A disclaimer: Talking about features under development
The purpose of this blog is to share some of the development of Hades' Star with future players of the game. My hope is that openly sharing this information can help everyone see early on whether the game is for them, and to solicit important feedback that can further guide development.
As is always the case, features under development can change substantially or get cancelled. This is a normal and expected part of development: Very often, things that sound great on paper break down when they are play tested. It's also especially true in online games, where getting the best out of a feature relies on human players not deviating too much from a specific range of behaviors. Human players have the habit of surprising naive designers like me who think they can design human behavior on paper. In practice, I believe any non trivial feature that relies on human interaction in a massively online game has to be playtested with a good number of players before it's called done.
For these reasons, sharing features under development with players is risky. It's easy to be misunderstood and be accused of promising things that are never delivered. It's a risk we are willing to take in order to have a closer, more meaningful relationship with our players. When features do change and are cancelled, we'll do our best to explain why.
As is always the case, features under development can change substantially or get cancelled. This is a normal and expected part of development: Very often, things that sound great on paper break down when they are play tested. It's also especially true in online games, where getting the best out of a feature relies on human players not deviating too much from a specific range of behaviors. Human players have the habit of surprising naive designers like me who think they can design human behavior on paper. In practice, I believe any non trivial feature that relies on human interaction in a massively online game has to be playtested with a good number of players before it's called done.
For these reasons, sharing features under development with players is risky. It's easy to be misunderstood and be accused of promising things that are never delivered. It's a risk we are willing to take in order to have a closer, more meaningful relationship with our players. When features do change and are cancelled, we'll do our best to explain why.
Comments
Post a Comment