Yo Peter and Jack and the dev team! Let's jam!

Hm. Well, I was given the go ahead to share this email with you all. I'm not including my longwinded response to it, because it appears to have been forwarded to George who told me I was free to share Jack's response with you all. I've also not included George's response because, well, mostly it would make the image somewhat lopsided in terms of size put together, it's mostly reiterating what Jack said, and if needed I can bring it up in a second (or Monkeythumbz/Matthew Allen can verify it chiming in here). Here you go guys:


Sorry for it taking awhile to get authorization to share, they seem to get around to these messages as they're winding down at the office. I tried to catch George for a quick double verify, since I was hoping that Jack would get back to me with something a little more substantial in response to my email sent very shortly after this one, and he gave me the double go ahead. So it looks like this is where we can begin again, and build everything up from here. If we want to try and put together a detailed list of questions either here or in another thread, I'll try to collect them together, revise them (as Digital Jam did awhile back) and send them off to George. I'm well aware that this is both a mixture probably of what you anticipated and that you may not wish to bother, provided this isn't exactly the first time we've done something like this, however I'm hopeful that if we can assemble the right sort of questions, maybe we can see good answers and possibly some internal changes to how things are being handled. More than that, if we can take this in a calm, patient stride, it may pave the way for improved communications that lead us to, if not improvements from this first try, the momentum for improvements to be made.

I only wish my other email had had enough sway in it to turn things around so that I wouldn't be coming to you with this. Unfortunately, I'm not sure to what degree Jack or the CMs have much say in this regard. Thank you, however, for further conveying that this is not all on us as a community. =D

I don't expect Jack to make a bunch of posts on the forums. He never really has. That is not his job. I do expect to be hearing more from anyone about the PC game turning into something that was promised back on the Kickstarter. Why can't anyone tell us straight out, are you ever going to make THAT game? The one you described and geared towards PC hard core gamers to get our cash? If your not, then can you just admit it already?

End of Play. 

And I agree that answers which the community hadn't hoped for are preferable to no answers at all (which has sometimes been the case too often). I'm interested to see how things go once some organized questions are put together and tossed their way.

So yesterdays go slow update has been replaced by a several hundred revisions older, all settlements removing optin - way to go guys.

I think it'll take a while to gather, sort, collate and refine all the very important questions based on the community's highest priorities. However, I think it'd be a great start and provide a launching point for continued communication. Chances are better if we prioritize them, and present each in as concise and condensed way as possible, while still hitting the most pressing important concerns.

Sounds like a lot of work, as the CMs know this all too well, and might take some time and dedication (and patience). So respect that whomever is involved is doing so voluntarily, and likewise, nobody is expected to partake; if people disagree about participating in this (e.g. that it's a wasted effort), that is ok and no ill-will to them.

Now, granted this is all being done in good faith, and I am fairly on board with it, but I would like to point out a couple things;
A) This isn't the first, or even second time that the community has gathered questions and such, amongst ourselves, and presented them for the 22cans to review and answer [Danjal and others can attest to that, and probably provide links]. I won't prattle on about the results, or lack thereof, be what it may. Just know, it is unlikely to happen again depending on where it all ends up.

B) It's very unusual for the community to have to put in the effort and ground work just to receive (seemingly) simple answers from Devs; it honestly shouldn't ever come to this, and (correct me if I'm wrong) may be setting a precedent on community/developer interaction. People are no longer content to sit back and not hold them accountable. Despite supporting this effort - because really, there's no harm or foul in trying - I still have reservations about why it's even required in the first place. That's all I'll say for now, because I want to keep a pleasant tonento the conversation.

I'll start coming up witg what I think are the top priority questions, to the best of my ability (and try finding time/energy to do so) over the weekend. This time, I swear i'll do it.

See you around the forums.

If we'd got paid for every single time we organized a list of questions we could probably fund Godus' development with that by now. =P

Regardless. I think this thread still has a number of questions that remain without satisfying answers.

Further answers would fall along the lines of the nature and expectations of Hubworld.
The nature and differences between iOS and PC, to what extend can we be expecting a difference and when (if ever) will that start to become obvious.
Can we finally start to expect some degree of consistency in communications? I'd rather hear that 22cans is currently incapable of assisting us on the PC side of things than keep hearing them say how much they love the PC community while they continually put all focus on iOS development.
I think we all can agree that we can understand and respect the need to accrue funding by 22cans and that without funding they'd go under leaving us without future PC updates aswell. As such anyone that desires PC updates should be willing to accept an honest answer regarding the need for 22cans to keep focus on iOS for atleast some more time, if that should be the case.

In line with that last question, I'd pose a request that at any given time, a single of the Cans should be set to work on the PC side of things.
To assure that some degree of content maintains operational. I'm thinking along the lines of bugfixing and general maintenance aswell as moving over and adjusting iOS generated content and making it suitable to the different needs of the PC platform. A general level of quality control and assurance towards the PC platform would subsequently assure that 22cans does not entirely abandon us and maintains a level of quality and focus towards the PC platform without the need for PR babble on how the various versions of the game are 'delicious' and whatnot.

Ideally I'd also like to see a certain degree of freedom being given to the CM's, so that they can move autonomously within 22cans to obtain answers as needed. Without continually having to pass Peter for permission. If a proper line of communication is formed and observed. It should be possible to indicate that answers regarding WIP-features are more or less than likely to be subject to change. As such it should become possible to provide clearer answers in the future. Answers that aren't coated in smoke and distorted by mirrors.


I'd like to point out aswell that the #1 frustration within the community is with the shape and consistency of communications coming from 22cans.
Things are being said by one person and contradicted by another. Statements are being made and later on made irrelevant or turned into outright lies.
All in an attempt to sugarcoat and PR-spin the reality of what Godus is going through.
If all pretense were to be dropped, a clearcut line of communications should prevent the need for such fantastical creations.
And it should become more clear when features are "being tested" aswell as when feedback is being discarded as useless.
Allowing a better 2-way line of communications in the future. And thus less need for frustrations.


Lastly - criticism isn't always bad. Just because we happen to disagree or see things from a different perspective, doesn't mean we hate your guts.
Its being ignored and lied to that causes us to hate your guts - not the disagreeing part.

Well, we might as well just do some Steam thread necromancy and dredge back up the AMA questions thread and repeat ourselves again.  Just about everything we asked back then is still unanswered.

It's sad that the response to "hey, talk to us" is for us to get another video.  I had to stop myself from going off in that thread when Gmr posted the response.  That whole Steam thread has turned into a bad joke.  We all pretty much bent over backwards to create at least one place where the community was not going to be threatening and 22Cans pretty much ran from it like it was the plague.  Oh joy, another video that'll tell us how important we are, how they've such grand plans for the future, and how feature x (or Hubworld) is just around the corner and will change our opinion about everything.  Rather than stick around, I should just script myself a bot that grabs my posts from old threads and just repeats them. 

I'm so sick of being insulted, belittled, and ignored by Peter Molyneux.  The community has been repeatedly attacked.  It's to the point now where we're being blamed for the sorry state of affairs, as if negativity could magically turn code buggy and remove features.  We've done everything in our power to foster positive change and every single step has been met with intractability, misrepresentation, and silence. 

Thanks for the responses guys, and keeping them as level-headed as can really be expected. I don't think we're in a position to really make requests, unfortunately, but I think we could probably sort the questions into different say, concern/problem categories and try to determine which we consider high-moderate-low priority? This way we can try to unambiguously define which we would really like to see answered, as opposed to having them pick somewhat at random?

Here's approximately what I'm thinking right now.

Common Game Concerns
E.g. Will sculpting be improved to be more precise? Will there be something more to Homeworld to distract from timers?

PC Game Concerns
E.g. How will this diverge from mobile past the implementation of the rest of the content and the introduction of mod tools?

Mobile Game Concerns
E.g. Will camera rotation be added, and how frequently can new content be expected? How will new content affect game progress?

Communication/News Concerns
E.g. Has any serious consideration been given to providing more frequent and insightful updates regarding the game's development, e.g. via weekly recap blog posts?

In general, my thinking is along the same lines as 13thGeneral regarding question prioritization and brevity, alongside the addition of distinct categories. I think perhaps organizing the categories themselves around prioritization may also help, but I'm not sure whether even the above seem okay and if so, how they might best be arranged.

All I can say is, this time (compared to the AMA and possibly past instances) we're given the opportunity to draw together the questions. We get to decide if we let low priority questions even appear. We can riddle this thing with all the hard questions in the world. I completely understand where everyone's coming from here. This is, frankly, a pretty insane situation to find ourselves in, but sometimes the best thing you can do in an asylum is to play along with the patients' bizarre behavior, perhaps merely to hope they come to their senses.

As silly as it may sound, I feel like I'm playing a real life Psychonauts level once you hit the asylum and go into the patients' heads. It doesn't make a lick of sense what you're doing but, darn it, it's the only way to retrieve everyone's brains!

Sorry, I completely agree. It would absolutely fit in there as I noted, under one of those categories as one of the top priority questions (if we even want to bother with prioritization of questions, or hell, even categorization of them). When talking about requests, I was referring to Danjal's post not yours. I hope that's clearer.