Welcome to the ANACONDA-Thread

[dtp Chris]

Hi guys,

my name's Chris and I welcome you in the ANACONDA-Thread.

ANACONDA is the game label of German publisher dtp, who revived the whole genre almost three years ago with the overwhelming success of Runaway. Since then, dtp has grown to be one of the most important adventure-publishers worldwide, with most developer-teams first coming to us and offering us their new projects.
And they are right, because we are deeply devoted to the genre and its development in the future.
Here is our line-up, from beginning to the future:

Sanitarium
The Longest Journey
Runaway
Tony Tough
The Westerner
Black Mirror
The Mystery of the Druids - Special Edition
The Moment of Silence
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silver Earring
Nibiru
80 Days
The Great Adventure-Box (out now)

To come:
Tony Tough 2
Runaway 2

plus more than five other adventures in 2006/2007, line-up is still in negotiation.

As we are very interested in the opinion of the players and the development of the genre, please don't hesitate to ask me anything you want to know.

[Terramax]

Hi there, I'm from England, a country where AGs are so few I have to import games such 'Runaway' and 'The Westerner'.

I'm mainly interested in 'Tony Tough 2' which is one of my most anticipated games. First of all I would like to know if you plan to publish in my country or if the honours are going to any other company or, although I'd really not like to read it, no one plans to?

Second of all, even though 'Runaway' was a critical success, have other games since then lived up to the same standard?

What do you think was the success of 'Runaway' - the way it was published, was the game hyped by word of mouth, a sleeper hit or one that made a bucket load of sales straight away.

I wouldn't mind knowing, if you know, what games on your list sold the most (say top 3 or 5?)?

[Noone]

Hi Chris. A couple days ago I've found comics about In 80 Tagen um die Welt on http://adventurecorner.de/. As far as I remeber it os a part of your PR strategy to release such comics, am I right? So the question is: will (and can) this comics be translated to other languages? And the second question is: as far as i remeber, you have exclusive right for TonyTough2 and and Runaway2. Do you plan to obtain exclusive rights for some of other adventure games you plan to release in 2006-2007? As you have exclusive right for TonyTough2 and and Runaway2 do you prepare some surprises for those who'll buy these game (I think if you have exclusive rights then you may want to experiment with PR and smth. a bit)?

[dtp Chris]

@Terramax: Be sure that we will find a partner for the UK release of Tony Tough 2, as it is of major interest for us to publiush the game on the islands.
Runaway 1 indeed was a huge commercial success, but Black Mirror and Sherlock Holmes - Silver earring are on the way to reach Runaway 1 in numbers pretty soon.

I think that the success of Runaway is mainly based on the fact that at the time it was published there simply was no other good adventure in sight, and there hadn't been any for some years. You could descrobe the adventure community and of course other players too as "starving" - it's oinly natural that they jumped on this new game as soon as it was released. Then of course the PR & Marketing job for it was tremendous, which is a speciality of us - we put all power and effort into the publishing of an adventure, like it was a triple A-game, which in fact it is for us. And that's the secret why we actually make successful adventures also in terms of money - because we know how to address our cutomers. Third - not to forget - it is an excellent game - no one had to be convinced of that very hard, and with this there had been a lot of word to mouth.

Here's the list you wanted:
Runaway
Black Mirror
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silver Earring

@Alex
I will disuss this with our comic artist, but as we only publish 80 Days in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, we have not planned releasing the comic in another language. But maybe.
We will have the exclusive rights on some totally new adventure games, as we have them on Tony Tough 2, but we have only the rights for the german soeaking territories on Runaway 2.
Maybe we will think about specials or surprises for very faithful buyers, but I have to think about this some time first