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does klei play dst.


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During the days of ANR, I played with my wife a fair amount but we were not that good and only survived until summer. Occasionally I'd join a public server but not very often. I haven't had as much time to play these days as I have a house full of young kids.

I played a lot during the Gorge and both seasons of the Forge. Most people didn't realize they were playing with a developer, even though I had the admin badge on the character icon. 

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1 hour ago, ScottHansen said:

During the days of ANR, I played with my wife a fair amount but we were not that good and only survived until summer.

I still find that pretty impressive, honestly! Even if you quite literally  know how everything works in the game, putting the knowledge to survive is another trouble entirely, especially with how winter is a huge roadblock for people due to its multiple dangers + Deerclops, which most who know about it usually don’t do too well until after a few attempts with the boss, so getting across that and  spring is still an achievement.

Family also is extremely important and should come first, so I understand not being able to play.

 

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Maybe they play(ed) sometimes with a second account, so no one knows there is a developer on the server? I would do that as a developer from time to time, to learn more about the target audience, what they could want or need and what could be done to improve the game experience.

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22 minutes ago, sudoku said:

I feel like playing your own game probably doesn't have the same magic when you know how everything works behind the scenes and spending countless hours debugging and testing.  

I disagree with this, in fact the developers of state of Decay 2 host a live stream every other weekend where they play their game with their fans, this is super important to note... because just recently they were live streaming with their fans and they all came across a building that the developers had no idea they forgot to finish building an Interior for- So instead of being super embarrassed about it they simply told everyone that they’ll have that fixed in the next couple patch updates.

Something they likely would’ve never even known was broken until people complained about it in their forums, they found Themselves while just out playing with their fans.

Do most game companies play their own games? It varies from company to company... but in my honest opinion I think that they SHOULD from time to time, it’s one thing to look at a game from the development side.. it’s another thing entirely to look at it as the people playing it.

now I’m not saying that developers DONT play their own games, (as Scott pointed out they do..) I’m just saying that sometimes, like with the above SoD 2 example developers will find something they missed during development.

 

From my Personal experience with map creators and level builders- Sometimes the ideas you put into them and the way you design and intend for the people playing your worlds do not go as you did them in testing it yourself.... (I’m no Game Designer.. but I HAVE spent countless hours building maps with built in map creators only to find out when I handed that world over to people who didn’t create it themselves.... they find new ways of exploring it or doing things that I never intended, Sometimes the things they did ended up breaking the whole layout of the map so I had to go back to edit mode and tweak every little thing I noticed them doing that I didn’t want done..)

I can imagine that this is what life would be like as a developer, and it’s hard work!! Even when I have a built in tool that does most the work FOR Me.

But the TL:DR- Developers (or at least Myself pretending to be one in a game that lets me develop my own maps..) Absolutely NEED to play their own games, And more importantly... watch a Test audience of people who don’t know the in’s and out’s and the intended design, so that They can edit, modify and improve things accordingly.

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3 hours ago, ScottHansen said:

I haven't had as much time to play these days as I have a house full of young kids.

What about the other developers? Does everyone have a house full of young kids, or do they have other reasons not to play on public servers, like being afraid of griefers?

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I think sometimes developers should play games as players.Looking at the game from a different perspective may have some different effects.

This will make them more aware of the player's feelings and what is the player needs. For example, ROT's BOSS loot, including shells, is not practical enough, or sometimes there will be other people using certain bugs on the server, which can make them more clear and repair the principle It.

 I like @ScottHansenMr. Hansen's reply because I like children very much! Having a happy family is a wonderful thing. I hope I can have one or two children in the future. At the same time, I am very curious about whether Mr. JoeW usually play DST?;)

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9 hours ago, Mike23Ua said:

But the TL:DR- Developers (or at least Myself pretending to be one in a game that lets me develop my own maps..) Absolutely NEED to play their own games, And more importantly... watch a Test audience of people who don’t know the in’s and out’s and the intended design, so that They can edit, modify and improve things accordingly.

That's basic QA stuff. Any half decent dev already does that. Why do you think alpha and beta builds are all over the place? Free QA testing.

What I think @sudoku meant is that a game stops being about "fun" for developers, and more about "work". Things kinda lose their charm when you know every little detail about a game, even those that aren't even noticeable by average players.

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10 hours ago, Viktor234 said:

What about the other developers? Does everyone have a house full of young kids, or do they have other reasons not to play on public servers, like being afraid of griefers?

When you get hired at Klei, youre given a house full of kids. Canadian law or something.

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There has been a few devs who have expressed that they wanted to do some streams, but not everybody has a good enough connection at home and we can't really be sure that we're going to have people interested in doing it every single week. 

Maybe I can if you all think it would be ok it's not not on a regular schedule and the quality isn't so good. I know some of the team has really missed hanging out with you all. 

We'll revisit the idea again here soon.  

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24 minutes ago, JoeW said:

There has been a few devs who have expressed that they wanted to do some streams, but not everybody has a good enough connection at home and we can't really be sure that we're going to have people interested in doing it every single week. 

Maybe I can if you all think it would be ok it's not not on a regular schedule and the quality isn't so good. I know some of the team has really missed hanging out with you all. 

We'll revisit the idea again here soon.  

ohhhhhhhhh!This is awesome!!Sir, if you don’t mind answering, May I ask you a question? I have always been curious about this question. As a developer of Klei, I noticed that the avatars you and other developers use are portraits.Did your artist paint you according to your appearance?

for example Just like a model  sitting there in the art class and the artist looks at you and starts painting?

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I dunno man, I frankly don't know how I would deal with the shock of seeing the devs not looking like their profile icons. I shudder to think that @JoeW doesn't actually have that beautiful moo-stache and pipe, and I'm not sure I could look at them the same way ever again :sad:

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Just now, minespatch said:

Yes, he's the main character designer.:wilson_ecstatic:

that's why you see Maxwell clones in most of the Klei games.

wow!! ohhhhh! Sir, I didn’t know this before. Thank you for your reply. May i ask you a question?

Did this Mr. Agala appear in the community before? I joined the community only in recent months, but I didn’t find this gentleman appear:shock:

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