The Last Dance: By Blue Eyed Nate

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Since the advent of Mafia Wars Live, Blue Eyed Nate is constantly being accused of skirting or dancing questions. When he realized his best performance would never be good enough for the Mafia Wars community.....



.....he made an interesting post on the Zynga Forums. I guess he is getting tired of dancing and wishes for people to understand why it's necessary. Don't forget to tune into Mafia Wars Live 4 tomorrow at 3:30 by going here. Submit your questions here before the broadcast.

#1       Today, 01:40 AM

Blue Eyed Nate  Community Manager   Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Zynga Posts: 134

How Mafia Wars Answers Questions We get asked a lot of the same questions again and again. In an effort to explain a bit more about what our answers mean and why I answer the way I do, I am providing this Q&A, made up of typical questions we get. We've been asking questions, but we never seem to get any real answers! I know how frustrating that can feel, but I really am trying to provide the best answer possible each and every time. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the answer I give is not the answer that people want to hear, which usually results in them accusing me of skirting the issue. For example: Question: We want XXXX in the game! When is that going to be possible? Answer: Because of the current game structure... blah blah blah blah... We're looking into it. MW has a living, breathing economy in which everything has value. This puts us in the difficult position of needing to make the game challenging but not too challenging. It becomes all the more difficult when you take into account that we are trying to achieve this delicate balance for players of all levels at the same time. A player experiences frustration when there is an imbalance, and that is what we are constantly trying to minimize. Minimize frustration, maximize enjoyment; those are our goals. Figuring out the right balance will always require a lot of investigation before we can make many changes and some trial and error in implementing them without harming the existing balance within the game... Which leads me to the next question: Why does it take MW so flipping long to get things done? We receive thousands of requests, ideas, fixes, updates, etc from both the community and from our own team that organization and prioritization becomes absolutely essential. For example: Someone has an idea to do X in the game. Everyone hi-fives because it is the best idea ever! But now we have to look at what it will take to accomplish, and we start by asking some questions. Questions like: What type of player will this help out? Do we have the hardware to support this? Do we have the programming expertise to make this happen? What art and design do we need? How much time does each division (art, programming, etc.) need to get this done and how much will it cost? Will the benefit justify the time and cost? When should it be put on the schedule for release? Which, if any, of our current projects (many on which we’ve already done weeks or months of work) should be deprioritized to allow us to get this new idea into the game sooner? There are a million great ideas that you and we have for Mafia Wars. The unfortunate reality, as exists in every game studio, is that we have finite resources that need to consider, out of all the great ideas, what would be the next best thing to tackle. So, the next time we respond with “We’re working on/looking into/considering it,” know that we really are! It’s just that each idea is 1 of thousands that we are working on/looking into/considering every single day. Where are the Stamina Boosts? You give away energy like it was candy, why not stamina? Quick Answer: We're looking into it. Long Answer: Our programmers have been trying to figure out how to get stamina boosts to work the same as energy boosts and how to properly implement it in the game. They have dedicated quite a bit of time to the issue and discovered, while digging through the code, that stamina was set up in such a way that it is not as easy to control as energy. As a result, creating stamina packs is not as easy as creating energy packs and will require more time (which needs to be prioritized and scheduled) to figure out how to make something work within the system. Why don't you just fix your freaking game!!!!! I saved the best for last. I hear this a lot! We are well aware of the issues with playing our game and... wait for it... here it comes... we're looking into it. When MW was created nearly 3 years ago, the initial concept was for the game to be played in a certain way. The way the community has adapted the game to fit its own way of playing is beyond what was originally intended. We are excited about this! But it creates an interesting problem for us as we now need to figure out how to restructure things to accommodate this game play. Think of it this way: We built a bridge for people to get from one side of the river to the other. People cross it daily, but some people occasionally pause to see the water below. Eventually some people also begin to bring picnic lunches to eat while hanging out on the bridge. This is manageable for a while. People who just want to cross can cross, people that are trying to catch a quick glimpse of the water can pause to do so, and those picnickers can still eat on the beautiful bridge. As more people hear of the bridge, more people come, and they come with different intentions. While originally the bridge was designed for people to walk across, people are now using the bridge for a variety of different reasons. We are excited that people find our bridge to be so useful, but now we need to expand that bridge. We need to construct an area for people who are just walking across, one for people who want to take a moment to enjoy the scenery, and yet another for those who want to enjoy the bridge for an hour or two (or all night until the sun comes up). The people here at Mafia Wars want to see this game continue to be a successful game. We know that the success we've had is solely because of the players who love to play the game - our mobsters. Our main goal is to continue the development of MW in a way that people with any of the various kinds of intentions will enjoy playing it. There will be misses, where we under or overestimate the importance of one aspect or another to our players, but we are always driving the achieve hits. We constantly turn to you, the player community, for the feedback that steers us in the best direction. An excellent opportunity for you to continue to participate in the development process is in the 4th episode of Mafia Wars Live!, which will broadcast live tomorrow afternoon! Post your questions here: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.php?t=1050571 Watch tomorrow (Wednesday, June 15th, 2011) at 3:30pm PDT here:http://www.ustream.tv/channel/mafia-wars-live1 I will be watching comments to this thread, but won't be able to respond to everyone, although I do appreciate everyone's feedback. -Blue Eyed Nate (Mafia Wars Community Manager)

Article written by Jennifer Patterson, Creator of the MW Loot Lady Blog, The Mafia Wars Loot Lady Facebook Fan Page and Co-Host of The Informant Podcast. All material is protected by copyright law