Suggestion: More Organized Development Updates

I just wanted to pass this along, and this is something we've seen echoed on the Kickstarter comments in the past... my good friend (founder level) was surprised to hear about a 'demo' being shown tomorrow and wondering what the heck he has missed. Of course 'demo' does not mean a demo of a full game, but he was still surprised to hear about something that shows off core gameplay features considering he's not really heard any updates about features. I do not believe he watches the videos or follows the chats/forums.

He used Project Eternity as an example of a site that does regular development updates on the homepage/kickstarter page.

I know you guys are a small team and short on time - but if I run a SotA update site and my own best friend isn't hearing about updates, that's a red flag... My suggestion is weekly or bi-weekly updates on Kickstarter/SotA homepage with development progress, ideas you are looking for feedback on, recent concept art, recent calls for unity art, etc. I realize this is all accessible through the forums and vids, but I'm betting a lot of people would like to be in the loop but don't want to go digging...

Thanks!

 

There are daily status updates posted in the dev forums.

 

This is a really good idea. With some major Kickstarters not having a good go (Ouya, Double Fine, Pebble), its probably a good idea to be pretty transparent on anything you can. KS people can get sensitive.

Since we have Fansites involved as well, I am sure Portalarium could even have some volunteers to help format any disorganized information if they just provide a dump of some information. This could then be used on the main site and KS without a staffer spending a lot of time on it. I definitely want people focusing on the game, but I know a lot of the same questions/topics keep coming up.

I follow SOTA pretty close, but I have tons of other KS' I don't and rely on their Kickstarter updates for progress. So when I get good updates through Kickstarter it definitely gives me more faith in the project when I can't get to the project's forums or website.

I think we are talking about something for everyone to access with general information which is outside of the privileged developer awardees.

 

There is updates, the team has been uber busy trying to get a new alpha version together because they made major changes to do things like double the overland map size etc...

My understanding they are working double time to get that done and in time for the gameshow conference.

Basically they don't need us before they complete a internal version to show anybody.

 

No one is questioning the workload of the team... but this is a Kickstarter project, funded by backers, and a good practice is to give those backers regular, easily accessible updates on the progress...that need must be factored into their workload or it will cause negative comments and press. This has been an issue since the Kickstarter began - not just during the RTX grind of the past couple weeks.

This is not my own personal beef, as I have the desire and time to follow all the places where news bits are posted... but there are almost 25k backers and I've seen this issue pop up multiple times on Kickstarter, here, and now with friends... and it is evident in other ways, like how many times the same questions come up that have already been answered.

 

I don't feel entitled to any updates really. But if they want our input: 1) they need to help keep things interesting enough or people will just forget about the forums and 2) if they want people focused, it would help to suggest a few conversation topics.

 

Given the amount of work they have had since kickstarter, even just in needing to hire people, travel for press, communicate in forums and with the community, and actually work, I think they are doing a great job and I wouldn't expect more. For them to offer more updates and news to the community I think they would almost need to hire someone that simply does that.. all day, publish news and moderate forums. That can be a hard position to justify a salary on (Although id submit a resume if they don't require relocation for physical presence!), especially when Forsaken Virtues and the Caverns is doing it for free?

Sometimes Forsaken Virtues is a bit slow due to what I'm sure is real life, and other times I'm a bit slow for that very reason. I figure between the two of us though, you could subscribe to our news feeds and get just about any news there is in a relatively quick manner. If people aren't following our feeds, hey.. that's their mistake. Weve both put out enough press out there everyone should know where to find them. Mine can be subscribed to in.. *thinks*.. 6 different ways I believe, so that people can get the info the way they want. I know of at least two ways to get your news as I'm getting it two ways . Id like to add a tie in for 3 other social sites (like Google +), but I've only found one way to do it and it would cost me 50.00 for all 3 (on sale, normally around 150.00).

I just don't think they have the man power in hours to really do what your asking, although its not an unfair request. To do what your wanting though I think what they would need is an employee they know they can trust, and each person on the team can just send that one person any clips, notes, news, etc.. that is ok to "publish" vie a quick email, as they have it. Then that one person would need to be continually wading through all that and putting it together as news feeds. There would be time in between which is when it would make sense for the same employee to do some forum moderation or other community related function (FAQ's, etc). However to hire someone to do that, and nothing but that? Not including benefits, I know that if I was going to do it as a job (without relocation required), I would need at least 45Ka year if not 50K (would depend on said benefit packages). If their benefit packages are good, that's another 40-50K a year they pay per employee. So that one employee is almost as much as an entire stretch goal per year. When there are lots of people like you, Stratics, and myself, who are willing to do it part-time as a hobby and accomplish the same goal... just doesn't make sense for them from a business standpoint to put the time into it when they have people willing to do is a hobby for the sake of its own reward.

Instead If I was them, I would do just what they did and publish "hey, here's a good place to get the news", and do a community spotlight on someone like Forsaken Virtues to say "Go here to keep abreast of things! They are doing a good job doing it".. and they don't have to pay a salary to anyone..

 

I think you may be misunderstanding... I am talking about a twice-monthly (or so) Kickstarter update with some screenshots/concepts and an article about recent progress or something of interest, not a daily stream of what the team is doing right down to Chris' bathroom breaks lol. Look at the Project Eternity site for an example. An update like this would likely take a few hours to do, and could be done by a different team member each time, if someone is working on something of particular interest that month. It is not close to being a separate job.

Right now, they provide next to no development updates for backers. Most of the recent updates on Kickstarter were pledge/money-related. Developer comments are strewn about random forum threads and within videos that most people will not watch. There is very little they provide direct to Kickstarter backers that are not participants in the forums.

I was the first community spotlight they did. Community spotlights and fan sites are not distributed to KS backers. There are 25k backers and the number of them that have awareness of our sites is surely slim. (I do not think it will look good if they suggest a fan site because they can't update backers themselves)

I am deeply invested in the project, so I am having fun and love the team and what I am seeing, but I'm not talking about people like me. Debate here is moot, because anyone reading this automatically does not include the people I am referring to (i.e. backers who rely on Kickstarter updates for their Kickstarter pledge, and do not have time to read forum threads to find bits and pieces of relevant info) I have no vested interest in getting them to make formal updates besides wanting backers to remain happy (and fwiw, providing backers info gives more incentive for them to up their pledge.) I simply made a suggestion based on my observations and direct feedback. SotA can take it or leave it

 

I think that all art and decisions should be made as twitter updates. At the founder level they are turned into vine videos. This way we will have tons of stuff to scour through and almost no information. This is what the internet is for.
Joking aside. Information will be given when it is ready. Unless you love greymaps and items that exist until they are cut in time for Beta.
I LOVE TWITTER.

 

A general bi-monthly Kickstarter update or so with perhaps some informative highlights wouldn't be such a bad idea...it couldn't hurt and I too like how Eternity sends Kickstarter updates. It's how I keep informed with that particular project since I don't really follow their forums and such like I do with SotA.

...But only if it doesn't interfere or take time away from the SotA team working on the game I kid. I kid. LoL

 

I get what your saying and part of me agrees with you. Theres also s part of me that feels that backers that don't want to make a little time to find a way to follow the type of news that would interest them, then they are more content to just wait for game.

I know i have 4 family members with accounts and they are excited but they also are just very content to ignore the topic until they can start trying out Alpha, or in two cases possibly no interest until actual release.

I think its a topic bigger then my scope of knowledge so will definitely concede you may be right on it. By far id love to see something like your talking about. On the other hand I've had a job thats been so busy for years that saying hi to a coworker for 5 minutes means 5 minutes of work that didn't get done that REALLY NEEDED to.. So i tend to be sympathetic to people i know have very full plates

Its only through automated processes i have in place that allow me the time to follow all the stuff i do, and listening to dev chats rarely falls into that category (and is why i subscribe to Forsaken for the cliff notes *winks*)

 

I understand that they are busy, and where both of you are coming from.
I think this is a 2 way street. People should be encouraged to follow what they care about, but there should be some more effort into making it easier to follow too. Ideally, the established community should help with this too.

As a newer person, I am seeing this from a different set of eyes. There are quite a few threads where I am thinking "It would be nice for someone to close the loop on this. Did I miss this because I am new, did the follow up get posted somewhere else, did someone get really busy and there is no follow up, or did it get punted to the next sprint?" Honestly, it is not a deal breaker, but I do think there is validity in the suggestion that we all take mutual accountability to help improve it forward for the next batch of community members.

 

Yes, thats aswell one of the things i am not very happy with. I backed for the large projects Star Citizen, Elite: Dangerous, Project Eternity, Project Godus and Shroud of the Avatar. And i have unfortunately to say, that Shroud of the Avatar has by far the worst information policy. Ok, we have some videos but i have to admit i didn't watched them, because most was the Pen and Paper, so drawing from some concepts. And the long talking for some information 1 hour is a bit long to get the infos. But no written news, like by the other projects.

Might be possible, that the news are in the developer forums, but as member who haven't the developer tier, they get nothing from it.
One of the reason i don't consider to upgrade aswell, because i don't know enough about the game.

 

There really should be a calendar of development prototyping goals and "release" type events that are already planned. I know that making an MS Project styled tracker sucks but it is very useful when explaining project status. Also by announcing the parts currently being developed you stir additional discussion on the forums possibly reducing rework.

 

I have been really slack getting back here so for the last couple of months I have been avoiding this because there is so much I need to catch up on and videos are an hour long at a time so once you get behind its hard to catch up. I kind of expected there to be an updates thread on kickstarter and here which would show what has been happening in short (link it to the bigger stuff but just the highlights) that those of us who haven't been around as much as we would like could use to catch up. This also serves to lower the barrier to people who are only just finding the project and wanting to know what its about and if its for them because if I am struggling to catch up, anyone new must be drowning and if its to hard they will just walk away