We almost gave up on development because of this..
Hey there everyone, Alex from Vox Games here. I wanted to write a little post about how we almost gave up working on our upcoming game because of a series of issues we've had. Our space station sim has always been a project of love for Stephen and I, and we've been hard at work on it for the past year.
We launched a successful game this year, Regions of Ruin and followed up on it by making Meeple Station.
With the renown we had gotten from ROR, we figured that getting a Publisher (something relatively important in this case, as BRANDING and PRODUCT PLACEMENT on the market are critical to VISIBILITY nowadays)
Days turned into months, and months went by, we spoke to dozens of Publishers and every time, every one of them came back with the same scenario. They loved the game, they loved the concept, but they wouldn't take the risk as they felt a Rimworld Like with Coop gameplay was too risky. Below is a working representation of our morale being chipped away every time a Publisher said no. Hell, I even physically flew out to Poland with my wife to meet up with a Publisher who GUARANTEED a yes, we celebrated it, ate at a nice restauraunt and I flew home content just to be slammed in the gut with a "Nah we're no longer interested" within 48 hours.
In September we launched a Kickstarter Campaign and it had all the impact of a wet fart. Seriously, you can look it up, it had zero impact and it took an inordinate amount of work to put together. I was running a different kickstarter at the same time and that one went super well, so you can imagine the one-two gut punch that it was to the feels to miss the mark on this one. Things were certainly getting to the point where we felt we needed to wonder if we were just making the game nobody wanted.
We explored many concepts, opened up the game's design, opted to put an overworld map in and modding support. And suddenly saw a large influx of popularity. We were slowly churning along, but money was(is) tight, and we were running out fast. Our only option was to find a publisher at this point and there was no telling if anyone would say yes. We had to think outside of the box.
We had been speaking to a good friend from the industry, someone who isn't a publisher but does run a very large series of businesses in the industry whom many allready know, and we kind of fell in together. At first it was just a series of short chats, but something about them got us thinking, we suppose it got him thinking as well because here we are, a few short weeks later, announcing we're going to be sponsored and working hand in hand with a really great group. While we can't announce it yet, we will be doing so soon and would love to hear whom you think it is in the comments below!
If you like what we are doing, the work we are putting in and would like to hear a bit more about the title, please go to
https://store.steampowered.com/app/900010/Meeple_Station/ Our steam page
http://www.meeplestation.com/ Our website where you can find the DEMO
https://discord.gg/eGhaPva Our discord where you can speak with us directly!
Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed the read please comment below, I'll read each and every one and respond to them!
We launched a successful game this year, Regions of Ruin and followed up on it by making Meeple Station.
With the renown we had gotten from ROR, we figured that getting a Publisher (something relatively important in this case, as BRANDING and PRODUCT PLACEMENT on the market are critical to VISIBILITY nowadays)
Days turned into months, and months went by, we spoke to dozens of Publishers and every time, every one of them came back with the same scenario. They loved the game, they loved the concept, but they wouldn't take the risk as they felt a Rimworld Like with Coop gameplay was too risky. Below is a working representation of our morale being chipped away every time a Publisher said no. Hell, I even physically flew out to Poland with my wife to meet up with a Publisher who GUARANTEED a yes, we celebrated it, ate at a nice restauraunt and I flew home content just to be slammed in the gut with a "Nah we're no longer interested" within 48 hours.
In September we launched a Kickstarter Campaign and it had all the impact of a wet fart. Seriously, you can look it up, it had zero impact and it took an inordinate amount of work to put together. I was running a different kickstarter at the same time and that one went super well, so you can imagine the one-two gut punch that it was to the feels to miss the mark on this one. Things were certainly getting to the point where we felt we needed to wonder if we were just making the game nobody wanted.
We explored many concepts, opened up the game's design, opted to put an overworld map in and modding support. And suddenly saw a large influx of popularity. We were slowly churning along, but money was(is) tight, and we were running out fast. Our only option was to find a publisher at this point and there was no telling if anyone would say yes. We had to think outside of the box.
We had been speaking to a good friend from the industry, someone who isn't a publisher but does run a very large series of businesses in the industry whom many allready know, and we kind of fell in together. At first it was just a series of short chats, but something about them got us thinking, we suppose it got him thinking as well because here we are, a few short weeks later, announcing we're going to be sponsored and working hand in hand with a really great group. While we can't announce it yet, we will be doing so soon and would love to hear whom you think it is in the comments below!
If you like what we are doing, the work we are putting in and would like to hear a bit more about the title, please go to
https://store.steampowered.com/app/900010/Meeple_Station/ Our steam page
http://www.meeplestation.com/ Our website where you can find the DEMO
https://discord.gg/eGhaPva Our discord where you can speak with us directly!
Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed the read please comment below, I'll read each and every one and respond to them!
