Grandlion1981
Lead Alchemist Studio
I'm sorry for the disappointment, we did all we could to make it work. We are also crushed that it didn't work out. We spent a lot of time, money and energy, but there was just not enough traction to get people to invest in this project. You will find below some of the blockers we faced and a few comments.
- Political: Most of the investment in the game industry nowadays comes from China, so people/companies with Chinese ties do not want to get in trouble in funding any games with a topic that might have a connection with Chinese politics. (Vietnam Borders with China and China involvement in the Vietnam War conflict), then you can also include all the small and mid-tier publishers that want to sell their games in China. They do not want to take the risk to offend the Chinese Government. This is overall one of the big issue, the number of people willing to invest in something else than F2P games is limited and most of them have Chinese connections or Chinese market interests.
- Sensitivity: People that are afraid that a Vietnam War game will not be well accepted in the US Market (This only came from people outside of the US). Then there are a significant amount of people that see anything related to real conflicts as something too sensitive/bad/ugly and do not want to touch it with a 5-foot pole. In one version of our game, we had civilians in it (That you were trying to help) well, that freaked some people out. Civilians that can be hurt by collateral fire, no way!
- Budget: As a new studio, asking for a budget to do a game that would have a production-quality close to XCOM was most of the time considered unreasonable. The classic can you do call of duty like quality with the budget of Pacman. There are lot of "experienced" people in the industry that have no idea on the costs of building something. We also refused to play the usual trick of lying on production cost and coming back after for more money once the partners are in too deep to refuse. This is a part of the industry I really despise, but the truth is people expect it, when we gave a realistic budget people either thought we were trying to make money out of their back (charging more for the game than it is worth) or they thought that if we asked X we would need X + 50% which made the budget outrageous. The bullshit is pervasive with "professionals" in this industry I really hate that.
- Team: No one complained about the quality of the team, but as a new studio this being our first game, they saw this as a risk.
- Production stage: This one is a classic, come to see us when you will have this or that ready in the game. This is a polite way to say we are not willing to take risks in your project. Please come back when the game is 95% finished and we will make you an offer.
- Market size: No one complained about the market size opportunity, we did our homework and did extensive market research with hard data that confirmed that the Vietnam War topic is getting a lot of traction.
- Personal taste: In this industry people do stuff more by gut than by analyzing stuff. Even with strong data and the best material, a lot of people will just say no, because they just don't like the theme personally. On a subject like Vietnam (or any modern conflict), you will find a lot of people that will just say no because Real War is bad. It doesn't matter if there is a market and people are willing to pay a lot of money. You need to find someone that really believes in your idea with deep pockets and then you have a decent shot.
- Kickstarter: There is no way for a new studio to get enough funding for a project like that on Kickstarter, we would need to get about 500-600K EUR to be able to move the game to what is called a polished Vertical Slice to be able to get another shot a pitching the game to investors/publishers again. In order to do a campaign able to raise that amount of cash, we would need to invest a significant amount of money that we don't have. Based on our research we do not believe it is possible for a project at our stage to raise that kind of cash on Kickstarter. We also do not want to get people's money and not be able to deliver we are here to stay and we value our reputation.
We are working on a new IP, that is not set in the world as we know it. It will still allow us to offer an experience of Early/Mid 20th century conflicts. We are very excited about it, but we want to mature it more before we can talk about it. We also want it to be strong enough to become a transmedia IP to allow us to not be limited to Video Games as those are very expensive and difficult to make. It would also allow us to get our video Games projects produced by another game studio if needed. So we are focusing on building a strong IP first and then it will be easier to get new games done once we have a visual universe we can present to people.
- Political: Most of the investment in the game industry nowadays comes from China, so people/companies with Chinese ties do not want to get in trouble in funding any games with a topic that might have a connection with Chinese politics. (Vietnam Borders with China and China involvement in the Vietnam War conflict), then you can also include all the small and mid-tier publishers that want to sell their games in China. They do not want to take the risk to offend the Chinese Government. This is overall one of the big issue, the number of people willing to invest in something else than F2P games is limited and most of them have Chinese connections or Chinese market interests.
- Sensitivity: People that are afraid that a Vietnam War game will not be well accepted in the US Market (This only came from people outside of the US). Then there are a significant amount of people that see anything related to real conflicts as something too sensitive/bad/ugly and do not want to touch it with a 5-foot pole. In one version of our game, we had civilians in it (That you were trying to help) well, that freaked some people out. Civilians that can be hurt by collateral fire, no way!
- Budget: As a new studio, asking for a budget to do a game that would have a production-quality close to XCOM was most of the time considered unreasonable. The classic can you do call of duty like quality with the budget of Pacman. There are lot of "experienced" people in the industry that have no idea on the costs of building something. We also refused to play the usual trick of lying on production cost and coming back after for more money once the partners are in too deep to refuse. This is a part of the industry I really despise, but the truth is people expect it, when we gave a realistic budget people either thought we were trying to make money out of their back (charging more for the game than it is worth) or they thought that if we asked X we would need X + 50% which made the budget outrageous. The bullshit is pervasive with "professionals" in this industry I really hate that.
- Team: No one complained about the quality of the team, but as a new studio this being our first game, they saw this as a risk.
- Production stage: This one is a classic, come to see us when you will have this or that ready in the game. This is a polite way to say we are not willing to take risks in your project. Please come back when the game is 95% finished and we will make you an offer.
- Market size: No one complained about the market size opportunity, we did our homework and did extensive market research with hard data that confirmed that the Vietnam War topic is getting a lot of traction.
- Personal taste: In this industry people do stuff more by gut than by analyzing stuff. Even with strong data and the best material, a lot of people will just say no, because they just don't like the theme personally. On a subject like Vietnam (or any modern conflict), you will find a lot of people that will just say no because Real War is bad. It doesn't matter if there is a market and people are willing to pay a lot of money. You need to find someone that really believes in your idea with deep pockets and then you have a decent shot.
- Kickstarter: There is no way for a new studio to get enough funding for a project like that on Kickstarter, we would need to get about 500-600K EUR to be able to move the game to what is called a polished Vertical Slice to be able to get another shot a pitching the game to investors/publishers again. In order to do a campaign able to raise that amount of cash, we would need to invest a significant amount of money that we don't have. Based on our research we do not believe it is possible for a project at our stage to raise that kind of cash on Kickstarter. We also do not want to get people's money and not be able to deliver we are here to stay and we value our reputation.
We are working on a new IP, that is not set in the world as we know it. It will still allow us to offer an experience of Early/Mid 20th century conflicts. We are very excited about it, but we want to mature it more before we can talk about it. We also want it to be strong enough to become a transmedia IP to allow us to not be limited to Video Games as those are very expensive and difficult to make. It would also allow us to get our video Games projects produced by another game studio if needed. So we are focusing on building a strong IP first and then it will be easier to get new games done once we have a visual universe we can present to people.
