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@Petri - SGG Community Manager -
@KiraSG - SGG Player Support/ Community -
@Rook - Moderator -
@zephyr1 - Moderator -
@littleKAF - Moderator
A frequent criticism to ‘Small Giant being a small team trying to do big things’ is that you make a fair amount of revenue — so why not add another team member?
That’s really not for us to comment on. I will just say that in general it doesn’t make it easier to have a huge team. It’s just more noise – too many cooks in the kitchen.
We have a very special culture here and having more people doesn’t always mean better results. It could just mean more hierarchy and bureaucracy. And we are a very flat team here. There is never a time where we cannot go and talk to a coworker, there is no process. If I have an issue, I can go directly to the team with that.
Your premise is that you recognize that there are places where you are capacity constrained, but there are benefits to keeping the team the size it is.
We are also always looking at how we can improve. Perhaps some things that we do manually can maybe be done automated and that would free up time for us. We’re always looking for things like that.
You mentioned that it’s useful to have more specific feedback on things players would like to have more communication about. I think we actually do know some of those things, and some we have already talked about. Such as updates to the Shortlist of Frequent Requests. And there’s talk about the Raid Index that was published in June – some people would like to see more of that sort of thing. Sneak peaks are something people ask about often. Release Notes are another place where people have asked for more detail and clarity. And likewise the bugs that come up – so we know this is a ‘Known Issue,’ but what does that mean?
We have to draw the line somewhere. On the Bugs & Issues topics, as an example, we try to say when something will be fixed, when possible. However, it’s not always possible as there are a lot of moving parts with the game development. We try not to over-promise or say something and then disappoint people. And sometimes these issues are beyond us. It can be something outside of this company. But we try to give updates.
If we get information that this will be fixed in version 25, then we write that. If it’s “we found the issue and we’re working on it,” then we write that. If we don’t get a timeline from the designers, then we don’t promise any timeline.
And some issues are so rare that it’s hard for the QA team to reproduce. With the release notes, we try to include all the player facing changes – that’s the goal. But there have been cases where we made a mistake; then we try to update the notes. But to include all the small details could be problematic. There are a lot of “under the hood changes” that we feel will be more confusing to people.
It could be a lot of technical jargon that players won’t see or notice anyway, so adding that would just be noise at that point. We try to keep it as clean and easy to understand as possible.
For the things that are more game design oriented, there are often two separate pieces of feedback that I see on Release Notes. One is that sometimes they are incomplete, meaning that people sort of discover there is something that was left out – that is sort of an oversight issue, which we just talked about. There’s also a separate piece of feedback about the Release Notes related to game design decisions. When there is a game design decision that is not technical or even a bug fix, but is more of a change to balance or a new feature, you sometimes get a one-line bullet and a lot of the information that is ultimately shared is coming from other players. Some information is from Beta, and others is from players who played it once it’s released and they are sort of puzzling it out. Is there some way that there can be clarity on those latter type of items, since the game designers have clearly put a lot of thought into it? One thing I’ve heard recently on the forum is it would be nice if Tim would do a five minute video saying, “Hey, we’re releasing version 25. It’s got these new things in it. Let me tell you about one or two things I’m excited about that we spent the last few months on."
That is a good suggestion. I cannot promise anything in the short term as it’s always a question about what is the best use of time. But I do understand the players always want to have more information and clarity. We can look into implementing some improvements, maybe start small and add something.
The Release Notes are simply release notes, and are not the place to go into these thought processes. But can we elaborate in a different thread or in short videos? We are discussing these things all the time and would love to do this. Personally, it would be cool to have a YouTube 5-minute videos with every team lead. Maybe one day?
But then that would take from something else. But that is some feedback that we need to take into conscience consideration.
I do understand that if you just read a bullet point in a Release Note you are like ‘why is this feature even here? I want to know more.’ And again, that is why we love our community, and are so proud of our community, because it is up to the players to say ‘I use it this way’ or ‘this is what we’ve been asking for.’ Zephyr’s threads are so wonderful where he breaks down and converses on each new hero and each new feature. Can we do more of those? Maybe.
You mentioned earlier about collaborating with Content Creators. Some players say it is great that there are content creators in the community while others say that this should really be a Small Giant role — why are you not publishing infographics or putting out your own guides on new features? If the premise is that players are going to do this, that it is both reflective of small size and the community that you are trying to foster (where you have players that are engaged and want to do this), is there a way to facilitate that more? Are there certain resources that could be happening with the Content Creators so they can have an easier time doing that work?
For example, there is a calendar that players are putting together and they have to guess what the dates are.
The calendar dates are tricky because they are all subject to change. If we give an official calendar then we are responsible for it. If, beyond our control, the designers decide to change a date (like for example, the Pirate event calendar), are we shooting ourselves in the foot by having a published calendar?
And then some of the things we like to keep as a surprise. We are happily surprised when all the people have found the mechanisms around the schedule and are actually really close, like when the Rare Quests are spawned. It was never meant to be that way and we thought an official schedule would take the fun out of it.
I do understand that players like the ability to plan ahead, especially when it comes to ascending heroes. They want to know what Rare Quest is coming up for materials, or what event is coming, and which heroes may be featured. I understand why this is important. But it’s kind of a tricky one. Does it take some of the fun out of it, it everything is planned to a T?
So we want to keep the balance of being surprised and that there’s always something new in game, instead of everything being published before hand, taking the fun out of it. But any time there is a schedule change we do want to announce that before hand. Or if there is new content, we always want to say those dates. That might be something we can discuss for improvements. Such as, would players need it more before hand, or when is the right time, and through what channel.
Back to the content creators, we are looking for ways we can better work with them and better support them. It is definitely something we are brainstorming behind the scenes.
One thing we are preparing is a fan kit for all the content creators or any player. This would have assets which are nearly finalized that they can use on their websites or videos. That is coming up.
Do we get to know what the fan kit will be once it’s finalized, so we can tell people?
Yes, it will be free to share for non-commercial purposes. It’s basically images and pictures that are not available yet, like wallpapers.