Industrial cooperation
Apologies for using the form of hints and teasers, we are still waiting
for final legal steps to be able to officially announce a second project
in development at SCS Software, but for now, we can unveil at least a
few bits of background info.
Back in 2010, an unfortunate sequence of events caused another small
Prague-based independent game development studio to shut down. Suddenly
we had the opportunity to hire several senior people in one swoop,
basically a nucleus of a very talented development team. It would be a
pity to miss such an opportunity, but we knew we just could not afford
growing our head count at the time. The higher monthly burn-rate just
wasn't in line with our revenues, and looking at where the extrapolated
lines on the cash flow graph were intersecting, it was clear that we
wouldn't be able to sustain so many people until the end of ETS2
project, even if a few extra programmers and artists could possibly
speed up its development.
As we were scratching our heads on how to have our cake and eat it too,
we came up with an idea: let's take a risk and do an experiment to
pursue smaller opportunities - try to produce limited-scope projects
next to the opus magnum of Euro Truck Simulator 2 project. Basically the
goal was to explore additional aspects of the truck driving phenomenon,
build smaller games quickly in a few months, and try to see if they can
bring back the investment as fast and hopefully even indirectly help
the progress of ETS 2.
This was the road which has led to creation of Trucks & Trailers.
This project turned out to be a success - new 3D models were built that
ETS2 benefited from, new engine effects were created for T&T which
ETS2 immediately took advantage of, we could spend more time on AI now
that multiple projects benefited from it, and both teams were providing
each other with inspiration. And almost as a side effect, a little
application which could help wannabe truck drivers get some insight into
trailer maneuvering was born. Last but not least, the accounting books
looked a bit better with another game providing helpful revenue.
As we were getting close to release of Trucks & Trailers, a very
exciting opportunity appeared in front of us, in the form of close
cooperation with a leading truck manufacturer. We did not think twice
about it, this was a chance to learn from the "big boys" and of course a
chance to bring our game to wider audience than just our loyal but not
so numerous fan base. We also knew that this time we could aim higher
and be more ambitious about the feature set of this project, we were
sure we could build something that more of you would find worth playing.
Here we are some half a year later, with an almost finished game.. Stay tuned!