Gerald Köhler (Director Bright Future GmbH - a subsidiary of Travian Games)

You are one of the directors of Bright Future, which means you are responsible for a large development team. You have worked on the development of some very successful and well-known full-price PC games and have now been working on browser games (such as Miramagia) for around 2 years. Since January 2012, Bright Future has been part of the ever-growing Travian Games family. How did you end up under the wing of an independent browser game provider?

We have been working with Travian Publishing for nearly two years now with very positive results. We place great value on the development of truly excellent games, and the existing infrastructure allows us to concentrate on the development of game content. We share tasks and are all involved in the project work. Petr Vlcek is responsible for our browser projects at Bright Future, but Thomas Schwan and I (we are usually responsible for the “Soccer” area ) have been playing Miramagia intensively for some time and are completely up-to-date. We were warmly welcomed during our visit to Munich after the announcement of the stakeholding, and we look forward to many exciting projects in the future.

Over more than 20 years, you have seen highs and lows in the games market, developments in different platforms, and worked together with many partners and companies. What experiences (both positive and negative) are you bringing to Travian Games?

I have always had interesting employers during those 20 years. Ascaron was exciting, EA was exciting, and the move to independence in 2006 was even more exciting. The best times were always when there was a real buzz going through the company, when my colleagues felt they were making a difference and working on truly promising products. I have always been very fortunate, which brings me to Travian Games. As a developer, I also value the shorter development cycle (compared to full-price PC games) followed by direct feedback from the players. It’s a lot of fun if you can apply ideas immediately and see them implemented in the game within a few weeks or months. It’s very different from a project that takes 2-3 years to get to the master stage.

Bright Future is already known internationally for its EA SPORTS FIFA MANAGER title. Do you think that kind of worldwide success is possible for browser games?

It is precisely browser games that have the greatest potential here, because they can be played free of charge and on cheaper or older computers, providing full gaming enjoyment with no need for state-of-the-art graphics cards. During the game design stage, you are forced to ensure that the initial game stages are easy and exciting, which also makes these games interesting for new target groups. Finally, localization is possible in many more languages, because the localization costs for traditional AAA titles are often incredibly high. Football manager games do sell internationally, but their main markets are the UK and German-speaking countries. It is a relatively European genre.