Your name: Rob Daytona
Twitter Handle/ Other Social Media: @LoreEmpires
One interesting and random fact about you that people would not necessarily guess: I can sprint the 100m in 10.5
What country you live/work in: UK
The video game company producing the project: Empires Of Lore
The name of the project: Empires Of Lore
Estimated release date: End of Q1 2020
link to website/blog/steam page/Youtube/other: https://facebook.com/EmpiresOfLore
How did you get into making video games? I just woke up one day, frustrated with the lack of games that would truly cater to me and my friends, and said to myself: “Hey you know what? I can do better than what’s currently out there!” The mobile games out there that I have been playing have let me down time and time again, having to abandon games that simply grew apart from their player fan base over time, too many enhancements, too many bugs, too much loss of joy over time, player communities being decimated and those that remain, desperately clinging on to the game, because of the bonds they made with their guild mates and not the game… Surely someone could do better I said to myself.
What is your background in? Business Software development.
Blurb about game: Empires of Lore is a RPG MMO, D&D fantasy world type of idle mobile game, time limited, turn based, single and multi-player game. It is currently in mid-development. Our game is designed from day 1 to be minimally Real Life (RL) intrusive taking you to lands far away, in your creative minds. To a place of Fantasy DND RPG MMO, Empires Of Lore is that place, Create empires, Up your skills, Join guilds and, complete single and multi-player events, all with simple tap based pick up and put down any time game play designed for busy individuals. Creating communities of likeminded players, with nail-biting events and entertainment.
What inspired this game? As I got older and settled down with a family of my own with children, I grew increasingly frustrated at no longer having the time to play games as I once did. I managed to play some mobile games on the sly but noticed a pattern in players playing these games. After a while they would abandon the game, saying they could no longer give the game the time it required. This also happened to me. Thus, I decided to create Empires of Lore, based on the D&D RPG genre that I love so much, squarely aimed at people too busy to play games. EOL allows you to play and to be successful in game, without having to spend hours and hours grinding. With EOL I thought very hard about what players had complained about in other games and have done my best to eliminate them in EOL. What makes it unique? While I have paid a lot of attention to the fun element of the game, which all games require, I have also incorporated many aspects to address complaints from other games to ensure the best user enjoyment experience. This just made a whole lot of sense, why would you not take due care to player’s concerns? After all they are the ones that eventually will deliver your ROI, and also be the source of one’s pride for the future, happy players = proud founder.
What will make it a success? The team is small and self-funded, we can spread our ROI over several years ensuring that we don’t become just another pay 2 win game, which is a key concern of most players we speak to. We have been building out our fan base during development and continue to do so in ready ness for release. We run free give away competitions of premium in-game currency to keep things spicy for our community and engage with our fan base. Of course none of that matters, unless the game is great, and for that we are simply taking the very best of all games we have played before and stitching them together, in a mesh of “Oh I really liked that from XXX game back in the 80’s” and “I loved that feature from YYY game in the 90’s” etc, so actually we are meshing up tried and tested fun generators, hence we believe this game will be a success.
Who do you think it will appeal to? The game will appeal to RPG fans, D&D gamers, tabletop gamers, card gamers, any one who likes a non-real time mobile game.
Number of people working on the project and skillsets: 3, most skills needed are covered.
How are you handling art? All art is original, done by a part time artist.
What tech/stack do you use? Xamarin
Are you full-time? If so how did you make the switch to working full-time in game development? Yes I am full time, I saved up to fund this myself and went for it, no worries, no looking back.
Is this your first game? If not how many and what other sorts of projects have you worked on? Yes this is our first game. I have worked on multiple business applications over the years, PC desktop applications and websites. I could have picked something less ambitious for a first game, but I was way too passionate about making something for our target audience that listened to their needs.
What’s been the hardest thing about making this game? Pushing myself to work more hours than one should safely do, pushing myself into learning new skillsets, such as they joys of Facebook advertising to give a simple example.
Anything else you would like people to know about you or the game? We are interested in hearing from game publishers and media so please send us a pm on twitter.
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