Submitted by Erik on
Good day soldiers,
I'd like to start off by thanking you guys for your activity and involvement on the blog and forum. As I've said before, this whole proces would be very different and a lot harder without your input and support. Your aid in game design issues is invaluable (stacking, what makes CoC fun, etc) . And your aid will be greatly needed when the testing starts as well :-). Its hard to imagine what this proces would be like without your support. A lot less fun and motivating, thats for sure.
Developing Call of Combat; a long proces
Its high time to update you guys about how the whole development proces is going. Florian and I have discovered that it's certainly not easy, and taking longer than we initially expected. One of the main reasons for the delay is that we have been adjusting our goals and expectations along the way. We started off in November 2012 with the motto 'lets give this a good try and see where it takes us'. Now, a year and four months later, we have shifted to: 'this really is the best damn game concept the world has ever seen, so lets develop it in such a manner that the world will be impressed by the entirety of it'. Rather than be put off because certain aspects have not been given enough thought/effort.
As we all know, the game concept already rocked in Call of Combat v1. It was just everything around it that lacked sufficient investment of time, money and effort. Think of the art, tech, sound and marketing departments for example. But lets not get into that too much now, I think most of us have a pretty clear idea about what went wrong in the previous version. And thats exactly what we are changing right now. Apart from the game concept, which together with your help we are thoroughly scrutinizing to ensure that its perfect in every way, we are putting A LOT of effort into everything else as well. The new version will be technically stable, visually attractive, sound great and be intuitive to interact with. Marketing efforts will hopefully result in getting enough players. And on top of that everything will be maintained and improved when the game is alive and kicking.
Low-cost approach
Now.. lets get back to why its taking so long to develop the game, as that is what I wanted to explain in this post in the first place. Up until not too long ago we have maintained a practically zero-cost approach. Meaning that literally noone in the team got paid in any way for their efforts. We are very grateful to all of these people who have been and still are helping out! A few months ago Florian and I have invested a little bit of money to give the project a small boost. Most of all this meant being able to cover all the costs such as the office, project tools and in particular a few experienced people. Currently we have a team of 15 guys, of which only a couple get a (very low) salary. How awesome is that? Very awesome :) It has a downside as well though. Most volunteers within the team have either a full-time job so very little time or not a whole lot of experience meaning their work output isn't always as rapid. This is exactly why the whole development proces is going quite slow. Or in other words, why your patience is being tested the way it is.
Another huge step in the right direction
To speed up the entire proces, we have decided to invest another (larger) sum of money. This will allow us to hire another couple of experienced professionals, at least up until September this year. Thats only half a year, which isnt a very long period of time. For those of you that dont know this, you'd be surprised how much (experienced) people cost ;) For the record: we have decided to do this with our own money. Attracting external investors requires a lot of time and effort, which is something we prefer not to deal with for the time being. Fortunately its not required either at the moment.
Our plan is to launch a crowdfunding (Kickstarter) campaign near the end of summer / beginning of fall of this year. We consider this to be the first major test for Call of Combat. Quite a lot will depend on the success of this campaign, so we really hope to have your support at that time.
Conclusion
I'd like to conclude this post the same way as I started it: by thanking you all. This time for your patience. And by apologizing for the delays that have occurred. I think that, back in November 2012, we put the official release date on spring 2014. Thats not gonna happen I'm afraid.. :-) I know that many of you, just like myself :D, cant wait for the game to be up and running. We are working extremely hard and doing all that lies within our power to have a version ready to be played ASAP. The beta release date remains a bit vague, we hope to have a lot more clarity on this within the next month or two. The good news is that we do still aim to release Call of Combat next winter. With a bit of luck, 2014 might even be the year where it all starts again for Call of Combat!!
Will keep you updated!
Salutizzle,
Erik