"The big moment for me came in 2011 when I took a call from Ubisoft, who said they wanted to sign the next iteration," Ammann recalls. Slowly the games industry started to take Farming Simulator more seriously. The company now receives drawings from children requesting new vehicles in the game, and the firm now sends out a fan pack to those who write in.Īfter the second game, the series continued to improve, the team was expanding and its popularity was expanding outside of Germany. Indeed, the younger fan base kept growing. So the response to the customer support helped a lot in terms of who was playing." The forum is for the more hardcore people who want to give us their opinions. "Those fans are hidden, because you don't see them on the forum. But through the support system, we saw a lot of parents asking questions on behalf of their kids. At the time, our physical distribution partners, especially in Germany, were saying that all our customers were hardcore simulation players. That is when we saw who our real customers are. "It was an email where people could send us enquiries. "After Farming Simulator 2009 we had to open customer support," explains Ammann. But with the second game, the team found out it was appealing much more broadly than expected. The belief was that such a project could never appeal to a mainstream audience. Even their distribution partner thought the game was only being bought by simulation enthusiasts. Yet there was still some scepticism around the project. Farming Simulator is huge in its native Germany This impressed a distributor, who released the game to much success (at least in Germany). So that is something we had to live with."īecause the firm had these forum fans, Ammann and Geiger spent far longer than originally intended on creating the prototype, to make sure they got it right. But, of course, farming is not the sexiest topic on earth. "You can convince a lot of people with numbers like that, just like we can today with our sales figures. But they were so passionate, and we had something like between 5,000 to 10,000 people on this forum. We were talking to them about the game that wasn't even out yet - we had only shown a short trailer that didn't even have any gameplay. "So we really had a hard time convincing the industry that it might interest a lot of people."Īmmann continues: "Then we opened up a forum before the game was released and people started signing up. "When we talked to partners and developers, they all said nobody is interested in farming and simulators," Geiger says. From left to right, Creative director Thomas Frey, Christian Ammann and Stefan Geiger What helped them break down barriers was this forum. A simulator about driving tractors? An international success story? It seems unbelievable, and indeed, that is how the industry felt back in 2007 when Geiger and Ammann (operating under the name of GIANTS Software) tried to find people to work with. The game's name has, for almost ten years, raised a smile from anyone that hears it. This was the key moment in the history of Farming Simulator. for us, the success of the forum was the key point that made us believe in the project." He knew a lot more about farming than we did, but he was able to convince me that there was a market for it. A friend of mine came to me with the idea. Geiger continues: "Farming was almost a random choice. "It sounds trivial, but the Swiss gaming industry is sort-of non-existent," Ammann says. The duo's desire to make the game as an independent outfit was because they wanted to remain in the video games industry, but also not leave their native Switzerland. "We just had time, ideas and passion to do it." "It was the only way for us to achieve it, because we didn't have a company back then," says Ammann. Together they handled the programming, the engine, the script, the graphics, level design and even the sound. The first game, which launched ten years ago, was created almost entirely by Christian Ammann and Stefan Geiger. Farming Simulator is a true indie success story.
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