Manor Lords publisher says the game's success has gone 'well beyond what we could have hoped'
Manor Lords is one man's unusual take on the joys of managing a medieval city and, after garnering a whole lot of wishlists, sold over a million copies within a few days of launch. The developer did try to set pre-launch expectations appropriately, warning players this was no Total War competitor, but the game's emergent narratives, relative polish, and the historically accurate NPC name Cuntz has charmed players and left it sitting pretty on around 25,000 'very positive' user reviews.
PCG had the opportunity to sit down with Tim Bender, the CEO of publisher Hooded Horse, about working with solo developer Grzegorz Styczeń of Slavic Magic on the game, and how they're trying to manage the scrutiny and demands that come with success on this scale. The main focus in these first weeks, says Bender, is paying attention to the fact that «there's so many people applying and leaving their thoughts and insights on the game.»
That doesn't mean the plan is just to follow the community, though. Bender says the team will «have a patch coming up that's informed by everything people are talking about. In that way, it's a very responsive and very community driven development [and] that's part of the virtue of an early access release, to get such mass feedback, and really go out and engage in a dialogue and let that guide development.»
The principle seems sound but, given Hooded Horse has been involved long before Manor Lords picked up the momentum it did, surely some things have had to be re-considered.
«It's not that we predicted [this],» says Bender. «But if there had been half the number of players, it would still for all intents and purposes be the same: there would still be an absolute ton of people playing and giving feedback, and looking forward to things.
»But to be perfectly honest, what we've seen is beyond hopes, right? No-one was sitting there thinking that the game was gonna have more concurrent players for its launch, 173,000 I think, than Total War Warhammer 3 and
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