Upcoming - Announcing and Studio Development Strategy
Author: Geometa,
published 1 year ago,
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//28842908/bd15871aa546654f1ed8f1dc5e18e4d76be10386.png[/img]
Dear Stormworkers,
It is announcement week! Next week is minor update update week, and next week we will be releasing the recently announced physics sensor, as well as other fixes and improvements.
A new major update is on the way! We were hoping to announce this week, but as always, we are very cautious to announce anything until it is ready, and there are some more improvements that we want to get finished.
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//28842908/4e3baf40841d8513d8fd4f5a3b6d2f716192acb1.jpg[/img]
[b]Our Update Announcement Strategy[/b]
Big updates are exciting, and when you are working new features, it is very easy for developers to get carried away with enthusiasm. We are no exception, and it is thrilling to see things come together and think about the new possibilities that this new work unlocks! We would love to share every step with players, but this can result in an overall negative player experience, as players would see the many ideas that don't work out, get cancelled, or de-prioritized. We are also big believers in doing rather than talking, and the focus has always been about the product and real value, rather than words or promises.
So, our strategy is to get new features to a stage where we are happy, then share the news to players with the confidence that we can deliver.
[img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//28842908/fbb9885638fc50dce3ce064bc932dd355e88fe69.png[/img]
[b]Studio Plans and Development Strategy[/b]
Stormworks released on Early Access on 28th Feb 2018, almost 5 years ago! And we had the invite-only beta 6 months prior. For years we released updates every week, and now every 2 weeks. There have been dozen of major updates and even two DLCs. Players have amassed over 6000 years of playtime.
We are very fortunate that Stormworks is a popular game, and making updates for players and seeing their reactions is very rewarding. This is something that must continue and we want to do our best to serve our players as best we can.
The challenge we are increasingly facing is that after 2 years of pre-release development and 5 years of servicing, the code becomes more and more fatigued. The Stormworks source code excluding third party libraries and comments is over 15 million characters. On top of this, we have made all the easy updates, and a lot of the not-so-easy ones. Stuff that should be easy turns out to be very complex to integrate with those 15m characters of existing source code. What is left tends to be difficult to deliver.
Our current strategy is to just get on with it and do the jobs, no matter how difficult. Obviously, this is a short term strategy and in the long term, there are better ways to serve our players.
So, our long term strategy is a new game and we have some very ambitious plans. Moving forward is important, so the new game won't be Stormworks 2, but it will be design and vehicle building game, taking lessons from Stormworks and from what our players have told us. We are discussing a lot about player authorship, modding, gameplay and purpose, and a lot of things never done before in a game.
Stormworks updates will continue, and we will work on our new game in parallel.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback! Catch you next week for the minor update.
Much love <3,
The Stormworks Developers