Reminiscing Part 2

I guess I should start with an apology as I mentioned in part 1 that I would have part 2 up within the next week... However I personally hit a spout of depression and frankly didn't want to leave the darkest corner of my shadowy room. And on that note, I Kieran Kehoe of PolyInteractive Games would like to say, sorry.

Alex had managed to find a place for our new found homelessness, it was rent free, not that secure... and also not in a secure neighbourhood in a small flat block with drug addicts in every room... No seriously, all of our closest neighbours were drug addicts, but this would become our home for the next 4 months to come. It wasn't the biggest of living spaces, especially for 2 grown adults with all their possessions in one space, but we managed to turn this tiny room into our very own nerd den/ office, chucking out the bed, and living in sleeping bags and on futons. To give you guys n gals an idea of the living space of which we inhabited, I took it upon myself to design you a not so accurate blueprint...

As I was designing this blueprint I realised it looks bigger than it was, but in this design it doesn't account for all of our baggage, coats, shoes, figures... All of our personal items. But our biggest issue wasn't the living space, nor was it Karen banging on Johns door at 3 - 4am demanding drugs because she can't quite sleep... or Karen ringing every intercom in the building at 5am because she'd locked herself out of the main building. It was the hunger, as our product had failed to impact the market as much as we'd have liked, we were left with £0 and still having to make minimal debt payments with what NEA fund we were given to survive. So we hit food banks, and I'm not going to lie... Those things are life savers and I encourage people to donate food they're not going to eat to these things, it's because of food banks myself and Alex survived as long as we did back then.

For the next 2 months I and Alex worked on 6 new game design documentations, for games that were in the "now" and games that were unique in their own way but would have worked well on the market... However these ideas/ projects needed funding or a dedicated team willing to work for royalties, as we have no cash to spare. So we hit the Polycount forums searching from programmers and artists of all kinds, from environment to prop, but we were capable of starting our project with a small team. Whilst searching for a team to help any one of our new 6 game designs, we also took to sending emails to "Publishers" I know I know... Never send your ideas to publishers as they will steal it... However at this point we needed help, and no Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaign has done well with just pictures and words... They want substance. So we reached out to publishers who claim to consider ideas that are in the written format with a few images, so we did just that, although the controversial thing I noted was in their emails in return "We like/ love the idea, however we'd like to see a vertical slice/ gameplay/ video of the game in action before we can make a decision on this" despite our emails stating that there is no such thing due to funding issues, we need pre-funding for vertical slices/ demos, this is why we're reaching out to you in the first place. And this is my current gripe with Publishers, I know it's a lot to ask for your time, but if you took a day of emails and responses to a single gaming studio about a product you "Like" you could learn about the capabilities of the studio offering said product. With funding we can make an amazing studio, with funding we can kick start our games and start making an honest business. However, after my above rant... If you're a publisher and you're reading this because we sent you a link to our website, then you're excluded from the hatred as you've clearly taken your time to seek out more information and we thank you.

Things were going great despite our situation, we were working on a new game "Poploons" with the help of our friend Kevin, a programmer who previously worked at Google, and with his amazing coding ability and knowledge we were able to smash out Poploons very quickly. However due to him starting school again things soon went dark , so with Poploons being completed (minus the implementation of adverts) we decided to release it as a paid game, as reading reviews on other similar games we noted that over half of the complaints were about advertisements tricking kids into clicking and following said advertisements. But it seems making Poploons a paid game was also another issue, as it failed to attract attention despite it's child friendly art, however we do in future have plans to make Poploons free once our programmer once again becomes available.

It's not as scary as it sounds, the studio didn't actually split up... And by studio I mean myself and Alex as business partners. But due to the strain of debts, lack or responses from publishers and no sign of funding in our near future, it took a severe tole on Alex's mental health, as well as mine. And due to this strain Alex moved back down to his hometown Somerset, pretty much shutting down and abandoning responsibility (which I don't blame him for). took it upon myself to gather all the company information, contacts, debts and place them all on my head, only asking Alex to do one thing... "Get a small job" so he can help pay off these debts while I work on the company, taking at least 30% of the stress and strain from his shoulders and placing them on mine. And I'm not going to lie, this has been a long up hill battle, a very stressful, anxiety filled hill... And I we're still not at the top, but we're also not giving up. After Alex moved down south, I moved in with my girlfriend, who has been amazing enough to take my stress and help keep me clothed, fed with a roof over my head while I try and get this company onto it's feet, and I am aware that it's because she has two mouths to feed, that she can't treat herself, but one day I would love to return the favour.

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Once again I would like to thank who ever took the time to read these blogs, as its something we hold close to our hearts, and we hope that one day you will see our studio, and you'll know our story. And I'd like to thank the people who have actually helped us in our times of need. Once again, if you're a publisher reading this, please consider our game idea and help us make a future out of what ever idea it is we have sent you. Don't forget to donate to food banks. And if you'd like to back us as a company you can find a donation button on our home page, and we will appreciate anything you send us and hopefully in future we can send you something nice in return. And last of all, if you want to invest in our company please please please reach out to us, because we have a lot to give to the gaming industry.