Tasos: You made a mistake about my presentation - we don't have 3 million users or 50 employees. We have 30 employees and, about the 3 million users… once, a journalist asked us how many people were following the development of our game (It's a video game... we will say more about it later) At the moment we have about 300k registered users at our forums and in our beta – that is, who are actually trying to get into our beta...
Of course, our system cannot support 300K users simultaneously at this stage. Our product is going to be released very soon - Darkfall is our product, a few moments ago there was an image of it here. It's an online video game - that is, it is played through the internet - it's a virtual world that we have created. It is located in a server somewhere in Germany. It’s a game where each user plays a role - that is, he has a character that enters this virtual world and every other character he meets in there is another user from a another place in the world. So, I could be playing with people from all over the world.
The most well known game of the genre is World of Warcraft, and if you haven't heard of it you probably are not familiar with the genre. They have announced having around 10.5 million users without knowing what exactly happens in China, in Russia and in other countries for which we don't have good statistics… 11.5 million users for a product. Up until then, the highest number of users that a game in the genre had was 500k users, from a previous game called Everquest… and in Asia there was something similar…
We started this effort some 6 years ago – it had already been started as a concept in Norway from 4 people. We went to find them, we brought them here to Greece, we incorporated them into us. The interesting bit is that a small company from Norway - as soon as it left the country there were headlines about it in the biggest Norwegian newspaper. I am mentioning this because if something like that happened to a Greek company, no-one would have noticed.
So how did Darkfall start out? We went to Norway and brought the company to Greece. We added Greek technical staff, we brought Greek scientists back from abroad who were working in foreign companies, we brought the technical expertise, and we've been in development now for 6 years non-stop, following a very serious pace because all of our competitors follow serious paces. All our technology is transferable/re-usable - we can make more games with it.
Our philosophy was this: What is it that the users (gamers) from these games want and why is it not given to them? We were playing these games ourselves, that's why we know it was not being done. So we moved in the opposite direction. We thought about what the users wanted, what we wanted, and why it wasn't happening and how it could happen. When we saw that it wasn't happening - because at that time there wasn't technology that could allow such things - we decided to develop the technology ourselves, which in hindsight was a very good decision. But we have doubted this decision many times over the years… we have been developing a video game for 6 years now.
To get an idea of what we are talking about, because you may not be familiar with it… a small video… everyone you see here is a character played by a user… in this case of course, it is us playing in the office. As you can see, it is medieval fantasy.
Noob questioner #1: Do play with only with other users or also with the computer?
Tasos: Yes, yes, both with each other and the computer. There are creatures in the game they can face.
This is for you to get an idea. It is a virtual world which in size is something like a small country, and it supports, this virtual world, 10K users simultaneously… more actually, but we put this as a safety limit. So, imagine 10K users per virtual world, to enter it, to socialise, and... do what you see here.
Forumfall Spy #1: In terms of hardware, what are we talking about?
Tasos: We’re talking about lots of servers, hundreds of proccessors, in Germany.
Forumfall Spy #1: How many?
Tasos: 80, but times 8 processors. To get a magnitude of the processing power, it is enough to envision a virtual world, the tree leaves moving on every tree… lots of things going on, there are millions of objects, tens of thousands of users – this interaction requires much processing power.
Noob Questioner #2: Is there a plot in the game?
Tasos: Yes, there is one... but we are actually interested in... we call this a 'sandbox game' meaning that what we actually have done is give the users a virtual world that provides them with relatively absolute freedom. When I say 'relatively absolute'... well you can't just do anything. Whereas in other games there is a linear progression - meaning, you have to go there, do this, in order to progress (you can't just move freely, which annoyed us as players) - we decided to make what we actually wanted to play as gamers.
And thinking along those lines, I think we have created something unique, because a small company with zero marketing budget has at this moment millions of people following the game - and we are being told we are the most anticipated online game in the world. Of course you could challenge that; however, in every poll that is the result, from a large community… that is quite an achievement. And this is partly due to the fact that we aim to provide what the users actually want.
Cockblocker #1: You have 2 more minutes for the presentation.
Tasos, who goes on for at least another 5 minutes:[/b] I will tell you then something which can perhaps inspire you. Let's not talk just about the game itself but also how it was created. As we said we approached the problem from the opposite direction: what does the user want? We turned to the world market from the start - the Greek market only interests us because we are here. The way in which we function is to make the right partnerships - but always based on what WE want to do.
We had publishers coming to us - large companies, all have heard of them that are familiar with the genre – who told us “Take this money, lots of it, we will take care of the publishing for Europe, the US, anywhere… but we want you to do this thing” (which may not be compatible with what WE want). You may argue that we had the luxury to do something like that [turn the companies away] - no, actually we didn't, and we have made lots of sacrifices. But we would have never made it if we couldn't make it as we wanted, as we believed.
We have a partnership now with a company, Audiovisual SA, for the distribution of the game in Europe, with a deal which was the deal that WE wanted. We were looking and found a company that was willing to accept our terms. So we started from what the users wanted - or rather, what they 'actually' want, because there is a difference between what they want and what they think they want. This is very important - when someone tells you 'I want this' It doesn't necessarily mean that is what that person really wants. In practice, there is often a difference. I could be talking all day, but…
Stupid corporate questioner and timewaster #1: What percentage from the company are actually in the Board?
Tasos: We are 8 people in the Board from the 30 people in the company, and we are all actively involved in the project.
Broke Darkfall fan #1: What will be the cost of the game subscription?
Tasos: It's a bit lower than the competition, about 10 to 11 Euros per month.
Heroic figure of a man #1: And when is it being released?
Tasos: The 22nd of January is our launch date.
[They say something about a demo that Tasos hadn't time to prepare]
Noob questioner #3: And where is the game being launched?
Tasos: Worldwide. We are launching in Europe with the US also taking part. And we have seen that our game can run problem-free from our tests.
Totally fucking fail WoW fan #1: A large portion of your audience is crazy about WoW, why would a WoW player leave a game he's been playing for years and come to you?
Tasos, who’s already answered this question in multiple ways and is imagining running the guy over with a hovertank: We could be talking all day about the things that make Darkfall unique. One thing is what I already mentioned earlier about the company. Another one is the level of interaction we allow among our users, which you can’t find in WoW. And let us not go into graphics and users per server. There is no doubt that WoW is a great game but it's a different game.
We don’t want WoW's users.
We want that portion of the users who are not covered by what WoW offers. And they play WoW and say 'Why can't I do this and that and that'
‘Long-term follower’ #1: You mentioned something about 6 years development, Greeks you brought from abroad, a company from Norway - and you are still in beta... how exactly... ehh…
Tasos, who has just died a little more inside: You mean, how we can justify all these years, right? One of the hardest undertakings in the computer industry is video games, and in video games, the hardest thing you can do is make this type of game. We also made the technology from scratch, which is re-usable. If we had to make this game now, it could only take us a couple of years assuming we had the same team… we had less people than some large companies - who have around 300 people - to produce something similar, or rather not even something like that [but better] – [these companies have] 80 million Euros budget and an additional 80 for marketing.
Notgoingtoinvestinyourcompany dipshit #1: My question is how did you get funding, even if it was for 2 people, working for 6 years....
Tasos: Yes, the budget we had to work with was...
END OF BATTERY!!!!