier publishers have no business being interested because it isn't clear it will move 3M+ (or whatever the minimum AAA benchmark is these days).

As for retail and SKUs…well, every industry has their benchmarks. A much as I hate GameStop and their ilk, a typical store has around 70m2 space and the only way to get the best results is to maximise sales-per-square-metre. SKUs might be "yuk" but that's the nature of retail.

Online and digital is the future for niche titles.

Best of luck to them but stop worrying about majors, Lar!

How did Lars not know what a SKU (stock keeping unit) was? Was he joking? If not, that's a serious investment concern right away.

He shouldn't be selling this to western publishers. From what I can tell, this game would be much better suited to Asian markets.

I think therre's another layer under this "yuk SKUs" meaning.

I think he's so negative about it, because treating games = SKUs stripps off them the whole "play" meaning". Like my philosophical approach that a thing retains its self only as long as it is considered as [the parts which] constiturtes itself. Um, difficult words.

It's like saying : This is not a man, it's a number. A number living in a flat. We don't need to know anything else about it. It eats food, it watches TV, it produces waste - but it is still a number. It even has no name anymore. It is a number to us. THX1138.

The same goes on for games in "the business" right now. Actual "playing" isn't needed anymore. All what counts is whether it is sold, it sells, or not. They are no more games [for them]. They are numbers. SKUs.

And I think this is, what Lar - as an underlying meaning" "is so yuk about", so to say.

Yes.. that's their job :p It shouldn't come as a surprise to find out that the numbers people are interested in numbers :p

But humanity gets least this way, don't you understand ?

If everything becomes a number - well then we may end up like the Nazis.

Well I'm not suggesting everyone should be a number person. Only the number people need to be number people. Someone has to be though.

Sometimes you need to let this go, Alrik.

Shops aren't about fostering art - they're about commerce. Larian could sell their houses, use the money to pay for development and give the game away for free, right? It would be all about the art. But (of course), they don't. Internally, you don't think Lar has worked on sales projections and costings? Of course he has! In fact, I bet they use the equivalent of skus internally.

To pick an example, GameStop has 6,500 stores. To put 2x copies of a game in each store (one display, one backup) means an investment of around $350,000 per sku. That needs to be paid for at some point in real money, not sentiment. Any manager would be a fool not use some form of stock tracking system to control this.

Now, I appreciate you don't care about all this but I know you like to buy real boxes at shops so someone needs to look after the business side or those shops won't be there for long.