Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord - The dangers of not having a marketing/community management strategy.

Mount and Blade 2 Bannerlord is the sequel to the 2008 cult hit Mount and Blade and it's 2010 expansion Warband. Developed by a then extremely small team in Turkey under the name Taleworlds.
These games astounded a reasonably sized group of insane people (myself very much included) that were able to look past the dated graphics, unpolished game-play and interface, and generally buggy experience overall to see an inspired masterpiece which presented a kind of gameplay that could not be found anywhere else.

Mount and Blade simulated a full low-fantasy medieval world and all of the violence, political intrigue and peasant suffering that comes with that. It allowed the player to take control of a single nobody with a broken sword and no money and through strategy, martial skill and no small amount of luck potentially rise to become a Lord or even the ruler of their own kingdom.
The sense of adversity experienced in trying to improve your characters lot in life and the sense of accomplishment when your goals were achieved perfectly crafted a deeply satisfying gaming experience that has spawned a small but fanatical army of die hard fans.

Which brings me to Bannerlord which began Development in the Summer of 2011 and now 7 years later still has no release date whatsoever.
The first thing I would like to point out is that this in and of itself is not out of the ordinary for the games industry and is actually a perfectly reasonable timescale for the development of such an ambitious title.
However despite knowing the above many fans are quite upset with Taleworlds, you can confirm this for yourself if you like by paying a quick visit to
https://www.reddit.com/r/MB2Bannerlord/
The question is why? Why are people that have a fairly solid consumer level understanding of game development and appreciate the timescales that can be involved in it so upset?

The answer lies not in Taleworld's approach to game development but in their approach to marketing.
on September 27th 2012 Taleworld's announced the game with a short teaser trailer you can see here:

At this point they are just one year into the development of a hugely ambitious title.
This is the first mistake, although most don't realise it among the AAA games industry it is not common practise to announce your game until quite far along in development. The announcement essentially marks the start of the formal marketing strategy so there is no point making the announcement until you know what you are going to do to advertise your product.
The above admittedly applies far less to Indie devs as they often need t o start generating "hype" and revenue if possible almost immediately through kickstarter, early access or some other means.
However while Taleworld's is an Indie developer (though quite a large one at this point)
they lose more than they gain in regards to trying to build "hype" so early and they do not need nor do they make any attempt to acquire any pre-release revenue.

This is due to the fairly large success of the original Mount and Blade combined with Turkey's policy of offering tax breaks/other incentives to game developers. (sadly we don't know the details of what the government offers but we know Taleworld's is a beneficiary of the scheme)

So Taleworlds have just teased a game which realistically wont see the light of day for at the very least another 4-5 years.
The next mistake was hinting a few times that the target was a 2016 release date, now it can be argued that this was only given due to increasing pressure from fans for a release date but it is agreed by both Taleworld's and the fans that a date never should have been mentioned.

Following their failure to meet the 2016 target Taleworld's hinted at a 2017 release during an E3 2016 Twitch stream.
This target was also not met, but following the harsh backlash they received Taleworld's changed (or as I am theorising started to create) their marketing strategy.
The new policy from then until the time of writing has been to vehemently refuse to even hint at anything like a release window and instead take to creating weekly development blog posts in an attempt to keep "hype" going while minimising the backlash they receive from their own community.
While not all of these blog posts are particularly satisfying or interesting to read, some really are and overall I think it's a huge improvement in marketing strategy.

I think the lesson for game developers here is that if you are lucky enough to have a financial situation where you can pay all of your staff for the foreseeable future and don't need a publisher, The temptation to just focus on your love of the game you are creating and ignore the boring business side of things can be huge. For the record I completely understand this, to be able to create a game in that kind of environment is a once in a lifetime opportunity and is surely every developers dream. However care must always be taken to communicate with your fans in a way that is going to keep them excited and happy or you can end up damaging your own little developer utopia.

thanks For Reading

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