Kingdom Come: Deliverance is one of the most successful Czech games ever and Warhorse has become one of the biggest development studios. Have you already reached the number one position in our country, or is Bohemia Interactive getting bigger?
M. F.: During the development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, we had about 120 people at the top. Now we have about 250 people and that's enough for us to be currently third in the Czech market.
It is said that the development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance cost approximately 400 million crowns, the second part is supposed to be twice as big, there are twice as many employees. Does this mean that a billion-crown game is being developed in the Czech Republic?
M.F.: You are right, it is not difficult to calculate and we are basically approaching this amount. It's really in the high hundreds of millions.
Game studios often outsource much of their work to Asia and the like. Developers are also starting to get help from generative AI. How is that going at Warhorse?
MF: In Asia, for example, there was a certain technological phase of making cutscenes, which are narrative video sequences embedded in the game, little movies like that. But we also outsourced a lot of things in the Czech Republic, like digital scans of the actors' heads. And last but not least, we use the testing capacities of the parent company Plaion. However, about 95 percent of the development was done in Prague at Warhorse. Of course, we have artificial intelligence in the game, it controls, for example, the behaviour of the game characters. But as far as generative artificial intelligence is concerned, we didn't use that in the development of the game, it's all the work of our graphic designers and scriptwriters.
This February you announced six million copies sold. If the sequel costs twice as much, do you also have double the sales expectations?
M. K.: Yes, we've even sold eight million copies in seven years. In the first year it was between one and a half and two million copies. The rest was sold gradually, thanks to expansions, the release of the complete version of the game with the datadisks and especially the discount promotions.
M.F.: The gaming market is obsessed with the number of copies sold. From a financial point of view, the most important ones are the ones shortly after the game's release. In the first year, financial success is decided. We sold another two million copies this year thanks to the announcement of the second part, but in terms of financial return, it's a relatively small contribution. As for the second game, we don't comment on specific plans. But the personal expectations of the people on the Warhorse team are basically quite high. Ten million copies sold would be nice, of course.
M. K.: It's better to be careful. The entertainment market is extremely volatile. It doesn't just depend on how much money and effort you put into the work. For example, for the same cost, films can have a difference of two orders of magnitude in sales, and it's terribly difficult to predict how it will turn out. All it takes is for some little thing to go wrong. Sometimes, of course, filmmakers suspect it won't be the hit they'd hoped for, but it's relatively often the case that everything indicates success, including the first screenings, and then something happens and the work doesn't meet with an audience. Often it can be things that are completely out of the writers' control. Of course, we feel good and hope that KCD2 will sell well. But it's terribly difficult to predict what the actual sales will be.
The games industry is an example that the Czech Republic doesn't have to be an assembly plant. But how does it look with the revenue from the sales of the game, when Warhorse is part of Embracer holding and the title is published by Deep Silver from the same group?
M.F. Deep Silver also published the first part and the current publishing contract is very similar. This is mainly due to the fact that the rights to the Kingdom Come brand were retained when Warhorse Studios was sold: Deliverance in Prague. If we were developing a bespoke Indiana Jones game, someone else would have taken the cream. But this way, most of the revenue will go back to Warhorse Studios.
So can we expect the turnover of the Czech games industry to grow significantly next year?
M. K.: We can expect the Czech budget to be in the black
(laughs).
M. F.: Sure, and we'll be second third in sales behind ČEZ and Seznam
(laughs).
In August, you announced that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II will not be released until the end of this year, but only on February 11, 2025. It seemed a bit like you wanted to avoid competing in the pre-Christmas market. But then there was also the postponement of competing games like Avowed and Assassin's Creed: Shadows. How might that affect sales?
M. F.: There is some overlap, but it's not significant. It's true, though, that the media space is pretty much booked up before Christmas and we wanted to give KCD II some air. Unfortunately, others had the same idea.
M. K.: I think it's good that we did it anyway. Before Christmas you're not just competing with Assassin's Creed or Avowed, but with everything else. There's a new PlayStation coming out, there's a lot of games coming out, but mostly everyone's trying to sell something to people at that time. It makes communication more difficult and more expensive. February is going to be more relaxed, despite the competition.
You made Czech gamers happy by announcing that the second part will be released with Czech dubbing. How did you manage to push this with the publisher when our market represents three percent of sales? Will it pay at all?
M. F.: Three percent is a big number for such a small market. The Czech Republic was in the top ten countries with the highest sales. We are convinced that the cost of Czech dubbing will easily pay for itself. He would probably pay for the first part as well. Unfortunately, in 2017 no one knew Kingdom Come, we were struggling with lack of money and logically had to limit potential risks. What we didn't necessarily do, we didn't do.
Thanks to the KCD2 preview in Kutná Hora, we discovered that one of the characters is played by Kristýna Leichtová. Can you reveal any other names that will be interesting for Czech fans?
M. F.: We are going to announce the people and cast later. But we have a lot of strong Czech actors in the cast. In the dubbing, people will also recognize several actors from the KCD fan dubbing. The main character Jindřich of Skalice, voiced by Richard Wágner, will retain his voice.
What characters from the first episode, apart from those seen in the trailers so far, will return in the sequel: will Henry's sweet Terezka be in KCD2?
M. K.: We're trying to make the sequel accessible to people who didn't play the first one. And actually, there's not much difference between people who haven't played the first one and people who played it in 2018. We obviously relate to all the characters from the first installment - they're often closer to us than some of our own distant relatives.
Players don't, they don't remember them, except maybe Jindra and Mr. Bird. A lot of people haven't even finished the first game.
(According to Steam statistics, only 11 percent of players have seen the end of the story on PC.)
Kutná Hora will play an important role in the second part of the game and wants to take advantage of the connection with the game. What can tourists look forward to?
M. F.: We are more of a facilitator, a connector.
Kutná Hora itself has great tourist potential, but we are not involved in what they are planning. We welcome ideas and help where we can.
At the unveiling of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, you made an icon out of St. Barbara's Cathedral. Won't players be disappointed to see a late Gothic gem in the video and a church being built in the game?
M. K.: Churches aren't like children, to be built small, watered and grown, and then the little church became a cathedral. St. Barbara's is disjointed in the game, but I don't think the players will be disappointed. Kutna Hora is a big city, there are other beautiful churches and many things to visit as a player, and lots of activities.
The aforementioned new version of PlayStation 5 has just come out with more power. Are you planning to offer higher frame rate running on it, for example?
M. K.: All we can say about PlayStation 5 Pro is that it's already public information. That is that all games that are now being certified for the PlayStation platform must support PlayStation 5 Pro in some way. Essentially, they must have two modes - one that works on the base PlayStation 5, and one that works on PlayStation 5 Pro.
What's the biggest strength of both parts of the game? Why do you thrive in foreign markets that have no relation to our history?
M. K.: That's exactly the question publishers asked us when we pitched Kingdom Come to them over a decade ago. Why would anyone play a historical game without dragons? For Czech fans, of course, our story is very appealing, but that's not the point. Czech fans also play games set in space and places that don't even exist. In general, I think people appreciate the opportunity to play a game from a setting they don't know. Imagine living somewhere in the middle of the cornfields of America and then having the opportunity to walk through the Czech forests. In a way, this makes KCD more attractive to foreign gamers than to someone who just needs to get on a tram and go to Hady or Prokopské valley.
M. F.: For us in the Czech Republic, setting the game in Czech realities is a matter of the heart, but from a global perspective, the specific location doesn't play such a significant role. What matters is the attractiveness of the story and Dan Vávra is a great storyteller. He proved it in Mafia, he proved it in the first KCD and he did it again in the sequel. A good story is universal.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not entirely without controversy. The creator of the game and the screenplay , Dan Vávra, is the one who has aroused a lot of controversy for his attitude, not only on the networks . How do you feel about that as a studio?
M. K.: We distinguish between the work plane and the private plane. I don't follow Dan on Facebook or X. Each of us has some private activities. I'm only interested in Dan's work.
M. F.: I'm the same way. We work very well together at work. KCD is Dan's baby and he has a major part in its success.
The play itself has not escaped controversy abroad. We learned that it was racist and chauvinistic because of the absence of non-white characters and the status of the female characters.
M. F.: Different markets have different tolerance and moral compasses, and when you offer a global product, you may find that some people will find certain things in it offensive. Assassin's Creed: Shadows recently struggled with this because of the insensitive setting of the main character in Japanese culture. But Kingdom Come is a Czech product from Czech history, and we can't change it to suit someone on the other side of the globe.
M. K.: Sometimes a small part of a game can come into the spotlight and stir up controversy where you don't expect it at all. If we knew in advance that there was something really controversial in the game, we would try to explain it, put it in context, or remove it. We don't make controversial moves in the first place to be called fascists on discussion boards. Unfortunately, the gravitational field of the American culture war is warping reality around the world and there's not much we can do about it.
KCD2 will still be an adult game for adult gamers?
M. K.: I wonder if it's even possible to finish KCD2 and avoid sex altogether. I'm not sure. Either way, it's definitely true that we have sex and drugs and stuff in KCD2. A good example of a successful game with adult elements is Baldur's Gate 3. They even included sex with a bear and the result was actually positive. But I can easily imagine an alternate universe where people are offended by this and it becomes a huge problem. That's exactly where humans can't see. I don't think they figured this is what's going to bomb, this is what's going to sell the game.
Based on the previews released so far and the content of the collector's edition of the game, it's obvious that the side characters will play a bigger role. Can you reveal anything about them?
M. K.: KCD2 is a single-player game, the player controls his character and the other characters will help him. In general, I think the plot in the second installment is more complex, deeper. That's why we have more characters and their relationships with each other are also more complex, more mature. Even Henry is no longer the simple village boy. He's a bit battered by life and what he's been through, less innocent.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance had a lot of technical bugs when it came out, and you guys spent quite a long time nurturing it. You've added new features and what I consider to be some great add-ons, especially The Feminine Destiny. Are you planning something similar for the second installment?
M. K.: You see, Women's Destiny in particular has gotten mixed reviews on Steam. We have announced three expansions for the second game, which are part of the gold version of the game, and we expect to offer some improvements beyond the announced additions. We definitely want to support the second game in the long term, and we believe that we will release it in a much better technical condition than the first game, when we were pressed for time and money.
At the moment, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is in a very decent state, certainly better than what we released the first installment in, and we are confident that we will not disappoint players in that area. But the moment millions of people start playing it on different hardware combinations, there are bound to be some issues that will affect a percentage of players. But even a fraction of a million is thousands of people, so we're going to respond quickly to reports of problems.
You've already let journalists and fans play KCD2 at Gamescom in Germany and PAX in the US, what kind of feedback have you had from players?
M.F.: Just over 9,000 people played KCD2 at Gamescom, which is a thunderous number. The queue to play was from morning to night and never ran out, even though we only offered a small 20-minute slice of gameplay. We got a hell of a response. In mid-October, we were at the Tokyo Game Show with KCD2, and even there we got positive feedback, perhaps because of the Japanese dub.
The music plays a big part. How happy are you with the choice of composer and what's the status of the soundtrack for the second volume on vinyl? Will we be waiting two years after the game's release again?
M. F.: There will definitely be a vinyl, we don't even need to hide that anymore. Logically it has to be, given the importance we attach to the music. We have a great relationship with the author Jan Valta. He heard about the game and wanted to approach us to see if we would consider it. For a change, Dan Vávra happened to hear Jan's music somewhere and it struck him that this was the kind of soundtrack he wanted for Kingdom Come: Deliverance. So it came together beautifully - with an element of chance.
How come KCD, as a historical game, doesn't have a historical soundtrack?
M.F.: Music from the 15th century probably wouldn't be very appealing to today's listeners, so we made a pragmatic concession to authenticity.
M. K.: It's a lot like the language the play is written in. When we started working on KCD1, we experimented with using period language. In English, that means going back two centuries before Shakespeare, somewhere to Chaucer. We tried it, played a bit of it, and it was terribly funny in an unintentional way. And we thought, well, that's actually not right. The characters understand the period language, they don't find it archaic, it's just that the player should be in the same position. Only where music is part of the depiction of the world, for example in a church, do we want it to be authentic, just like we have authentic architecture, clothing or weapons.
How big a part of your income are things like vinyl or t-shirts? Is that important in terms of community building or also in terms of finances?
M.F.: It's much more of a fan service, the revenue for us is basically negligible. But that's mainly due to the success of the game itself. It's made so much money that even if we sold ten times more t-shirts, it would still be a tiny fraction of our income. Still, we're merchandising as hard as we can. Merch is to us what a paper newspaper is to you. You see them on the newsstand every morning when you walk by and sometimes you buy them for the train. They work a bit like advertising. It's kind of a walking reminder that KCD exists.
What will the second part bring? "In general, I think the plot is more complex, deeper. That's why we have more characters and their relationships with each other are also more complex, more mature," says Martin Klíma, executive producer of the game studio.
Photo: Warhorse Studios
Also a walking advertisement on social media is actor Luke Dale, the face and voice of Mr. Bird from Pirkštejn. Isn't it strange that you can hardly see the lead actor Tom McKay?
M. F.: I think my relationship with Luke Dale has grown far beyond a professional collaboration. He's a friend of Warhorse, genuinely likes KCD and is very active on social media. Tom McKay is in a slightly different position, he has a family and social media is not his thing and we 100% respect that.
Will fans in the Czech Republic have the chance to meet the KCD2 heroes? Do you have any launch event planned for them or would you have to rent Strahov?
M. F.: We will definitely prepare an event for the release of the game where players will be able to have their copy of the game signed. We probably won't fill Strahov, so we'll probably meet at a more intimate venue.
