When a major gaming website announces your game and for 24 hours it’s the only carrier of that information different things might happen.
For example quite a few of other media outlets from all over the world can republish that story. And if it’s helped by a proper media blast delivered by a specialized PR agency as well as your own channels it might turn out that when you type do a google search of your game you find there’s almost 300 mentions across more than 20 countries in the first 72 hours alone. Countries from Australia to Vietnam (sadly, nothing in Yemen and Zanzibar, and unless you tried Catalan – Xina also doesn’t count). All covering WARSAW.
I believe a certain admission is owed here. When we set out to make a game based around Warsaw Rising we knew that we can’t push that out to the front of the messaging. As mentioned before – Warsaw Rising isn’t a story many people are familiar with. And we never felt this should be something we constantly bring up.
The way we communicated WARSAW outside of Poland from the start was: “a tactical rpg set in WWII”.
We felt if the game has arresting visuals, compelling gameplay, engaging mechanics and an interesting tactical layer combined with historical setting – we will have gamers interest. And then – and only then do we uncover the facts. That the length of the Rising is actually the imposed time limit on the player. That all the characters are based on people or groups of people who actually took part in the Rising. That all the weapons you wield in game were used in the Rising. That uniforms and equipment were all consulted with a historian dealing with Warsaw Rising. That a dialogist made sure that the lines spoken during the battle by the combatants would be true to the era. That you move on a map based on the maps from Warsaw ’44. That the names of the streets are factual.
And we hoped that when WARSAW was being covered by whatever medium decided to run the story – once the genre, the visuals and all surface level qualities are mentioned – there will just be no way around mentioning what Warsaw Rising actually was.
Near total destruction of the city. Hundreds of thousands people killed. Even more relocated from the capital. Which until that point might not have featured in
Months later there’s more than 400 publications on WARSAW across major gaming media all around the world, and all of these mention Warsaw Rising. Sometimes in media that never touched upon that subject. All of these refer to the game first – as was intended. WARSAW is not a performance project but a game and needs to be one if it is to succeed commercially.
But at the same we’re extremely proud with what we achieved. In bringing a piece of Polish history to the forefront for hundreds of gaming media outlets.