The Kiev studio Loadme, with the support of the Kaliningrad company Herocraft, recently released a shareware turn-based strategy “Corsairs: The Storm of the Seas” on Google Play. As part of the “Who’s who” section, we asked the guys a few questions.
I answered the questions Nikolay Veremyev is a game designer and studio head.
Hi! First, tell us a little about yourself. How long have you been playing games, why are you making mobile phones now?
Hi! We are a young and ambitious Kiev studio founded in 2012.Even before the studio was founded, we all had a little experience in developing mobile games in other studios, so when we got together, we knew for sure that we would make games for Android and iOS mobile platforms. Our first project was the game Cosmo Battles.
Loadme In the case of the Corsairs, Herocraft acted as your publisher.
But if I remember correctly, about a year ago you were just looking for a publisher. In general, how difficult is it to find him today and what does he usually require (and most importantly, what does he give /promise to give)?
Yes, that’s right. About a year ago, we were actively looking for a publisher for our game “Pirate Battles” – the working name of “Corsairs”. In our case, it was not easy to find a publisher, since not all publishers have a target audience for our project. But still, in the end we had several offers, and we chose Herocraft.
As a rule, publishers want to see the project already at the alpha stage, in which they can consider the potential of the project. In our case, the publisher is actively involved in the development of the project. Herocraft also took over QA testing, marketing, support, localization and analytics.
Since it turns out that you started without a publisher, please tell us about where the young teams are getting money for development today? How did it happen with you?
The young team should immediately determine the source of funding. There are only two possible options: own or third-party financing. In our case, we were lucky, and the “Business Angel” Alexey Kleshchevnikov, the head of WNET, took us under his wing. He provided us with everything we needed to conduct development.
If it’s not a secret, can you share the exact figures: how much money was spent on the development (or at least what composition and how long they worked on the project and how long they then brought the game with the support of the publisher)?
Unfortunately, I can’t share exact figures, but I can say that more than $150,000 was spent on development. Before signing the contract with Herocraft, a team of 6 people worked on the game for a little over a year – 2 2D/3D artists, 1 technical artist, 1 client programmer, 1 server programmer and a game designer. The game was brought to the world release with the support of the publisher for about 7 months.
Looking back, after the launch of the project from the stocks, what would be the main problems you would highlight? How were they solved then, how will you solve them when developing the next title?
“Corsairs: The Storm of the Seas” is our first online project, before that the team had no experience in developing server games, so one of the biggest problems was writing the server part of the project. We have already passed this way, and in the next online titles it will be much easier for us.
And the last question: do you have a shareware project, a game service, how is its support going now and who is doing it – you or the publisher?
We support and develop the game together with Herocraft. We have made an update plan and will gradually increase the functionality and content of our game. Many more interesting things await our players in the future!
