I would prefer it if you explained your definition of no cost and minimal overhead.
Easy, there's no materials cost to add new content unless it somehow alters the entire delivery of the game. Servers aren't added for new challenges or champs or offers, those are coded by on staff coders for the most part. Thus overhead. Maybe some costs if they need to lease a specific software from another developer but that's highly rare. The main issue is they lease the game engine from another party and, well, we've seen how that's been working out lately.
I’m interested to know in your book how there isn’t materials cost to adding new content.
To me, it involves the Quest design team (an actual team), the QA & Testing team, the Content team (for dialogue) and the Community / Communications team at the very minimum. Also I’m not exactly sure which team manages the Game Economy but I’m sure the rewards and whatever titles may come with it factor in there somewhere. Project management to track whatever was added, however they track it. Issue management and change control will be a part of the project management office.
On another point when it comes to servers and licenses, I think you could have explained that a bit better, and that’s how I know you don’t work in IT. When it comes to software services, Kabam would, to the best of my knowledge, have procured:
1) Licenses to use characters. 2) IT Infrastructure, which could have been procured as cloud services for at least the following: profile management, data and storage, analytics. If not procured as cloud services then these would have been built and maintained in-house in a data center, which increases overhead. 3) Software licenses for character build, for character animations, for automation testing (unless something was built in-house), an admin panel for management of in-game resources, built and maintained in-house. 4) You’ve also got licenses for cybersecurity and vulnerability penetration testers, and an analytics team who make sure people aren’t exploiting the game. 5) You’ve got Kabam support, who will have an incident management system (license or built in-house).
Yeah, that’s what comes to mind right now, and this is without consideration of the approval processes they’ve set up, the monitoring and reporting of KPIs to management, and the involvement of stakeholders and other vendors and partners.
It’s a big ecosystem, and it costs a lot of time and money to maintain.
Players been saying this stuff for months on forums and it’s ignored…1 of biggest issue with kabam is their lack of communication with the player base. Great example is when the new aq season started. Starts on a Saturday and tons of issues and not a single member from kabam to answer a single question for 2+ days
I’m interested to know in your book how there isn’t materials cost to adding new content.
To me, it involves the Quest design team (an actual team), the QA & Testing team, the Content team (for dialogue) and the Community / Communications team at the very minimum. Also I’m not exactly sure which team manages the Game Economy but I’m sure the rewards and whatever titles may come with it factor in there somewhere. Project management to track whatever was added, however they track it. Issue management and change control will be a part of the project management office.
On another point when it comes to servers and licenses, I think you could have explained that a bit better, and that’s how I know you don’t work in IT. When it comes to software services, Kabam would, to the best of my knowledge, have procured:
1) Licenses to use characters. 2) IT Infrastructure, which could have been procured as cloud services for at least the following: profile management, data and storage, analytics. If not procured as cloud services then these would have been built and maintained in-house in a data center, which increases overhead. 3) Software licenses for character build, for character animations, for automation testing (unless something was built in-house), an admin panel for management of in-game resources, built and maintained in-house. 4) You’ve also got licenses for cybersecurity and vulnerability penetration testers, and an analytics team who make sure people aren’t exploiting the game. 5) You’ve got Kabam support, who will have an incident management system (license or built in-house).
Yeah, that’s what comes to mind right now, and this is without consideration of the approval processes they’ve set up, the monitoring and reporting of KPIs to management, and the involvement of stakeholders and other vendors and partners.
It’s a big ecosystem, and it costs a lot of time and money to maintain.
You didn't even include other groups that are important to any large business such as HR and legal teams.
You know what? Any large corporation has those exact same expenses. The difference; this company makes money hand over fist off of digital content. It's a very lucrative enterprise compared to standard retail organizations that have much grater expenses and much lesser profit margin because they deal with all of those expenses but also deal with product spoilage, transportation costs, retail location cost expenses and so much more.
The profit margins tell you all that you need to know and they are making money at a pace similar to when the game was better, without delivering a quality player experience due to a broken product by their own admission. That's a problem.
I’m interested to know in your book how there isn’t materials cost to adding new content.
To me, it involves the Quest design team (an actual team), the QA & Testing team, the Content team (for dialogue) and the Community / Communications team at the very minimum. Also I’m not exactly sure which team manages the Game Economy but I’m sure the rewards and whatever titles may come with it factor in there somewhere. Project management to track whatever was added, however they track it. Issue management and change control will be a part of the project management office.
On another point when it comes to servers and licenses, I think you could have explained that a bit better, and that’s how I know you don’t work in IT. When it comes to software services, Kabam would, to the best of my knowledge, have procured:
1) Licenses to use characters. 2) IT Infrastructure, which could have been procured as cloud services for at least the following: profile management, data and storage, analytics. If not procured as cloud services then these would have been built and maintained in-house in a data center, which increases overhead. 3) Software licenses for character build, for character animations, for automation testing (unless something was built in-house), an admin panel for management of in-game resources, built and maintained in-house. 4) You’ve also got licenses for cybersecurity and vulnerability penetration testers, and an analytics team who make sure people aren’t exploiting the game. 5) You’ve got Kabam support, who will have an incident management system (license or built in-house).
Yeah, that’s what comes to mind right now, and this is without consideration of the approval processes they’ve set up, the monitoring and reporting of KPIs to management, and the involvement of stakeholders and other vendors and partners.
It’s a big ecosystem, and it costs a lot of time and money to maintain.
You didn't even include other groups that are important to any large business such as HR and legal teams.
You know what? Any large corporation has those exact same expenses. The difference; this company makes money hand over fist off of digital content. It's a very lucrative enterprise compared to standard retail organizations that have much grater expenses and much lesser profit margin because they deal with all of those expenses but also deal with product spoilage, transportation costs, retail location cost expenses and so much more.
The profit margins tell you all that you need to know and they are making money at a pace similar to when the game was better, without delivering a quality player experience due to a broken product by their own admission. That's a problem.
I just feel that it's very disappointing that, at least from all appearances, it takes Seatin and other Content Creators to make videos for it to feel like any feedback has any actual impact.
This I understand, however I feel (of which I’m guilty of as well) that the manner in which we approach these forums is sometimes abrasive to the administrators?
Seatin does hold more “socio-economic” control of the game than we do as individuals, for lack of a better descriptor- but if we all banded together positively and constructively perhaps we could have a positive impact and get things done?
Absolutely....
We have in the past banned together, but even then it wasn't till CC's started making the videos did Kabam even really respond. Thus my statement.
I hate to say it, but I've reached the point where I spend more time on the forums, Reddit, Line, and other places discussing the game then in the game. The discontent about the state of the game for the last year or so has been significantly more entertaining then the game itself.
I’m interested to know in your book how there isn’t materials cost to adding new content.
To me, it involves the Quest design team (an actual team), the QA & Testing team, the Content team (for dialogue) and the Community / Communications team at the very minimum. Also I’m not exactly sure which team manages the Game Economy but I’m sure the rewards and whatever titles may come with it factor in there somewhere. Project management to track whatever was added, however they track it. Issue management and change control will be a part of the project management office.
On another point when it comes to servers and licenses, I think you could have explained that a bit better, and that’s how I know you don’t work in IT. When it comes to software services, Kabam would, to the best of my knowledge, have procured:
1) Licenses to use characters. 2) IT Infrastructure, which could have been procured as cloud services for at least the following: profile management, data and storage, analytics. If not procured as cloud services then these would have been built and maintained in-house in a data center, which increases overhead. 3) Software licenses for character build, for character animations, for automation testing (unless something was built in-house), an admin panel for management of in-game resources, built and maintained in-house. 4) You’ve also got licenses for cybersecurity and vulnerability penetration testers, and an analytics team who make sure people aren’t exploiting the game. 5) You’ve got Kabam support, who will have an incident management system (license or built in-house).
Yeah, that’s what comes to mind right now, and this is without consideration of the approval processes they’ve set up, the monitoring and reporting of KPIs to management, and the involvement of stakeholders and other vendors and partners.
It’s a big ecosystem, and it costs a lot of time and money to maintain.
You didn't even include other groups that are important to any large business such as HR and legal teams.
You know what? Any large corporation has those exact same expenses. The difference; this company makes money hand over fist off of digital content. It's a very lucrative enterprise compared to standard retail organizations that have much grater expenses and much lesser profit margin because they deal with all of those expenses but also deal with product spoilage, transportation costs, retail location cost expenses and so much more.
The profit margins tell you all that you need to know and they are making money at a pace similar to when the game was better, without delivering a quality player experience due to a broken product by their own admission. That's a problem.
I mentioned HR and legal teams two posts ago, so I hope you were being sarcastic.
And yes I understand your message, that organizations in the IT industry are typically smaller than organizations in other industries that are heavy on supply-chain. And that profit margins are higher because of this. But there’s something you’re missing:
IT is the one of most complex industries up there. If not the most complex. We have a famous saying in IT: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. Which means, even if you increased the team nine-fold, it does not mean that the time will reduce by the proportionate amount.
So when you demand things to work, you need to be patient, because eventually they will work. Just not at the pace you want it to.
I hope my side of the argument brought you some insight.
Rebuilding a completely new roaster 5* after 4*. Then 6* after 4* is a major demotivate. I think the game would be a way better if you just keep building your roaster and this star business is not their.
I can relate with Seatin. No amount of energy can compensate for the fact that AQ is a chore. The best moment of the year for me when AQ was skipped for an entire week and we've got double the rewards from Kabam. That should have been implemented years ago.
Seatin seems very in touch with how a lot of us feel in the community. He may not being playing hardcore like he was, but the points he made are very much the same things I have been feeling for months and maybe even years.
Comments
To me, it involves the Quest design team (an actual team), the QA & Testing team, the Content team (for dialogue) and the Community / Communications team at the very minimum. Also I’m not exactly sure which team manages the Game Economy but I’m sure the rewards and whatever titles may come with it factor in there somewhere. Project management to track whatever was added, however they track it. Issue management and change control will be a part of the project management office.
On another point when it comes to servers and licenses, I think you could have explained that a bit better, and that’s how I know you don’t work in IT.
When it comes to software services, Kabam would, to the best of my knowledge, have procured:
1) Licenses to use characters.
2) IT Infrastructure, which could have been procured as cloud services for at least the following: profile management, data and storage, analytics. If not procured as cloud services then these would have been built and maintained in-house in a data center, which increases overhead.
3) Software licenses for character build, for character animations, for automation testing (unless something was built in-house), an admin panel for management of in-game resources, built and maintained in-house.
4) You’ve also got licenses for cybersecurity and vulnerability penetration testers, and an analytics team who make sure people aren’t exploiting the game.
5) You’ve got Kabam support, who will have an incident management system (license or built in-house).
Yeah, that’s what comes to mind right now, and this is without consideration of the approval processes they’ve set up, the monitoring and reporting of KPIs to management, and the involvement of stakeholders and other vendors and partners.
It’s a big ecosystem, and it costs a lot of time and money to maintain.
You know what? Any large corporation has those exact same expenses. The difference; this company makes money hand over fist off of digital content. It's a very lucrative enterprise compared to standard retail organizations that have much grater expenses and much lesser profit margin because they deal with all of those expenses but also deal with product spoilage, transportation costs, retail location cost expenses and so much more.
The profit margins tell you all that you need to know and they are making money at a pace similar to when the game was better, without delivering a quality player experience due to a broken product by their own admission. That's a problem.
We have in the past banned together, but even then it wasn't till CC's started making the videos did Kabam even really respond. Thus my statement.
I hate to say it, but I've reached the point where I spend more time on the forums, Reddit, Line, and other places discussing the game then in the game. The discontent about the state of the game for the last year or so has been significantly more entertaining then the game itself.
And yes I understand your message, that organizations in the IT industry are typically smaller than organizations in other industries that are heavy on supply-chain. And that profit margins are higher because of this. But there’s something you’re missing:
IT is the one of most complex industries up there. If not the most complex. We have a famous saying in IT: 9 women can’t make a baby in a month. Which means, even if you increased the team nine-fold, it does not mean that the time will reduce by the proportionate amount.
So when you demand things to work, you need to be patient, because eventually they will work. Just not at the pace you want it to.
I hope my side of the argument brought you some insight.