I’ve actually wanted to bring this up for a while now, but I keep forgetting. Every now and then, we get the privilege of seeing a developer create a forum account just to pop in and offer their time to answer questions or collect feedback. The problem is, by design, Chrono.gg is about having a new deal every 24 hours. The time window is too short for there to be any real incentive for developers and publishers to… Well, gain anything from us. I feel like the majority of the developers who generously pop in end up chatting with Chrono.gg staff, while the rest of us stay silent and either buy the game and learn more about it, or we just don’t have any curious questions and skip the deal. While there has been exceptions here and there, and it’s fortunate those developers did get something out of their time, but for the most part, by design, there isn’t any real incentive to spend one day and hope somebody has a question.
Now before any discussions on ideas begin, the next question is… So what? I want the public’s opinion on this. Is this even a problem to begin with? Are developers okay with spending one day, instead of weeks and weeks of answering questions and taking too much time off of development work? Do they prefer this short time window?
If there should be ideas on what options to make for developers/publishers to get recurring feedback on expired deals relevant to them, then… What alternatives do we have that doesn’t interfere with Chrono.gg’s 24-hour cycle? I mean, is the forum all we need? I’m not implying that the main site needs a feedback section, because I’m not sure the work to design and implement it is even worth it at all, especially if it really disrupts the look of Chrono.gg.
Thoughts anyone? Again, I’m not even sure this is even a problem. This may be one of those, “it ain’t broke so stop fixing it.”
I’m certainly with you on this idea. I saw the dev for the current sale pop up in the sales thread and thought “oh that’s nice… I have nothing though”. Not just because this particular game is of little interest to me. Even if I did buy it straight away as it went on sale I would likely not actually end up playing it straight away and in the case I did then it’s unlikely I’d get much insight into it to have any direct questions about the title or the devs within the day outside of polite small talk. Unless I was running into problems or bugs of course.
It’s very nice of the devs to volunteer their time to talk to us on the forums though but maybe it isn’t entirely useful for anyone like this. Maybe something more organized and event like would be better. Something along the lines of Reddit’s AMA system, where it’s announced beforehand who will come and answer questions so interested parties can prepare a little before hand. But that doesn’t really fit into the whole 24h cycle thing chrono got going here.
I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve noticed a dev showing up on the forum myself. Maybe as more people become aware of it happening we’ll see more engagement?
That’s the other issue I’ve noticed. A lot of the community doesn’t even realize devs are there waiting for questions to answer. There’s actually been a handful of devs who are there, and some of them end up just chatting with the Chrono.gg staff. But on the other hand, maybe devs are happier with this short time window as they can focus on development work, instead of chit-chatting all week. I don’t know.
I like your idea, but lets face the truth, just look at Discussion section of any Steam game, how many dev really answer players questions? Or it’s just players helping each other?
From my experience it’s about half and half depending on the game. I’ve seen devs from smaller independant studios doing consistent personalized replies in the Steam forums. And then I’ve seen other games, where the developers are only around to post announcements, and by developers I mean community managers/moderators.
I’d like to think Chrono.gg is in contact with enough developers interested in communicating with their customers to warrant the effort of providing some kind of channel to do so. But then again, that’s exactly what I’m questioning as well.