Advice from the CEO

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Originally Posted by moriteq

:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:

Fine. The holiday season has no impact on SC's ability to service their product. That makes them different from every other online gaming company out there. Their emergency patch a few days later to fix the shield issue is CLEARLY definitive proof that completely discredits all arguments to the contrary. :rolleyes:

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So since the OP is criticising the update and it's timing. What do you know about why sc did it the way they did? What is your silly opinion based on? If this update was made at a different time what would have been different? Do you have evidence to support your claims?

Your sarcasm just makes you look like an idiot, but I suppose that was what you were going for.

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Originally Posted by raynestorm2

We have a BINGO! I've been questioning this exact thing ever since the update! As much money as SC pulls in, they can afford the top level employees in the gaming industry, top to bottom, in the entire world. As well as sand boxing this in beta. Yet they roll out this amateur stuff when billions of $$$ are on the line.... Why? How? If I'm CEO, or the investors, really, I'm NOT chancing killing my cash cow in one fell swoop.

Something isnt adding up. I wouldn't think SC would be that naive, but it could be possible. The investor has went crazy on a spending spree, and maybe demanded a change to gather a return on his investment? However, I feel that SC was at the apex of its earning ability, I mean after all, you can only squeeze so much cash out of the population. They could have made a huge mistake with trying to take that earning to a new level...

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Softbank
10chars

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Originally Posted by hoopstime98

His points are terrible and sound like someone with no real experience in business, which brings into question his assertion of CEO which he is clearly using as a way for his poor analysis to be taken seriously.

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Why don't you share specifically which of his points you consider terrible and poor analysis?

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Originally Posted by hoopstime98

His points are terrible and sound like someone with no real experience in business, which brings into question his assertion of CEO which he is clearly using as a way for his poor analysis to be taken seriously.

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Not sure I totally agree... The writing doesn't sound like someone who runs a successful company, I agree with that.

The main points, I think, are mostly right. I don't work for a gaming company, so my context may be off. But all of our production changes have rollback plans, in case updates are dysfunctional or this poorly received. Our business is far more cut throat than Supercell's, so we can't insist we're right when our clients disagree.

I could care less if the dude is a real CEO, its a damn good post and it would do supercell justice to read it, REGARDLESS of who posted it. The dude put his title to give a background, if you're so lame as to disregard an entire msg based on that then you probably haven't seen the sun in weeks and should put your tablet down and slowly back away. And I am an actual CEO BTW, I own a small business, feel free to search me on fb if it'll make you feel better about the content of my msg.

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Originally Posted by Obsidian99

I'm the CEO of a substantial game development company in Vancouver, BC.

I've been in charge of the company for 12 years now, and we mostly produce PC games. I won't name the company but you've heard of it.

SC - it is clear that you broke your top game. Without discussing (too much) my amazement that you don't have a beta server that is open to players (we focus group and include every category of our players on our beta servers) who could have tested your update properly - I will say that I'm surprised that you changed as many things that you did within a single update. Do you not understand scientific method?

With Scientific Method (very applicable to game operations) you change one major element at a time and gauge the response. In this way, you can ensure that you maintain the game balance for ALL PLAYERS in all areas before you change something else.

Here, you introduce TH11 along with new hero and new defences. That is a huge update by itself. Why in the world would you also try to get rid of bots in the same update? The bot killing content was so overbroad that it destroyed the ability for TH7-9 to maintain casual gamers. That was reckless imho

But my main issue, the one that demonstrated to me that you are not a professional operation (in the sense that you must be run by inexperienced management and C-level staff) is that you made these changes in the holiday season.

Why in the world would you have made ANY change other than introducing new content (TH11) over the holidays when you KNEW you wouldn't have the staff to respond to complaints, and when you knew you wouldn't have the staff to correct issues and re-patch or revert to prior, and when you most needed to keep the community happy because all the players have extra time to play???

In my opinion, doing a major patch over the holidays and even risking user unhappiness is incompetent. A community will forgive a game developer for ruining their ability to enjoy a game for a few days or even a couple of weeks if there is COMMUNICATION about the issue, and a somewhat quick resolution to it. But once a few weeks goes by, the most disenfranchised users will find a new game to play and you will have lost them forever.

Sadly, I believe this game was balanced well, but it was luck not skill on the part of SC. The game balanced for casual players by allowing loot from dead or suspended bases that could be snipped. The cost of progress was balanced because sniping gave sufficient loot that upgrades could be made even by casual players, but they would then gem to speed the update or speed army build-time. That was unintended, but it was very lucky on the part of SC.

The game was balanced for serious gamers by the introduction of clans and wars, as well as win bonuses at high levels - not luck, but as intended by SC.

In these ways, game balance worked at both the low and high end for gamers, and SC got the Whales and small fish to pay for gems.

I would have fired (not joking) anyone who pushed this update between Thanksgiving and New Years. It never would have happened here, of course, as we would have just pushed the TH11 component, and then tested the rebalancing one patch at a time over about 3 months. But shoot, I guess that's what happens when you get a game that works because of luck and not design.

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12 years ?
sorry but never heard of you.

Best of luck in your future endeavors.
kind regards
sneakymaori

http://www.candevs.ca/bc.html

Feel free to search for this guy :p

Anyway, he makes good points, even if i don't believe this whole "I'am a CEO" thingy.

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Originally Posted by Obsidian99

I'm the CEO of a substantial game development company in Vancouver, BC.

I've been in charge of the company for 12 years now, and we mostly produce PC games. I won't name the company but you've heard of it.

SC - it is clear that you broke your top game. Without discussing (too much) my amazement that you don't have a beta server that is open to players (we focus group and include every category of our players on our beta servers) who could have tested your update properly - I will say that I'm surprised that you changed as many things that you did within a single update. Do you not understand scientific method?

With Scientific Method (very applicable to game operations) you change one major element at a time and gauge the response. In this way, you can ensure that you maintain the game balance for ALL PLAYERS in all areas before you change something else.

Here, you introduce TH11 along with new hero and new defences. That is a huge update by itself. Why in the world would you also try to get rid of bots in the same update? The bot killing content was so overbroad that it destroyed the ability for TH7-9 to maintain casual gamers. That was reckless imho

But my main issue, the one that demonstrated to me that you are not a professional operation (in the sense that you must be run by inexperienced management and C-level staff) is that you made these changes in the holiday season.

Why in the world would you have made ANY change other than introducing new content (TH11) over the holidays when you KNEW you wouldn't have the staff to respond to complaints, and when you knew you wouldn't have the staff to correct issues and re-patch or revert to prior, and when you most needed to keep the community happy because all the players have extra time to play???

In my opinion, doing a major patch over the holidays and even risking user unhappiness is incompetent. A community will forgive a game developer for ruining their ability to enjoy a game for a few days or even a couple of weeks if there is COMMUNICATION about the issue, and a somewhat quick resolution to it. But once a few weeks goes by, the most disenfranchised users will find a new game to play and you will have lost them forever.

Sadly, I believe this game was balanced well, but it was luck not skill on the part of SC. The game balanced for casual players by allowing loot from dead or suspended bases that could be snipped. The cost of progress was balanced because sniping gave sufficient loot that upgrades could be made even by casual players, but they would then gem to speed the update or speed army build-time. That was unintended, but it was very lucky on the part of SC.

The game was balanced for serious gamers by the introduction of clans and wars, as well as win bonuses at high levels - not luck, but as intended by SC.

In these ways, game balance worked at both the low and high end for gamers, and SC got the Whales and small fish to pay for gems.

I would have fired (not joking) anyone who pushed this update between Thanksgiving and New Years. It never would have happened here, of course, as we would have just pushed the TH11 component, and then tested the rebalancing one patch at a time over about 3 months. But shoot, I guess that's what happens when you get a game that works because of luck and not design.

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Whatever job you have, it doesn't matter. It is a good post.

I could see all these anti bot changes if they actually stopped bots, but bots are still working much like the failed anti bunny update SC did 10 months ago. This game has 2 fatal flaws. 1. It's client side. 2. The developers cannot stop bunnies, and I'm not sure if it's because they aren't skilled enough? Or it's impossible with a client side game. I believe it is the former as I agree with the OP and believe SC lucked into this game being a big hit

Nice post, CEO. Your company deserves to be more successful than ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

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Originally Posted by TheJudgedClan

Why don't you share specifically which of his points you consider terrible and poor analysis?

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The complete misunderstanding of the scientific method and its application to game development, not understanding why you'd want to coincide something the community would dislike with something that would keep profits incoming rather than separating them, the idea that all of this change outside of TH11 is purely to somehow "stop bots" (you could do the PBT stuff completely separate from shielding items if you'd wanted to, the motivation for this was clearly not just to "stop bots").

Mostly though, as a CEO, the goal is to drive profits. Not one word about that, just complaints about not liking the update basically with some business sounding words thrown in but not really used in the appropriate context.