One year in Knockout City | GI Live Online
Alex Calvin
Tuesday 7th June 2022
It's been quite the year for developer Velan Studios.
Just weeks after the studio's CEO Guha Bala appeared at GI Live: Online back in May 2021, the company released its first title, Knockout City. This was the culmination of almost four years of work in the wake of the Bala brothers founding Velan Studios in 2016 following their exit from Activision Blizzard's Vicarious Visions.
Once again, Bala took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss how Knockout City's first year in the wild has been, what Velan has learnt from the experience and what the future holds for the dodgeball multiplayer romp.
Knockout City was always going to be a multiplayer-only game, he told us. There were numerous examples of this kind of experience on the market, including Overwatch. But by the time release was approaching, many of these titles had shifted to being free-to-play, while new and similar games had launched with this model.
Guha Bala, Velen Studios
The Velan team settled on a $20 price tag for the game, but wanted to court an audience that was growing more and more accustomed to such an experience being free-to-play with its Block Party launch event. This saw users being able to play Knockout City without paying for ten days.
We had to launch it at mid-price premium but we also had to one make that price barrier as affordable as possible so we went to this $20 price point that we thought was going to be effective, but then make it as easy as possible for people to get in and try it, Bala explained.
One of the hardest things we've found is that if you write the concept of a game, like 'I've got a game about dodgeball' and you say here's what you do, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense and it doesn't
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