Hello everyone,
For those of you following these Dev Diaries, you know that we are taking a short break from the regular diaries to talk about other things we do in order to bring a game your way (not to worry, next week podcat will be back with more juicy stuff on what we are working on). Last week KimchiViking, the Project Lead on HoI IV, described what our development process looks like. This week I will try to give you some insight from a publisher’s perspective, as I work as the Product Manager for HoI IV at Paradox Interactive.
Many of you probably already have an inkling as to what a publisher does, but just to set the bottom-line straight, the publisher finances the development of a game and is in charge of the distribution and marketing of it! My role as a Product Manager is to make sure that we can deliver the best possible game to you guys whilst ensuring that the teams involved get the resources they need to do so.
In the case of HoI IV, I work closely together with the Product Team, meaning the Game Director (podcat),the Project Lead (KimchiViking) and the Product Marketing Manager who coordinates all the activities dealing with the marketing & sales department. It is in this constellation we discuss what we need to do for upcoming months/year. The Game Director is the one who is responsible for coming up with ideas for the expansion(s), the PL works out when we can deliver these and the PMM is in charge of how we market the expansion in question. And I am responsible for the budget (profit/loss).
Normally we work with yearly plans (even though we naturally also have a more long term vision of where we want to take the game). This means that around this time of year we start planning more concretely for what we want to do in the next 12-18 months.
This is an iterative process where we look at:
- the content we want to add to the game (i.e. what each expansion should be),
- what development staff is required to do this (no of programmers, content designers, QA etc),
- the optimal timing of release and the cost of marketing to make you, the players, aware of the expansion (competing releases, campaigns such as the Paradox Weekend on Steam and various trade shows etc.),
- and finally the business case for all of the above.
(For a more detailed description how we work within the Product Teams around an expansion, I recommend my colleague Gruffa’s, PM for CK2, dev diary. We work in a similar way to them; https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-dev-diary-59-publishing-ck2.1036690/)
When all of this is done I look at the budget requirements and compare that to my initial estimates and goals. Hopefully those match, or else I have to revisit and change the plans or I need to request additional funds from management, be it that the developers need additional funds to add amazing new features to the expansion or that we would like to buy 30 seconds of airtime during Super Bowl. ☺
So, in a world of infinite money and time, I would say yes to most requests, but alas it is also for me to sometimes set tighter deadlines and/or budgets due to whatever constraints we may face. But normally we sit down and try to agree together on how to best proceed.
The Product Team busy planning the next move for HoI IV
A very concrete case for HoI where we have had to alter our plans was for the first expansions which has affected those of you who bought the Expansion Pass. Our initial plan was to include the first two expansions at a USD 50 value for USD 40. After the launch of HoI IV we realised after your feedback that certain aspects of the base game needed attention. We already had plans for these expansions, but we decided to scope Together for Victory and Death or Dishonor down and put more effort into the free updates and bug fixing.
We believe that we have made the base game a better experience thanks to these fixes but this has made the Expansion Pass holders confused as to what and when they will get their promised content. And rightly so. What I can say is that we are aware of the situation and are working on a solution. Our goal is to make the holders of the Expansion Pass feel it was worth the wait even though it is taking longer than initially planned. Stay tuned!
KimchiViking mentioned last week that I would mention how we decide our release dates/frequency. This is really down to two things: how long it will take to make the content for a particular expansion and secondly how much money we need to make in any given period of time. If we were to need 52 weeks to create an expansion with all the people that are involved, it would be pretty hard to recoup that cost. So it’s about finding a balance between the time we spend on making the expansion and how much we can charge for it. We want to have a dedicated team working on the game over the year to ensure continuity. We also want to support the game long term, just like we are doing with other titles like CK2 and EUIV. This means that we will have a certain amount of cost that we need to recoup. This will be done by releasing a certain number of expansions over a year. Meaning that with smaller expansions we normally need to have a more frequent release schedule and less so for larger expansions. With this logic Death or Dishonor should have come out sooner after Together for Victory. In this particular case we decided to put extra effort on bug squashing and other fixes during Q1 this year rather than releasing an expansion. Additionally having paid content allows us to work on the free stuff that we provide with all releases.
We also want to ensure that we reach as many as possible once we do release an expansion. Once we have decided on the expansions that we plan on releasing within the next 12-18 months, we need to look at when it is deemed best to make them available to the players. In the Product Team we decide on a release window (usually a couple of weeks) and then our marketing team gets back to us with a proper release date as we approach that “window”. This date is based on other competing releases and when we can have suitable campaigns on platforms such as Steam, Green Man Gaming etc.
Once we have released an expansion we always look at the reception from you guys and the sales numbers to see if and what we need to address going forward. We value your comments and strive to make adjustments where it is feasible. We are thrilled and happy to see that so many of you keep on coming back to the game on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean that we are content and sated! Hopefully you will be pleased with the stuff that we have in the pipeline which podcat will start revealing next week in the next dev diary.
Please continue giving us your feedback! I will stay around the thread to answer as many questions as I can.
For those of you following these Dev Diaries, you know that we are taking a short break from the regular diaries to talk about other things we do in order to bring a game your way (not to worry, next week podcat will be back with more juicy stuff on what we are working on). Last week KimchiViking, the Project Lead on HoI IV, described what our development process looks like. This week I will try to give you some insight from a publisher’s perspective, as I work as the Product Manager for HoI IV at Paradox Interactive.
Many of you probably already have an inkling as to what a publisher does, but just to set the bottom-line straight, the publisher finances the development of a game and is in charge of the distribution and marketing of it! My role as a Product Manager is to make sure that we can deliver the best possible game to you guys whilst ensuring that the teams involved get the resources they need to do so.
In the case of HoI IV, I work closely together with the Product Team, meaning the Game Director (podcat),the Project Lead (KimchiViking) and the Product Marketing Manager who coordinates all the activities dealing with the marketing & sales department. It is in this constellation we discuss what we need to do for upcoming months/year. The Game Director is the one who is responsible for coming up with ideas for the expansion(s), the PL works out when we can deliver these and the PMM is in charge of how we market the expansion in question. And I am responsible for the budget (profit/loss).
Normally we work with yearly plans (even though we naturally also have a more long term vision of where we want to take the game). This means that around this time of year we start planning more concretely for what we want to do in the next 12-18 months.
This is an iterative process where we look at:
- the content we want to add to the game (i.e. what each expansion should be),
- what development staff is required to do this (no of programmers, content designers, QA etc),
- the optimal timing of release and the cost of marketing to make you, the players, aware of the expansion (competing releases, campaigns such as the Paradox Weekend on Steam and various trade shows etc.),
- and finally the business case for all of the above.
(For a more detailed description how we work within the Product Teams around an expansion, I recommend my colleague Gruffa’s, PM for CK2, dev diary. We work in a similar way to them; https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-dev-diary-59-publishing-ck2.1036690/)
When all of this is done I look at the budget requirements and compare that to my initial estimates and goals. Hopefully those match, or else I have to revisit and change the plans or I need to request additional funds from management, be it that the developers need additional funds to add amazing new features to the expansion or that we would like to buy 30 seconds of airtime during Super Bowl. ☺
So, in a world of infinite money and time, I would say yes to most requests, but alas it is also for me to sometimes set tighter deadlines and/or budgets due to whatever constraints we may face. But normally we sit down and try to agree together on how to best proceed.
The Product Team busy planning the next move for HoI IV
A very concrete case for HoI where we have had to alter our plans was for the first expansions which has affected those of you who bought the Expansion Pass. Our initial plan was to include the first two expansions at a USD 50 value for USD 40. After the launch of HoI IV we realised after your feedback that certain aspects of the base game needed attention. We already had plans for these expansions, but we decided to scope Together for Victory and Death or Dishonor down and put more effort into the free updates and bug fixing.
We believe that we have made the base game a better experience thanks to these fixes but this has made the Expansion Pass holders confused as to what and when they will get their promised content. And rightly so. What I can say is that we are aware of the situation and are working on a solution. Our goal is to make the holders of the Expansion Pass feel it was worth the wait even though it is taking longer than initially planned. Stay tuned!
KimchiViking mentioned last week that I would mention how we decide our release dates/frequency. This is really down to two things: how long it will take to make the content for a particular expansion and secondly how much money we need to make in any given period of time. If we were to need 52 weeks to create an expansion with all the people that are involved, it would be pretty hard to recoup that cost. So it’s about finding a balance between the time we spend on making the expansion and how much we can charge for it. We want to have a dedicated team working on the game over the year to ensure continuity. We also want to support the game long term, just like we are doing with other titles like CK2 and EUIV. This means that we will have a certain amount of cost that we need to recoup. This will be done by releasing a certain number of expansions over a year. Meaning that with smaller expansions we normally need to have a more frequent release schedule and less so for larger expansions. With this logic Death or Dishonor should have come out sooner after Together for Victory. In this particular case we decided to put extra effort on bug squashing and other fixes during Q1 this year rather than releasing an expansion. Additionally having paid content allows us to work on the free stuff that we provide with all releases.
We also want to ensure that we reach as many as possible once we do release an expansion. Once we have decided on the expansions that we plan on releasing within the next 12-18 months, we need to look at when it is deemed best to make them available to the players. In the Product Team we decide on a release window (usually a couple of weeks) and then our marketing team gets back to us with a proper release date as we approach that “window”. This date is based on other competing releases and when we can have suitable campaigns on platforms such as Steam, Green Man Gaming etc.
Once we have released an expansion we always look at the reception from you guys and the sales numbers to see if and what we need to address going forward. We value your comments and strive to make adjustments where it is feasible. We are thrilled and happy to see that so many of you keep on coming back to the game on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean that we are content and sated! Hopefully you will be pleased with the stuff that we have in the pipeline which podcat will start revealing next week in the next dev diary.
Please continue giving us your feedback! I will stay around the thread to answer as many questions as I can.
