Chris Taylor: Public development is "exciting"

Chris Taylor, the founder of US-based independent developer Gas Powered Games, has told GamesIndustry.biz that his plans to create new title Kings and Castles in the public eye is exciting, rather than brave.

Speaking in an interview at this year's DICE Summit, which took place in Las Vegas last week, Taylor explained that the strategy - which involved unveiling the game only one month into development - was in part the result of the challenge of bringing a new IP to market.

"It is exciting," he said. "The brave part? Not so much. I think it just makes sense - in a way too much sense. One of the challenges we have in our business is the introduction of new properties.

"People are afraid of them because they don't have a business model that they can model out on Excel and show how they're going to make a good return on their investment.

"...I've got 22 years of experience, I know a lot of people, and I've placed an incredibly high value on relationships, getting out there, and not hiding away somewhere.

"So I've already got a leg up - but I also have a tremendous amount of respect for our customers and fans. I really respect them, so when I do my first video blog, for example, I'm not jamming a product message down their throats - instead I'm having fun with them, because it is after all about entertaining.

"So I'm in a bit of a unique position to do these kinds of experiments - when you're Evel Knievel and you're jumping 14 buses for the first time, but you've already jumped 12, it looks really scary to people in the audience. But to you it's only a few more buses than you normally jump."

He went on to explain that today it was increasingly important to be "clever and creative" about marketing techniques because "there's more noise," adding that "it's really important that we evolve, and we evolve with the changes and challenges we're confronted with. That's all I'm doing right now."

Taylor, who is active as Deathbot9 on Twitter and actively welcomes direct emails on the Kings and Castles project, has already posted two videoblogs and promised to reply to all correspondence from fans.

"I am going to be listening, and they do affect me - I will be responding back to all the emails, and everybody who's ever written is going to get a response, even if it takes me two, three, six months to get a reply," he said.

"I'm very, very fast on email. Over the course of months and months there probably will be a backlog, but it's actually really fun to do. We will be taking a lot of suggestions, and people will hopefully get to see how it manifest itself - we're not signing our name on the bottom line to a democratised approach... that would be hard to do, and make anybody happy."

The full interview with Chris Taylor is available on GamesIndustry.biz now.