Gamescom 2013 – Exclusive Interview with Aeria Games

September 3, 2013 9:07 ( F2P News ) 0

 

We met up with Matthias Fellinger, Director of Product Management, and the Public Relations Manager for computer game publishers Aeria Games and had a candid chat about some of their titles including the ever infamous Scarlet Blade. Find out more about Scarlet Blade and their other titles along with what exactly the company looks for when adding a title to their family.



<Q>. Could you introduce yourselves?

Thanks for having us, my name's Michael, I’m the PR manager at Aeria Games

I’m Matthias I’m the director of product management at Aeria Games.

<Q>. Who Aeria Games are and what it is you do?

Aeria Games is a free to play publisher, we are from Aeria Games Europe which is based in Berlin. Our parent company is based in California, so we’re here representing the Berlin office. We’re a free to play publisher of client games, browser games and mobile games and especially the mobile game market and mobile game division is growing.

<Q>. How do you go about acquiring new licenses?

We go looking for games all the time, usually most developers come from the Taiwanese and the Korean markets, we look at their games, see how they perform on the market, look at their KPIs, their numbers, then we see with our experience what we have if this is something interesting for the western market, maybe North America, even Latin America or Europe, or just the speciality of the Berlin office, so France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Turkey, these are all territories we are in. So first we look at the games in the Asian countries then we decide if this is something we’re going to do for the western territories.

<Q>. Can you tell us a little bit about Scarlet Blade?

Yes, Scarlet Blade is our newest game, it’s been released in English and in German, and it’s going to be coming in French too. It’s a free to play sci-fi MMO, featuring a lot of mech transformations and very good PvP action. We’re very excited about it, it’s been very well received in the community so far.

<Q>. It’s been criticized as sexist, do you have anything to say about it?

To be honest there has been a little bit, but we see that as positive, that there’s been a lot of interest in the game. It’s really not meant to be taken so seriously, and that’s the kind of message we’re trying to get across. Generally there has been a little of people saying its slightly sexist, but it’s really just a stylistic thing and actually just take a look at it, there’s a lot more to it, it’s not just about the girls, that’s what it looks like on the surface but when you actually sit and play it for a few hours you realise there’s actually a lot more to it. The PvP action is very good and it’s a deep and very involved game.

<Q>. A male class is about to be included though, right?

Yes, the game was developed in Korea and recently the Korean version has now also brought out a male class and that is something we at Aeria Games are also looking into the English version starting to prepare it now, and it’ll be coming to the German and French versions as well.

<Q>. Earlier this month an email was sent from Aeria Games to encourage players to try out SWTOR. What’s the situation?

Well it’s usually something as at Aeria Games were not only the publishers saying we have the games here and taking care of them in the offices, we also do something called channelling. We have for example the Ignite platform, which is something like a free to play platform which is kind of like Steam but only for free to play games, we also have partners who can also put their games there. Star Wars: The Old Republic was one of the deals where it’s kind of integrated but only channelling the game, so Aeria Games are not directly taking care of it but we do promote it to our users.

<Q>. What can we expect to see next from Aeria Games?

Well about two weeks ago we announced that we are releasing a new anime-manga style game called Aura Kingdom, it’s going to be released in English and French at the same time, so keep an eye out for that, we’ll be releasing that before the end of the year. And also keep a look out for our mobile titles, at the moment we’ve got three different mobile games, but there are definitely a lot more coming for iPhone and Android. Fear online is another big one that’s coming out in English soon, and then that’s obviously a big franchise and we’re very excited about that.

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