KING Art’s journey from a bunch of artworks they saw on the internet to Germany’s Game of the Year. Launch The team worked extremely hard and kept on working after release. We did community support, monitored and optimised our online services, prepared free content updates, and did hotfixes and patches. For the first twelve weeks after release, we released an update each and every week. We didn’t initially plan for a break-neck speed like this but since some players and reviewers felt that the game did not have enough content to justify the price tag, we released additional free content faster than initially planned. We also had some technical difficulties that needed to be addressed quickly. In the first six months after release, we released many new features, some of them pre-planned, some of them based on player feedback, a ton of new maps, a completely new game mode and many improvements for free. Steam reviews rose from “Mostly Positive” to “Very Positive” and sales stayed strong, especially during sales. We also released the 4-map mini campaign “Rusviet Revolution” that Kickstarter backers received for free. During all of this, we started work on the big addon, “Operation Eagle”. The add-on introduces a new faction and a new sub-faction with over 30 new units/buildings, pushing the total to around 120 units. We also introduced a new unit type, flying units. Some of us have worked on Iron Harvest and Operation Eagle for well over four years now, and we are proud of what we achieved. At the same time, it is time for something new. We have made a big step with Iron Harvest, and we are looking forward to taking what we have learned and start the next projects. What worked? Marketing, PR and community work was pretty successful. We had an exceptionally successful CGI trailer (25+ Mio. views) and a big, active and overall positive community. We believe it’s important for a developer to be involved in these things and set ambitious goals together with the publisher. The overall quality and presentation were good, especially for the first RTS we ever did. Our careful planning, the extensive prototyping and the fact that many experienced developers worked together with young talent helped to make Iron Harvest a well-rounded affair – despite the fact it was the by far most complicated and biggest game we did so far. What didn’t work? Departments vs taskforces: We had a department structure for a long time but in some departments we saw the limit of this structure when 10, 12 developers needed to be organized and kept up to date by a lead. In future projects we will work more with interdisciplinary taskforces of 5-6 people. The game felt smaller than it is. Some people were complaining that the game wasn’t worth full price. This surprised us because Iron Harvest was one of the biggest RTS games in terms of content at release. We had close to 100 units, 3 campaigns with over 20 hours of playtime, coop, multiplayer, multiple game modes, a big meta game… yet when you look back at it, it did not feel like it. We didn’t show off the depth of the game and many features were kind of hidden. For upcoming games, we will make sure they feel as big and deep as they are. Team
In addition, we had external contributors for 3D Art, Concept Art, Sound FX, Music, Mocap, Voice Recordings and of course marketing, PR and product people on Koch’s side. Further “Making of Iron Harvest” articles will follow soon! Jan Theysen Jan Theysen is Creative Director at KING Art and one of the two founders. He is the Iron Harvest Game Director and worked on narrative design, the campaigns and game design. He was part of the small group of people who laid the foundation for the game that would become KING Arts’ biggest project to date. The post Making of Iron Harvest: Finding the Project (Part 3/3) appeared first on Making Games. Making of Iron Harvest: Finding the Project (Part 3/3) published first on https://spymugblog.tumblr.com/ Making of Iron Harvest: Finding the Project (Part 3/3) published first on https://waltergillespie.tumblr.com/ via Tumblr Making of Iron Harvest: Finding the Project (Part 3/3)
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