Gaming company’s first title was the well received Project Warlock – an fps retro shooter created by a 19-year old Pole Jakub Cislo.
Pixelated Milk’s first title was the well received Regalia: of Men and Monarchs – a jrpg created by a team of close friends from Poland.
Despite these two companies’ earlier efforts were good – we couldn't be sure that our unannounced project will actually get people talking. Or even - that the story will be picked up just on the merit of a press release alone. We needed the attention.
Last year Steam saw the launch of some 8 000 games. Getting even a modicum of coverage fighting all the tripe A, triple I, sequels and next efforts from established devs is a challenge. You literally have to fight for attention among the 20 other games that show up daily. And in getting the media attention you also have to continuously combat the giants – games that continuously get coverage as they are what these websites’ audience and viewers continuously want to read and watch.
In short: it’s hard. (whatshesaid).
We felt that our announcement package was solid. A moving trailer. Non-fake, promising in-game screenshots. A less than obvious genre for a WWII game. An unknown chapter of a well known conflict. And a talented team attached. One that actually delivered a good game before.
But for the effect we hoped for we needed the attention from the biggest players out there. We wanted to show up on the radar by presenting the game through a largest possible gaming outlet.
Thanks to the intro by two great guys – Michal and Radek – we managed to get in touch with the editorial team at GameSpot, reached out and then waited. All of 24 hours when we were given the go ahead.
For one months we were going back and forth to deliver additional information, assets, work out the details of the timing and the announcement. Given the implied relationship of the trailer’s characters we were considering the announcement on 14th of February, but decided this might prove to be too much on the nose. And also diverting the attention from the actual story and setting of the game. We then pushed the release by further 12 days.
On the 25th of February, GameSpot shared a teaser Tweet, that currently (and appropriately) sits at 44,4k views.
The teaser consists of the sound of Karl's huge mortat shell hitting the Prudential building, but doesn't show too much. Or anything actually. The only visual clue was the background color that was to evoke more or less contemporary warfare setting. We were quite paranoid and felt that even one tiny detail might have everyone go - "oh. i knew it. It's obviously a Warsaw Rising game". So the sound and the color were the only hints we gave.
Oh. apart from the game's title that was prominently visible: in the Twitter handle's location. We actually alluded to that. But no-one guessed that until the next day.
And then the reveal happened.