The Gamescom People Do Not Hear About: Part 2

The Gamescom People Do Not Hear About: Part 2

Anyway, after my tour through the countries section I went to see if I could score some interviews with the people that I mentioned before, TaleWorlds Entertainment creators of Mount and Blade. I went there and talked with one of the PR guys who seemed surprised that I came at all and then told me that they were completely booked off. I said that was fine, gave him my card and left. I went to see Frontier, the creators of Elite: Dangerous, but same result. I tried a lot of developers but same results.

I even got a simple no from the developers of everyone's favorite game Rambo. Remember the PC on rails shooter that made Angry Joe go insane, yes those guys. It turns out that, and I am not dramatizing, that they are making another game. Yes I know. Furthermore the title is now Terminator. When I got there I was greeted by Scott, who I had a talk with about his company's past. I told them that the bad experience with the game was probably a good thing, as they now can learn from their mistakes, he agreed and even mentioned how the bad press sold copies because people bought their game as a joke, no kidding. I asked him about the Terminator game and also if it would be possible to do an interview regarding it. He said no, as they are not ready to even talk about it. In my head I was confused because why set up a booth when you do not want to talk about your game? Well after that meeting I carried on, as time was running out.

At this point I realized that I was out of my league, the interviews were either booked yesterday during press day or beforehand to special outlets. This was the issue and I was determined to get the content I wanted. I decided to go to Wargaming, the creators of World of Tanks. When I stepped in front of their booth I asked to see if I could get an interview with a developer of one of their games. They were surprised because many of the people that came, at least it seemed, were investors. They asked me to wait a while and then the nice people from the booth managed to turn up one interview. I was asked “do you know the game Master of Orion?”, with some relief I said, “yes I do… wait Wargaming makes that game?”. To my surprise I did not know the new Master of Orion was made by Wargaming, a company that had created world war two themed games for as long as I can remember.

I entered into the fancy booth with large TV screens all around, animated logos for all their games, and an espresso machine. I was greeted by Alexander, the head of research and development at Wargaming. He was also one of the people behind Altima Online, and the original Master of Orion. We chatted for a bit and then decided to sit down on one of the very comfortable leather couches and conduct the interview. I asked him about how he got to where he is now, where Master of Orion is taking itself in its reboot, and the future of the game. It was an interesting interview because I was talking to a veteran of gaming. Many people would not realize who he was and what he did, but to Wargaming he was an essential member.

Alexander’s Interview and Master of Orion: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

After my talk with Alexander I left the Wargaming booth and began to plan my next four hours. While I was happy to met who I met, I only had two interviews and some footage from Warhorse. I needed to find the surefire area for interviews, the indy area. While the press section was full of game developers, the issue was that most of them were either busy speaking with investors or booked solid from Wednesday. The indy section is always full of really fun games with amazing people who really do not have a schedule and also really need the press. The worst thing of all is that they put the indy section outside of the press section in a remote corner of the convention center, almost invisible and hard to find. That is made even more frustrating because this area had at least thirty games in the area of two squash courts. A small, compact area, full of people needing press, my kind of place. Now you might think, “if this area is so hard to find then why not ask an information desk?” Those my friend as much harder to find. They literally have three of them and there are no signs to speak of pointing one to them. But I regress, let us carry on.

To give context on my physical state at this point, I was in a rough shape. I mentally decided that I did not have the time to eat during the convention. Why? Because if I did that I would wait an hour to wait in line and get food and eat, while carrying a lot of camera equipment and travel goods. All in all, my head was not tight on at the time. At the same time during my entire experience at the press section I was playing a fine line. I did not have a pass, so if security would of approached me I would be essentially a person without travel documents in another country. I could of been kicked out. So the main reason I hit the indy section was to stop playing my luck and leave. I left out of the calm and sparsely populated press section into the roaring crowd of half a million visitors.

On my way through convention halls I stumbled accross a title that was very familiar to myself, Endless Space. On a second look I realized that there was a sequel to one of my favorite space 4x strategies. From there I was joined by Amplitudes senior game designer Maxence. He agreed to an interview and we talked about where the titles is going and he told me about his journey from school to his current position within the critically acclaimed studio. This was right next to the t-shirt throwing MLG booth that created such a noise the interview sounds like it was shot next to a warzone. Turns out that t-shirts are the natural prey of convention goers.

Maxence’s Interview and Endless Space 2: https://www.youtube.com/wat...

To make the events that followed brief, I roamed for an hour through the convention halls looking for that indy area. I saw the land of Blizzard, EA’s Empirical setup, and Ubisoft's towering displays, but I was not looking for them, I was looking for the indy area. After many wrong turns and a lot of going in circles I found the “Indy Village”, as it was called. Imagine, so many cool games, many this year were VR based. Now it was time to get some quality coverage.

Written by Sean W.Havel - Chief Content creator of the Seanarchy Gaming Channel.

Part 3: http://n4g.com/user/blogpos...