I’m writing this on day 15 of our mad PR tour. Flying back from Los Angeles to Brussels to spend the weekend with my family. Then, on monday we’re off to Paris where 27 journalists await us at a press event organized by Focus, our local partner. In the end, we’re aiming to show Divinity: Dragon Commander and Divinity: Original Sin to almost 100 media spread over Europe and the US, and by the time we’ll finish this tour, we’ll have been presenting for over 5 weeks.
That’s quite long and by now I’m sick of seeing hotel rooms, unpacking and repacking PC’s at airport security checks and trying to organize TV screens that do the games justice. I’ll be quit happy when it’s over. My personal highlight on this tour was snatching one hour of free time in Santa Monica so I could go for a run on the beach. Other than that, it’s been one big rush and I’m starting to collect quite a lot of bad karma in the email department because I simply gave up answering. I have some vague hope that I’ll drink a special potion over the weekend and manage to answer all those urgent requests, but past experience tells me that’s not going to happen so I’ll need to figure out something different.

Dragon Commander presentation in San Francisco - there's quite a lot of stuff that needs to be organised for doing these types of things, like getting a place to show the games in the first place
What complicated this tour more than others was that we wanted to show the games in multiplayer, with the journalists joining in. This meant that wherever we went, we needed to ensure there were sufficient screens in place, that we could set up a network, that we had sufficient room and that we had sufficient people to explain the game in addition to the usual stuff. It’s a small miracle that that all worked out, but it did which does say something about the people involved in organising this i.e. they’re good at what they do 😉
Obviously we’ve constantly been googling for our stuff and as articles started trickling through (Rpgwatch,onrpg, co-optimius, gamesradar, rock paper shotgun or strategy informer), there were these moments of elation when we saw something positive being said about our creations and likewise, there were moments of frustration when criticism surfaced. Even after all these years, I still haven’t managed to reach the state where I can say that I’m indifferent to what’s written about my games and seeing the reactions of my co-demo-tour participants, they clearly care too. That’s a good thing btw in my book..
I’m told by our PR agency that the coverage we’re managing to put together is impressive for an independent studio, and come to think of it, I don’t think any of the previous Divinities actually ever had so many previews in the works, despite the publisher backing. At least on that front our little self-publishing outfit is scoring well, even if we have had our problems.
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