All right, folks. New interview with Dan (creative lead) and Martin (producer). Both co-owners.
The made it to the photoshop torture chamber and on the cover! of some... thing... I've never heard about (but it says it is a supplement of one of the biggest newspaper here, so). Anyway.
here -
http://www.floowie.com/cs/cti/17509538735254256bf2692/#/strana/1/zvacseni/100/
the interview itself starts one page 14
There is nothing new, but let's have some summary:
- Console games used to (5 years back) outsell PC copies in orders of magnitude, due to piracy of course. This ratio has gotten much better thanks to digital distribution, yet consoles are still more financially viable, but PC is significant again. Also piracy is a concern of publisher, not the developer. So bye bye, DRM-free (aside from Steamworks), if publisher is a cunt.
- They were being discouraged by majority of people every time they were working on some ambitious project (Hidden and Dagerous, Mafia 1) and it isn't any different now. "Who fucking cares about Jan Zizka and the Hussites out there in the world?"
- Although the game is being made with CryEngine they implement significant portion of their own unique technologies (which do have impact on player's experience, so not talking about in-house tools)
- Mafia 1's budget was ca $1M (one!) and was made by team of roughly 30 people, now they are talking about tens of millions although they only talk about "industry standard" not about this particular project. Dan said several times in the past they aim to be cheaper and more effective competitors to western devs. So something like CD Projekt who were able to build own tech and monstrous RPG for some 15 (20?) million in 4(?) years while most of the West struggles to fight for survival with selling millions of copies of safe-bet, so-so-quality, badly designed, simple, film-y, easy, highly restricted linear games (my words, not Dan's)
- They have the biggest problem to find good programmers, all other positions have more than enough applicants. Most applicants are for music and art (although finding good 3D artist is a tough fight).
- Kickstarter and F2P are mentioned as the two biggest revolutions in the industry and that every old-type dev and publisher is nervous as hell awaiting the outcome of it. Star Citizen and Minecraft are mentioned for crowndfunding part of the revolution and Wargaming.net and whole Chinese market for the other.
- Skyrim is again mentioned as the biggest competitor, told to have sold 16m copies.
- Again has been confirmed that this is historical RPG (no fantasy)
- Final budget, devtime and sales plans hint: "Regarding this project we have such image in our minds: If we sell over 1 million copies the income will be twice the investments. The game is to be developed in 2 or 3 years which means yearly return of investment is about 30%."
- Their investor (one Czech billionaire) aims to create a valuable gamedev company, not to create just this one project. If this project fails to return the investments they won't cease to exist.
So that should be it.
