Dev Diary 7
This is one of those posts a lot of developers dream of writing some day. It's my privilege to do it on behalf of Novarama, so here we go:
Killsquad has been the #1 Worldwide Best Selling game on Steam for a good chunk of last week, and continues to sell really well. It's outperforming our expectations, and building a community we could only dream of.
So, in no particular order:
To the developers of Killsquad, who worked tirelessly out of sheer faith and work ethic on a really hard proposition: to do a brand new IP from scratch. The fame is all yours now. You deserve it.
To everyone at Novarama, who helped the Killsquad team succeed. It's not only about what you do. It's about what you do to help others achieve a goal. That's the true measure of generosity.
Here's to the wives, husbands, kids, dogs, cats, boyfriends and girlfriends. You gave us your loved ones for a good 2 years. We hope they come back home after the battle proud, scarred, but saying "Yes, but I did Killsquad".
To the Government of the Autonomy of Catalonia, who believed in us, helped us financially to realize our vision. We hope our success brings jobs, and a clear roadmap for young kids out there: do game companies. It can be done.
I want to thank you Indiecade and our friend Caspar Gray. Without these two, no E3 booth for Killsquad. No E3: no visibility. No visibility: no game.
Everyone who came to the E3 booth: you rock. Amanda and Victor from Epic. Alexander from COG Connected. Erick from Subnation. The folks from NVIDIA. Nick from Microsoft. The folks from RPGFan. You were the first ones who saw the game, and made us believe it could be a hit.
A huge thank you goes to our PR firm, PlanofAttack: Chris, Aidan, Audra. I remember having a Baileys with Chris at GDC 2 years ago, and saying "we'll do this game and set the world on fire". Well, look at us now. If you need PR, hire them. Stellar.
Speaking of which, none of this would have happened without Vaiva Viktute, our Campaign Manager. We're now erecting a statue of you in our offices. On a horse. Leading the charge.
We move East now, to the folks at Original Force 3D in Nanjing, China. Shirley Tang, our producer there. You deserve everything. Like those weapons? Those enemies? Those props? Well, Original Force did them.
To my ex-bosses at Sony: Pete Smith, John McLaughlin, Mitsuo Hirakawa, Shuhei Yoshida. We learned how to do games by watching you.
To everyone at Epic: Mario, Sjoerg, Michael. Game looks great, right? Maybe these guys know why ;-)
To Matt at Valve Software. It's got to feel weird to see a developer come all the way from Barcelona to Seattle and say "we're gonna do a killer game". But you believed in us.
To Saul Gascon & everyone at Starbreeze. Your contribution may be invisible. But extremely important.
To Patrick Seibert, Steam wizard extraordinaire. Your insights paved the way to a successful campaign.
Thanks to Jon Labrie. Boo Kim. Dakota Grabowski. Tina Kowalewski. Peter Lee. Raul Aguaviva. And many more who offered us helping hand, guiding conversation, feedback or just a "hey, it's looking good" when we needed it the most.
To the streamers. Especially, to the original bunch, who began streaming when no-one knew us. Vulkan. Splattercat. VicioOMT. Toney Mo. It's easy to stream Fortnite: everybody will like it. But streaming a brand new game, reporting bugs back to us? That's class.
To all the fans. It's impossible to put down in words how it feels when someone enjoys something you created. Impossible. On Discord, on the games we play daily with y'all. On Twitter. You've been extremely supportive, surprisingly polite, unbelievably patient. Now, if we can get y'all to cheat a bit less, we'll be in a great spot!!!!! ;-)
I could carry on forever. I'm surely missing people, so apologies to everyone involved. Paraphrasing Bilbo, I'll say I've thanked only one fourth of those who deserve it. And I'd like to thank each one of you four times more than I'm thanking you already.
Now the pressure is back to us. Killsquad is going to grow in the next weeks and months. Think about this: when you guys weren't there, look at what we did. We now feel your passion. That's the fuel we need to reach even higher.
Labor omnia vincit
Novarama
P.S: join us to keep the conversation going.
We're live on Discord at: discord.gg/rddgwum
Follow us on Twitter at: @killsquadgame
Thank you.
Killsquad has been the #1 Worldwide Best Selling game on Steam for a good chunk of last week, and continues to sell really well. It's outperforming our expectations, and building a community we could only dream of.
So, in no particular order:
To the developers of Killsquad, who worked tirelessly out of sheer faith and work ethic on a really hard proposition: to do a brand new IP from scratch. The fame is all yours now. You deserve it.
To everyone at Novarama, who helped the Killsquad team succeed. It's not only about what you do. It's about what you do to help others achieve a goal. That's the true measure of generosity.
Here's to the wives, husbands, kids, dogs, cats, boyfriends and girlfriends. You gave us your loved ones for a good 2 years. We hope they come back home after the battle proud, scarred, but saying "Yes, but I did Killsquad".
To the Government of the Autonomy of Catalonia, who believed in us, helped us financially to realize our vision. We hope our success brings jobs, and a clear roadmap for young kids out there: do game companies. It can be done.
I want to thank you Indiecade and our friend Caspar Gray. Without these two, no E3 booth for Killsquad. No E3: no visibility. No visibility: no game.
Everyone who came to the E3 booth: you rock. Amanda and Victor from Epic. Alexander from COG Connected. Erick from Subnation. The folks from NVIDIA. Nick from Microsoft. The folks from RPGFan. You were the first ones who saw the game, and made us believe it could be a hit.
A huge thank you goes to our PR firm, PlanofAttack: Chris, Aidan, Audra. I remember having a Baileys with Chris at GDC 2 years ago, and saying "we'll do this game and set the world on fire". Well, look at us now. If you need PR, hire them. Stellar.
Speaking of which, none of this would have happened without Vaiva Viktute, our Campaign Manager. We're now erecting a statue of you in our offices. On a horse. Leading the charge.
We move East now, to the folks at Original Force 3D in Nanjing, China. Shirley Tang, our producer there. You deserve everything. Like those weapons? Those enemies? Those props? Well, Original Force did them.
To my ex-bosses at Sony: Pete Smith, John McLaughlin, Mitsuo Hirakawa, Shuhei Yoshida. We learned how to do games by watching you.
To everyone at Epic: Mario, Sjoerg, Michael. Game looks great, right? Maybe these guys know why ;-)
To Matt at Valve Software. It's got to feel weird to see a developer come all the way from Barcelona to Seattle and say "we're gonna do a killer game". But you believed in us.
To Saul Gascon & everyone at Starbreeze. Your contribution may be invisible. But extremely important.
To Patrick Seibert, Steam wizard extraordinaire. Your insights paved the way to a successful campaign.
Thanks to Jon Labrie. Boo Kim. Dakota Grabowski. Tina Kowalewski. Peter Lee. Raul Aguaviva. And many more who offered us helping hand, guiding conversation, feedback or just a "hey, it's looking good" when we needed it the most.
To the streamers. Especially, to the original bunch, who began streaming when no-one knew us. Vulkan. Splattercat. VicioOMT. Toney Mo. It's easy to stream Fortnite: everybody will like it. But streaming a brand new game, reporting bugs back to us? That's class.
To all the fans. It's impossible to put down in words how it feels when someone enjoys something you created. Impossible. On Discord, on the games we play daily with y'all. On Twitter. You've been extremely supportive, surprisingly polite, unbelievably patient. Now, if we can get y'all to cheat a bit less, we'll be in a great spot!!!!! ;-)
I could carry on forever. I'm surely missing people, so apologies to everyone involved. Paraphrasing Bilbo, I'll say I've thanked only one fourth of those who deserve it. And I'd like to thank each one of you four times more than I'm thanking you already.
Now the pressure is back to us. Killsquad is going to grow in the next weeks and months. Think about this: when you guys weren't there, look at what we did. We now feel your passion. That's the fuel we need to reach even higher.
Labor omnia vincit
Novarama
P.S: join us to keep the conversation going.
We're live on Discord at: discord.gg/rddgwum
Follow us on Twitter at: @killsquadgame
