The Gamescom People Do Not Hear About: Part 1

The Gamescom People Do Not Hear About: Part 1

Written By Sean W.Havel

Gamescom this year was one of innovation. VR was making a big scene, EA was pushing its two big titles, and, unbenounced to many, the smaller independent developers were making themselves shine like never before.

While the rest of the press focused on games such as the new Dawn of War, Battlefield 1, and Titanfall 2 I could not help but feel some sympathy for the smaller studios that are making just as amazing content with under 10% of the resources. This was the Gamescom of independent developers, and to explain this claim fully I will tell a little story.

My first Gamescom had been an amusement park, my second was my first steps into video game journalism, and this time was my largest break yet. While most press had fancy camera crews, professional presenters with years of schooling, and all five days to garner interviews and content; I had six hours, a Canon Legria Mini X, and a year of YouTube content development.

From this perspective the average reader might either feel sympathy or the feeling that I did not know what I was doing. The first notion is not needed and the second is so very true. I was a freelance games journalist, and for those six hours I would get my viewers what they wanted, real people talking about themselves and their games.

I woke up on the Thursday of Gamescom at my hotel right outside of the airport. With enough adrenaline to run a marathon and enough anxiety to pop balloons with my eyes, I journey to Gamescom for my first scheduled interview with Warhorse Studios, the creators of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I realized late that my interview might be hampered by the fact that I was lacking a press pass. This did not stop me.

I went to the convention hall and went straight to the head of personnel. She and I talked for a bit and in the end she refused to let me in. This was due to my lack of press pass and the lack of a Warhorse team member on contact to let me through. My heart then sank. I was responsible to get there on time and I was not going to let someone stop me in my tracks. I asked a fellow journalist from Bonn if he could help, and so he did. He went into the hall and then found that the Warhorse team was not there. I then decided to try a hail mary by calling them on my cell. I believed up until now that the number I had was a landline phone in Prague but instead I get the reassuring voice of Jiri, one of the two PR Managers. It turned out that they were at breakfast and that they would let me in to the place that all convention goers dream, the press section. Imagine a place with free food and drink with almost unlimited access to developers. I was half right.

After getting through about five layers of security, which felt like getting in North Korea, I found myself in a booth within a booth, surrounded by lawyers, publishers, journalists, and corporate agents. I was out of my element, I had not been to this kind of place before and to be honest was very nervous and overwhelmed. I was guided to the Warhorse booth, essentially a small box with a little theater inside. I talked with their CEO, project leads, PR managers, and all sorts of people working on the team. I have to be honest, these were some of the nicest people I have ever met, they were welcoming and knowledgable, people I was very happy to talk too after a long morning of taxis and getting lost in Cologne.

If you do not know about the game, it is an RPG set in 1403 medieval Bohemia, during a time of civil war between Sigismund of Hungary and King Wenceslas of Bohemia. This game is its own success story due the long road they had to take to get to this point. If it was not for a lot of luck I probably would not have met these people or even have gotten into the conventions press section. During the early years the company almost went bankrupt a few times and members of the team, had at some points, to help fund the game. As some of the seasoned gamers here might remember, their kickstarter essentially drove them to a point where they could fund the game and create what they wanted, and it is looking very good indeed. If you compare this to any other story you can say this is the Star Citizen of Medieval RPG’s, now that is something to be proud of.

Moving swiftly on, I decided to just film the presentation and then move on as afterwards I saw a flux of well dressed individuals come to their booth. I did not want to disturb them as I knew they needed to garner attention to their game, they were a company after all and this was their livelihoods. I could see that the team was very busy meeting various investors and journalists (people with suits and press passes).

Warhorse Presentation: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

After the presentation, presented by my friend Toby, it was around 10:30am and I had to get moving, I had less than six hours to go and many people to see.

I began my travels with a fellow from Warhorse Rick Lagnese, who had a friend working at IC, a publishing company. We talked and he mentioned that they had a few games that I could make interviews on. When I got there I was greeted by Jan, who took me into the booth. There I saw many interesting smaller artistic titles, nothing like the previously published Red Orchestra.

I was introduced to Carlos, a game developer from Columbia. Now I have to be honest, I have never heard of game studios from Columbia and I was very excited to see what creations they had in store. To be at Gamescom meant a long journey and a story that I had to tell. I was guided in a small recording room that 1C had set up which featured a TV and big leather couch, perfect for interviews. I sat down, put up my tripod, and then, after talking to Carlos about how it would be conducted, light (wait I had no lights…) camera (had that) and action.

Carlos’s Interview and his game Haimrik: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Carlos had talked to me about his journey through game development and his innovative game Haimrik. This was a very, very, very, dark word based platforming game that really got me excited as we talked and then after the interview, played. I had never seen anything like it; a game where you literally walk on the words of your story and then pick them up off the ground to use to get past other words. Now that was original and very fun to play with.

I had to say farewell as I had five hours left and time was of the essence. I then spent a nice while walking through the convention hall, almost aimlessly lost. I then stumbled into the countries plaza, where every major country had a massive booth with their games in show. France, the UK, USA, Korea, China, Italy, and even Turkey which makes the Mount and Blade games. I was in awe because if one does not dig into it the gaming industry may seem like the USA produces the most, but this is far from the truth. When I was touring the game studios in the Czech Republic I found that they produce more per capita than most other counties. Some booths were however better than others, the Canadian booth (where I was born) was simply a disappointment. No games on show like all the others, just a small business area and some government officials. I did not feel like I was seeing the best of Canada at all, which goes to show how lackluster the support for game studios are here in this country. If you may be saying “well Montreal has Ubisoft”, that is because Quebec actually gives subsidies to game studios, otherwise Ubisoft would of went to New Brunswick and enjoy some cheap lobster.

Part 2: http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...