Question: I think with this being the last question it would be good for you to give us some insight as to what Vostok's goals/desires are for the game. What you plan for the future, is there talk of a remaster, are new maps something the team wants to create, what incentive will older players have to keep them in the game? Vostok used to publish road-maps of development plans for the year ahead but as that is no longer the case, it is difficult for players to be excited about what is to come as they (in most cases) have no idea what to expect.
Answer: I believe the overall strategic goal hasn’t changed – to implement and deliver the game in its full potential. The more detailed explanation can be tracked from the discussion regarding Freeplay we had recently, so you can get the understanding why we are not there yet. We’ll think about the ways of how to add more visibility to players with regards to the planning part. Please, take into account we try to rely on the players’ feedback generated by the updates we make, so often the plans tend to shift and modify, which I think is good for the game and the community after all.
Question: The game has gone through many different phases throughout its history. Some better than others. At times it even looked like there was a loss in direction where Vostok didn't seem to know what Survarium was. Do you think these sorts of things are caused by the many different lead designers the project has had over the years, or something else? Just thinking back, the game was once almost a "hardcore" shooter, focusing on slower, more controlled gameplay, whereas now it is certainly played at faster paces. Not only that but the art direction has changed in many ways too. Can you give us some insight into the decision making processes behind the changes mentioned above and if the team behind the game has a clear vision of where to take the project in the future.
Answer: The game has been in development for a while, so naturally we had periodic changes in the direction of the game. Sometimes we indeed had to make drastic moves and take decisions which could be treated as hard. Many of those decisions made in situations of insufficient resources to keep up the development of the game the way we wanted it to be. In any case, be sure, the development team behind Survarium does their best, and frequently beyond that, to keep updating the game with new content and features on regular basis. We are deeply thankful to the community supporting the game, it’s you who make it move forward!
Question: Survarium is mostly played by Europeans and Russians, this makes sense as Vostok is a Ukrainian development team. The question here is, what plans has Vostok made or will make to boost awareness of the game in the American market? As we recall, there was never really any major "push" to promote the game in the Americas, save for what is achieved by just having the game listed on Steam. What are your thoughts on this?
Answer: You’re right we have many Eastern European players in the game. However, since Survarium is also available on Steam, we have a lot of international players in the game as well. US would be in the top 3 location when it comes to the player-base. Making a push always makes sense. I think we’d need to have a relevant game update for that though. So, working on it.
Question: Can you describe a normal day in the office when it comes to the Survarium project? What are some of the things that the team do each day or week to move the development forward? And how has this process been affected since the global lockdown due to the Covid-19 virus?
Answer: The creative process would be similar to any other project we’ve had internally: the team would do regular meetings to brainstorm and toss in various ideas relevant for the game, discuss pros and cons, then take time to consider and reconvene again to fine-tune the discussion and work out a rough plan, which could later be translated by the producer into a bunch of specific task for the team to work on. The tasks are then grouped into so called sprints and the team gets into working on those to deliver on time. On regular basis the guys get together for status-update meetings, to keep track of the sprint progress and to make sure everyone’s on the same page about the current goals and the deliverable target. The lockdown has made the process a bit more complicated as now all the discussions need to happen online, which could be less spontaneous a process, but nevertheless just as heated a chats.
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