General Godus discussion

Well stated; I think it's a fair enough assessment and justifiable as informative. I see no reason they could use to ban you without a contrived interpretation of the forum conduct rules & guidelines.

Well said. I wish 22cans would engage with the community and reflect that engagement in their development. I don't know what job Colin is fulfilling but he doesn't see it requiring him to talk to the community at all.

A while back Aynen made a response post to someone on the Steam forums about the difference between PR and Community Management and how they were very different things. Makes me wonder if Colin has washed his hands of any "community management" because that's "not within his scope".

The feedback on those forums has been sorted out to be more about a priority system for which "features"* to be worked upon; no question of what parts you liked or how you think some mechanics could be improved, but instead more like what you used the most/least and if everything worked properly. Everything else, if answered at all, gets a basic thank you as a "We're being nice to you, but we really don't care." - most other developers, with that apparent need for feedback to set the forums up 22cans have, would have better engaged most others except for the token show of the paywall being removed.

So that makes it even more questionable.

With the contempt 22cans have shown towards their own CMs' future careers by making them look like a con artist's monkey and otherwise useless, it's not like there was ever much interest in that by 22cans, and from the state of product it's not as if it seems as if others there at 22cans are overworked.

I think it was Andy, one of the two supposed Producers on Godus/Godus Wars when it's a mystery how they have any at all with development in this state, who said he ordered the developers off of the forums so they could focus on their work. That was about the same time Dave was doing the Daily Updates, and according to the Godus Wars credits should have been the person to talk to about what everyone was working on for the day.

More like they were trying to keep the developers from spilling any dish out on the plans for Godus Wars.

Godus Wars is what happens when your Producer is more someone who goes around making sure there aren't any leaks of "sensitive" material and less to do with coordinating the development of a game.



Maybe CyberGrim will see it and pass it onto the rest trapped in the Cannery to know that we still sympathise with the rank and file. From everything I've seen, Godus Wars looks like another Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, where the management treated those working for them with contempt for having different ideas than what management wanted to shovel out as cheaply as possible out onto consoles after a bit of time through PC "testing" (sound familiar?), despite the fact that while I like Slipknot it has absolutely nothing to do with the Fallout setting.

This is the likely reason why most left on the dev teams are young - not because of their enthusiasm, but because they won't push back against (mis)management.

* - I use this term extremely loosely given the state of Godus Wars. A better question would be "Did you find any features in the game?"

Upon closer inspection of the Godus Wars description, I guess at least they're a little more honest (even if complete dicks towards original backers as per usual):

"We’re using Early Access to gather balancing feedback and gauge player reaction as we work towards a feature complete release. Early Access will allow our users and loyal Kickstarter backers to try out and provide detailed feedback in order for us to deliver a more polished, optimised and balanced game upon release!"

"What is the current state of the Early Access version?
'We have a lot of the ground work completed.'"

Very distinct from the Godus description:

"GODUS is a unique game that we hope will grow to be truly special. We've thoroughly enjoyed developing our dream game alongside the community and are continuing to refine the game based on the feedback of the players. We warn you that there are still bugs and incomplete features - this is the nature of the journey we are on. You may wish to wait for the finished game, but we have much content still to discover and improve as the game continues development. We do hope you’ll help with this. If you do, you are part of our development team. We look forward to receiving your feedback."

To give them credit, I think it's pretty accurate to describe the people who still stick around after everything that happened for the past years as loyal
Most people have long given up.

Also more seriously, I think saying they have completed a lot of ground work isn't that bad.
More units, interesting maps etc.. isn't what I describe as ground work. I read it as 'we've laid a rough basis for the game'. Which is pretty much the case atm.
The question is whether they will try to finish it, and make an actual game out of this.

The most revealing item, and one that really damned the release:

22cans felt that the state of the second continent was worth charging for.
In turn, that would imply that the base game is the first continent.

From several reviews, this would barely be suitable as a tech demo, and maybe only if you had to prove that the engine could run and that you were waiting on the writing and actual deity design (since so far they offer non-customisable deities that seem rather silly).

The way that Bryan Henderson was put into the game seems like ticking off of a box that it was technically done, but as usual the label on the tin and the actual contents may really vary.

One moment:

steamcommunity.com/app/422420/discussions/5/405691491109509543/





Aynen , thy name be Judas goat. Or are we to go back to that you don't speak for the company, yet here you are...speaking for the company?  

Yes, I know. Deniable.  

(You say "personally" yet about the only feedback that exists outside of form reply - yet you "personally" should know better by now, and you're just saying this from a point of offering folks false impressions about the state of development/feedback being accepted, implied by your association/familiarity with 22cans.)
 
Wat. So you're telling me that the answer to a crippling game modifier wasn't to lessen the hopelessness involved with such a modifier involved, but to accent that experience?

*goes back and reads Aynen's post*



Okay then...so where are the developers, the actual developers who are working on the game who could readily process this feedback as per the Early Access program?

The reason for keeping the developers in quarantine is a little past due now that Godus Wars has been offered as surprise (feedback, right?) - unless 22cans has something even worse ready to unleash upon their rather unsuspecting audience.

They've stopped even pretending they care about feedback.

Again, we're back to the ghost town of the 22cans site/forums - nothing else suggests more strongly that 22cans are not actually interested in gameplay feedback (or interested in continuing development upon Godus since a few items on the Steam Godus forum were given the "go over to the Godus Wars forum").

It seems far-fetched for a possible legitimate reason why they would let their storefront "go dark" like that, but maybe...bandwidth? Reduce interaction to Twitter and other off-site media to reduce costs?