and when people say - we have news and updates coming over the coming weeks… its been a month and a half… coming weeks are like less than a month and we will let you know
It doesn’t grow faith if thats all that has been said… it will either succeed or fail… maybe they are on holiday… ok fair enough… but what about the Community Manager - they know whats going on every step of the way (or should)
Unless James posted this info on another thread which i haven’t found yet?
Because i cant find any Announcements - we are updating the game on X date - we are STILL active nothing about that can i find…
So with people losing faith yet again its no surprise…
All any of us want is 100% clarity and honesty every step of the way
But then there was almost black-out silence for a few years until SE backed out… Sorry but i don’t trust these guys anymore simply because lack of continued info that we were promised…
My autism wants me to rage and shout and be a Keyboard warrior… but i was banned previously for that, so i am shutting up now
info black-out refers to Steam - NO ONE of the team has interacted with us there for a year or more!
I refuse to trust New updates coming soon unless it is on Steam! its almost like lets say something and shut them up!
Been on the other side of the equation MANY times. I have been a community manager before and I am also a developer and have been with a few fortune 500 companies and currently work as a developer at Universal Studios in Orlando.
It is pretty important that when you provide a product and your clients are asking for you to communicate what is going on with your product that you respond. We all know you cannot communicate to every request, question or suggestion, but you can communicate. When you do not respond you get reviews like some on Steam stating the devs gave up, even if they haven’t.
Look at the News feed in-game sometime. You can see where there was pretty constant updates then they slowly grew slower and slower until there was nothing for a year (at least the entire time I’ve been playing). That is pretty unheard of in business unless going out of business, abandoning a project or just having no funding.
I have been on many dev teams and while yes SOME players do not understand devs are people with lives, budgets, and not always enough time, it takes all of 10 minutes at most to write a quick post to give a quick update.
No communication causes speculation, distrust and just a feeling of abandonment that, as shown by the massive response and excitement to James last post, could be prevented by just throwing out a quick update.
lack of updates from a gaming company leads to a lack of interest from their customers.
lack of communication from a gaming company also leads to lack of interest from their customers.
both 1 & 2 above leads to customers leaving games behind.
it doesn’t mater if you are a “James Supporter” or not, the fact is #1 and #2 above. Anyone that argues that, look at the servers 4 years ago, and every year after. Look at all the negative feedback about James (no, not James… but the company over all) not replying. I mean, unless James is the only Developer and only one working on this game, OK then I would get it and cut him some slack because the man has a life outside of boundless and we can only assume he would be working on picking up the pieces.
However, the assumption is that the company is a group/team of people. You can tell me that noone at all is reading these forums? I mean seriously, as a online company, that has a monthly subscription both as gleam pass and as the added worlds. This is the definition of a “SaaS” but without the “communication” that comes with “Service”.
Anyone that argues that, I ask them, look at any Online game. Any MMO. Any multiplayer game. Then look at their customers / clients. All they ask for is “meaningful updates” and “communication of what’s up” … him or anyone at the company dropping into this chat and saying “look guys, we are scrabbling to do our best to come up with something for you guys. Just be patience” … even a stern message like that, everyone would be like “ohh thank you god… we will wait patiently” … at least for another 30days lol. but still, I feel like they are burning all there bridges by no communicating. it honestly looks like they have no interest. As people have said for eons … actions, speak louder then works… well, we can’t go by the companies words, because they are non-existent so we have to go by there actions, which um… are pretty much non-existent as well.
EDIT :: btw want to add… communication is also even more important at a time like now when the roofs on fire and clients are panicking. Of course we are going to make assumptions. but if the company would simply update us, take 5mins and say “we are still working on it” … literally that’s all we ask… at least it would tell us that you haven’t fully given up on your clients.
We know that there are three devs that regularly look at the forums and that all three of them have full time jobs with Larian Studios outside of Turbulenz. So yeah, not a lot of free time to work on Boundless I would guess.
I’m just imagining some scenario where all three of them were like super active in all the discussions over the last year, but not actually talking about development at all - just shooting the ■■■■ with us and chatting about the game, maybe giving casual input on the suggestions and going “Yeah, I wish I could get some more time to work on the game and get that in, it sounds amazing!”
It would be bizarre, and I wonder if it would actually have been any better. It would certainly have been more interesting.
I often wonder what I would do if I was in James’ shoes, so this is interesting to think about. I certainly wouldn’t do what he did, but I don’t know what I would do.
What i would have done… is give some feedback. You cant run nor hide in this situation, doing this will just worsen the community reaction, creating panic, creation speculation and at end creating negative reviews for your game/firm. Again no excuse for zero feedback, there are 365 days in year… surly you have a tee break in that year to type one line feedback.
I know it would leave a few people grumping that they should be working and not chatting, but I believe on the whole it would overwhelmingly leave people feeling a LOT better. It would show they still have passion for their game and appreciate their community even if practical matters keep them from doing much about it - I think most reasonable people would understand that, and the bulk of people I’ve encountered here are kind, helpful, wonderful folks. Life is life, and bills need to be paid and families supported. Just level with us and be transparent… if things are bad, we can understand that, but don’t act in a way that can be read by us like we’re old rubbish that has outlived it’s usefulness and now they have the distasteful task of trying to deal with. There have been issues that have left people literally begging, many reviews are making it so clear that the feeling of abandonment is causing them to leave. Personally I’ve had things stick in my craw here too, though I still happily pay for rentals because I both enjoy them and also I love having a way to try to do something nice for this community, and in the end I’m still grateful for all the work and what they gave us even if they’ve completely moved on. Though it does make me feel guilty a bit enjoying something that I can’t help but sense (which might be wrong but how I read it) is a burden to them now, and though I still promote the game on social media this feeling makes me wonder if they might not want us doing that, it could be if they want to sustain it online themselves now, they might want to just keep it very small from here on out to keep costs down. But just have no way of knowing for sure.
It is the same location that Larian has had listed for awhile. I suspect that might not be a studio location and that they might all be working remotely still, but not sure on that.
I do feel pretty confident that will happen, that at the very least they won’t give up on that part, or I think it would have been done already.
Turbulenz changing address would go pretty well hand in hand with the fact that Larian is taking over the Boundless IP, and James working full time at Larian going forward too, leaving no real use for Turbulenz except as a Holding company.
This also pairs well with my personal prediction on the matter, being that the reason he isn’t telling us anything yet, is purely due to legal matters, that needs to be in place, before he can publicly annouce it.
This totally makes sense too. Earlier on, the change in communication at first struck me as having “lawyer” written all over it. Like a lawyer gave specific instructions on what to say and (mostly) not say. Originally it worried me since it made me suspect some sort of trouble behind the scenes, but THIS reason on the other hand, would give hope for a bright future.
Based on the companies past track record, I’m not overly surprised either. I mean, I’m also not overly surprised that Sony pulled out. Sony has deep pockets but there is a reason for that. They don’t side with companies with little to no movement. If they see that happening, they will set a deadline that by X day if something doesn’t change, we are shifting. So if Turbulenz in general gave the same “lack of communication” to Sony as they did to us, I’m not surprised at all they walked away. Now there might be other reasons as well, like not meeting X yearly revenue, etc but i have work as a Consultant many time for similar companies that have partnerships with much larger companies and the dollar made at the end of the day is normally less important to them then the frontal facing experience and reviews that may get if they keep them around. If Sony thought they would drag them down, they would put the line and with no surprise.
Guess we are all saying, you can tell based on the working and all used in these replies, you have some clients/players that are with some high-end corporate environments. Turbulenz should take what we say as a warning and as advise “IF” they truly want to see this move forward and want to expand and progress the game beyond the current dead city type of game it is today. If they don’t come up with something soon, even just a basic… “we are sorry, it will take some more time for an update. but we are working on it.” I can tell you a communication like that wouldn’t break any legal guidelines or rules, again… assuming they are truly working on something and not simply dragging this out.
and that would generate another 542 posts dissecting and speculating on every word said
sometimes I see these posts spiral away from themselves and my eyes start to roll but then I remember it’s all engagement, whether postitive, negative or, like, whatever , and having that interest is always a good thing.
The games where the forums are dead are the games that don’t have much of a future.
It would certainly have been more interesting.
, and having that interest is always a good thing.