Ancient Forge berättar om hur de uppmuntrar spelare att behandla "anställda som vår familj"

Under vårt besök i Portugal på mässan DevGAMM hade vi möjlighet att prata med en rad olika spelutvecklare och kreatörer, inte minst Hotel Galactic-studion Ancient Forge. Vi tog oss ett gott snack med producenten Ida Szczecinska för att få veta mer om det mysiga managementprojektet, vilket nyligen lanserades via Steam som Early Access-version.

I den fullständiga intervjun, som även finns med svensk textning, frågade vi Szczecinska hur utvecklaren utformat titelns managementsystem för att hantera dynamiken kring anställda samt rekrytering, omhändertagande och till och med att gå vidare från personal:

"Well, we want to see the employees as our family. Yeah, this is often a joke for us, that we hire employees, and we say like, oh, they're sleeping with us, but do this, do that, clean that, bring this, and we are only task givers in the game. But the whole impression of the workers is that they stay with you, they learn skills, and they actually grow old with you. So, when they grow old, you can give them retirement, but what's good to use this time when they are older as employees is to actually start a mentoring programme. You can hire a new employee that has zero skill set, and you send them on the mentoring adventure, literally, when they get up more skills with the older employee to keep your hotel in a good level of performance. So, this is the whole cycle of employee, it's pretty long, it's not like your employees get old in a week, you need to stay them, train them, and then let them know, pass the knowledge to the next generation of the hotel staff."

Med detta som utgångspunkt frågade vi om utvecklingen av Hotel Galactic och var Ancient Forge befinner sig när det gäller produktion och förbättringar av spelet under Early Access-processen:

"Right now our game is in Early Access, we [went] Early Access this summer, and at this moment we are collecting the feedback, we are checking how it's seen by the players, our game, and we already know where is the place to improve, and we are taking it very seriously. Right now we are working on rework that will make the gameplay smooth, of course debugging of the whole game, but also extending the content to deliver more gameplay to our players. So, right now we have tons of work, there is a rework going on, and we are planning to finish it in December this year.

So, right now we have tons of work. December is one of our goals to show the players the improvement that we made from the Early Access, and honestly the next step is to start thinking about full release next year."

Med förbättringar planerade till december och förhoppningen att lansera den fullständiga produkten nästa år, berättade Szczecinska hur Ancient Forge ser på andra plattformar:

"We are open for communication, also about porting. Right now we are only on Steam, and on Steam Deck also, we are available on Steam Deck. But we are also thinking to go to other platforms."

Du kan se hela intervjun med Szczecinska nedan för mer information om Hotel Galactic.