Live Streams
Hi again, everyone! This week is gonna be crazy exciting, so let’s not waste any more time and start off with the first stop of our itinerary…
Livestreams, for four days straight. Yup, you heard that right! For every day of the week, we’ll be having a streamer play Genfanad! The schedule goes as follows:
So be sure not to miss those lovely streamers! Plus, this Wednesday we’ll have a Livestream Giveaway, where the streamer randomly selects and rewards a handful of viewers with a Beta Key! So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and give them all a watch!
A Twitter Contest!
Have you been waiting to show off that piece of Genfanad Fanart? Or perhaps you’ve grinded all through the Beta and you’re ready to flaunt your sick gains? Now you’ll have a space to share that with the team, and get rewarded for it too!
This Thursday, we’ll be running a contest on Twitter. Everyone is encouraged to join and post about what you’ve created in honor of Genfanad! This is your chance to show us fanart, player builds, videos, tributes, anything. As long as it’s something you’ve worked on and shows your appreciation for the game, go ahead and submit it to the contest!
Tag your posts with #Genfanad so we can see them, and afterward, we’ll carefully select two winners. One winner will be the most liked, retweeted, and viewed post— the other being the most creative! You’ll be offered a Beta Key, so go ahead and push your ideas to the limits!
The contest will start on Thursday 1 AM PST (we’ll be making an announcement post on Twitter and Discord during that time to commence the contest) and will be ending on Friday 12 AM PST. If you want a head start, better get creating!
Team Interview!
As the game gets closer to release, we thought it would be a great idea to introduce you guys to some of the awesome members on our team who made Genfanad a reality! So, every Monday we’ll be having a little interview session. Today’s team member is… Cory!
Who are you and what do you do on the team?
Hello! I’m Cory, our lead gameplay & balance designer. I oversee our (quite small) design team as we try to put together new expansions to the gameplay systems! I’m the guy behind the crafting redesign, new xp curves, and I’m currently figuring out some standardized baselines for monster stats, and just generally have my hands in a lot of cookie jars.
I also run our design meetings where the game design team talks about what some of the next big expansions to everything will look like, which is honestly the most fun part!
Nice, so how did you get started with game design?
I actually studied creative writing when I started university initially in 2007, but didn’t really find it to be quite what I was looking for. I meandered about a bit, doing odd-jobs and freelancing in various creative fields, until I ran into a flier for a game design program near where I was living at the time. I’ve been playing games my whole life, so this felt like a good fit!
I started formally studying game design in 2014, published my first game in 2016, and never looked back! I particularly enjoy working on smaller teams and on indie projects, and I’m something of the black sheep among my friends who have almost all been in Triple-A for quite a few years now. All in good fun, of course!
I want nerd stuff. What was your favorite experience recently while working on Genfanad?
This is absolutely insanely self-indulgent and I fully acknowledge that, but one of my highlights was launching my forging system redesign. I’ve worked on a lot of projects of a lot of different sizes and styles, but this project is my first foray into something with such a classic feel.
Trying to put aside my own sense of aesthetic and trying to make something that the players of this game would really enjoy was definitely a challenge, and when it got lots of really positive feedback on launch, I was super stoked! We haven’t been 100% on target with everything we’ve done, but I like to think we pulled that one off pretty well. That moment when all of the worry I had just fell away made me feel so much more a part of the game and the community, too!
I wanna get into game design! Any advice?
It might be a little counter-intuitive, but in general, avoid game schools. There are exceptions to this, and you should absolutely do your own research, but in my experience (which includes teaching at a couple of local ones), they don’t give you anything you can’t do for yourself. There’s a million tutorials you can look up for how to build stuff in engines like Unreal 4 or Unity, and at the end of the day anyone looking to hire a junior for a design role is going to first and foremost look at your portfolio.
Also, if you have a portfolio and do end up going to a school, then the school will only help you push your projects even further! So there really is no substitute for just jumping in and making your own mistakes. And don’t get discouraged! If you’re looking for jobs, games is an insanely competitive field to break into and sometimes you can do everything right and still get passed over for a role you wanted, even if you’re great at what you do. Just keep applying and don’t give up!
Anything else you’d like to say to the players?
I’m not always super active in the Discord public chats, but I read almost everything that comes out. So keep giving us feedback because we definitely get pretty much all of it directly!
So keep being awesome and next time you’re in-game and you see a mysterious stranger standing eerily still just watching you chop down trees, it just might be me! Always watching…
Reminders...
Remember, we’ll also be posting weekly devlogs every Wednesday starting this week, so catch those over on our Twitter! And before you forget, we’re having a Stress Test this Saturday, 11 AM PST— so don’t miss it! And if you haven’t yet, be sure to Wishlist the game on Steam!
Plus, we’re running games and quizzes over in the Discord server every Tuesday and Thursday, where you can collect tokens and join a weekly giveaway that will let you win (you guessed it) Beta Keys.
Again, thank you and we’ll see you soon!