Hylis · @Hylis1
14th Aug 2020 from TwitLonger
Some info about the launch of Trackmania
1. The conditions of the release of Trackmania.
2. The Fukushima of records
3. Why holidays and why communicate on it?
1. The conditions of the release of Trackmania.
With this new decade, and with a team that increased a lot since the commercial success of Trackmania Turbo, I had the wish to reinvent our biggest success, Trackmania Nations, and make it as much as possible a restart for the oldest & a start for the newest members of the team.
We had also the goal to release the game before the biggest ever Trackmania event where 15000 people already bought a seat to assist in june 2020 in Paris. It is totally created without us, by ZeratoR and the ZQSD team. In addition to being a very good story for the studio, we love these people and the show and wished to give our best for the occasion.
Then the Covid-19 happened, the studio went remote and the show was forbidden to happen. So, we decided to postpone and release a game with the feature we expected + the ones that we wished to add afterward, such as the trophy system, that were scheduled for the 1st of July.
The date was decided with two main things in mind :1. Due to the studio and project situation, how long can we have more without disappointing too much for the wait?2. Because we are so close to summer, how can we postpone without causing trouble in scheduled holidays, that would be so key especially in these moments?
In addition, and it's my mistake here, I ask to work on some key opportunities for the studio alongside. Of course, these opportunities are made to help secure the long term future of the studio.
But in addition as well, the show came back and was announced to be hosted online in July 2020 with the previous offline event being postponed to May 2021.
So, to sum it up:
1. We had the Covid-19 remote work challenge
2. We had the same feature list to do for 1st of July 20203. Knowing that we would not have the pressure of the show, we work on additional stuff.4. We had the online show to finally secure
2. The Fukushima of records
Of course we made a lot of performance testing, with enough bots to test the infrastructure before launch. But making the real conditions is always hard and one spot where ready to test too late, and it was about a sub subject of the records. And when the game launched, this weak part made the whole thing go slower. But we had a way to disconnect it without losing the records by relying on the fact that you can do your records offline and they are uploaded afterward anyway. But this secondary system had a bug that made it not work and we had to patch quickly. But if some people connected before this update, a window of 18 hours, they lost records. So, two systems went down and some players lost their records. If you have lost records in July, it is very unlikely that you will recover them since they may also include that bug that would make them invalid.
3. Why holidays and why communicate on it?
1. People already booked their well deserved holidays with their relatives.
2. They were working home for up to 120 days, sometimes alone in apartment
3. We are keeping the records, except for some losses early July, and will be able to run the anticheat on them as early as next week without any consequence on the yearly rank since the trophies based on the ranking will be attributed after, would it be for the summer campaign or tracks of the day.
And we communicated on it because some very engaged players wish to know what is happening. And when half of the studio is off, it's really complicated to fix things that sometimes depend on multiple people. So, in order to explain why it took longer than they expected, I said the simple truth.
I also did it because we have been used to two things online : clients that are judgmental towards the developers and people that are judgmental at companies that are making bad work conditions for the employees. First is often justified because they give their hard earned money to devs and the later because they want a better world for them or their kids. But using the money reason to justify bad treatment in the first place and to say that there should be respect in all cases, even when money is engaged, there is a contradiction. I feel some clients act like bad bosses. And I also act like that sometimes, of course, and try to improve. And part of it is also making it clear that the quality of work of the people at the studio is the best as possible.
We had this "Great Place To Work" poll at the studio and received a high score of 92%. I don't believe too much in the poll general, but just to say that it is something we believe is good to try to improve. And it depends also on the clients attitude toward employees for me and I hope that this type of lack of respect will be less socially accepted in the near future and that this type of communication will be more natural. So many things are led by communication nowadays that values seem to be second sometimes.
Thanks for reading, I hope you understand better our launch conditions and wish to say that players are acting at least 92% of the time right ^_^ It's just to push for better, like we push ourselves.