The War Z creator apologises for controversy, aiming to regain confidence of players
The War Z creator Sergey Titov addressed the players through an extensive letter, apologising for the controversy that had surrounded the open-world zombie survival horror since its release on December 17, 2012.
He admitted becoming arrogant and blinded by the early success of the game and therefore chose to ignore the criticism and concerns of the players following the game’s launch on Valve’s digital distribution platform.
Titov took the blame for most of the issues that the players faced upon purchasing and playing the game, conceding that getting 700,000 users in nearly two months made him lose his focus and ignore the community.
"This failure is entirely on my shoulders and if anything I owe thanks to that vocal minority and admit that I should have paid attention sooner. I chose instead to concentrate on the bigger picture: my dream of turning The War Z from being a game developed
by a small indie team into a large online venture, instead of addressing small things first and staying focused on the game issues," he explained.
Titov highlighted the wide communication gap between the developer and users, noting that the controversy would not have started had the latter been timely informed about the changes that Hammerpoint Interactive have planned for the game.
The game’s creator said that the studio was relying completely on the administrators and moderators to manage and moderate the community forums, where it was tasked with ensuring that the rules were not being broken and that violators were aptly punished.
He believes the directive should have been to address the concerns and issues and take criticism to constructive discussions.
Titov conceded that a complete overhaul of the company’s community management procedures and rules are in the pipeline, where the main aim would be to increase the presence of development team on forums.
"There wasn’t enough presence of the development team on forums; there wasn’t enough updates on development of upcoming features,” he admitted.
The War Z creator also shared his idea of inviting 10 players from the around the world to the Los Angeles office of Hammerpoint and give them an opportunity to interact with the developers.
Tags: