After Patch #13 launch I will be able to take time to sit down with the EP etc to talk about our likely patch cadence going forward and see if I can set a comm-link cadence in line with that.
Ultimately I don’t want to be in a position again where I don’t have information I am able to share, and just communicating for the sake of keeping to the set schedule, so they might well become more ad-hoc.
So I would imagine the next comm-link won’t be until after Patch#13, and the next piece of comms from us will be in the form of a dev blog.
I totally understand your enthusiasm for news on the update and that you have been waiting for changes like this.
The dev blog will be the next set of comms, and will give you much more information on the class revamp - until then all the information I can give is what the devs said to journalists at Gamescom
Thanks for the details @FatsharkCatfish - it seems like a “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. Hopefully people can remain patient (inb4 “we’ve been patient”) - it’s a bummer, but a barebones Comms Link just to satisfy a schedule would be more frustrating (at least for me) than a fleshed-out one to get excited about.
A lot of pressure on you guys with this one. Couple of Darktide players who frequent Vermintide 2 that I talk to are hyping this update up. If this content update disappoints me I will continue haunting your Darktide forums. Break a leg, as they say.
I really appreciate the transparency and explanation - that seems very frustrating that the only people who can generate the content for you to post about are the same ones who need to put the work in to get the development done. I was under the impression that while the CM’s work with the developers, the blogs/updates was written by the CM based on the information given to them by the devs to then give to the community. If this was my impression then it must be for others as well, so hopefully this transparency helps with people being more understanding.
It feels like there must be a better way to get that done - it seems like a waste of the dev time to have to stop working on the game just to write these blogs, and it’s a waste of your time too I imagine. It feels like there should be some workflow that can improve that transition from planned content to blogpost that doesn’t involve the devs having to stop what they’re doing and forcing you to just wait to see what they give you.
For what it worth, I actually preferred it this way. Even if there was no new info to give, I liked the frequent opportunity to be given information/insight if something is going well, if it’s going bad, etc. “We’re still working on it” is perfectly valid to me because I really value transparency. I don’t mind if things come out slow personally as long as things are well laid out and I can see what the overall plan is.
Though, with the amount of people chasing after those posts going “Where’s all the other stuff what are you guys doing why is this so slow” I can understand why you’ve taken this position.
There’s probably some nuance to it - does a developer provide the details and CMs craft a blog post around it, does “devs” literally refer to developers or does it refer to the development team(s) (of which there may be non-developer roles to handle this).
You will always receive different feedback regarding this, because there is different customer types, who react differently to these situations. And unlike other fields, say B2B customer support or sales, you cannot please everyone here, because you write public statements, which cannot be personally adressed to one type (although you could steer it a little by giving the option for an opt-in newsletter for instance). Thus these updates are necessarily received by everyone paying attention.
The six types of gamers I noticed over my years in Gaming:
The Regular: Likes methodical updates, even “empty ones” with little new info. Plays your game likely daily, but not religiously. This is the type who wants to feel the “game is alive” and that they are somehow involved. By giving a bi-weekly update tidbits like you did in the past, you make them happy.
The Practically Minded: Somewhat reductionist customer type. Plays when he feels the urge, doesn’t when he has better things to do. “Less is more, short to the point and if there’s nothing to say I don’t want to hear it”. Somewhat put off by overly long banter, but will tune out anyway if they don’t feel relevancy. Won’t make a fuss, as long as their e-mail / news feed aren’t spammed.
The Enthusiast: More is more, wants to soak up as much as possible. Plays one or two games religiously and exclusively, until their hype fades. Unlike the “Believer” they are less forgiving with big mishaps. Wants to learn a new tidbit every time an update drops and if there is nothing in it, they are disappointed. Would be the type to be turned off by your “empty” updates.
The Meritocrat / Honest Critic: Cannot be permanently won over or turned off. Will judge every action separately and individually. Rare type, despite many thinking they are this. Is the person who actually changes their review after the fact to “be fair”.
Only plays sporadically what currently interests them.
Lastly, there is two unique types you don’t encounter in many other industry branches:
Optimistic Believers: Will view most actions positively, regardless of circumstances. Plays religiously. You can do no wrong by them.
Pessimistic Detractors: Will view most actions in a cynical light, regardless of circumstances. Never played your game to begin with or only shortly. Uses the object of his criticism to unload OR feels personally slighted by a past experience. You can do no right by them.
If you want a good measure of what feedback to really take serious, you should ignore the latter two to some degree, because they have a personal emotionally vested interest in projecting their inner feelings and world view onto you and the company you represent. Much more so than any of the other types.
Devs pretty busy so the players got jakshit information after patch 12… but not busy enough to swing around game journos with exclusive interview and sneak peek.
…
Contacting Game Journalists makes more sense than a Blogpost, because the reach is greater. You can count on “lost players” to get the memo, when the specified blog posts are only read by the customer types who sticked around until now.
Remember: It’s a company, it thinks economically. Choosing more reach over the niche that already decided to stick around is a good call. Just not a very personalized one.
Any decent corporation has a policy who, what and when and how make a “puplic statement” like interviews… So again the game jurnos circrejerks had a set date wich means fatsharks had time to prepare how they approche the possible question and what they can share… So how fuking hard to took those bulletin points and give it to the resident community mouthpiece and make a post about it ?
So far jurnos had:
material to make an article with exclusive screen caps
short YT video (12 sec but something)
An interview with devs
So far we have at the announcement:
Patch 12 (aug 7)
Patch 1.1.21 (aug 9)
At this point idk it’s sheer stupidity or malice from the management not even have the will copying in 1:1 the jurnos material to the forum…
But we do have an answer to that.
As far as I read Catfish comments between the lines correctly, Fatshark didn’t hire an individual Marketing team - They have the Community Managers and the Team Leads / CEO do the Marketing, seemingly because they feel that ‘cost of hire’ + ‘cost of long-term employment’ of a Marketing Team is wasted resources. They’d rather outsource that (where the game journos come in) and split it up as additional responsibility to their established employees.
Now, it may look to you from the outside that nothing is going on at Fishtank HQ, but you’d be amazed how absolutely stacked from top to bottom a corporate calendar can be, depending on what systems need to be managed and what communicated.
Is some of it corporate BS? Sure is.
But you also need corporate BS to make corporations of a certain size work. Which the treshhold Fatshark has surpassed.
Besides, sharing information with Journalists doesn’t mean that we don’t get it. Clearly we are talking about it here.
Journalists increase the reach through their publications.
You are taking what the Journalists got and calculate it against what “we” got. Make it an us vs them thing.
Now, you can’t be entirely faulted for that, because these last years journalists did an excellent job writing themselves into a corner by antagonizing their supposed audience (us). This is a failing on the journalists’ part. They hired bad talent, who couldn’t keep their politics out of work and they did the most stupid thing - Which is to bring politics and religion to the work place and customer. One does not. But that’s mostly in the past now (we don’t talk about Extra Credit and Kotaku).
I don’t think Fatshark cared about that aspect. They clearly decided they need more reach and were willing to go that step, regardless of how some would feel regarding journalists.
But technically speaking “we” got all of the information here and “the outsiders / less aware of Darktide” only got the journalist stuff.
Every keystroke on fatsharks defense is die in veins…
You dose not have a reasonable explain why the busy CEO why not attached catfish to the end of the E-mail string which went to the jurnos with a PS: btw post it on forum as well…
and the jurnos had the audacity to make an article with the title “Not even the gamers know…” No s hit Sherlock, cuz the devs dose not told us …
Ohh poor gaming company dose not have a resource for a marketing team… I have a solution… How about fire the (gossiped) useless Player retention department (clearly making awful work so far) and hire more marketing personal ? Or a secretary for the overworked CEO… LOL
It’s simple: I believe I have cracked the code.
And I feel it’s my duty to share it with you. Maybe that’s wrong, though.
Anyway, what you attribute to malice, I attribute to something else.
I am strictly convinced Fatshark appears outlandish to us, because they operate under certain company credos and processes they picked up in the past, when they were still subcontracting for other companies.
And rather than risk losing it all, they figure they play it safe by sticking to what worked for them thus far, even if it’s a little “old-fashioned”.
It fits the puzzle pieces perfectly. Here look:
+The refusal to go Early Access, despite VT2 and DT being perfect candidates for it
+The alienation they feel from players playing their game 24/7
(The expectation is clearly complete once and be done - Singleplayer - Popular before 2010)
+Their very loose adaption of Live Service formula, clearly not fully getting behind it
+Their unsure way of dealing with the cash shop (constant price and regulation changes)
+The tall company structure internally
+Not having your own marketing team
+Contacting Journalists to spread your information and communicate to the audience
You know what all of these things have in common? They are behavior patterns of a legacy company, that doesn’t quite know how to deal with post 2010’s Gaming scene. A legacy company, that rose in times where Twitter “haha funny meme” marketing wasn’t a thing yet and games were sold to and treated differently by the audience.
I know this will come off as weird, but this is incredibly fascinating to me. And I can’t help but see the human elements behind it.
I, too, know how difficult it is to adapt to changes. Society changes all the time. How does one cope with it, when it takes so twisting turns?
I get your complaint, really, but that’s just dumb clickbait. This title isn’t meant to rub salt in your personal wound, it’s meant to garner interest.
“Look, we have information EVEN THE DIEHARD FANS DON’T HAVE! Come and read here”
Classic case of professional journalist vs fan disconnect.
The best part is: You can bet good money the writer of that article didn’t give 2 flying squirrels how you feel. They probably didn’t even think too deeply about it. It was just a “quick, gotta have some captivating headline” type of thing. You are getting bent out of shape over something nobody else wasted a two braincells on. The dude had to push an article on time, it was a quick and dirty write-up.
CEO will have quite enough on his plate, I’m sure. There is many meetings to hold and many things of the company to manage.
How useless their player retention team is I’d also debate. Clearly we’re still around here. Makes you kinda wonder.
Also hiring new employees isn’t a snip-your-fingers-and-be-done thing. Staff needs to get trained, needs to get checked for reliability, needs to get hired.
And again, it might not fit their company strategy. If you push out a blogpost every few weeks and one interview every few months, you don’t need a fully paid marketing team. Why waste money on that?
Clearly most of the players of Fatshark games are fine with the pace of updates. Making you happy 24/7 is not a priority of theirs (and changing your operations to suit such an agenda is a wasteful undertaking anyway). Remember, they have no idea if doing even more in terms of PR work would yield them any pay-off. For all they know, you and me could be just another bunch of cynics, barking up the wrong tree to relieve stress.
Sounds harsh, but it’s a reality someone who isn’t us has to consider.
This is a good general perspective that most people acquire when they become an adult. Unfortunately a lot of people operate on the opposite assumption despite like a decade of this company’s history showing their heart is generally in the right place and they genuinely do care about their games.
