Corp Wars - Connected, cross-genre games: Games that affect each other within one world
iCrowdNewswire -
Apr 7, 2015 8:55 AM ET
Corp Wars – Connected, cross-genre games
Games that affect each other within one world.
Be a city-builder, general, explorer, trader, saboteur, anything you want! By connecting several popular genres, a broad range of gamers can play Corp Wars just the way they like.
The Company
Our plan is to start a separate company for Corp Wars split between our game studio, Kybernesis, and any investors. This company will then be the owner of all the games set in the Corp Wars franchise while development will be done by the game studio, Kybernesis.
Kybernesis
Kybernesis started back in 2007 with the dream of making a self-sustaining game studio with international focus. During 2010 the concept of Corp Wars was born on a bus ride to Oslo and by early 2012 we won NOK 110.000 from the HiST Entrepreneur Scholarship.
In February 2013 Kybernesis was finally incorporated into Kybernesis AS and in August the same year we got our first grant of NOK 270.000 from Innovation Norway. And one year later in August 2014, we got our second round of grant of NOK 300.000 from Innovation Norway.
We released our first game, Wasteland Bar Fight, on Google Play in late December 2014 and are currently working on the first Corp Wars game.
Why Corp Wars
Today’s games often follow the same patterns with sequels repeating a steadily more worn-out pattern, watering down the initial concept. This because the game studios want to repeat the success of their previous games. In our opinion though, this excludes more gamers than it includes since the gameplay never really evolves beyond the first concept.
Also, the trend today is to make games more social, more connected, so a lot of technology already exists to support sharing data between games and social media. This is most commonly used to share achievements or profiles across games, but also to unlock something in another game. We get that and we want to use that beyond what’s already been done.
Corp Wars is a franchise where we will make several different games with the uniqueness that all our games will be directly connected to each other; Which means that actions done in one game will have a direct influence in all the other games. If you build a city in one game you will be able to visit the same city in another game. Or you can trade resources with your friend who plays a totally different game.
We will focus on developing only one game at a time, making it easier for us to finish the development on each project, instead of making all games at once and have several half-done projects. This way we can get each game out faster and start earning revenue earlier.
Connecting each game together also gives us the unique opportunity to invite the player to play our other games, which encourages retention. And since we offer several different games with different gameplay, we can appeal to a broader audience which will increase our player base drastically as we are not tied to only one target audience.
As all of our games will be set in the same universe, we can re-use and share literally all assets across all games. Cutting our development time and costs by a drastic amount. This is very important for us, so we can keep making new games quicker and cheaper.
The Financials
Corp Wars is a huge project which might never really be completely done, as we can keep adding games to the franchise and connect them to existing games. But as mentioned above, we will focus on one game at the time and connect the games together just before release. We might develop up to two games at the time, but that’s only if we manage to find a partner to do some of the heavy lifting for us, for example another game studio with experience with making city-builder strategy games.
We’re asking EUR 100’000,- for 10% of Corp Wars AS. This will help us finish developing the first Corp Wars game with marketing before and after release. This sum will also give us the opportunity to take the project to other types of Crowdfunding and better our chances at getting more governmental funding.
Note though that according to the business evaluation calculated by Equidam the business has a pre-revenue value of EUR 2.4 million. But releasing games has some risks attached, mainly due to the huge amount of games released every day, especially on mobile platforms. This is the reason we opted to offer 10% for EUR 100’000,- instead of just 4%.
Costs and release estimation
Estimated cost and release for our first two games.
Corp Wars: Karavan:
Development costs without marketing estimates – EUR 100’000,-
Development costs with marketing estimates – EUR 150’000,-
4 months development with a team of 5: Release – Q3 2015
Corp Wars: Territories:
Development costs without marketing estimates – EUR 200’000,-
Development costs with marketing estimates – EUR 250’000,-
6 months development with a team of 7: Release – Q1 2016
Financial forecast
We still have the possibility to apply for a third round of grants from Innovation Norway of approximately EUR 44’000,-.
We plan to run a Crowdfunding campaign for each of our games, starting with Corp Wars: Karavan where we will ask for EUR 20’000,-.
We might also apply for grants from the Norwegian Film Institute, probably starting with EUR 35’000,-.
Revenue calculations are done with an estimation of 50’000 users using GamesBrief’s Free-to-Play Game Forecasting Spreadsheet, http://www.gamesbrief.com/spreadsheet/, as that is usually the minimum amount of new users publishers operate with.
Previously secured financials
EUR 12’800,- from HiST Scholarship for Entrepreneurs
EUR 66’000,- from Innovation Norway
The Market
Our revenue estimation above focuses on free-to-play which is most prominent on tablets, mobile phones & PC(Mid-Core). With the Corp Wars games we will focus on these three platforms, even though we might enter other segments with future games.
Global market for these platforms made up almost one third of the total global market at $25Bn in 2013.
Note! We’re using numbers from 2013 as the numbers for 2014 aren’t available yet
Judging by the estimates, tablets and mobile platforms will keep growing while PC has kind of stagnated, but it’s important to remember that the mobile market is overpopulated with games these days which makes marketing and getting seen a lot easier to do on PC than on mobile.
The Global Market for our focus platforms are estimated to grow to a staggering $43Bn in 2017.
Competition
We have some huge competition out there with companies like Zynga, King, Supercell and Mojang. But the trend in the games industry today is that the bigger a company gets, the less they dare innovate. They would rather buy an emerging company that has proven that their innovation is a success instead of finding it themselves.
User Acquisition
The unique aspect with our concept is that it has built-in growth hacking. As long as we get an initial user base, the games will market themselves by making it easy for players to invite and connect with friends and since all our games will be connected, a player of one of the games will most certainly also convert to be a player of the other games.
The casual games market today are completely saturated with companies like King and Supercell, who each use thousands of dollars a day just on marketing alone. We can’t compete with that! So to be able to get a foothold in the market and acquire our initial user base we will start off by targeting niche markets instead of targeting gamers as a whole. And since each game we develop will be a stand-alone game, they will better appeal to players of similar games and genres so user acquisition will also be easier to for the niche surrounding that type of game.
The setting behind the games is post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk science-fiction, which today is a rapidly growing niche market with still not as many competitors as other markets, like fantasy. And with movies like the new Mad Max coming out this summer, our setting will most likely appeal to fans of that movie too, which we aim to benefit from.
The Business Model
Past Milestones
2008:
Kybernesis was born as a single person company. Name and logo was decided upon and finalized.
2010:
The Corp Wars concept was born on a bus ride down to Oslo to pitch the company to Bachelor students.
2012:
Granted NOK 110’000,- from HiST Scholarship for Entrepreneurs
The founders quit their day jobs and started working on Kybernesis 100%
2013:
Pitched the Corp Wars concept in a pitch competition hosted by Doug Richard from Dragon’s Den and won.
Kybernesis AS was founded by Ronny Anderssen Holding AS & Ståle Tevik
Granted NOK 270’000,- from Innovation Norway
2014:
Granted NOK 300’000,- from Innovation Norway in second round
Kybernesis’ First game for mobile devices released, Wasteland Bar Fight.
Future Milestones
Note! With the right amount of funds we will also have the possibility of outsourcing parts of these games, which will expedite development time considerably. We’re also actively looking for possible partners with previous experience with similar gameplay mechanics which might give us the opportunity to have up to 2 games in development at the same time, one in-house and one with partner.
Q3 2015:
Founding of Corp Wars as it’s own company owned by Kybernesis and investors.
Corp Wars: Karavan – A game about exploration, trading and defending your cargo against pirates.
Q1 2016:
Corp Wars: Territories – A strategy game about building a city, gathering resources, researching technology and training armies.
Q3 2016:
Corp Wars: The Siege – A castle defence game about defending a city against waves upon waves of invaders.
Q1 2017:
Corp Wars: Infiltration – A First Person shooter where players can infiltrate buildings in player cities and steal information or sabotage a facility.
Q3 2017:
Corp Wars: Scavenger – A turn-based tactical skirmish and exploration game where players can scout old ruins from before the apocalypse and find lost technology or root out bandits nests.
Why should you invest in Corp Wars?
With the Corp Wars concept, we have dived deep into the current trends of the game industry, taken it apart and found that there exists an untapped opportunity. There exists similar ideas like CCP’s Eve Online Dust 514, but no one has so far taken the concept of interconnected games to the level we are aiming for.
The biggest problem with games today is that since there are so incredibly many games coming out constantly that players quickly tire of certain games. We aim to remedy that by making all our games directly influencing our other games based on actions done in the game. This will increase retention by encouraging players to play several of our games to maximize their experience or even connect with other players, who are better at playing certain types of games, to help them out and influence the game they themselves enjoy playing.
Corp Wars is the future of gaming!
Invest in the future!
Invest in Corp Wars!
FAQ
Will each game be stand-alone and playable by themselves?
Yes absolutely! We will develop and release each and every game as a stand-alone game, but with the connectivity solution built in. No one will ever be required to play all the games in Corp Wars, which is one of the great things with the concept, you can play the games that you like and get your friends who like other types of games to play those for you.
TEAM
Ronny Anderssen
CEO & Co-Founder
Ronny comes from a background of IT and bar management, although he already made his first game back in ’88 and got his first game published in a Norwegian magazine back in ’90. He started Kybernesis in 2008 with Ståle, working part-time Kybernesis and part-time IT. Ronny decided that entrepreneurship was his beck and call when he got his dream job as a 3D engine programmer at Statoil, but still couldn’t stop working with Kybernesis. Ronny started focusing 100% on Kybernesis in 2012 and founded the company into a legal entity in 2013 with Ståle.
Ståle worked as an artist, 3D modeller and animator with Trondheim-based game studio Board Games Online for 3 years before starting Kybernesis with Ronny in 2007. He’s been working part-time with Kybernesis until 2013 when he and Ronny founded Kybernesis as a legal entity and started working 100% with Kybernesis as an art director, 3D modeller and animator.
Simon has a bachelor in Game Development and Design from the Norwegian IT University College. He joined the team to help polish Wasteland Bar Fight before release and have stayed on since.
Tommy has a masters degree in music and audio technology from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where he developed a music application with Open Sound Control called OSCController. He wants to apply his knowledge of audio & music technology in games so he joined Kybernesis in early 2015.
Magnus have studied 3D Game Design with focus on 3D modelling and animation for 2 years at Noroff University College. He joined Kybernesis in 2014 as an intern and have been working with us ever since.
Arild Petersen
Advisor
Arild has been the manager of LEN’s business incubator the last 5 years. He combines ten years of business development experience with a strong marketing background and a passion for business strategies.