The Czech gaming industry is smashing records. The biggest draws are Kingdom Come and Mafia.
Even though the video game Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 did not eventually win at The Game Awards, which is comparable in significance to the Oscars, it can still celebrate its success. Thanks to nominations in the most watched category Game of the Year, as well as in the categories of story and best RPG game, it has risen to public awareness and followed praise already given by the public and critics to another Czech game called Mafia. Domestic computer game manufacturers thus confirm that they belong to the absolute top in international comparison. So what's behind this success?
This year's Czech video games Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Mafia: Homeland have been successful worldwide. Warhorse Studio announced in November that it has sold four million copies since the release of the Kingdom Come sequel in early February.
The game's story focuses on the journey of a blacksmith's son, Henry of Skalitz, who accompanies the young nobleman Jan Ptáček as he carries a message to Trosky Castle. An unexpected ambush draws him into a whirlwind of events that will reveal whether and how he is brave and honorable. All this fits into the environment of the early 15th century during the political duel of Wenceslas IV. and his brother Sigismund. Here, players explore the landscape of the Bohemian Paradise and Kutna Hora and its surroundings.
"We strive to present a realistic, engaging and credible Middle Ages, which we create according to our best knowledge,"
said for the server IGN Warhorse studio spokesman Tobias Stolz-Zwilling. To this end, the developers also reportedly made use of their own historian and close collaboration with other experts from universities or museums.
Czechs at the Game Oscars
The Game Awards competition, where the game Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was nominated in several categories, is often compared in importance to the Oscar film awards. The ceremony, which took place on the night of December 11th to 12th, attracted the attention of fans from all over the world. The Czech product was nominated for the best game for the first time this year. In the past, the Czech-Slovak Beat Saber won in the category "for parties", which is focused on virtual reality. Before that, the third installment of the Mafia series received two nominations.
Mafia remains at the top of popularity
Mafia is another game that has been doing well for a long time. According to the latest financial results of the American publisher Take Two Interactive, the interest in the latest game of this series, Mafia: Homeland, exceeded internal estimates, which also means that more content and updates will be created for it in the future. Our studios Hangar 13 and 2K Czech collaborated on the game, which is set in the world of organized crime in Sicily at the beginning of the 20th century. This mostly concerned the artistic appearance of the game and film editing.
Czech Hangar 13 also has studios in Brighton, UK, Brno, and Prague. In Brighton, there are more game designers, in the Czech Republic, there is a larger number of artists.
"For example, film materials were usually created in the Czech Republic under the leadership of Tomáš Hřebíček, one of the veterans of the Mafia series,"
wrote LP-Life head of Czech branches of Hangar 13 studios, Roman Hladík.
Under Take Two, in addition to Hangar 13 and 2K Czech, there are also brands such as Rockstar Games, which owns globally successful series like Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto. The American group also publishes, for example, the Borderlands series.
Gaming Industry on the Rise
The Czech gaming industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of domestic business. Its turnover exceeds 2.5 billion crowns. This is mainly due to the stability of key players, such as Bohemia Interactive and SCS Software brands. The total number of studios involved in the aforementioned field exceeds 150.
"It remains true that more than 90 percent of gaming companies are Czech-owned and mostly the sector consists of smaller studios of up to 10 employees. Czech games currently generate more than 98 percent of revenue from abroad, which still makes them the most significant cultural export articles of our country,"
Last year, the Czech game industry's publication was announced by Pavel Barák, the chairman of the Association of Czech Game Developers, in a publication.
The field is even taught at some universities. Students interested in courses focusing on video games can register for instance at the Czech Technical University, Charles University or Masaryk University.
Sources: own querying, author's article, ČTK, IGN, Wikipedia
