The Community
22. Do you have any plans to address negativity about the game amongst the player community?
Yes, that’s something we’ve been discussing the negativity on the forums.
We’ve been reading the thread that @Rigs started, and there are lots of good points there.
One thing we’ve been discussing to combat the negativity is to put in fun new activities for the player community. Like adding in more contests, as we did for the Second Anniversary.
If you have concrete ideas, those are welcome. We hear a need for more communication but we want more actionable ideas of what specifically SGG should do.
Kira: Forums were always intended to be more player-to-player discussion. We are more in the role of monitoring, reading, and collecting feedback. The developers are also actively reading it and collecting feedback. You [moderators] can always reach out to us directly with issues. We will have Sneak Peeks, will update list of Frequent Requests, which is due to be updated as it’s getting old, and providing more previews.
Petri: Also regarding clear violations [of forum rules], we will now take a stronger stance on enforcement. If someone is not providing anything other than negative feedback — of course, we don’t want to silence people, we want to encourage honest feedback, but if someone is too negative all the time, then we are going to take action.
Kira: That’s an important point. We want the negative criticism of the game, we can take it. We want the negative feedback; we’re never going to censor unwanted or undesirable posts from our point of view. But there’s a fine line between that and always negative, negative without providing feedback of how it should be improved.
We’ve had issues recently about negativity. When we’ve asked for documentation, many times it’s coming from third party apps (such as Line), which we do not have any control over.
Petri: That’s something we can add the FAQ, but those issues have to be reported to the platform provider, not SGG.
Kira: One other thing I’d like to add on that, if you feel the Forum has become too negative, set a good example. Be a positive voice. Use your voice to lift up the community.
Petri: If you have good ideas, make sure to remind us of them.
Kira: We do trust the moderators; you’re our eyes and ears. If there are issues or good ideas, bring them to us. But the forums were always meant to be player-to-player.
23. There are certain things that come up over and over again on the Forum. The times that one of you comes in and gives a clear statement can often just resolve it. It seem like there are a lot of opportunities where a single, clear answer can end a lot of frustration, speculation, and debate. Is there an opportunity for staff to be more proactive about that?
Kira: Yes, we could be more proactive about that. You [moderators] can ping us directly. Usually those issues are addressed on the FAQ page (https://support.smallgiantgames.com) , which does require one extra click, but hopefully we can share that around.